The Setar
The origins of the setar go back to a pre-Islamic lute called the tanbouré Khorassan, from the family of long neck and small resonating chamber plucked instruments. In the evolution of Persian music, this instrument underwent many transformations, especially with regard to the shape of the resonating chamber, the number and placement of the frets, and the number of strings. This last transformation took place at the beginning of the twentieth century. A fourth string was added to the setar (the literal meaning of which is ‘three strings’) by Moshtaq Ali Shah, who positioned it between the second and the third.
Today the setar has 4 strings, two singles and one doubled. The setar is tuned in different ways depending on the mode in which the musician plays. A wide variety of tuning can be adapted to the setar regarding the desired effect by the instrument, modal or non-modal. The instrument has between 25 and 29 moveable gut frets (depending to players) organized in microtones according to the Persian musical scales. The setar has a range of two and a half octaves.
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