I bought a Kabosy! How the hell do I play it?

[Ted]

Today I bought a kabosy in Antananarivo, Madagascar, as well as a cheap Malagasy guitar.

The kabosy is an interesting instrument. The tuning and fretting is very strange to me. With the "standard" tuning, there are some chords that are simply unavailable because the fret needed is missing. An E maj, for example; there is only one G# note on the neck, and it's not in the most convenient place.

Here I am at home with all of the instruments I now have at home in Madagascar.

The kabosy cost about $13 US, and the guitar cost $23 US. I can't wait to hear how it sounds with whatever cheap pickup it has installed.


I also have my MBR, and my Korg NanoPAD2, if those count as instruments.

Here's some Kabosy music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXc4P2t6268

[Oldrottenhead]

looking forward to hearing what you do with em.

[cuthbert]

I love oddball instruments, and that kabosy looks super-cool to me (mmm, those partial frets!).

Regarding its limitations, I consider those to be good things most times. If you can't manage a full E major, can you manage a partial chord like an E-B or an E-F# dyad instead? (my terminology may not be completely accurate, but you get the idea).

[Ted]

Regarding its limitations, I consider those to be good things most times. If you can't manage a full E major, can you manage a partial chord like an E-B...

Right on both counts. The Kabosy may bring out some musical ideas that wouldn't occur to me on a guitar, or a fully-chromatic instrument.

Interestingly, this is not a strictly diatonic instrument either. There are a couple little chromatic spots on the higher strings. It will be interesting to figure out what the logic is to that.

[Geir]

Cool cool cool!!

An instrument for happy music I'd suspect.... Open tuning? Looks like the fretting is following a major scale except for the higher strings as you say. Very cool. Please post some music soon.



Interesting t-shirt too Ted 

[bruno]

Cool set of instruments you have there Ted, I particularly like the fretless 5 string bass (?), never heard of a Kabosy, defo can make some world music with that - looks very interesting.
B

[Ted]

Open tuning? Looks like the fretting is following a major scale except for the higher strings as you say. Very cool. Please post some music soon.

Exactly right. I've tuned it to an open G, according to these instructions.

The two lower strings are both G, and indeed follow a major scale up to the octave fret. After that, it gets a little weird. (I'd say the 12th fret, but there is a full-step gap between the 5th and 6th fret that makes the octave occur at the 11th fret.)

I did figure out how to do an 11-note chromatic scale, which (in theory) should mean that every major and minor triad is available to me -- possibly in some kind of tortured fingering.



As for the shirt...

[Ted]

I love this!

I just noticed that the bridge is a pencil!

[Hook]

I am so very jealous, cant wait to hear it!!!
Rock On!

[Blooby]

How very cool. Thanks for the pictures and interesting thread.  Look forward to listening as well.

Blooby