Authiik String Instruments

The origins of modern authiik string instruments lie in an instrument family called the yudatkii shuta, or "pair string", first seen in art on Udyana around RZh 900. This is a very wide category whose earlier members are referred to as authiik lutes, as some instruments had as few as seven strings in four courses, three of which would have two strings while the highest in pitch was alone, and others still would have as many as twelve courses and a total of up to twenty strings, often with reentrant tunings.

In size, authiik instruments are roughly 10 to 20 percent smaller than human equivalents, and are tuned an average of a half octave sharper in either perfect fourths, five semitones apart, or in perfect fifths, seven semitones apart.

   Bowed instruments were never widespread on Udyana. The majority of instruments were instead played by using the first and second fingers to strum, pulling strings up towards the body and suddenly releasing them to resonate freely.

Modern players substitute the thumb where more convenient, but also employ tactics like plucking or popping, where one pulls a string away from the body of the instrument rather than pushing it aside for a brighter sound, tapping, where one suddenly presses the string onto the fingerboard to produce notes in more complex pieces, and slapping or thumping, where one uses the side of the thumb to strike the string against the fingerboard for more percussive sounds.

The use of plectrums or picks to increase the initial brightness of a note, or the "attack" led to the adoption of scratchguards, an easily replaceable piece of plastic or another softer material that absorbs the scratches that can be caused by aggressively playing with picks.

### Modern Yudatkii Navashuta Family

The older yudatkii shuta were reduced to a standard four courses per instrument, resulting in the modern yudatkii shuta family around the year RZh1250. From large to small, they were named the yudatkii mavehukitii, teriiukitii, and anvayaukitii.

The word "yudatkii" translates to "pair", or "together", while navashuta translates to "four string". Each instrument's voicing translates to "low voice", "high voice", and "very high voice". They equate to baritone, alto, and soprano, and are often shortened to "yunavama", "yunavate", and "yunava'an".

In construction, they were shaped like teardrops and had flat sided bodies with polygonal bowl-shaped backs. The fingerboard was flat, and the frets were short, made from thin organic string that could be moved up and down for fine tuning of each note. The headstock was angled sharply back at the end of the neck, and the tuning pegs held tension by friction alone. Each instrument had four courses with two strings for a total of eight.

The methods of building yudatkii shuta changed over the years. Bodies shrunk, backs were flattened, and the headstock became straighter and more in-line with the neck, following the trend set by the later ehkakii shuta branch of the family. They would adopt the later style of convex fingerboards as opposed to flat fingerboards seen on earlier yudatkii shuta, or the concave fingerboiards used on classical ekakii shuta.

Fret markers for harmonics and positional assistance are far more common on a yunavashuta than on a dazharshuta. Dazharshuta typically have an unmarked fingerboard with protrusions to mark harmonics. Yunavashuta will have inlays every four frets, usually ovals or squares, a double oval inlay or wide box on the octave frets of 12 and 24, and thin horizontal inlays on the fifth, seventh, and nineteenth frets to mark the third and fourth harmonics.

The yunava'an and yunavate were always played horizontally, and the yunavama was played either horizontally or upright depending on the intentions of its luthier. The advent of the electromagnetic pickup in the RZh 1440s led to an immediate decrease in the size of the body of the yunavama, allowing them to be played horizontally as the smaller two were.

While the ekakii shuta branch of the family has overtaken them in popularity, they are still favored in certain styles of music. For instance, Kazhate Shakakii, an artist on the fifth fleet is known to use an electric yunavama with a 1 razhi scale length, or roughly 65 centimeters, to back her vocals while her partner in both occupation and habitation, Tala Shakakii, plays a 5-string electric dazharte tuned in fourths for supporting melodies.

They are tuned in fourths, each course five semitones higher than the last and paired with a second string tuned to the same note on the treble courses, or one octave higher on the bass courses. The family is tuned in increments of one octave. The open course pitch ranges from G1g2 to A#2A#2 on the yunavama, while those on the yunavate range from G2g3 to A#3A#3. The yunava'an is tuned to G3g4 to A#4A#4, an octave higher than the yunavate.

