The Russian domra is the ancestor of the balalaika. It has a circular body shape with a staved, rounded back. The frets are fixed metal and in a chromatic pattern. It has metal strings and is overwhelmingly played with a plectrum, but finger picking can be used for some passages. I was told to use a small teardrop shape, as a guitar pick would not be proper. The thumb can be used to form some chords, but the domra's playing style differs a lot from the thumb heavy balalaika.
Originally played by jesters and peasants, classical musicians picked the dombra up relatively fast. While the balalaika too did eventually legitimize itself with the help of the pro-working class attitude of the Soviet union, the domra was seen as the more refined instrument of the two. This was not always the case, though. After people used the instrument to accompany mocking lyrics, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich banned playing it in 1648 and had dissidents banished from the Tsardom. Andreyev, who designed and patented the modern balalaika, found a broken domra in the late 19th century. Because the etymology is not entirely clear (tambur has denoted drums in many languages), some people say that the instrument was misnamed. Ibn Dust wrote that the Kievan Rus had a type of tambur sometime during his life in the 900s AD. It's believed that the Tatars may have introduced a type of domra (dombra, dumbyra) to the region. Daniel, Metropolitan of Moscow, first mentioned the instrument by it's name in the 1500s.
There are different sizes: The piccolo, prim(a), alt(o), tenor, bass and contrabass for the original three courses. The prim is the most popular and most versatile. I imitate it in it's Ead tuning. The baglamas that I am using (smallest bouzouki size) is played in a standard tuning of D(d) a(a) d(d), so I removed my double courses and tuned my bass up. Tunings for the other sizes can be Bea or Adg. Burov and Lyubimov invented the four string domra in 1905, tuned to fifths in GDae. The construction and stringing reminds more of the Ukrainian (not Romanian or Moldovan) kobza. It has become so popular there, that people refer to it as the Ukrainian domra.
#tambouras
