As a visitor to Ukraine, you may get the opportunity to enjoy some local music while you are there.  You may have noticed that there are some strange looking instruments in this part of the world, one of them being the triangular balalaika.  Measuring around 27” in length, the balalaika has three to six strings and is plucked like a guitar over the front soundboard’s rosette hole.  The peg box at the end of the neck is at an acute angle to the neck and the body and the strings are run from the top of the neck, over the movable soundboard, and around the end of the instrument to be secured at the back.

What is interesting about the balalaika is the way it can be tuned.  One instructional booklet has 87 different tuning methods.  47 of them were to tune the balalaika like a guitar.  The other 40 are for common and hard to find stringed instruments such as: mandolin; banjo; dulcimer; bass; harp guitar; oud; charrango; bouzouki; tres; ukulele; bajo sexto; dobro/lap steel; vihuela; requinto; and as a balalaika itself.

The next time you have the opportunity to visit Ukraine and listen to music, look for one of these interesting instruments to be in the band and see it you can hear it more distinctly than the other strings.