 Yunavate
 Yunavama

### Ekakii Dazharshuta Family

Classical dazharshuta were created in the eastern continent, based upon the yudatkii navashuta's designs and combined with local folk instruments around RZh 1350. The primary changes made were to use five individual strings, a standardized tuning in fifths rather than fourths, and a slight increase in scale length. This resulted in the ekakii dazharshuta mavehukitii and teriiukitii.

"Ehkakii" translates to "alone", and "dazhar" and "shuta" translate to "five string".

In construction, the body was circular with flat sides and a shallow bowl-shaped back, traditionally carved from a single piece of wood. Their steel reinforced necks have flat fingerboards and gut metal frets, quickly replaced with metal bar frets. The strings were made from gut early on but as synthetic materials became available, such as polymers and nylon fiber, the authentic gut fell out of favor among contemporary musicians. They retained a small following in traditional styles and with historical music enthusiasts. Later instruments made to be more structurally durable even adopted the steel strings of other instruments and their electric counterparts, for a much louder and bolder timbre. Traditionally, classical instruments are not expected to have fret position inlays, though some artists prefer a single inlay at the fourth or twelfth fret for both playing assistance and/or artistic flair. Electric instruments and modern steel string acoustic ehkakii have a position marker every fourth fret.

    This pair of acoustic dazhar display a number of design features they are credited with creating. For instance, the smaller dazharte was intended to sit on the player's lap, between the legs, and at an angle with the neck pointing upwards. The dazharma on the other hand featured a horn that allowed it to sit on top of the musician's leg for easier access to the lower frets without requiring it to be played in an upright standing position as many of the larger yudatkii instruments had to be played. It also served as the inspiration for many early electric dazhar designs, paving the way for the modern diversity of body shapes seen in electric chordophones. It also had a deeper bowl shaped back as the instrument was offset from the player's torso, allowing the instrument's shape to be modified from the smaller sibling for better production of lower frequencies.

Later steel stringed acoustic examples of the dazharma increased the dimensions of the body from 14 to 17 inches, the scale length increased from 28 to 30 inches for more clarity in the bass register, the lower horn was made larger to increase the offset relative to the player's body and added a rounded metal or plastic arm guard attached to the top of the instrument that was more rounded than the corner of the body would have been, and a floating intonated, height adjustable bridge and a trapeze style tailpiece were also adopted to modernize the instrument in a variety of ways. A few short decades later, a revolution would take place regarding the design, and method of operation, of string instruments.

Above is an example of a very early solid-body electric dazharma. Its body was directly inspired by that of the larger acoustic dazharma, with a horn-shaped bout to allow for it to be placed on the artist's leg, and a larger rounded shape for both aesthetics and balancing purposes. It used induction to produce minute electrical currents through an interaction between the magnetized pole in the pickup, the coils of conductive wire wrapped around them, and the steel strings, which is then regulated for volume through a potentiometer and output through a standard 5 aka audio interface port on the instrument's face, where it can be sent to an amplifier or various effects systems for a broad range of sounds.

The purpose of the solid body had many facets. First and foremost, it was intended to reduce feedback, which was common in amplified acoustics. Secondly, it was meant to achieve the longest possible sustain, allowing notes to ring for as long as possible by reducing the vibration energy lost to the body's resonation. Third, it minimized the acoustic sound of the instrument, allowing for beginners and hobbyists to practice silently without disturbing their neighbors. Lastly, but most importantly, it's smaller size, lower material quality requirements, and simpler construction, allowed it to gain popularity quickly due to as vastly reduced cost, in addition to a greater tolerance for high amplification making it essential for live performances in large venues. As the shape had little effect on the instrument's sound, a large variety of aesthetic styles and improvements to the electronics design appeared allowing for a number of different and very distinct designs that could be associated with artists, or genres. This created a market for sponsorships, paying artists to play instruments of specific designs as a form of advertisement built into their fame.

The music that authiik composed changed when they left Udyana. The confined and overpopulated halls of the colonies of Udshaxiva caused the grand orchestral band to shrink to groups of four or five playing two or three melody instruments, including a treble and bass musician, most often playing the dazharma and dazharte. A rhythm musician playing a set of drums or a navano backed them, and a vocalist, who was often also a melody player, took the lead.

