Irish traditional music bouzouki players may play single note melody instead of harmonizing accompaniment, but in live acoustic sessions with more than two or three players but it is difficult to produce sufficient volume to be heard over drumming and the piercing sound of fiddles and penny whistles. Although not traditional, the Irish bouzouki has found a home in the modern Irish traditional music scene. The Greek bouzouki was introduced to Irish traditional music in the late 1960s by Johnny Moynihan and then popularised by Dónal Lunny, Andy Irvine, and Alec Finn. Today's Irish bouzouki (usually) has four courses of two strings (usually)
Bouzouki the mainstay of most Rebetiko music. It has fixed frets and 6 strings in three pairs. In the lower-pitched (bass) course, the pair consists of a thick wound string and a thin string, tuned an octave apart. The conventional modern tuning of the "trichordo" bouzouki is DD–AA–DD. This tuning was called the "European tuning" by Markos Vamvakaris, who mentioned (but failed to describe) several other tunings, or "douzenia", in his autobiography. The illustrated bouzouki was made by Karolos Tsakirian of Athens, and is a replica of a "trichordo" bouzouki made by his grandfather for Markos Vamvakaris. The absence of the