A friend of mine is from Morocco, and on a recent trip back to visit family, she bought a lute-like instrument known as a “Sintir.” I’ve been looking around trying to find out how its supposed to be tuned and played.
I was hoping for some sound clips, but haven’t found any yet.
The best I can find so far is the wikipidia article on the Sintir. There it says the base string is a drone, the next string is an octave higher and is never fretted, and the third string is tuned a fourth higher than the second. Does this mean that only that highest string is ever fretted then? Also, are there standard pitches to which the strings are supposed to be tuned, or not? The instrument my friend bought comes with bar you can place under the strings to tune the whole thing up or down, so it may not be so important what specific pitches the strings are tuned to.
As for sound clips, I found the website of someone who plays the instrument–Hassan Hakmoun–but the music at his website consists in a lot of instruments playing all at once and I can’t make out the part that is just the Sintir.
Anyone know anything about this thing?
-Kris