Modern dazharshuta have convex fingerboards to aid fretting chords, and more commonly use inlays, with common position markers present on lower-cost instruments for novices at the second, third, and fourth harmonics, every third or fourth fret, or only on significant frets such as the fifth, seventh, or twelfth frets.

More common now are electric models utilizing magnetic pickups. Not only are they less expensive, but they take up less space and can be played nearly silently with headphones connected. This is an important consideration in the enclosed space of a starship, where disturbing neighbors is a common occurrence and metal surfaces allow sounds to carry farther. In addition, the use of wood in the construction of instruments came to be a very high-end feature as the authiik left planetary surfaces where it was readily available, instead relying on 3D printing of polymers engineered for producing similar tones to wood, and the printing of false grain as a purely aesthetic element.

Human musicians treat these instruments as cultural equivalents to the guitar, referring to them as the dazhar and bass dazhar. The standard tuning for the two are in perfect fifths one octave apart, from F1 to A3 on the dazharma, and from F2 to A4 on the dazharte, and as a result they can be played like a human Mandola and Mandocello with five single-string courses, the additional string tuned to a low F.

 Dazharma

Alternative tunings for the instrument include alternating fourths and fifths, such as F-C-F-C-F, which was popular with underground and rebellious styles of music, but never reached the same level of popularity as the all-fifths standard.

### The Ekakii Navashuta Family

The navano, "alone four string very low voice", or ekakii navashuta notehukitii, is the only surviving instrument of the ekakii navashuta family, a large family of single-string instruments tuned in fourths like the yudatkii navashuta family. It predates the eight-stringed instruments by a number of centuries and was likely later grouped with the yudatkii navashuta to place within the common four-instrument paradigm of the time.

Each "small" band required a rhythm player who would be playing a mavehukitii, or baritone instrument, a pair of melody instruments in the teriiukitii and anvayaukitii, or alto and soprano, and a sort of rhythm/percussion hybrid on a notehukitii, or bass, alongside a dedicated percussionist using drums.

As the yudatkii navashuta came into popularity, the navano continued being used in popular and professional music while the other members of the family faded into classification as a folk instrument in much the same way as the banjo and mandolin families did on earth. Later still, dazharshuta overtook yudatkii navashuta in popularity and the navano was able to adapt its tuning to play in fifths a half octave below the deeper four strings on a dazharma. Its solo playerbase grew vastly after the invention of the electromagnetic pickup allowed them to be built on nearly the same scale as an electric dazharma, their bodies shrinking to more practical sizes for use in confined spaces.

Modern players after its sound simply take the thinner string of each course off of a yunava'an, yunavate, or yunavama. Dedicated single-string baritone, alto, and soprano navashuta are always either custom made or antiques. No luthers make them as a primary product.

Authiik musicians and historians now say it to co-evolved alongside the leading instruments of the time, and believe it speaks to how important a solid rhythmic foundation is to their music.

 Fourths Navano

### Strings and Tuning

Authiik string instruments are most often tuned in regular intervals. Major thirds, perfect fourths, and perfect fifths are most common. Strings are cut and gauged for a light playing experience at around 15 pounds of tension. For instance, despite the relatively short scale length that dazharte have and the wide range of notes they are intended to play, they use similar string gauges to the human guitar, ranging from a low string of steel wire wrapped in copper or nickel measuring 0.047 inches to 0.009 inches of plain steel wire for the thinnest, 1.19 millimeters to 0.23 millimeters, or 0.975 aka to 0.1875 aka.

They are not intended to be clipped at the tuning peg, instead the spare string length is intended to be wound around the tuning peg three to five times, and the rest should be allowed to hang freely or otherwise be secured to the headstock. Given the low tension that the strings are under and corrosion-resistant materials they are made from, cleaning them restores the majority of brightness lost as strings become dirty from use, and they stretch very slowly. An instrument will need maintenance before strings need to be replaced. The tuning end of the strings are sealed in a wax or plastic end to protect the instrument's finish, while the bridge end has a large metal ball, block, or cylinder used to secure them within the bridge, ferrules, or tailpiece.

Listed below is the ideal string gauge for each course of an authiik string instrument.