Talk:Zither

Untitled

The Estonian Kannel links to a page about something to do with WAP. It's likely that this is not what is wanted. I assume that it's something vaguely like the finnish instrument, but I have no real clue, or I'd write something myself.

This article has no mention of how the zither is played or tuned, or what it sounds like. To someone unfamiliar with the instrument (like me) we're given no information beyond historical background.

Some possible background

The following was a "note" left in by a non-registered poster in the main article - I have not verified the validity or reliability of the information, but am posting it here in case someone can do that.

ˈDear Sir. I have two remarks about the citera.1. All kinds of citera are coming from Iran, Irak and the east of Turkey. Even the 'cimbalom, kanteke or dulcimer, the all com from there. Later the form changed a bit in the different countries and got an other name, like humel or langlijk. The first citera was only a string over a plan followed by more stings. After that the plank was changed by a box to have more resonance. 2. The hungarian page gives a better idea about the basic form of the citera. The English and the Dutch page gives mainly information about the concert zither. The both are from the same category or family and it would be more complete to inform about both. Jan ten Hove, citera teacher and painter. 84.2.98.242 (talk) 12:00, 22 November 2010 (UTC)tenhove@t-online.hu ---I am Dutch living in Hungary.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Cae prince (talk • contribs)

Yangqin

Isn't the Yangqin a dulcimer rather than a zither?

--CharlieHuang 12:48, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Reformatting

Shouldn't some content from the intro be moved into the actual article?

Playing

How does one play the zither?

You pluck the strings. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.20.126.64 (talk) 00:50, 10 June 2008 (UTC) I can't see how to start a new section in the main article. To play the zither, you put a thumb ring (like a guitar fingerpick) on the right thumb. You use your right thumb to pick out the melody on the five fretboard strings, which are stopped by the left hand like a guitar. Meanwhile, you use the remaining fingers of the right hand to play accompanying chords on the open strings. Typically, these are grouped as follows: the first twelve strings after the fretboard are accompanying strings, then the next twelve are bass strings. All these are tuned according to the circle of fifths. After that, there may be some contrabass strings tuned chromatically. As few as two or three, or as many as thirteen, depending on the type of zither. The zither is always played while lying flat on a table, which acts as a resonator to amplify the sound.Pavel (talk) 00:23, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Jadagan

The cultural information related to the Khakass people contained in this section, while very interesting, is not directly related to the instrument and should be moved to an article about Khakass culture. Having a hyperlink in this section, however, to the related cultural information would be desireable.

146.142.69.212 (talk) 15:10, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Looks like there's an article, under the (preferred?) spelling "Khakas." I'll link that as a stopgap, but leave the merging to someone with more of a clue. --207.178.110.185 (talk) 03:34, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Zither main Stream Exposure

No discussion of the Zither can be complete without mention of the score for the movie The Third Man and its hitting the pop charts as " the Third Man Theme. All of the Zither music in the movie and the rcord was by Anton Karas.

Joel I. Beeler — Preceding unsigned comment added by JBeeler125 (talk • contribs) 01:16, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

History and development

The first line currently states "The term zither is mentioned in Daniel during the Jewish exile of 606 BC". Daniel purports to have been written at this early date but biblical critics counter that the book was written during the reign of Antiochus IV during the 2nd century B.C. as propaganda to incite the Maccabean revolt. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.237.40.42 (talk) 21:02, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Ambiguity

The article notes that the term "zither" can refer both to a class/family of instruments, and also to certain specific members of that class. It is then asserted that this article will be about the second of these uses. All this seems reasonable.

It is a bit jarring, therefore, to suddenly encounter passages about the guqin and the koto. These seem out of place here, and more properly placed in a article about the first use of "zither" -- as the name of a family of instruments (both instruments also have separate Wiki articles).

I moved the koto information to what seems to me a more logical place, but it still jumps out at me as not really belonging in this article. I didn't want to just delete it without discussion, so it's still there, but I would suggest that a "See Also" link to koto should be sufficient. How the koto is played isn't really relevent to how the concert and alpine zithers are played.

Also, I changed one thing in the koto information: the bridges are not moved "while playing". There are located before playing, and remain in place throughout any performance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.95.43.249 (talk) 22:47, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Cleaned up ambiguity

I beefed the article up, particularly the "history" section; added a bunch of references; put some items in the empty bibliography; added some notes on contemporary use; added a list of notable players. In the process I fixed the logical flow of some sections, made the "history" a bit more chronological and specific. Finally, based on the assumption that this article is supposed to be primarily about the instrument known as the "zither", and not the zither family at large, I removed irrelevant detail about kotos, autoharps, etc., leaving it in only where it filled an information gap in the history or usage of the instrument "the zither".

Hope it's been an improvement. Have at it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.95.43.249 (talk) 01:40, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Sound Clip

Can someone please reformat the sample sound clip into a standard audio format like .WAV or .MP3? Virtually every modern computer supports both of these formats; I've yet to encounter any system that supports "OGG". Thanks. 67.206.183.236 (talk) 07:00, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Hi 67.206.183.236. wav, ogg (and .ogv, .oga, .ogx, .ogm), and flac for royalty reasons are the only three audio file types that Wikimedia supports. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 08:54, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Cool. Since you mention WAV as one of the supported formats, how about reformatting the "OGG" clip into a WAV file? Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.89.176.249 (talk) 23:27, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Is it possible to add information on what type of zither is audible in the clip? We are describing so many subtypes in the article and it would be cool to particularize this. I don't know what zither it is, but I find the piano-like sound quite interesting

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History of the zither

This section needs a better flow. It mentions Chinese, Japanese and Indonesian zither-like instruments, and then suddenly jumps to 19th century Europe. But did the zither come from China? Or did it originate in Europe and spread to China? Or did it originate somewhere else, and spread to both, creating distinct traditions? Probably the last one is correct, but this needs to be explicit. The reason I noticed is because I was reading about the Norwegian zither Langeleik, which has existed since at least the 16th century - what kind of tradition does this instrument come from? Surely it only has very distant connections to the Japanese Koto?

Ornilnas (talk) 20:05, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Zither. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20110612052901/http://www.zitherbau-wuensche.de:80/zitherhistorie.htm to http://www.zitherbau-wuensche.de/zitherhistorie.htm

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