Kacapi
The kacapi is a traditional zither of Sundanese people in Indonesia. This musical instrument is similar to Chinese guzheng, Japanese koto, the Mongolian yatga, the Korean gayageum, the Vietnamese đàn tranh and the Kazakh jetigen. The kacapi played as the main accompanying instrument in the tembang Sunda or Mamaos Cianjuran, kacapi suling genre, pantun stories recitation or an additional instrument in gamelan degung performance.
The word kacapi in Sundanese also refers to santol tree, from which initially the wood is believed to be used for building the zither instrument.
Form
According to its form or physical appearance, there are two kinds of kacapi:The kacapi parahu, also called kacapi gelung, is a resonance box with an uncovered underside to allow the sound out. The sides of this kind of kacapi are tapered inward from top to bottom, which gives the instrument a boat-like shape. In ancient times, it was made directly from solid wood by perforating it.
The kacapi siter is a plan-parallel resonance box. Similar to the kacapi parahu, its hole is located at the bottom. The upper and bottom sides of it form a trapezoid shape.
For both kinds of kacapi, each string is affixed to a small screw or peg on the top right-hand side of the box. They can be tuned in different systems: pelog, sorog/madenda, or slendro. Kacapi siter often tuned in Western diatonic scale for some purposes, such as contemporary music.
Nowadays, the resonance box of kacapi is made by gluing six wood-plates side by side.
The kacapi is traditionally played by sitting cross-legged on the floor. Thus, the strings are about 25 cm above the floor. Nowadays the kacapi is sometimes placed on a wooden frame, so that the player can sit on a chair. If the kacapi indung is played while sitting on the floor, usually a pillow or some other small object is placed under its left-hand side, as seen from the player, so that the sound can freely escape through the resonance hole in the bottom of the soundbox. Some kecapi are fitted with small feet, so that it is not necessary to lift them in this way.
Functions
According to its functions in a musical accompaniment, the kacapi is played as:- Kacapi Indung or ; and
- Kacapi Anak or Kacapi Rincik
The Kacapi rincik enriches the accompaniment by filling in inter-note spaces with higher frequencies, especially in fixed metered songs as in the kacapi suling or Sekar Panambih. For this purpose, a smaller kacapi with ~15 strings is used.
Tuning and notation
Kacapi uses various scales, such as Saléndro, Degung, Madenda, and its derived transpositions. Wisaya nad Mandalungan are playable if the suling has additional holes. See the following table.The note range, from the lowest to the highest frequency in Degung scale is:
Note range
The kacapi is tuned to match the 60 cm length suling tones. With this length, an approximation for the tuning compared to western scale is:
Tuning of kacapi
The following picture applies the above-mentioned tuning and notation.
Tuning and Notation of a kacapi
