The project began after the recent Baltic Psaltery workshop at Tartu College in Toronto. After my wife, Laani, put out a call to the Estonian-Canadian community for a spare kannel (the Estonian name for the stringed instrument known as the Baltic Psaltery), our friend, VEMU archivist and Eesti Elu columnist Keila Kopvillem, assisted in the search. Epp Aruja generously donated a kannel in her possession, which had been stored away for many years.
Fotogalerii
The kannel came to us in an orange, custom-fitted case that preserved its condition well. It was handmade, though its specific maker remains a mystery. This instrument was visually intriguing, with seven holes drilled into the soundboard in a hexagonal shape and a comfortable overall shape. However, some care and effort would be needed to sound the notes out once again as had been done before. We were curious if fresh strings would result in a brighter sound.
(Side note: a kannel might resemble an autoharp, but it functions more as an ancestor to that instrument. The kannel/psaltery has parallels across the region: the kokle in Latvia, the kanklės in Lithuania, and the kantele in Finland.)
The work in earnest took place during the celebrations for Jaanipäev, Estonia’s midsummer holiday. A fitting occasion, that’s for sure.
A visit to Long & McQuade proved invaluable. The staff were helpful in measuring the gauge of the existing strings, allowing us to plan and purchase individual replacements of specific thicknesses. This included a pack of bass strings, which required an interesting technical approach. The lowest strings were partially unravelled, such that they would wrap around small posts on one side of the kannel and loop through the tuning pegs, but be thick enough to have a lower tone.
I approached the tune-up as a complete amateur, having never dealt with a twenty-one-string instrument before. The first string I tried to change—the highest pitched and shortest of them all—failed entirely. “Winging it” without a plan led to a string that bent, slipped, and failed to hold tension. It was necessary to trim down the string and try again from the beginning.
Repetition and patience eventually revealed a method that Laani described as a “jewellery technique.” It involved creating a tight initial loop by pulling one side of the string taut with a pair of pliers, then tightly winding over and under the other side again and again, almost like braiding hair. It was also helpful to hold the instrument between my knees to brace the frame. And finally, when the looping and tightening was complete, the excess string could be clipped with pliers.
“Tuning, with the piano-style peg mechanism, was done one fraction of a turn at a time with a drum key, to ensure the notes were as precise as possible. As I found out, adding fresh strings to and tuning a kannel is quite different than doing the same for a guitar. It takes more focus.”
From there, I attempted to match the strings with the pitches indicated on a piece of tape found on the side of the instrument. The instrument spans a range of just over two octaves, ascending from a low D on a bass string to a high C on the top string. Tuning, with the piano-style peg mechanism, was done one fraction of a turn at a time with a drum key, to ensure the notes were as precise as possible.
As I found out, adding fresh strings to and tuning a kannel is quite different than doing the same for a guitar. It takes more focus. Setting up a six-string Gretsch guitar with a Bigsby Vibrato isn’t easy (look it up to see what I mean!), but by and large, handling a guitar is something one can do with speed. In fact, watch the sides of the stage at a big stadium rock show and you might see guitar techs working with haste like Wimbledon racquet stringers.
The end result was satisfying, with each string creating a twang or a peaceful decay, depending on how you plucked/strummed. By muting strings with different gaps of open strings in between, emotive chords were heard. And in this experimentation, new vocal melody ideas emerged. Those fresh sounds in and of themselves make the task of tuning up a less-familiar instrument a pleasure.
