It truly is amazing how much the UA-cam recording artist community just benefited from a $20 thrift store purchase. Thank you for all the work you put into these videos, you are very talented.
Not just that, but he was feeling unmotivated and just wanted to check out his local shop to sort of chill. Amazing find and going down the rabbit hole with him was so great.
@@watchandjewelryloft4713 heck, I'd say I benefited even from the simple idea to check out local shops when feeling unmotivated. It's something that happens to me fairly often, and I already really like "junk shops", as he calls them, so...
It nearly went into ad territory there. However, the sampler is a product I would certainly consider supporting if / when I work on electronic music. Seems like the dev. support would be excellent.
As an albanian, seeing a non-albanian going this long road to add such value to our music tradition and offer such great possibilities to young artists and whoever that decides to create music, and for free... such an honour. You my friend have earned a most deserved like, and a very loyal subscription. God bless you 🇦🇱
I am Turkish and I find this incredible! Thank you so much for putting the effort to create the 'Albanian Scale'. I will try to incorporate this into a psytrance track 🙂👽
As a Turkish guy, i can add another fun fact. Althought, it's an Albanian instrument, it's name came from Turkish. Its original name is actually "çiftetelli". In Turkish, lets split it as Çift-e-tel-li "Çift" means couple, the "e" after it is a suffix but doesn't add any meaning. "Tel" means "string" and the "li" is a possessive suffix. Summing up, Çifteli means "double stringed" in Turkish :D
@@TBARBL We got Bağlama which is pretty similar but with more strings to Çifteli. At first I thought the instrument in the video was a small bağlama without strings
In Albanian, we often use the phrase 'Kryet qiteli', which means you have a stubborn head, in other words, nothing could convince you! We often use it towards the kids, when they misbehave. So yeah, it might be true what you said, but it also has to do with the fact that Qiteli is made of 'stubborn materials' aka hard pieces of wood! I know, I used to kick them when I got the chance, and they make a weird sound lol.
Being an Albanian, coder, and music maker, this hit home so so so hard. I've tried my hand at making JUCE plugins, but never found much success. This was so informative and inspiring!
As an albanian, i really enjoyed this video, thank you for covering the beauty of Çiftelija. I grew up being annoyed by it and hating it since I had to listen to it every day, but i found a new appreciation.
haha funny that you're annoyed by Çifteli music instead of synthesized Zurnas (fyelli) in your party music. I got tired of the sound after only a week lol.
That's how I felt about the banjo growing up in the southern US. Once I grew up and saw things a bit differently, I ended up loving the sound of a banjo.
@@dordly thats how i feel about bayan (accordion?). My grandfather played it during every celebration while being drunk by vodka lol. And also my father always said that its a cool instrument because it was cool in the soviet union during their youth but i was always annoyed by the sound and look of this instrument. For me it was some old fashioned boomer instrument for villagers. But now i started to appreciate it more
Im a musician originally from Kosovo, and I have been thinking about incorporating our traditional çifteli in my next music project, and this is such a great timing to look into your sampling bank! Thank you for doing all this work to bring this amazing intstrument to a wider audience
"I'm not only a samplist, i'm also the creator of decent sampler" I watched the video with such thrill, elation, amazement and gratitude... I'm from the middle east (Israel) and we have lots of songs using Eastern scales. And I had JUST talked about this with my music teacher, about how there's nothing that can help incorporate these sounds into digital music producing, not just the instruments themselves but the scales. There's nothing but a dreadful process, being forced to pitch handly each note, hoping to get the right sound. Well, now there's a way. Making this more exceable also means opening up a new path to music creation, thank you for that!
10 years ago I came across a used baglama on craigslist... I forked over the $50 not really knowing what I was getting into.... it led me down a path that has opened my eyes, or rather my mind and ears to a wider possibility in music. I am much grateful for that. This region of the world has magical music.
I bought a baglama a few years ago online, and they are surprisingly inexpensive even new. It's a fun instrument, seven strings. They even make electric ones nowadays and there are modern bands that use them, like the Dutch-Turkish band "Altın Gün". There are good free books online on the different tunings and the Makam system, which uses mainly Arabic and Persian terminology for the scales, but describes scales that go back 3,000 years or more, some of them used in ancient Balkan/Greek/Anatolian music, so it's a real window into the past (the Arabic language is used like we use Italian in English for our music theory rather than meaning that it's Arabic in origin). But nowadays it sounds very "oriental" to our ear, even though that's what music would have sounded like even in ancient Balkan music, through to later Roman/Eastern Roman music. So you feel like you are playing something that could have been heard by a Roman emperor or Ptolemaic Egyptian ruler. It's a lot of fun
Absolutely fantastic! As a teacher of music theory for the past 30 years, the division of the octave, and how it is applied to various musical instruments has fascinated me. The relationship between culture, the environment, materials used for instrument, making, and the influences of outside of the culture result in a vibrant, musical world. For example, the piano was developed in northern Europe, where there are plenty of hardwood trees, the ability to create strong metal, and the ability to manufacture strings of different with, and length. Compare the weather and the environment of northern Europe to the subcontinent of India. In India, we can see that it makes total sense that one of the primary instruments is the sitar. The sitar is constructed of a gourd, which is grown inside of a box like wooden structure that forms, the appropriate size and shape for the main part of the instrument one can’t imagine people in England, growing gourds and shaping them into a musical instrument. In India, there are of course, pianos that arrived with a British. They are very very difficult to maintain because of the monsoons, the humidity, and the heat. Factor in religious, class, and financial considerations, and we can readily understand that the human desire to make music will manifest itself in thousands of different ways. Another fascinating, at least to me, concept is the relationship between the human body and instruments, if one sits at a full piano keyboard, we can see that the size of the piano fits perfectly with the adult human who has stretched out their left and right arms! That’s an obvious example, but it goes deeper than that. Human beings have eardrums that are of a certain size and the size is restricted by our physiology. If human beans were twice the size, then it stands to reason that our eardrums would be bigger, and that we could then hear lower and higher frequencies than we do and if human beings were, on average, 10 to 12 feet tall instead of 5 to 6 feet tall, then we would be making pianos much larger and with a greater harmonic range than we do now. Finally, there is the difference between playing a stringed instrument and, for example, a woodwind instrument Flutes, for example, are not confined to the structures of a fretted instrument, and can therefore play Quarter tones, microtones, and everything in between. And culture is so very important. Here in the west, we grow up listening to the octave divided by 12. So when we hear microtonal Music, it sounds off to us, it sounds “out of tune”. Quite a few of my students in my music theory classes over the years have been from cultures/countries, like Turkey. They have told me that, setting aside the massive, cultural influx of western influences, the 12 note, diatonic scale sounds off to them. They also tell me that they feel constricted, because suddenly they are going from an octave divided by 52 to an octave divided by 12. I am an old man now, and when I was young, I used to dream about what the future would look like AND SOUND LIKE. but I never imagined living in the world of today, a world in which, via the Internet, musicians could immediately connect with one another. The influences of West and East are coming together to create a new vocabulary. Learning to speak, and communicate with this new vocabulary is, and has been, one of the main goals of my artistic life. Cheers!
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This video made me tear up for whatever reason. As an Albanian and a musician (who was classically trained, I don’t play Albanian folk music) I’m so amazed at you, a non-Albanian musician, have so much respect and such a beautiful appreciation for our national instrument. The fact that this is getting out to a non-Albanian audience as well is so exciting and nice to see. You’re educating people who may have not known about this side of music and can gain something from your experiences. I even learned things I didn’t know about the çifteli myself! Fantastic video, man. Keep it up.
As a black guy, i can add another fun fact. Althought, it's an Albanian instrument, it's name came from Turkish. Its original name is actually "çiftetelli". In Turkish, lets split it as Çift-e-tel-li "Çift" means couple, the "e" after it is a suffix but doesn't add any meaning. "Tel" means "string" and the "li" is a possessive suffix. Summing up, Çifteli means "double stringed" in Turkish :D
This was really cool. There are a lot of other tuning systems, for instance, Iranian music uses something called Radif which is very extensive. A lot of the nations in the Middle East such as Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic and... use the same scale as Radif. The interesting part is that each nation has its own taste.
I am a guitar player, also married to an Albanian, she and her family introduced me to the Çiftelija during last vacation and was a very interesting experience, thanks for promoting such a beautiful instrument.
As a turkish and a beginner musician I am actually very excited that you delved a little into the turkish musical system, if you want to learn more about it and if you want to be amazed by an awesome instrument I'd recommend you acquaint yourself with the tanbur or the turkish tanbur. The 53 intervals you mentioned are almost entirely represented on the tanbur and almost all are used. Though which are used change depending on the maqam. I would love for you to make a video about the turkish tanbur. Great video, love from Turkey
@@stefanodobleja6923 yeah it's related since people who lives in Siberia are mostly Turkic nations so they are also kind of Turkish or same part of culture from long long years. And lastly Wikipedia does not include %100 true information to make research on it. Çift means double ,tel means wire in Turkish so çifteli can mean either something has two wire or something with double item.
@@stefanodobleja6923 Some did, and some did not. The Turks invented a system called a "bod" which we today call a "nation". This bod was based on language + land + law (töre) and not looks.
I’m currently living in Albania. I’ve been here for a couple years now. Wasn’t expecting to be scrolling UA-cam and see that you found a çiftili in Philadelphia. Glad the unique music from this region inspired you to accomplish microtonal use in DS. I’m a user of DS and love what you’ve created!
@@bletrick3352 I live in Korce. We moved here to help vulnerable children primarily. Right now we’re hoping to help establish foster care in the country. There are a lot of children here with trauma and difficult lives and my wife has a background in foster care and mental health. My wife’s father is Albanian and from Korce so that’s why we ended up here. Thanks for asking! God bless!
I must say that decent sampler is simply one of the best libraries ever. Not only is a lot of it free, but it is extremely high quality. The really amazing part about it though is the fact that you can find exotic instruments and sounds on there, which you can't find anywhere else, or only in an expensive exotic instrument bundle. So great work, and keep going! it really helps music producers like me. Thanks a lot🙏
Your video is FANTASTIC. Well done research you did. I am a music teacher here in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil , and loved it. I also created something very new that saves lots of time in the learning of Brasilian popular music on accoustic guitar, and also international music. It is a new way of writing rythmic patterns. The student do not need any knowledge of music theory and is so easy even a 5 year old child understand. In the future I will be putting it on youtube for all the world to learn guitar 4 times faster than any other method. Greetings from Brasil
I lived in Albania for a year and had the privilege to listen to the maestros live. Thank you for explaining the technical aspects of this traditional instrument!
I just love how common droning notes are in a lot of folk music. I get goosebumps every time I hear an instrument such as this one where you have a quite eccentric melody played with the droning note in the background. Also the time signatures in a lot of Balkan folk music are so interesting and inspiring.
I am a music teacher in Switzerland and there are quite a lot of people from Southeastern Europe living here. In the past two years I've heard several students mention the çifteli when talking about different instruments in class. Even though I already had albanian classmates when I went to school, I've never heard of this instrument before. It seems like there is some kind of revival and more young people (re-)discover the origin culture of their parents or grandparents, which is cool.
