Taishogoto
Taishōgoto ( Japanese 大 正 琴 ) is a Japanese box zither with five to six strings that are shortened using a keyboard. The name taishōgoto (or taishō-koto ) goes back to the Taishō period from 1912 to 1926 when the instrument was developed, and the ending -goto for koto , a Japanese vaulted board zither. The occasional name Nagoya harp refers to the original place of manufacture Nagoya , whereby “harp” has nothing to do with the harp type of instrument . The taishōgoto serves as a solo or ensemble instrument .
Origin and Distribution
The taishōgoto was developed in 1912 by the musician Gorō Morita in Nagoya. He had received a scholarship from the first Prime Minister of Japan to study musical instruments in Europe and the USA for two years from 1906 and then came up with the idea of combining the mechanics of a typewriter with an instrument. In the 1920s, a variant of the taishōgoto called bulbultarang spread from Mumbai in northwest India and southern Pakistan. Presumably through Chinese immigrants in the 1930s, the taishōgoto came to the Indonesian island of Bali , where an instrument called nolin with four to six strings and twelve keys occurs mainly in the Tabanan administrative district .
Design
The taishōgoto consists of a long sound body with strings stretched over it. It has several pegs that are used to tune the instrument and are very similar to those of an acoustic guitar. However, the strings of the instrument are not pressed onto the fingerboard with the fingers, but rather by typewriter-like keys that run over the strings on metal strands. These buttons are operated with the left hand, while the right hand strikes the strings with a pick. The instrument is built in different sizes: soprano, alto, tenor and bass.
Mood
The taishōgoto is usually built with five strings, the soprano has the tone G as the drone tone, the following string is also tuned an octave higher to the tone G, the top three strings together an octave higher, also G. It is used in Europe mostly guitar strings, which you then tune a little higher, but which have about the same string tension because of the shorter scale length. In practice, either the drone string is dismantled or, if necessary, it can be tuned up or down by a whole tone .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Andrew C. McGraw: Nolin. In: Grove Music Online, May 28, 2015