One of my earliest music performance memories is from my 2nd grade music class. They brought out auto-harps for all of the kids and handed us a pick to strum along to whatever children's folk song the teacher had picked out. And I remember thinking how much I liked the tone of the instrument: celestial and harp-like. But I was simultaneously getting very mad. After all, here was a beautiful harp instrument that you could only strum chords on. And you couldn't even make the chords yourself. Pressing a button was all that was necessary. I truly felt that the strings of this instrument were wrongly imprisoned. The auto-harp was made conventional by the trappings that made it so user-friendly.
Flash forward twenty something odd years and I find myself combing craigslist for strange instruments. I come across a harp-like instrument. The seller had no idea what it was, only that it was gathering dust in his house. He sold the instrument for a meager sum of cash, and I headed on my way. I bought a couple new strings where it was missing them, and I installed a pick-up on it with the help of Terry from Beat Street Music in Manlius, NY. Then I set about figuring out some ways to play the thing.
In the mean time I'd figured out that this instrument was a Fretless American Zither, also known as The Mandolin Harp. This particular one was made in Brooklyn. I researched all kinds of zithers, and there certainly is quite a range of these instruments...not to mention styles in which they're played. Well, having had no lessons on the instrument, I came up with some strange ways of playing it myself. I use a guitar slide on it and a number of percussive techniques.
In the video below are two short songs off of "For the Unforeseeable Future", both played on the fretless zither.
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