Some trivia: There is a famous Anatolian dance that is named for this instrument, which is much more famous than the instrument itself. The dance exists since ancient times, but when Turks expanded into Anatolia, the style/dance was renamed "Çiftetelli", because it is played with this instrument! Nowadays Çiftetelli is played with any instrument you want, but the name remains. I love these things because they're a window into antiquity - in English we call the dance Tsifteteli today, after the Greek spelling, but it's seen in Anatolia in records from the Classical Period (~500BCE), mentioned by ancient Greek writers of the time, and (arguably) originated from the Balkans, where many later-Anatolian tribes originated. It's speculated to be related to a dance mentioned by Aristophanes, and by ancient Romans, who may have added finger cymbals to the dance, which may have inspired many variations using that method, which followed the Romans to all sorts of places. Anyway, it's kind of funny, since for me, I knew about the dance before ever knowing that it was named (in modern times) after this instrument, so that was a whole interesting discovery. The name means "two stringed" in Turkish, but today it's usually played on more complex instruments and by whole bands.
@@1412mariLU aha, it is very similar to cifteli. wooden body, 2 strings, same shape. but it has turkic (not turkish) origin. and i was trying to differenciate them😅
I grew up hearing my family members play the Cifteli. I'm Albanian, but I grew up in the U.S. and never learned how to speak the language. However, A few months ago, I wanted to learn how to play the cifteli myself (I assumed that it would be easy since I play guitar), but I was barely able to find information on how to even tune the strings Lol, Even after I tuned it though, I just gave it up after hearing those "off" notes because I had no idea how to even approach that whole situation Loll. Almost all of the information online about the Cifteli is in Albanian or some other language, or just very hard to find in general. Seeing this video in my recommended today was just such an incredibly pleasant surprise, (and also just surprisingly convenient timing.) I really dont know what else to say other than thank you!! Theres so much useful information in this video. I'm like.. as targeted as a target audience can get for this video
Mozart loved Turkish music and threw an eighteenth century twelve tone blanket over the Makkams. Also Ravel’s Bolero has echoes of this sound and structure. What a great instrument you found!
@@echetlosDude dont be racist here. Turkish music with strings is a known fact even before they migrated to west. There are lots of documents about their music and instruments in Chinese documents from 2 millenias ago. Please educate yourself in art history before making any racist claims. Start with researching about qopuz which is well documented 6th century B.C
@@robedechamberlol this aint no turkish instrument this is a "Qifteli" an albanian instrument and we do have a instrument similar to turkish instrument "saz".In my country we call it "Sharkia".Im not trying to argue but i am speaking with facts like it or not.
As a band coming from İstanbul and using Turkish musical ways and İnstruments Thank you very much just want to add that etymology really helps us to reach to the cultural roots and the name of the instrument is strictly Turkish Çift means two or double and Tel means string in Turkish 🦚
Kosovar here! I saw this video in my sub box and smiled. Then I saw that you made the çifteli a sampled plugin, then I cheered from excitement. Thank you for featuring our national instrument, it's truly a pleasure to see! I'm happy that you loved it so much.
Oh man, that looks like such a fun instrument. I hadn't heard of Decent Sampler until today but I'm definitely gonna check it out. Thanks for adding support for custom tunings!
So glad about how humbly you approached the instrument, watching lots of videos of traditional players and trying to learn about its scale rather than deeming it "out of tune" as too many westerners would probably do. It's also SUPER interesting to me to hear that scale, because it's pretty much the same as many folk flutes in Sweden ! LOVE that blue scale 💙
Yes, more xenharmonic/microtonal support. I’ve been in the microtonal rabbit hole for a while now, so it’s good to have musicians I like acknowledge the world. Also, it’s really cool seeing love for Sevish, one of my favorites.
6:16 "I should warn you that microtonal composing can be quite the rabbit hole. There are people who start doing it and they just kind of like never return." Me: "But what if they don't want to return?" I personally fell into this rabbit hole but I did it on purpose because I wanted to try out something new. It was hard at the beginning and some concepts are still hard for me, since there seems to be no limits, but I don't regret it. It widened my possibilities of composing and making music. I will definitely check out Decent Sampler, it sounds interesting.
@@GlazeonthewickeR It is still possible to make good music with microtones. Sevish is the most known person who makes such music. Other examples are benyamind, Xotla, Zhea Erose and Brendan Byrnes, just to call the most famous ones. Most people of western culture have a problem with microtonal music because there are so many intervals which aren't present in the 12-tone equal-temperament system, these sound bad for them. I understand why the 12-tone equal-temperament dominates the music, but some people just want to experiment and compose something in other systems. It isn't everyone's taste and this is okay.
I've been kind of procrastinating that jump for a while now, I guess it feels intimidating to jump into this whole new world? How would you recommend someone who's never produced microtonal music to approach it? Also, I'm pretty sure the free synth Vital also supports microtonal scales. Check it out if you don't already have it!
@@zkassai.audio.2 I can confirm, that jumping into microtonal music feels really intimidating. There isn't a right way for first approaching microtonal music, it depends of what you want to explore. If you want to stay in 12edo (EDO stands for equally divided octave) but want some microtonal flavour in it, then you might check out the EDOs 24, 36, 48, ... (so any number that can be divided by twelve). It's like tuning your instruments differently and playing them together at the same time (that's how some composers approached it, the most famous I can recall is Charles Ives). If you want to stay in meantone temperament, you can check out the EDOs 31 and 53, maybe also 19 (although 19edo has a flat-ish flavour). From there you can experiment with other existing scales. That's basically the way how I did approach microtonal music at the beginning, but there isn't a right way for approaching. Yes, Vital also supports microtonal scales, I will check it out.
This is probably one of the best videos in UA-cam in last few days I have seen. I am an amateur flute player and passionate about musical instruments. This particular instrument is similar to an Indian (Bengali) folk instrument called Do-tara (two-string) though the Bengali version is having generally 4 strings and without fretes. Any way, this work is very inspiring for me. Thanks for uploading. Best wishes
As albanian, music lover and software engineering student I have absolutely no idea why youtube algorithm hasn't showed me this video before. Thank you for the video
Watching your experience with a microtonal instrument totally took me back 21 years to the first time I played Balinese and Javanese gamelan instruments at the California State Summer School for the Arts - where I also got to hear Kate Conklin teach some of the vocalists Bulgarian vocal technique a vocalization technique that coincidentally is also used in Turkey. So I was intrigued by the Turkish connection in your video. :) It’s great to hear that you added Scala support to Decent Sampler so quickly! One of my colleagues at our music tech mag (SoundBytes Magazine) is really big on micro-tuning support in software, so I might mention that addition to him. Keep up the great work!
@@ringsystemmusic anything possibly more specific lol? I already play other instruments and have a somewhat big interest in music theory so I might understand what ur talking about if u describe/comment on it lol
My family is from Greece and I have learned more about this instrument in your video that I have my entire life. Sidenote, I have about 700 hobbies all because I visit thrift stores and used shops and just find stuff that leads to new hobbies. 😂 Nice video as always
the amount of work and crazy things you put out for the community is beyond me, top 3 music youtube channel for me, you really inspire in a different way for music producers
I don't think I've ever paused a video so many times to read every word on the screen! My undergrad was in (American) music composition, and I was a flute player, which has some of the most easily adjustable pitches of the major wind instruments. I was sometimes asked to play microtones with pitch bending (done with the mouth) in new experimental music, and knew that other cultures have systems that involve microtones, but that was about all I was expected to know about it. This video gives me so much more context and information. Bravo and thank you!
As an Albanian with a bit of music knowledge i really enjoyed this video and i'm happy to see the albanian culture shown to the rest of the world. Thank you very much. By the way if you need any translation i would be more then happy.
Fricken awesome video. Informative about scales, micro tuning, software, sampling, samplers, musical history, cultural history, coding. Best 9 mins on UA-cam in a long time. Thanks for DS and your channel.
In Kazakhstan there is an instrument that looks a LOT like this,called a Dombra & it is tuned D G. While CLEARLY related instruments ,it would seem the tone of Çifteli doesn't have as much of the sympathic drone that I hear with Dombra! I applaud you for taking the time & effort to actually do a bit of research! Also...You paid $20.00??? that is a steal ,considering they usually go for like $60.00 & up (some of the fancy electric models sell for $600.00)
it's a turkish instrument, so naturally related to that kazakh instrument, just like bağlama and many other turkish instruments. çift means double and tel means string, it's easy to find stuff like this in former ottoman states.
This guy is such a treasure for the internet. He just does shit he finds interesting and does everything as high quality as possible. He should have like 5 million subscribers
This reminds me of how I was when I discovered the existence of a Scandinavian folk instrument called the tagelharpa (also called bowed lyre) it has 2,3 or 4 strings. One of which is the one you play your melodies while the others are drone strings. The strings are also made of horsehair and you use a bow to play it. After going down the tagelharpa rabbit hole, I decided to build my own. And it is currently my favorite instrument. It has such a raw sound that is unlike anything I've heard before
Sort of a simplified Dulcimer played like a Mandolin, reminiscent of a Balalaika. This is a really great, impressive, inspiring video! I felt excitement after watching it. I love notes and harmonies that sound a little "off."
Balalaika was originally a turkic instrument (most likely) - like the Kazakh dombra. And it wasn't shaped like a triangle, Vasiliy Andreyev made it look like a dorito basically.
@@denisborzov8406 Before Andreyev, the balalaika was just non-standardized, and there existed both oval and triangle shapes beforehand (evident from old paintings and prints). But even some Turkic instruments have a more triangle shape, so I would assume there’s a common ancestor regardless.
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard is an Australian band that has heavily used microtones in some of their music through microtonal guitars, Sitars, Zurnas, and more. You should check you their album flying microtonal banana if you are interested in hearing more microtonal music. They use it in very creative ways.
Humongous Fungus, David Lindley, probably the best-known (yet chronically under-appreciated) American musician to use traditional Middle-eastern instruments such as the Saz, Oud and Bouzouki in both a rock band setting (first with the Kaleidoscope, and later with ElRayo-X) and for solo performance of old Celtic folk songs, Appalachian banjo and bluegrass tunes, and reimagined covers of singer-songwriters such as Bob Dylan and Warren Zevon, passed away 3/3/23. Although probably best known for providing Hawaiian lapsteel slide guitar and violin parts to records by world famous performing artists, he had an extensive collection of instruments from around the world, and numerous modified or custom made instruments of his own devising, and plaayed them in his solo acoustic shows. Anyone interested in the possibilities of incorporating microtonal instruments and music into more modern styles should really check out Lindley's music. There are a ton of live performances by him on UA-cam. He was unique, an iconoclast, a 1 of 1. More than anyone else, he is responsible for the resurgence of interest in Weissenborn-style acoustic Hawaiian lap steel guitars, but his Oud, Saz and Bouzouki skills are less well known. Personally, I don't think one has truly lived until they've heard him play the instrument he built from the body of a Vox Bill Wyman teardrop bass guitar with a bouzouki neck grafted onto it, and earthquake sensors for pickups!
