The Bağlama

This is the most common folk string instrument in Turkey. The bağlama is in a family of long-necked lutes called The Saz (this instrument is called either a Bağlama or a Saz). The frets are made of gut, allowing them to be moved around. The bağlama has seven strings and is grouped in 2, 2 and 3 strings. The tuning depends on the region, but the most common tuning is A, G and D (known as bağlama düzeni).

To recreate this on a western instrument, I firstly took 2 strings of my guitar, leaving 4 strings. This with an octave effect should recreate the 7 string sound without buying a new instrument. Despite this setup technically sounding like 8 strings, the sound should be similar to a bağlama.

Despite it working theoretically when playing it didn’t sound the same at all. Just sounded like a weird guitar. This is due to the type of strings, and more importantly the frets. On a standard western guitar, there are 12 frets for one octave, while the baglama has 15 frets meaning there are 3 extra notes in this scale.

After looking into bağlamas, I decided to purchase one. When it arrived it was completely different from a guitar, despite both having strings and frets, the tuning was completely different and the extra notes create new opportunities for scales. But I really enjoy playing it, and if feels like you can’t play anything bad using it. I am planning to use this in some songs I’m composing, but I have to understand the instrument better before I can. And I will create a follow-up post when I understand the Bağlama more.