Bouzouki

The bouzouki is a stringed instrument with a very long neck and a pear-shaped body. Having a flat body and heavily inlaid with mother-of-pearl, the bouzouki instrument belongs to the 'long neck lute' family that resemble a mandolin. The instrument is developed from a Turkish instrument during the early 20th century featuring four courses of strings. It is played with a plectrum usually in a vigorous and agile fashion.

The bouzouki comes in different variety namely Trichordo, Tetrachordo and Irish. As the name suggests, the trichordo had 6 strings in three pairs and fixed frets, which was largely used for rebetiko. It was a standard during the 1920s. The Tetrachordo features four pairs of strings while the Irish features four pairs of strings and a flack back. The tetrachordo had 8 metal strings arranged in 4 pairs known as courses. It was created during the 1940s and was mainly used for playing melodies. The Irish bouzouki is made like a flat backed mandolin and uses fifth-based tunings. Introduced in the 1960s, the Irish bouzouki has today become an important part of the Irish trade scene.

Some of the well-known Bouzouki player includes Markos Vamvakaris, Keith Urban, Yiorgos Batis, Vassilis Tsitsanis, Manolis Chiotis and Mike Oldfield and numerous others. The different varieties of bouzouki guitar are available at several online stores.