SLAV FEVER FOREVER

ALEXEI BIRIOUKOV — ROMAN JBANOV — REVELATIONS — BALALAÏKA AND BAYAN — UNDATED

First some specifications about the two instruments. The bayan accordion: ”The bayan (Russian: бая́н, IPA: [bɐˈjan]) is a type of chromatic button accordion developed in the Russian Empire in the early 20th century and named after the 11th-century bard Boyan.” The Balalaika: “The balalaika (Russian: балала́йка, pronounced [bəɫɐˈɫajkə]) is a Russian stringed musical instrument with a characteristic triangular wooden, hollow body, fretted neck and three strings. Two strings are usually tuned to the same note and the third string is a perfect fourth higher.” But we need a little bit more: “A fourth is a musical interval encompassing four staff positions in the music notation of Western culture, and a perfect fourth is the fourth spanning five semitones (half steps, or halftones, note since one full tone is equal to 9 commas, a semitone can be 5 or 4 of these commas: “A tone is formed of a chromatic semitone, 5 commas, and a diatonic semitone, 4 commas. It, therefore, has a total of 9 commas.”. Some composers worked on such subtle differences, but all instruments cannot really differentiate between chromatic and diatonic semitones.) For example, the ascending interval from C/DO to the next F/FA is a perfect fourth, because the note F/FA is the fifth semitone above C/DO, and there are…