King Gizzard are the lamest band I have ever heard in my life. It's a carbon copy of the 70s psychedelia and prog they're ripping off, without the soul and creativity
@@phlog_dog7336 All music is ripping off stuff you like. The first Tame Impala record is just Lennon/Beatles psychedelia with the rhythms and production sounds of Dungen and Todd Rundgren. It wears its influence on its sleeve and it's still amazing. You don't have to like King Gizzard, but saying they're lame because they're similar to the stuff they love to listen to is idiotic. Literally every band that doesn't make outsider music does this, including all the bands you think are incredibly unique but were also doing the same thing. The Beatles had music they listened to and were emulating, too. If you obsess over originality you're shooting yourself in the foot because every musician gets their inspiration from something, it doesn't happen in a vacuum lmao. Normalize saying you don't like something, not that the something "sucks", or you're going to sound like a petulant child to anyone trying to talk music with you.
Sitars are absolutely one of my favorite instruments to listen to. Surprisingly versatile, too! Check out the sitar intro in Dream Theater’s “Home” track from Scenes From a Memory. Sounds so good in a prog metal context and would fit neatly into other genres as well!
I wholeheartedly support your aspiration of writing for these scales. I find microtonal music ravishing and compelling. Thank you for this post, I enjoyed it immensely!
This is how it feels when I go down the rabbit hole of learning a new language. It's so much more than learning just words, and an instrument is no exception.
I love everything about this video. The story, the brief background in theory, the curiosity and the respect for the instrument and it's cultural context, the way this was all translated into a modern sampler and most of all the fact, that this was shared with the world. This is what makes UA-cam and the internet as a whole so great.
So very cool! I appreciate what you were able to do here - especially in being open and interested in the story of the instrument, not simply its timbre - which pushed you to build a feature set that you might never have explored otherwise! It sounds so alive with its proper tuning. Thank you for sharing this!
The content just kept on blooming! That songlet also was a cool take... This is a nomadic instrument we (Turks - "Orcs", Ork-huns,) brought with us from the Middle Asia. Kopuz is çiftetelli's grand father. You may even see Mongols sing along. It's carved into a log. As Nomads, we have a different musical system. We can't carry books (or even coins) as they mean burden. There's no currency. All value is stored as calories in sheep and horses. Mobile assets only. There are barter markets. The Atabaskhans in Alaska call it Potlatch, same as us, in Istanbul. Potlaç is an exchange market you can see every Sunday in Kadıköy. So this instrument is also an item of exchange but this time designed for conveying verbal information since there are no books. The library is the elderly people, who we call Ata :)
@@drumspleasefab A wikipedia article is more reliable than your speculations, that is certain. I wasn’t expecting some turk to claim an albanian instrument as their own, either.
@@haticealbayrak2387 it may be a turkish loan word, but that does not make it a turkish instrument. Show me a video of a turk using the exact same instrument and then i will believe you.
Thanks for sharing this great instrument. It looks and sounds like it's related to the Turkish saz (also called baglama). I bought one in Istanbul and brought it home. It has 7 strings--two pairs of two strings and one pair of three strings. The bottom set is played as a drone, and the top two are for the melodies--similar to the cifteli. Microtonal music is common throughout the Middle East and India.
Thanks for the video! Just by listening to the instrument scale I can tell it is a Maqam Bayati. Very known in Arabic music. Turkish have other maqams a bit similar. If you want to play Bayati maqam, tune to E -25%, and B -25%. The maqam bayati starts with D. Hence the name of quarter notes in arabic music.
I have been a silent follower of your channel, watching and re-watching all your videos. I just love following your journey of discovering and sampling all sorts of nostalgic and quirky instruments. However, when I saw the thumbnail of this video on my feed, the cifteli I was speechless. I never would have imagined you'd stumble upon it, ever! Doing it feels like an homage to our culture. I myself am from Kosovo and have to say, I appreciate you so much for all the great work and energy you put into your channel. Big respect
I just discovered microtonal music and this is the second video I watched on it. Crazy cool. You, sir, have a talent for exploring the many facets of a given subject.
This is exactly what every creative artist should be like. Open-mindness leads to try something knew, curiosity makes to dig deeper, passion allows to spend time and effort on making something completely new and a big heart gives a result of this work to the people.
CIFTELI is a Turkish word meaning "WITH DOUBLE" in reference to 2 strings. There are variations to this instrument that has more strings commonly known as Saz or Baglama. The strings are doubled similar to a mandolin or a 12 string guitar however not in octaves bur as unison. Saz can be tuned in several ways. It is used in Turkish pop extensively together with western instruments such as guitars and keyboards. The band Kurtalan Express has many great examples. I hope this information was useful to you.
@@davidnayir That name refers to a particular stringing of the violin, where they move the top two strings close together and tune them an octave apart, then play them together. A very sexy sound. :-)
Hello, I am a darbuka player interested in Middle Eastern music, and to understand the scales similar instruments use, you should study the oriental scale system called "Maqam". While western music uses just two modes (minor and major), there are quite a few more Maqamat, each named, and assembled from usually two "ajinas", which are basic four or five sequences. Also, "Ciftetelli" is a rhythm used in Turkish and Greek music.
In my country (Iran) we have a traditional or maybe ancient instrument which is totally looks like çiftli, we call it "duo-taar". In persian "duo" means "two" and "taar" means string. Anyway, i suggest you to search "iranian dotar" in youtube and look at the skills that players have.
Thank you so much for putting this video together and exposing me and everyone else here to the çifteli and the music it makes. I was suddenly struck while listening to music played on this instrument that the constant drone along with the melody is pretty much exactly what one hears in the sound that Bulgarian Women's Choirs use. For a few years now I've been amazed and blown away by the sound of Bulgarian Women's Choirs, never having heard anything quite like that sound before. And now the çifteli helped me better understand what they are doing. Thanks again.
Ah, that's really cool! There's actually a Bulgarian Women's Choir in my neighborhood, and I've gone to see them several times, but I never made the connection.
It’s a wonderful surprise to see this video about çiftelia Dave. I used to study at the Ballet Academy in Tirana and during the last year of the school Çiftelia was included in the school program as a traditional instrument. I do appreciate your huge contribution to the musicians community with Decent Sampler and Pianobook,now i have some more reason to appreciate it much more. Thank you Dave on behalf of all Albanians.
Tone is somewhere between a mandolin and a Koto. It's nice. OMG I just looked, didn't realise Decent sampler is available as a vst plugin. LMMS and Linux can deal with those quite happily... You have just opened up a huge well of sonic exploring and dramatically changed my composition game ❤❤❤
What an amazing video, David! I am so glad you bumped into this instrument. Thank you for introducing us to this wonderful instrument and giving us a mini-lesson on the history of this music instrument!
That's an awesome find! I'm a New Zealander living in Greece. I recently did a course on Rebetiko guitar which is a kind of Greek folk music that was influenced by the 'Turkish' settlers that immigrated to Greece from Turkey in the early 1920's as part of the 'population exchange' (to avoid a messy ethnic cleansing type of thing). Rembetiko doesn't exactly use scales, rather 'Dromoi' or 'Roads' which are some kind of mode or progression... Rembetiko instruments are often without frets, or with moveable frets, and look something like this Cifteli. Little body and a long, thin neck. I have a baglamadaki which looks like the baby brother of this one, but is tuned like a Greek Bouzouki (D A D) Anyway, I was learning Rembetiko on guitar thankfully! And I recognised the scale that the Cifteli is in as a Rebetiko dromi. Other than that the course went over my head much like a jumbo jet taking off... Thanks for the videos and the awesome sound libraries that you produce!
I live in Greece and I play the tamboura! It has moving frets and uses the Byzantine intervals. I find it interesting how similar so many instruments from other Balkan are very similar.
Greek music uses the Makam system just like what is described in this video. Names of scales/'dromoi' in the Makam system come mostly from Arabic/Persian/Turkish vocabulary, but that's a very modern change and incidental - nearly all of those modes/scales were known about and written about in ancient times, at least 3,000+ years ago, so it's more like how we use Italian vocabulary in music theory in the English-speaking world - doesn't mean our music is Italian in origin, even if we use Italian (largo, staccato, allegro, piano/forte, cantabile, de capo, crescendo, etc., are all Italian). Anatolian Greek refugees brought some elements (and vocabulary) back to Greece in the 20s, like their own variations on instruments, but none of it is new. Modern bouzouki was invented in the 1920s in the way it looks now, but is a variation on long-necked lutes of ancient origin, with the modern variation being popularized by Armenian luthiers like the Zozef family, who were from Smyrna. The weird thing is, the "European tuning" of the bouzouki (D-A-D) was one of many that were popular in the 30s, but we don't have a lot of surviving records of what others were popular, so it's just speculation. If you read Markos's autobiography, he describes the D-A-D European tuning as one of many that he performed with, but doesn't describe any of the others, which is kind of frustrating.
At first, I was thinking "I have one of those! It's a dulcimer-like instrument called a Strumstick" and then you played that scale. I had no idea that there were other scales! That's fascinating. It sounds so fresh, yet also... mystical? dark? I'm not quite sure how to describe those odd tones, but I like it!
Look up some videos on UA-cam of the late great multi instrumentalist David Lindley playing old American folk and blues songs, English murder ballads, and reimagined singer-songwrter tunes, on the Saz (Baglama), Oud and Bouzouki. You will never hear music the same way again!
God bless you for this amazing video. You taught me more about my own culture’s music in a fashion that has never been done. Thank you for this in depth research and appreciation of our culture.
Wow, an unusual instrument, a different tuning/scale, a new sample set, and free software that I hadn't heard about, all in one short video! This was way more than I was expecting, especially given your Vox-style vocal presentation. Also, I am impressed by your incredible amount of restraint in only buying ONE item at that store!
A good recommendation for microtonal music is King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizards three microtonal albums for a fun way of getting into it. They use 24TET to try and mimic a baglama (Turkish instrument similar to this). That led myself to get a guitar fretted with microtonal frets. Another one to check is Noura Mint Seymali, a Mauritanian singer who plays a microtonal harp, and her guitar player, Jeiche Ould Chighaly, plays a 24TET fretted guitar. 75 dollar bill is another band that uses these 24TET instruments.
Multi instrumentalist David Lindley, who passed away recently, was playing Middle Eastern instruments in a psychedelic band called the Kaleidoscope in the 1960s, and later in the Eighties with his own jam rock band ElRayo-X (in between recording sessions and tours with world famous singer songwriters). His solo acoustic shows, many of which you can find on UA-cam, frequently featured the Saz, Oud, and Bouzouki as well as the Weissenborn acoustic Hawaiian lap steel guitar. Some of the El RayoX band performances on UA-cam have him playing the electric Saz, as well as Persian classical music on a violin which segues into The Hangman's Reel, a fiddle tune from Quebec.
