Kaval? - Please Help!

[mandace87]

okay - thank you so much!

[JackCampin]

Looking at those pictures again, I see it's got wire bands as decoration. So does mine (different wire) - I'm pretty sure that's an exclusively Balkan idea, and perhaps more likely Bosnian or Macedonian than anything else (though I defer to anyone who knows more about things Bulgarian than I do). I don't recall ever seeing a kaval in Turkey with wire bands like that.

Acoustically it'll be the same as a Turkish dilli kaval, anyway.

[James_Alto]

What mode does it play in then?

[rkostas]

Here's an educational VCD - why not learn to play it?

http://herevesaz.com/urun_detay.asp?id=2200

This is not a method. It is rubbish.
I have got it. It is only a few minutes of generalities.
Absolutely rubbish.

[JackCampin]

Thanks. I did wonder, given how many different kinds of kaval it promised to cover.

[JackCampin]

Scale of mine in the low register, low to high. Note the thumbhole is between 1 and 2, unlike a recorder.

T 123 456 F#
T 123 45- A
T 123 4-6 Bb
T 123 4-- Bb a bit sharp (as for ussak mode, maybe?)
T 123 -56 B
T 123 --- c
T 12- --- c#
T 1-3 456 d
T 1-- --- eb
T -23 4-- e
- 12- --- e
T -2- --- f
T -23 456 f#

So I'd say it's basically ussak on A, and it's not easy to see why the lowest note is so high. It plays more easily in the second octave.

[JackCampin]

...and you did read that right, there seems to be no way to get a G or G# without halfholing.

[JackCampin]

This guy seems not to use the bottom two holes at all:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKDsawvnwag

He's obviously got some severe disabilities and can't use all his fingers, but the tune he's playing and singing isn't unusually restricted for the idiom.