Ütőgardon
The ütőgardon also called a gardon, gordună, gardony, ütősgardony, tekenyőgardon, is a folk musical instrument played in Hungary and Romania. Although it is similar in appearance to a cello, it is played percussively: instead of using a bow, the player plucks and beats the strings with a stick. In the Romanian region of Banat it was an actual cello and the playing was similar—plucking and beating the strings.
Description
The body of this relatively large stringed instrument, usually carved from a single piece of maple, poplar or willow, resembles classical stringed instruments, with a flat or slightly convex back and top, but with much thicker wood. There are four, or sometimes three, strings which are beaten with the bow which resembles a stick approximately 40 cm long and 2 cm in diameter. On the four-string version, three thicker strings correspond to the G-string of the double bass, and the thinner string, used as the plucking string, corresponds to the D or G string of the cello. Currently the most common tuning of the strings is D – D – D – d; previously on three-stringed instruments the tunings were often D – d – g; D – d – a; A – d – d.Use
Playing with a stick instead of a bow provides a droning accompaniment.The gardon is regularly though not exclusively played by a woman, often the wife of the soloist who would teach her or one of his close relatives to play it, or hire someone for that purpose on occasion.