I also fell in love with Cifteli. But by listening to a shitton of Albanian music after falling down the Balkan YT rabbit hole (don't ask). Needless to say, it makes me EXTREMELY happy to see, not just non-western music, but Albanian and Balkan music in particular, being added to the digital tools these days! I always loved these alternative scales since a kid, but struggled to recreate it in FL studio or whatever I was using. Then watching some more UA-cam videos I realized what insane ways Albanians, Indians, Romanis etc. use to recreate their folk sounds digitally. That's why most of the pop music based on folk music is till heavy with real instrument recordings, or if such tunes are ever used in a more "international" western way, it's almost always seen as some exotic flavour, rather than a whole new music culture one could you enjoy, if it ever passed the older generation & non-Western language barrier. The only culture that I've seen transcend that would be Punjabi. Man Punjabi pop really does carry some of that original flavour from it's now far away roots. And it happened precisely because it's community (now living in the west, with access to all these modern digital music making tools) went through the process that you just demonstrated. So yeah huge thank you David. I no longer feel alone on my journey (as a listener, not even a musician). You've done an amazing job making this thrift shop find digitally available to everyone! Keep it up! Subscribed! Also gotta love people who come across something new, and are instantly interested in it. I'm the same. So once again, glad I'm not alone! :)
Heya David. I'm really pleased to find this video. I'm not Albanian but I got somewhat randomly (or magically, depending) introduced to the çifteli back in 1993, when my father was there on a relief mission and brought one back for me to California. I fell in love with it and have been playing it, researching it, and writing about it ever since. Curiously, it's not just the internet that doesn't really talk about its microtonal tuning system--none of the Albanian musicologists that I'm aware of have explicitly mentioned it either! So I set about to write something about it, so far just my Master's thesis where I did a lot of music analysis of the çifteli's modes--afaik they don't talk about it in Turkish terms like 'makam'-s, they have their own system. IMHO the çifteli only approximates the Huseyni makam scale, as it's played in Ottoman makam music--there's a couple notes, those microtones especially, that are, if we're measuring using the cents system, still noticeably 'off' from the Huseyni notes. Since the çifteli was never a court or art music instrument, it makes sense that it really shares little with the Ottoman music. It does have things in common with Turkish instruments like the saz family, as others here have noted, though again IMHO the çifteli and its playing style have become thoroughly Albanicized. A couple points that I've learned that are not immediately obvious that you might find useful: the two strings should ideally be a very thin gauge, and they should both be the same gauge--I spent years using guitar B and E strings on it before I got my 2nd one (I now have 5) and discovered my error, and why they string it like that... It's b/c, for one, they like to tune it very high (that B and E are only approximate, I've heard it tuned up higher and lower, it's a matter of individual taste) so that the strings are very taut, much tauter than is usual on its Turkish relatives. This seems to be b/c it creates more resistance to the thin plectrum that allows the plectrum tip to bend and slide off more easily, which facilitates the tremolo plucking. I never hear the çifteli played slow! In fact the great maestros play(ed) with blinding speed. More importantly though, the strings are the same thin gauge b/c...this may blow your mind...there are at least 5 different ways to tune it, each of which gives a very different scale. The tuning in 4th is the most common, but you can also tune it in a 5th, in unison, or, these are especially interesting, in seconds--either, for example, to B-A or A-B. This changes where the 'tonic' note is on the melody string and shifts all the other intervals around. The A-B tuning is cool since if you fret the drone string at fret 1 with your thumb, then the strings are in unison but with the drone string open then there's a different base note. In much Balkan music they call this a di- or double-tonic, it's never clear which note is really the base. Also I never hear them fret the melody string on fret 1 in this tuning--that gives a Major 3rd and they don't seem to like that interval on this instrument. Instead, they fret the drone string, with thumb, on fret 2 and their forefinger on the melody string together. It's quite a sound. The B-A tuning is also cool since then the 'tonic' falls on fret 1, and gives a unison, so the open melody string becomes the 7th leading tone, another double tonic. And, with this traditional fretting system, there's no perfect 5th either. You can, in principle, also tune it so either one of those microtonal frets become the 'tonic', though I've never heard anyone actually play in those tunings. They're fun to play around with though. They do sometimes fret the drone string though, it's very common for a player to fret it with their thumb on fret 5, the leading tone. Sometimes they'll play extended passages with their thumb there so it becomes like a new 'tonic' (I keep ' ' that word b/c idk what they call that note, and our sense of tonic is not exactly the same thing). It turns the scale from a quasi-Huseyni or Phrygian mode to something more like a quasi-Mixolydian. I've also heard players do the same at frets 3 and 4, though less commonly. So you could add a feature to your program that allows you to change the pitch of the drone, and play around with the different modes that result. :) Thanks for this video and software. The çifteli is really a unique instrument, as is its music, and I'm glad someone else is also helping to bring it to greater worldwide awareness. :)
Pretty cool looking instrument! I'm quite into microtonal music myself (got myself a fretless bass, microtonal guitar, and Arabian oud which is like a fretless lute), it really is quite fun to play and compose in this style!
IMO it cannot be overstated how much you helped xenharmonic community with this feature for DS. 🦋 Also you inspired me to experiment with trying to make a sample library, I’m even tinkering a bit with weird cardboard tubes for some time; but they seem to have little pitched sound level than I’d like; maybe I’ll try another design which could help. Or maybe I’ll try to make something with synthesized loops. IDK, we’ll see. I was very surprised when I’d been reading the docs and found out that DS has convolution among other things! That’s useful! (I don’t know anything about what samplers like Kontakt support-probably a lot of stuff, but it’s still very nice. DS is right here and Kontakt is somewhere far away.)
As a music fan and albanian, i appreciate this video. I want to tell you that there are other Çiftelis too, that have „all“ the notes (12 steps) + the „albanian notes“, so you can choose how you want to play. My Çifteli is bigger and is usually tuned lower but it has more notes. Beside of that, there are many other instruments in albanian music, which gives a big variety. Thank you
Ah you have no idea what you’ve done. I thought I was going crazy because I could never replicate that sound electronically and you’ve unlocked the mystery why. THANK YOU!!! Thousand times over. Also if you want to keep going down the Albania music rabit hole. Check out their traditional clarinet playing. It’s so distinct and now I’m wondering if it’s because of this scale you’ve mentioned.
Wow! This was video was special for me since i’m crazy about lutes. You you might to learn about the brazilian viola-the-cocho. First the name of the Çifteli, with the first Ç. I’ve been studying catalan that shares the Ç with portuguese (i’m brazilian) , french but with a different function than in turkish. I learned that most of catalans write it wrong after an error in a children alfabetization book decades ago that went too literal. Ç is called “broken c” in catalan. The Çifteli construccion also reminded me of the brazilian “viola-de-cocho”. You might like to learn about it. I hope someday you will sample it also. Cheers!
It truly is amazing how much the UA-cam recording artist community just benefited from a $20 thrift store purchase. Thank you for all the work you put into these videos, you are very talented.
Not just that, but he was feeling unmotivated and just wanted to check out his local shop to sort of chill. Amazing find and going down the rabbit hole with him was so great.
@@watchandjewelryloft4713 heck, I'd say I benefited even from the simple idea to check out local shops when feeling unmotivated. It's something that happens to me fairly often, and I already really like "junk shops", as he calls them, so...
Very informative 👍🤔🗣️💯🇬🇧
This comment is pin worthy
You have accomplished something truly wonderful for many artists and those who love their music! Thank you
"I'm not only a samplist, i'm also the creator of decent sampler"
Didn't expected this kind of surprise, didn't knew DS had microtonal support now!
I too enjoyed this plot twist!
wahoo
It was like a villain reveal
Absolute gold
It nearly went into ad territory there. However, the sampler is a product I would certainly consider supporting if / when I work on electronic music. Seems like the dev. support would be excellent.
I had to laugh here too! I am glad I am not the only one that didn't know.
As an albanian, seeing a non-albanian going this long road to add such value to our music tradition and offer such great possibilities to young artists and whoever that decides to create music, and for free... such an honour.
You my friend have earned a most deserved like, and a very loyal subscription. God bless you 🇦🇱
@@0THC0 who said I was annoyed?
@@0THC0 I think you responded to the wrong comment.
@@hkrasniqi sorry, reponded to the wrong comment
@@Ellary_Rosewood yes i did, thanks for pointing it out.
@@0THC0 no worries man, all good :)
I'd call this a win for the preservation of a local music culture
I am Turkish and I find this incredible! Thank you so much for putting the effort to create the 'Albanian Scale'. I will try to incorporate this into a psytrance track 🙂👽
Post link when complete!
MERHABAAAA
@@audenisarat8179 Merhabalar efendim :)
I wanna hear your track when it's ready!
I would love to hear that :) this instrument is so cool.
As a Turkish guy, i can add another fun fact. Althought, it's an Albanian instrument, it's name came from Turkish. Its original name is actually "çiftetelli". In Turkish, lets split it as Çift-e-tel-li
"Çift" means couple, the "e" after it is a suffix but doesn't add any meaning. "Tel" means "string" and the "li" is a possessive suffix.
Summing up, Çifteli means "double stringed" in Turkish :D
Do you have Çifteli in Turkey though?
@@TBARBL In Turkey there is even a folkloric dancing called Çiftetelli popular in northeastern parts of Turkey :D
@@TBARBL We got Bağlama which is pretty similar but with more strings to Çifteli. At first I thought the instrument in the video was a small bağlama without strings
@@mertgulec7541 so it's not a Çifteli, since Çifteli has two strings.
In Albanian, we often use the phrase 'Kryet qiteli', which means you have a stubborn head, in other words, nothing could convince you!
We often use it towards the kids, when they misbehave.
So yeah, it might be true what you said, but it also has to do with the fact that Qiteli is made of 'stubborn materials' aka hard pieces of wood!
I know, I used to kick them when I got the chance, and they make a weird sound lol.
Being an Albanian, coder, and music maker, this hit home so so so hard. I've tried my hand at making JUCE plugins, but never found much success. This was so informative and inspiring!
Needed a better press, to JUICE it goooodd
same here bro! pershendetje!
@@handle_with_caution bruh isn't it turkish? Even the name "çifttelli" means double strings.
As an albanian, i really enjoyed this video, thank you for covering the beauty of Çiftelija. I grew up being annoyed by it and hating it since I had to listen to it every day, but i found a new appreciation.
haha funny that you're annoyed by Çifteli music instead of synthesized Zurnas (fyelli) in your party music. I got tired of the sound after only a week lol.
That's how I felt about the banjo growing up in the southern US. Once I grew up and saw things a bit differently, I ended up loving the sound of a banjo.
@@dordly thats how i feel about bayan (accordion?). My grandfather played it during every celebration while being drunk by vodka lol. And also my father always said that its a cool instrument because it was cool in the soviet union during their youth but i was always annoyed by the sound and look of this instrument. For me it was some old fashioned boomer instrument for villagers. But now i started to appreciate it more
Wow that’s incredible, the power of context and perspective, thank you for your humble wisdom
@@miavelvet both my parents and they're partners are annoying by my beautiful singing voice, I guess that's the original one
Im a musician originally from Kosovo, and I have been thinking about incorporating our traditional çifteli in my next music project, and this is such a great timing to look into your sampling bank! Thank you for doing all this work to bring this amazing intstrument to a wider audience
From Albania**
I’m all for that! 100% go for it!
