Baglamas particularly popular with musicians who needed an instrument transportable enough to carry around easily or small enough to shelter under a coat. During parts of the 20th century, players of the bouzouki and baglamas were persecuted by the government, and the instruments were smashed by the police. The name comes from Turkish , a similar instrument. Baglamas The baglamas () (plural "baglamades") or baglamadaki (), a long necked bowl-lute, is a plucked string instrument used in Greek music; it is a version of the bouzouki pitched an octave higher (nominally D-A-D), with unison pairs on the four highest strings and
Irish traditional music form of improvised "countermelody" is often used in the accompaniments of bouzouki and guitar players. In contrast to many kinds of western folk music, there are no set chord progressions to tunes; many accompanyists use power chords to let the melody define the tonality or use partial chords in combination with ringing drone strings to emphasize the tonal center. Many guitarists use DADGAD tuning because it offers flexibility in using these approaches, as does the GDAD tuning for bouzouki. Like all traditional music, Irish folk music has changed slowly. Most folk songs are less than 200 years old. One measure