A very elegant (not) way to keep a Greek Bouzouki from sliding while playing.
I've a few zoukis - Irish flatbacks & this Greek jobbie, which I'm starting to like more and more for playing Celtic stuff on - something about the thinner strings.... Anyhow - for the life of me, I cannot understand how a culture could come up with an instrument as abominably difficult to hold while playing !? My beer-belly against the infernal convex bottom of the thing just ain't rght.
At this point, it's either figuring out how to keep the thing from jiggling all over the place or screwing it to the wall as a pretty decoration.
Tradition be damned - I've solved it, at least for me - by the use of pieces of 80 grit sandpaper stuck onto bowl with the strongest double-sided tape I could find, really does work!
If you ever saw my webpage ( http://DennisHavlena.com ) you could see that in my half-century of diddling with musical instruments, I've always preferred function-over-form.
If you play with the thing on your right thigh, position a 4" diameter piece of the sandpaper where the bowl meets your right thigh & another 4" piece where the bowl touches your lower rib area.
I play with the bowl nestled between my two thighs - not the proper way I'm told - so I put a 3" wide rectangular strip where the Bouzouki touches my left thigh; a 4" x 4" square near the tailpiece where the bowl touches my right thigh & a 4" disk of sandpaper where the bowl touches my belly area.
As crude as this might (does) sound, it solved my problem.
Yep. Dennis Havlena - Straits of Mackinac northern Michigan where an extended late-season snowstorm is putting pretty much a halt to any ideas of traveling.
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