"I'm not only a samplist, i'm also the creator of decent sampler"
I watched the video with such thrill, elation, amazement and gratitude...
I'm from the middle east (Israel) and we have lots of songs using Eastern scales. And I had JUST talked about this with my music teacher, about how there's nothing that can help incorporate these sounds into digital music producing, not just the instruments themselves but the scales. There's nothing but a dreadful process, being forced to pitch handly each note, hoping to get the right sound. Well, now there's a way.
Making this more exceable also means opening up a new path to music creation, thank you for that!
10 years ago I came across a used baglama on craigslist... I forked over the $50 not really knowing what I was getting into.... it led me down a path that has opened my eyes, or rather my mind and ears to a wider possibility in music. I am much grateful for that. This region of the world has magical music.
Hı Cory. As a baglama player, l would rocoment some baglama vırtoese şike ARİF Sag, Neset Ertas, and Muhlis Berberoğlu.
@@haydarkaderoglu Cool, will def check out, thank you!
I'll just drop this here for you ua-cam.com/video/ajLBenBWCso/v-deo.html
Much love from Turkey.
I bought a baglama a few years ago online, and they are surprisingly inexpensive even new. It's a fun instrument, seven strings. They even make electric ones nowadays and there are modern bands that use them, like the Dutch-Turkish band "Altın Gün". There are good free books online on the different tunings and the Makam system, which uses mainly Arabic and Persian terminology for the scales, but describes scales that go back 3,000 years or more, some of them used in ancient Balkan/Greek/Anatolian music, so it's a real window into the past (the Arabic language is used like we use Italian in English for our music theory rather than meaning that it's Arabic in origin). But nowadays it sounds very "oriental" to our ear, even though that's what music would have sounded like even in ancient Balkan music, through to later Roman/Eastern Roman music. So you feel like you are playing something that could have been heard by a Roman emperor or Ptolemaic Egyptian ruler. It's a lot of fun
Absolutely fantastic! As a teacher of music theory for the past 30 years, the division of the octave, and how it is applied to various musical instruments has fascinated me. The relationship between culture, the environment, materials used for instrument, making, and the influences of outside of the culture result in a vibrant, musical world. For example, the piano was developed in northern Europe, where there are plenty of hardwood trees, the ability to create strong metal, and the ability to manufacture strings of different with, and length. Compare the weather and the environment of northern Europe to the subcontinent of India. In India, we can see that it makes total sense that one of the primary instruments is the sitar. The sitar is constructed of a gourd, which is grown inside of a box like wooden structure that forms, the appropriate size and shape for the main part of the instrument one can’t imagine people in England, growing gourds and shaping them into a musical instrument. In India, there are of course, pianos that arrived with a British. They are very very difficult to maintain because of the monsoons, the humidity, and the heat. Factor in religious, class, and financial considerations, and we can readily understand that the human desire to make music will manifest itself in thousands of different ways. Another fascinating, at least to me, concept is the relationship between the human body and instruments, if one sits at a full piano keyboard, we can see that the size of the piano fits perfectly with the adult human who has stretched out their left and right arms! That’s an obvious example, but it goes deeper than that. Human beings have eardrums that are of a certain size and the size is restricted by our physiology. If human beans were twice the size, then it stands to reason that our eardrums would be bigger, and that we could then hear lower and higher frequencies than we do and if human beings were, on average, 10 to 12 feet tall instead of 5 to 6 feet tall, then we would be making pianos much larger and with a greater harmonic range than we do now. Finally, there is the difference between playing a stringed instrument and, for example, a woodwind instrument Flutes, for example, are not confined to the structures of a fretted instrument, and can therefore play Quarter tones, microtones, and everything in between. And culture is so very important. Here in the west, we grow up listening to the octave divided by 12. So when we hear microtonal Music, it sounds off to us, it sounds “out of tune”. Quite a few of my students in my music theory classes over the years have been from cultures/countries, like Turkey. They have told me that, setting aside the massive, cultural influx of western influences, the 12 note, diatonic scale sounds off to them. They also tell me that they feel constricted, because suddenly they are going from an octave divided by 52 to an octave divided by 12. I am an old man now, and when I was young, I used to dream about what the future would look like AND SOUND LIKE. but I never imagined living in the world of today, a world in which, via the Internet, musicians could immediately connect with one another. The influences of West and East are coming together to create a new vocabulary. Learning to speak, and communicate with this new vocabulary is, and has been, one of the main goals of my artistic life. Cheers!
This was one hell of a comment. In a good way!! Loved your reflections!!!
This was a pleasure to read
Wonderful comment
That was a Astonishing Thing to Read 👀 , Thank You So Very Much 🧘♂️ ✌️ ☮️ 🕊 🧘♂️ 🌻 , for Taking the Time ⌚️ to Type it.., .....WOW , .... IMPRESSIVE 👏 👏👏👏!!!! Can you get in Touch with ( DANIEL DONATO "COSMIC COUNTRY" ) PLEASE 🙏 , He Needs to KNOW THIS . This could make His MUSIC / ART 🎨 , ... EVEN BETTER THAN IT ALREADY IS , u Are a Angel 😇 .
Fascinating!
This video made me tear up for whatever reason. As an Albanian and a musician (who was classically trained, I don’t play Albanian folk music) I’m so amazed at you, a non-Albanian musician, have so much respect and such a beautiful appreciation for our national instrument. The fact that this is getting out to a non-Albanian audience as well is so exciting and nice to see. You’re educating people who may have not known about this side of music and can gain something from your experiences. I even learned things I didn’t know about the çifteli myself! Fantastic video, man. Keep it up.
Right, nice try to keep down your hidden nationalism
@@felicegreece do you know definition of nationalism?
Same dude. It's so heart touching! It's like it hits home for so many of us!
@@felicegreece Why keeping down the nationalist pride! Albanians are stubbornly proud people!
As a black guy, i can add another fun fact. Althought, it's an Albanian instrument, it's name came from Turkish. Its original name is actually "çiftetelli". In Turkish, lets split it as Çift-e-tel-li
"Çift" means couple, the "e" after it is a suffix but doesn't add any meaning. "Tel" means "string" and the "li" is a possessive suffix.
Summing up, Çifteli means "double stringed" in Turkish :D
Im an albanian producer and this is amazing, Thank you for making this! This so much fun🇦🇱
This was really cool. There are a lot of other tuning systems, for instance, Iranian music uses something called Radif which is very extensive. A lot of the nations in the Middle East such as Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic and... use the same scale as Radif. The interesting part is that each nation has its own taste.
I am a guitar player, also married to an Albanian, she and her family introduced me to the Çiftelija during last vacation and was a very interesting experience, thanks for promoting such a beautiful instrument.
As a turkish and a beginner musician I am actually very excited that you delved a little into the turkish musical system, if you want to learn more about it and if you want to be amazed by an awesome instrument I'd recommend you acquaint yourself with the tanbur or the turkish tanbur. The 53 intervals you mentioned are almost entirely represented on the tanbur and almost all are used. Though which are used change depending on the maqam.
I would love for you to make a video about the turkish tanbur.
Great video, love from Turkey
It looks similar to a instrument that they use in Siberia,Russia...are they related?
The wikipedia article said it is Albanian,not Turkish...
@@stefanodobleja6923 yeah it's related since people who lives in Siberia are mostly Turkic nations so they are also kind of Turkish or same part of culture from long long years. And lastly Wikipedia does not include %100 true information to make research on it. Çift means double ,tel means wire in Turkish so çifteli can mean either something has two wire or something with double item.
@@MahirTAN I wonder,did the ancestors of Turkish people look Asian like those Turkic people of Siberia?
@@stefanodobleja6923 Some did, and some did not. The Turks invented a system called a "bod" which we today call a "nation". This bod was based on language + land + law (töre) and not looks.
I’m currently living in Albania. I’ve been here for a couple years now. Wasn’t expecting to be scrolling UA-cam and see that you found a çiftili in Philadelphia. Glad the unique music from this region inspired you to accomplish microtonal use in DS. I’m a user of DS and love what you’ve created!
A Philly çifteli, if you will 😉
Hey Tommy, fancy seeing you here haha
@@WilliamPRea Hey! I see we spend our time on UA-cam similarly 😂
Where in Albania are you living and what made you want to move there?
@@bletrick3352 I live in Korce. We moved here to help vulnerable children primarily. Right now we’re hoping to help establish foster care in the country. There are a lot of children here with trauma and difficult lives and my wife has a background in foster care and mental health. My wife’s father is Albanian and from Korce so that’s why we ended up here. Thanks for asking! God bless!
I must say that decent sampler is simply one of the best libraries ever. Not only is a lot of it free, but it is extremely high quality. The really amazing part about it though is the fact that you can find exotic instruments and sounds on there, which you can't find anywhere else, or only in an expensive exotic instrument bundle. So great work, and keep going! it really helps music producers like me. Thanks a lot🙏
The desk lamp one in particular is amusing, but does make a pretty rad sound in use.
Your video is FANTASTIC. Well done research you did. I am a music teacher here in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil , and loved it. I also created something very new that saves lots of time in the learning of Brasilian popular music on accoustic guitar, and also international music. It is a new way of writing rythmic patterns. The student do not need any knowledge of music theory and is so easy even a 5 year old child understand. In the future I will be putting it on youtube for all the world to learn guitar 4 times faster than any other method. Greetings from Brasil
I lived in Albania for a year and had the privilege to listen to the maestros live. Thank you for explaining the technical aspects of this traditional instrument!
How did you end up in Albania Bhai?
@@arkamukhopadhyay9111 sir r u in albania?
I just love how common droning notes are in a lot of folk music. I get goosebumps every time I hear an instrument such as this one where you have a quite eccentric melody played with the droning note in the background. Also the time signatures in a lot of Balkan folk music are so interesting and inspiring.
The microtones sound haunting! Notes between the notes. I hear it all over the call to prayer in Turkey and in music around that region of our planet.
I am a music teacher in Switzerland and there are quite a lot of people from Southeastern Europe living here.
In the past two years I've heard several students mention the çifteli when talking about different instruments in class.
Even though I already had albanian classmates when I went to school, I've never heard of this instrument before. It seems like there is some kind of revival and more young people (re-)discover the origin culture of their parents or grandparents, which is cool.
Some trivia: There is a famous Anatolian dance that is named for this instrument, which is much more famous than the instrument itself. The dance exists since ancient times, but when Turks expanded into Anatolia, the style/dance was renamed "Çiftetelli", because it is played with this instrument! Nowadays Çiftetelli is played with any instrument you want, but the name remains.
I love these things because they're a window into antiquity - in English we call the dance Tsifteteli today, after the Greek spelling, but it's seen in Anatolia in records from the Classical Period (~500BCE), mentioned by ancient Greek writers of the time, and (arguably) originated from the Balkans, where many later-Anatolian tribes originated. It's speculated to be related to a dance mentioned by Aristophanes, and by ancient Romans, who may have added finger cymbals to the dance, which may have inspired many variations using that method, which followed the Romans to all sorts of places.
