;BOWED PSALTERY-T-SHIRT T-Shirt

BOWED PSALTERY-T-SHIRT--Description The conventional bowed psaltery is triangular in shape, allowing each string to extend a little farther than the one before it, so that each can be individually bowed. Chromatic bowed psalteries have the sharps and flats on one side and the diatonic notes on the opposite. It is a psaltery in the traditional sense of a wooden soundbox with unstopped strings over the soundboard. It significantly differs from the Mediæval plucked psaltery only in that its strings are arranged to permit bowing. The soundboard has a soundhole or rose in the center. It is normally played with a small bow, often made in the earlier semicircular style, rather than a modern concave violin bow. Performance styles vary, but the instrument may be played either one note at a time, with the instrument held with one hand and bowed with the other, as in instruments of the violin family, or it may be laid down and played with a bow in each hand, in a style reminiscent of the closely related hammered dulcimer. Some players will also hold two bows in one hand to facilitate double-stopping. Besides bowing, the instrument may also be strummed or struck for additional tone colors. The strings are often too closely spaced for conventional finger picking, but may be plucked at the bowing end.