The Portuguese guitar belongs to the family of string instruments known as citterns. It uses six double steel strings over a movable bone bridge. Although normally associated with fado, the song of Lisbon, there are composers and players that see the Portuguese guitar as a true solo instrument.
There are two main types of Portuguese guitars: one from Lisbon, the other from Coimbra. Their differences include body and scale size, and tonality. The most common tuning for the Lisbon Portuguese guitar, also known as banza, is from low to high - dD, aA, bB, ee, bb, aa, the lowest pairs being tuned in octaves. The instrument from Coimbra uses the same tuning but a whole tone lower.
|
||||
|
|
|||