Anyway, it's kind of funny, since for me, I knew about the dance before ever knowing that it was named (in modern times) after this instrument, so that was a whole interesting discovery. The name means "two stringed" in Turkish, but today it's usually played on more complex instruments and by whole bands.
@@linusp9316 Very interesting, thanks for sharing!
have you ever heard about "dutar"?
@@swezork No, is that also an instrument?
@@1412mariLU aha, it is very similar to cifteli. wooden body, 2 strings, same shape. but it has turkic (not turkish) origin. and i was trying to differenciate them😅
I grew up hearing my family members play the Cifteli. I'm Albanian, but I grew up in the U.S. and never learned how to speak the language.
However, A few months ago, I wanted to learn how to play the cifteli myself (I assumed that it would be easy since I play guitar), but I was barely able to find information on how to even tune the strings Lol,
Even after I tuned it though, I just gave it up after hearing those "off" notes because I had no idea how to even approach that whole situation Loll. Almost all of the information online about the Cifteli is in Albanian or some other language, or just very hard to find in general.
Seeing this video in my recommended today was just such an incredibly pleasant surprise, (and also just surprisingly convenient timing.) I really dont know what else to say other than thank you!! Theres so much useful information in this video. I'm like.. as targeted as a target audience can get for this video
Mozart loved Turkish music and threw an eighteenth century twelve tone blanket over the Makkams. Also Ravel’s Bolero has echoes of this sound and structure. What a great instrument you found!
This is no turkish music, you are referring to ottoman music, which is basically roman Greek music that the ottomans adopted.
@@echetlosDude dont be racist here. Turkish music with strings is a known fact even before they migrated to west. There are lots of documents about their music and instruments in Chinese documents from 2 millenias ago. Please educate yourself in art history before making any racist claims. Start with researching about qopuz which is well documented 6th century B.C
@@echetlos lol and the award for most pathetic comment of the year goes to you
@@robedechamber They even shamelessly appropriate Central Asian Turkic music 😅
@@robedechamberlol this aint no turkish instrument this is a "Qifteli" an albanian instrument and we do have a instrument similar to turkish instrument "saz".In my country we call it "Sharkia".Im not trying to argue but i am speaking with facts like it or not.
As a band coming from İstanbul and using Turkish musical ways and İnstruments Thank you very much just want to add that etymology really helps us to reach to the cultural roots and the name of the instrument is strictly Turkish Çift means two or double and Tel means string in Turkish 🦚
It's an albanian instrument.
@@the_shqiptarit’s name is in Turkish
@@the_shqiptar its a turkish instrument adopted by Albanians.
Kosovar here! I saw this video in my sub box and smiled. Then I saw that you made the çifteli a sampled plugin, then I cheered from excitement. Thank you for featuring our national instrument, it's truly a pleasure to see! I'm happy that you loved it so much.
This is so sweet
Oh man, that looks like such a fun instrument. I hadn't heard of Decent Sampler until today but I'm definitely gonna check it out. Thanks for adding support for custom tunings!
One of the best presented and beautifully researched mini documentary I have ever seen
So glad about how humbly you approached the instrument, watching lots of videos of traditional players and trying to learn about its scale rather than deeming it "out of tune" as too many westerners would probably do. It's also SUPER interesting to me to hear that scale, because it's pretty much the same as many folk flutes in Sweden ! LOVE that blue scale 💙
Your curiosity and commitment not only to learning, but to teaching, is absolutely inspiring
Yes, more xenharmonic/microtonal support. I’ve been in the microtonal rabbit hole for a while now, so it’s good to have musicians I like acknowledge the world. Also, it’s really cool seeing love for Sevish, one of my favorites.
6:16 "I should warn you that microtonal composing can be quite the rabbit hole. There are people who start doing it and they just kind of like never return."
Me: "But what if they don't want to return?"
I personally fell into this rabbit hole but I did it on purpose because I wanted to try out something new. It was hard at the beginning and some concepts are still hard for me, since there seems to be no limits, but I don't regret it. It widened my possibilities of composing and making music.
I will definitely check out Decent Sampler, it sounds interesting.
It widened your possibilities of making music but likely narrowed your possibilities of making good music lol
@@GlazeonthewickeR It is still possible to make good music with microtones. Sevish is the most known person who makes such music. Other examples are benyamind, Xotla, Zhea Erose and Brendan Byrnes, just to call the most famous ones.
Most people of western culture have a problem with microtonal music because there are so many intervals which aren't present in the 12-tone equal-temperament system, these sound bad for them. I understand why the 12-tone equal-temperament dominates the music, but some people just want to experiment and compose something in other systems. It isn't everyone's taste and this is okay.
#DroningEnvelope Pack Extra Shoes Heh Heh
I've been kind of procrastinating that jump for a while now, I guess it feels intimidating to jump into this whole new world? How would you recommend someone who's never produced microtonal music to approach it?
Also, I'm pretty sure the free synth Vital also supports microtonal scales. Check it out if you don't already have it!
@@zkassai.audio.2 I can confirm, that jumping into microtonal music feels really intimidating.
There isn't a right way for first approaching microtonal music, it depends of what you want to explore.
If you want to stay in 12edo (EDO stands for equally divided octave) but want some microtonal flavour in it, then you might check out the EDOs 24, 36, 48, ... (so any number that can be divided by twelve). It's like tuning your instruments differently and playing them together at the same time (that's how some composers approached it, the most famous I can recall is Charles Ives).
If you want to stay in meantone temperament, you can check out the EDOs 31 and 53, maybe also 19 (although 19edo has a flat-ish flavour). From there you can experiment with other existing scales.
That's basically the way how I did approach microtonal music at the beginning, but there isn't a right way for approaching.
Yes, Vital also supports microtonal scales, I will check it out.
This is probably one of the best videos in UA-cam in last few days I have seen. I am an amateur flute player and passionate about musical instruments. This particular instrument is similar to an Indian (Bengali) folk instrument called Do-tara (two-string) though the Bengali version is having generally 4 strings and without fretes. Any way, this work is very inspiring for me. Thanks for uploading. Best wishes
As albanian, music lover and software engineering student I have absolutely no idea why youtube algorithm hasn't showed me this video before. Thank you for the video
Watching your experience with a microtonal instrument totally took me back 21 years to the first time I played Balinese and Javanese gamelan instruments at the California State Summer School for the Arts - where I also got to hear Kate Conklin teach some of the vocalists Bulgarian vocal technique a vocalization technique that coincidentally is also used in Turkey. So I was intrigued by the Turkish connection in your video. :)
It’s great to hear that you added Scala support to Decent Sampler so quickly! One of my colleagues at our music tech mag (SoundBytes Magazine) is really big on micro-tuning support in software, so I might mention that addition to him. Keep up the great work!
Ah, another gamelan player, wonderful!
Am a Bulgarian American myself technically so (anyways) thanks for the shout out ;)
@@ringsystemmusic what is it like playing that instrument?
@@mihailmilev9909 ah it's wonderful, well worth seeking out!
@@ringsystemmusic anything possibly more specific lol? I already play other instruments and have a somewhat big interest in music theory so I might understand what ur talking about if u describe/comment on it lol
My family is from Greece and I have learned more about this instrument in your video that I have my entire life. Sidenote, I have about 700 hobbies all because I visit thrift stores and used shops and just find stuff that leads to new hobbies. 😂
Nice video as always
the amount of work and crazy things you put out for the community is beyond me, top 3 music youtube channel for me, you really inspire in a different way for music producers
I don't think I've ever paused a video so many times to read every word on the screen! My undergrad was in (American) music composition, and I was a flute player, which has some of the most easily adjustable pitches of the major wind instruments. I was sometimes asked to play microtones with pitch bending (done with the mouth) in new experimental music, and knew that other cultures have systems that involve microtones, but that was about all I was expected to know about it. This video gives me so much more context and information. Bravo and thank you!
"I could get lost in the sea of objects" is a wonderful way of putting it!
As an Albanian with a bit of music knowledge i really enjoyed this video and i'm happy to see the albanian culture shown to the rest of the world. Thank you very much. By the way if you need any translation i would be more then happy.
Fricken awesome video. Informative about scales, micro tuning, software, sampling, samplers, musical history, cultural history, coding. Best 9 mins on UA-cam in a long time. Thanks for DS and your channel.
In Kazakhstan there is an instrument that looks a LOT like this,called a Dombra & it is tuned D G. While CLEARLY related instruments ,it would seem the tone of Çifteli doesn't have as much of the sympathic drone that I hear with Dombra! I applaud you for taking the time & effort to actually do a bit of research! Also...You paid $20.00??? that is a steal ,considering they usually go for like $60.00 & up (some of the fancy electric models sell for $600.00)
it's a turkish instrument, so naturally related to that kazakh instrument, just like bağlama and many other turkish instruments. çift means double and tel means string, it's easy to find stuff like this in former ottoman states.
Nope, steal is to sell two-stringed scale-limited instrument if you can buy cura baglama for lower price and just remove some strings.
So what might be the common link between Kazakhstan and balkans you might wonder…
@@fandacy Islam, of course.
@@MergenKarvaach Also Turks. What do you want to say?
This guy is such a treasure for the internet. He just does shit he finds interesting and does everything as high quality as possible. He should have like 5 million subscribers
So true,Lucio(?) He's a gem!!! 👃✌️🥰🇨🇦
This reminds me of how I was when I discovered the existence of a Scandinavian folk instrument called the tagelharpa (also called bowed lyre) it has 2,3 or 4 strings. One of which is the one you play your melodies while the others are drone strings. The strings are also made of horsehair and you use a bow to play it. After going down the tagelharpa rabbit hole, I decided to build my own. And it is currently my favorite instrument. It has such a raw sound that is unlike anything I've heard before
Sort of a simplified Dulcimer played like a Mandolin, reminiscent of a Balalaika. This is a really great, impressive, inspiring video! I felt excitement after watching it. I love notes and harmonies that sound a little "off."
yep, a dulcimer was the first thing that came to my mind too. Great little "gateway" instruments that you can't really play wrong :)
Balalaika was originally a turkic instrument (most likely) - like the Kazakh dombra. And it wasn't shaped like a triangle, Vasiliy Andreyev made it look like a dorito basically.
@@denisborzov8406 Before Andreyev, the balalaika was just non-standardized, and there existed both oval and triangle shapes beforehand (evident from old paintings and prints). But even some Turkic instruments have a more triangle shape, so I would assume there’s a common ancestor regardless.
Feels most like a Bağlama to me
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard is an Australian band that has heavily used microtones in some of their music through microtonal guitars, Sitars, Zurnas, and more. You should check you their album flying microtonal banana if you are interested in hearing more microtonal music. They use it in very creative ways.
