Recording the Bavarian Concert Zither
Bavarian Concert Zither
I picked up this lovely Bavarian Concert Zither on ebay for about £40.
This is the instrument used on the soundtrack for the movie “The Third Man”. It features 5 fretted strings and 27 open strings which are usually tuned in a cycle of fifths. I used my own unison tuning.
One thing that is really interesting about these instruments is that almost every country and culture has some kind of version of the zither, and it’s basically an ancestor of the guitar.
Combined with a fairly crude homemade contact microphone and my standard effect chain (2 DL4’s, Boss PS-2, Blues Driver, Verbzilla, Alesis portable mixer) I was using this setup for the first Unknown Devices sessions with David Toop. The case acts as a resonant chamber/amplifier and picks up lots of great creaks and friction.
I later edited together this quite dark loop-based composition..