Acoustics

The sound of Lithuanian kanklës of all the types develops just like all playing by chordophones. The kanklës of Suvalkieèiai (TMM 26265) have shown from 7 to 17 overtones. One can get most of them by shivering metal string by one third of the distance from the metal stick with a bone (plectrum). least - by touching the string at the same place with a finger and at the very middle with the bone. By vibrating the strings in the middle less overtones can be found and kanklës sound lower (hollow). Timbres evolves non shiny discolor. By touching the strings more to the side, the overtones increase: the highest ones provides for timbres pretty sharp nasal sound. That's how the folk players used to play by hitting the third or the fourth part of the string from the end. Such naturally developed principal of getting the sound matches the first T. Jung principal and decides the sound model of traditional kanklës.

The dynamically diapason of kanklës reaches 12 - 16 db. The plectrum produces up to 16 db, fingers - no more than 12 db.

While playing kanklës the dynamically abilities of kanklës are practically non used. It could be explained by the fact, that expressive dynamics is non characteristic feature for all kind of ethnic music.