Humongous Fungus, David Lindley, probably the best-known (yet chronically under-appreciated) American musician to use traditional Middle-eastern instruments such as the Saz, Oud and Bouzouki in both a rock band setting (first with the Kaleidoscope, and later with ElRayo-X) and for solo performance of old Celtic folk songs, Appalachian banjo and bluegrass tunes, and reimagined covers of singer-songwriters such as Bob Dylan and Warren Zevon, passed away 3/3/23. Although probably best known for providing Hawaiian lapsteel slide guitar and violin parts to records by world famous performing artists, he had an extensive collection of instruments from around the world, and numerous modified or custom made instruments of his own devising, and plaayed them in his solo acoustic shows. Anyone interested in the possibilities of incorporating microtonal instruments and music into more modern styles should really check out Lindley's music. There are a ton of live performances by him on UA-cam. He was unique, an iconoclast, a 1 of 1. More than anyone else, he is responsible for the resurgence of interest in Weissenborn-style acoustic Hawaiian lap steel guitars, but his Oud, Saz and Bouzouki skills are less well known. Personally, I don't think one has truly lived until they've heard him play the instrument he built from the body of a Vox Bill Wyman teardrop bass guitar with a bouzouki neck grafted onto it, and earthquake sensors for pickups!
They use it as passing notes though very subtly. It's about as innovative as the average psych band bending their note.
King Gizzard are the lamest band I have ever heard in my life. It's a carbon copy of the 70s psychedelia and prog they're ripping off, without the soul and creativity
@@phlog_dog7336 All music is ripping off stuff you like. The first Tame Impala record is just Lennon/Beatles psychedelia with the rhythms and production sounds of Dungen and Todd Rundgren. It wears its influence on its sleeve and it's still amazing.
You don't have to like King Gizzard, but saying they're lame because they're similar to the stuff they love to listen to is idiotic. Literally every band that doesn't make outsider music does this, including all the bands you think are incredibly unique but were also doing the same thing. The Beatles had music they listened to and were emulating, too. If you obsess over originality you're shooting yourself in the foot because every musician gets their inspiration from something, it doesn't happen in a vacuum lmao.
Normalize saying you don't like something, not that the something "sucks", or you're going to sound like a petulant child to anyone trying to talk music with you.
Sitars are absolutely one of my favorite instruments to listen to. Surprisingly versatile, too! Check out the sitar intro in Dream Theater’s “Home” track from Scenes From a Memory. Sounds so good in a prog metal context and would fit neatly into other genres as well!
I wholeheartedly support your aspiration of writing for these scales. I find microtonal music ravishing and compelling. Thank you for this post, I enjoyed it immensely!
This is how it feels when I go down the rabbit hole of learning a new language. It's so much more than learning just words, and an instrument is no exception.
You are someone that music needs. Your understanding of microtonal music, and your music software, are admirable.
I love everything about this video. The story, the brief background in theory, the curiosity and the respect for the instrument and it's cultural context, the way this was all translated into a modern sampler and most of all the fact, that this was shared with the world. This is what makes UA-cam and the internet as a whole so great.
So very cool! I appreciate what you were able to do here - especially in being open and interested in the story of the instrument, not simply its timbre - which pushed you to build a feature set that you might never have explored otherwise! It sounds so alive with its proper tuning.
Thank you for sharing this!
The content just kept on blooming! That songlet also was a cool take... This is a nomadic instrument we (Turks - "Orcs", Ork-huns,) brought with us from the Middle Asia. Kopuz is çiftetelli's grand father. You may even see Mongols sing along. It's carved into a log. As Nomads, we have a different musical system. We can't carry books (or even coins) as they mean burden. There's no currency. All value is stored as calories in sheep and horses. Mobile assets only. There are barter markets. The Atabaskhans in Alaska call it Potlatch, same as us, in Istanbul. Potlaç is an exchange market you can see every Sunday in Kadıköy. So this instrument is also an item of exchange but this time designed for conveying verbal information since there are no books. The library is the elderly people, who we call Ata :)
You’re making all of this up, providing no source.
@fb4492 are you expecting wikipedia articles in youtube comment section?
@@drumspleasefab A wikipedia article is more reliable than your speculations, that is certain. I wasn’t expecting some turk to claim an albanian instrument as their own, either.
@@fb4492 man it literally means (with double string) in turkish . çifte (double) tel ( string ) li ( with) and neither of those word is albanian
@@haticealbayrak2387 it may be a turkish loan word, but that does not make it a turkish instrument. Show me a video of a turk using the exact same instrument and then i will believe you.
Thanks for sharing this great instrument. It looks and sounds like it's related to the Turkish saz (also called baglama). I bought one in Istanbul and brought it home. It has 7 strings--two pairs of two strings and one pair of three strings. The bottom set is played as a drone, and the top two are for the melodies--similar to the cifteli. Microtonal music is common throughout the Middle East and India.
shoutout for the dev work you did to update your software! major props.
Love the mention of Sevish, one of my favorite artists. Truly pushing the bounds of tuning in music.
Thanks for the video! Just by listening to the instrument scale I can tell it is a Maqam Bayati. Very known in Arabic music. Turkish have other maqams a bit similar.
If you want to play Bayati maqam, tune to E -25%, and B -25%. The maqam bayati starts with D. Hence the name of quarter notes in arabic music.
I have been a silent follower of your channel, watching and re-watching all your videos. I just love following your journey of discovering and sampling all sorts of nostalgic and quirky instruments. However, when I saw the thumbnail of this video on my feed, the cifteli I was speechless. I never would have imagined you'd stumble upon it, ever! Doing it feels like an homage to our culture. I myself am from Kosovo and have to say, I appreciate you so much for all the great work and energy you put into your channel. Big respect
I just discovered microtonal music and this is the second video I watched on it. Crazy cool. You, sir, have a talent for exploring the many facets of a given subject.
This is exactly what every creative artist should be like. Open-mindness leads to try something knew, curiosity makes to dig deeper, passion allows to spend time and effort on making something completely new and a big heart gives a result of this work to the people.
CIFTELI is a Turkish word meaning "WITH DOUBLE" in reference to 2 strings. There are variations to this instrument that has more strings commonly known as Saz or Baglama. The strings are doubled similar to a mandolin or a 12 string guitar however not in octaves bur as unison. Saz can be tuned in several ways. It is used in Turkish pop extensively together with western instruments such as guitars and keyboards. The band Kurtalan Express has many great examples. I hope this information was useful to you.
ottomans gave them the insturment its turkish in origin
Çift telli = Çifteli
@@FilmCameraLens Cifte telli is a folk dance in the Aegean cos of Turkey.
@@davidnayir That name refers to a particular stringing of the violin, where they move the top two strings close together and tune them an octave apart, then play them together. A very sexy sound. :-)
Cifteli means a double string in Albania too lol
Cift - Double
Teli - String
Hello, I am a darbuka player interested in Middle Eastern music, and to understand the scales similar instruments use, you should study the oriental scale system called "Maqam". While western music uses just two modes (minor and major), there are quite a few more Maqamat, each named, and assembled from usually two "ajinas", which are basic four or five sequences. Also, "Ciftetelli" is a rhythm used in Turkish and Greek music.
Thank you for adding microtonal support to Decent Sampler!!! 💜
This is incredible. Your depth of research and curiosity is by far the best thing I've seen on YT, or anywhere else for that matter. 🏆
As an albanian ,but not a musician, im proud and thank you very much to you . This is a promote of one of our national instruments
In my country (Iran) we have a traditional or maybe ancient instrument which is totally looks like çiftli, we call it "duo-taar". In persian "duo" means "two" and "taar" means string. Anyway, i suggest you to search "iranian dotar" in youtube and look at the skills that players have.
Çifteli also means dual or having dual (strings) in Turkish ☺️
It's doutar actually .
An Iranian instrument.
Name has changed by Turks.
A real legend. I am from Albania and this is very amazing how you turned the çifteli in a sample. Fantastic!
Sending some love to Sevish, he's the one who introduced me to microtonal music ! He's a true inspiration and a great composer.
Thank you so much for putting this video together and exposing me and everyone else here to the çifteli and the music it makes. I was suddenly struck while listening to music played on this instrument that the constant drone along with the melody is pretty much exactly what one hears in the sound that Bulgarian Women's Choirs use. For a few years now I've been amazed and blown away by the sound of Bulgarian Women's Choirs, never having heard anything quite like that sound before. And now the çifteli helped me better understand what they are doing. Thanks again.
Ah, that's really cool! There's actually a Bulgarian Women's Choir in my neighborhood, and I've gone to see them several times, but I never made the connection.
I admire the dedication and enthusiasm with which he went about his research.
David's skill and knowledge is matched by his generosity. It seems to me that he and the whole DS project embodies E M Forster's idea "Only Connect!"
That was WONDERFUL. Moral of the story: never pass up a folk instrument find. Buy it, bring it home, explore. Loved this. Thanks.
It’s a wonderful surprise to see this video about çiftelia Dave. I used to study at the Ballet Academy in Tirana and during the last year of the school Çiftelia was included in the school program as a traditional instrument.
I do appreciate your huge contribution to the musicians community with Decent Sampler and Pianobook,now i have some more reason to appreciate it much more. Thank you Dave on behalf of all Albanians.
are there Albanian ballets accompanied by çiftelia???
I’m not sure about that Kat.
As far as i know Çiftelia is used only for vocal or instrumental accompaniment.
Thank you for making the internet what it should be: a learning and sharing tool for us all.
Microtonal rabbit hole: “there’s people who start doing that and never return” indeed
trueeeeeeee
man i love microtones
man i hate 12 tet
but man i still love 12 tet
Tone is somewhere between a mandolin and a Koto. It's nice.
OMG I just looked, didn't realise Decent sampler is available as a vst plugin.
LMMS and Linux can deal with those quite happily... You have just opened up a huge well of sonic exploring and dramatically changed my composition game ❤❤❤
What an amazing video, David! I am so glad you bumped into this instrument. Thank you for introducing us to this wonderful instrument and giving us a mini-lesson on the history of this music instrument!
That's an awesome find!
I'm a New Zealander living in Greece. I recently did a course on Rebetiko guitar which is a kind of Greek folk music that was influenced by the 'Turkish' settlers that immigrated to Greece from Turkey in the early 1920's as part of the 'population exchange' (to avoid a messy ethnic cleansing type of thing).
Rembetiko doesn't exactly use scales, rather 'Dromoi' or 'Roads' which are some kind of mode or progression...
Rembetiko instruments are often without frets, or with moveable frets, and look something like this Cifteli. Little body and a long, thin neck. I have a baglamadaki which looks like the baby brother of this one, but is tuned like a Greek Bouzouki (D A D)
Anyway, I was learning Rembetiko on guitar thankfully! And I recognised the scale that the Cifteli is in as a Rebetiko dromi.
Other than that the course went over my head much like a jumbo jet taking off...
Thanks for the videos and the awesome sound libraries that you produce!
I live in Greece and I play the tamboura! It has moving frets and uses the Byzantine intervals. I find it interesting how similar so many instruments from other Balkan are very similar.
Greek music uses the Makam system just like what is described in this video. Names of scales/'dromoi' in the Makam system come mostly from Arabic/Persian/Turkish vocabulary, but that's a very modern change and incidental - nearly all of those modes/scales were known about and written about in ancient times, at least 3,000+ years ago, so it's more like how we use Italian vocabulary in music theory in the English-speaking world - doesn't mean our music is Italian in origin, even if we use Italian (largo, staccato, allegro, piano/forte, cantabile, de capo, crescendo, etc., are all Italian). Anatolian Greek refugees brought some elements (and vocabulary) back to Greece in the 20s, like their own variations on instruments, but none of it is new.
Modern bouzouki was invented in the 1920s in the way it looks now, but is a variation on long-necked lutes of ancient origin, with the modern variation being popularized by Armenian luthiers like the Zozef family, who were from Smyrna. The weird thing is, the "European tuning" of the bouzouki (D-A-D) was one of many that were popular in the 30s, but we don't have a lot of surviving records of what others were popular, so it's just speculation. If you read Markos's autobiography, he describes the D-A-D European tuning as one of many that he performed with, but doesn't describe any of the others, which is kind of frustrating.
thank you for including alternative tunings. it is how i found decent sampler and how i recorded my first complete microtuning composition.
cant decide if this is the best tribute to a specific musical culture ive ever seen or the most clever self plug advertisement ive ever seen
We can never get bored with these videos, David.
Thank you so much :D
At first, I was thinking "I have one of those! It's a dulcimer-like instrument called a Strumstick" and then you played that scale. I had no idea that there were other scales! That's fascinating. It sounds so fresh, yet also... mystical? dark? I'm not quite sure how to describe those odd tones, but I like it!
You could call them neutral thirds and sixths 😊 They're neutral because they're neither minor nor major, but in between.
Look up some videos on UA-cam of the late great multi instrumentalist David Lindley playing old American folk and blues songs, English murder ballads, and reimagined singer-songwrter tunes, on the Saz (Baglama), Oud and Bouzouki. You will never hear music the same way again!
This is amazing.
And I want a Çifteli myself - what an awesome sound it has!
Thank you for making this sound and sampler available!
I have just found your channel and it is GOLD! Thank you so much for what you do!
God bless you for this amazing video. You taught me more about my own culture’s music in a fashion that has never been done. Thank you for this in depth research and appreciation of our culture.
Wow, an unusual instrument, a different tuning/scale, a new sample set, and free software that I hadn't heard about, all in one short video! This was way more than I was expecting, especially given your Vox-style vocal presentation.
Also, I am impressed by your incredible amount of restraint in only buying ONE item at that store!
A good recommendation for microtonal music is King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizards three microtonal albums for a fun way of getting into it. They use 24TET to try and mimic a baglama (Turkish instrument similar to this). That led myself to get a guitar fretted with microtonal frets. Another one to check is Noura Mint Seymali, a Mauritanian singer who plays a microtonal harp, and her guitar player, Jeiche Ould Chighaly, plays a 24TET fretted guitar. 75 dollar bill is another band that uses these 24TET instruments.
Multi instrumentalist David Lindley, who passed away recently, was playing Middle Eastern instruments in a psychedelic band called the Kaleidoscope in the 1960s, and later in the Eighties with his own jam rock band ElRayo-X (in between recording sessions and tours with world famous singer songwriters). His solo acoustic shows, many of which you can find on UA-cam, frequently featured the Saz, Oud, and Bouzouki as well as the Weissenborn acoustic Hawaiian lap steel guitar. Some of the El RayoX band performances on UA-cam have him playing the electric Saz, as well as Persian classical music on a violin which segues into The Hangman's Reel, a fiddle tune from Quebec.
I also fell in love with Cifteli. But by listening to a shitton of Albanian music after falling down the Balkan YT rabbit hole (don't ask).
Needless to say, it makes me EXTREMELY happy to see, not just non-western music, but Albanian and Balkan music in particular, being added to the digital tools these days! I always loved these alternative scales since a kid, but struggled to recreate it in FL studio or whatever I was using. Then watching some more UA-cam videos I realized what insane ways Albanians, Indians, Romanis etc. use to recreate their folk sounds digitally. That's why most of the pop music based on folk music is till heavy with real instrument recordings, or if such tunes are ever used in a more "international" western way, it's almost always seen as some exotic flavour, rather than a whole new music culture one could you enjoy, if it ever passed the older generation & non-Western language barrier. The only culture that I've seen transcend that would be Punjabi. Man Punjabi pop really does carry some of that original flavour from it's now far away roots. And it happened precisely because it's community (now living in the west, with access to all these modern digital music making tools) went through the process that you just demonstrated.
So yeah huge thank you David. I no longer feel alone on my journey (as a listener, not even a musician). You've done an amazing job making this thrift shop find digitally available to everyone! Keep it up! Subscribed!
Also gotta love people who come across something new, and are instantly interested in it. I'm the same. So once again, glad I'm not alone! :)
Stumbled on to you site and am flabbergasted. I learned more about music in the last 10 minutes than in the decades before.!
Man, I love your Channel. All the work in the search, so educational. Such inspiring, congrats 👏🏼👏🏼. Greetings from Brazil.
Heya David. I'm really pleased to find this video. I'm not Albanian but I got somewhat randomly (or magically, depending) introduced to the çifteli back in 1993, when my father was there on a relief mission and brought one back for me to California. I fell in love with it and have been playing it, researching it, and writing about it ever since. Curiously, it's not just the internet that doesn't really talk about its microtonal tuning system--none of the Albanian musicologists that I'm aware of have explicitly mentioned it either! So I set about to write something about it, so far just my Master's thesis where I did a lot of music analysis of the çifteli's modes--afaik they don't talk about it in Turkish terms like 'makam'-s, they have their own system. IMHO the çifteli only approximates the Huseyni makam scale, as it's played in Ottoman makam music--there's a couple notes, those microtones especially, that are, if we're measuring using the cents system, still noticeably 'off' from the Huseyni notes.
Since the çifteli was never a court or art music instrument, it makes sense that it really shares little with the Ottoman music. It does have things in common with Turkish instruments like the saz family, as others here have noted, though again IMHO the çifteli and its playing style have become thoroughly Albanicized. A couple points that I've learned that are not immediately obvious that you might find useful: the two strings should ideally be a very thin gauge, and they should both be the same gauge--I spent years using guitar B and E strings on it before I got my 2nd one (I now have 5) and discovered my error, and why they string it like that...
It's b/c, for one, they like to tune it very high (that B and E are only approximate, I've heard it tuned up higher and lower, it's a matter of individual taste) so that the strings are very taut, much tauter than is usual on its Turkish relatives. This seems to be b/c it creates more resistance to the thin plectrum that allows the plectrum tip to bend and slide off more easily, which facilitates the tremolo plucking. I never hear the çifteli played slow! In fact the great maestros play(ed) with blinding speed.
More importantly though, the strings are the same thin gauge b/c...this may blow your mind...there are at least 5 different ways to tune it, each of which gives a very different scale. The tuning in 4th is the most common, but you can also tune it in a 5th, in unison, or, these are especially interesting, in seconds--either, for example, to B-A or A-B. This changes where the 'tonic' note is on the melody string and shifts all the other intervals around. The A-B tuning is cool since if you fret the drone string at fret 1 with your thumb, then the strings are in unison but with the drone string open then there's a different base note. In much Balkan music they call this a di- or double-tonic, it's never clear which note is really the base. Also I never hear them fret the melody string on fret 1 in this tuning--that gives a Major 3rd and they don't seem to like that interval on this instrument. Instead, they fret the drone string, with thumb, on fret 2 and their forefinger on the melody string together. It's quite a sound.
The B-A tuning is also cool since then the 'tonic' falls on fret 1, and gives a unison, so the open melody string becomes the 7th leading tone, another double tonic. And, with this traditional fretting system, there's no perfect 5th either.
You can, in principle, also tune it so either one of those microtonal frets become the 'tonic', though I've never heard anyone actually play in those tunings. They're fun to play around with though.
They do sometimes fret the drone string though, it's very common for a player to fret it with their thumb on fret 5, the leading tone. Sometimes they'll play extended passages with their thumb there so it becomes like a new 'tonic' (I keep ' ' that word b/c idk what they call that note, and our sense of tonic is not exactly the same thing). It turns the scale from a quasi-Huseyni or Phrygian mode to something more like a quasi-Mixolydian. I've also heard players do the same at frets 3 and 4, though less commonly.
So you could add a feature to your program that allows you to change the pitch of the drone, and play around with the different modes that result. :)
Thanks for this video and software. The çifteli is really a unique instrument, as is its music, and I'm glad someone else is also helping to bring it to greater worldwide awareness. :)
Kat, are you on any of the Facebook microtonal tuning groups? Love to learn more about your journey with çifteliya!
@@yuyiya I was on one but not anymore. I have a yt channel with some vids with my çifteli and other instruments though.
FWIW, idk why that one passage in my comment has been struck through, i didn't do that!
Great video David! Your content is always great. I love the storytelling feel of your editing.
Pretty cool looking instrument! I'm quite into microtonal music myself (got myself a fretless bass, microtonal guitar, and Arabian oud which is like a fretless lute), it really is quite fun to play and compose in this style!
I am a random curious youtuber and I am very impressed. Cheers to you for all the work you put into this video.
IMO it cannot be overstated how much you helped xenharmonic community with this feature for DS. 🦋
Also you inspired me to experiment with trying to make a sample library, I’m even tinkering a bit with weird cardboard tubes for some time; but they seem to have little pitched sound level than I’d like; maybe I’ll try another design which could help. Or maybe I’ll try to make something with synthesized loops. IDK, we’ll see.
I was very surprised when I’d been reading the docs and found out that DS has convolution among other things! That’s useful! (I don’t know anything about what samplers like Kontakt support-probably a lot of stuff, but it’s still very nice. DS is right here and Kontakt is somewhere far away.)
As a music fan and albanian, i appreciate this video. I want to tell you that there are other Çiftelis too, that have „all“ the notes (12 steps) + the „albanian notes“, so you can choose how you want to play. My Çifteli is bigger and is usually tuned lower but it has more notes.
Beside of that, there are many other instruments in albanian music, which gives a big variety. Thank you
Ah you have no idea what you’ve done. I thought I was going crazy because I could never replicate that sound electronically and you’ve unlocked the mystery why. THANK YOU!!! Thousand times over. Also if you want to keep going down the Albania music rabit hole. Check out their traditional clarinet playing. It’s so distinct and now I’m wondering if it’s because of this scale you’ve mentioned.
Thank you man for the Sampler and sounds! Great work and interesting videos!🖤
Thank you so much my friend for including me in your documentary! Respect!
Wow! This was video was special for me since i’m crazy about lutes. You you might to learn about the brazilian viola-the-cocho. First the name of the Çifteli, with the first Ç. I’ve been studying catalan that shares the Ç with portuguese (i’m brazilian) , french but with a different function than in turkish. I learned that most of catalans write it wrong after an error in a children alfabetization book decades ago that went too literal. Ç is called “broken c” in catalan. The Çifteli construccion also reminded me of the brazilian “viola-de-cocho”. You might like to learn about it. I hope someday you will sample it also. Cheers!