advantage of the many sounds the orchestra withholds. "Beriozka" (The Birch Tree), "Korobushka" (The Peddlers), "Yablotshka" (The little apple), "Ossennii son" (Autumn Dream), "Vetshernii Zvon" (Evening Bells), "Podmoskovnye Vetchera" (Moscow Nights), but also waltzes, marches, polkas, and Russian suites are part of the repertoire. http://www.si.umich.edu/CHICO/MHN/pages/blka_gnrl.htmlThe balalika is similar to the oud of the Middle Eastern area. Compared to the lute, the oud (also spelled ud) is a short-necked, half pear-shaped, plucked lute of the Arab world, the direct ancestor of the European lute. Oud's name derives from al-oud (branch of wood.) An oud has five pairs of strings, each pair tuned to the same pitch, and a single string, which is also the thickest and is known as the "bamteli" in Turkish. The most common way to tune the oud is to tune each string a fourth apart. There is also an Arabic variant of this tuning where the intervals stay the same but the pitch of each string is dropped down by a full step; CGDAEB. Some other tunings are CGDAGD, GDAEDA, DAEBAE, GDAEDA. "Known both from documentation and through oral tradition, it is considered the king, sultan, or emir of musical instruments, "the most perfect of those invented by the philosophers". The lute is the principal instrument of the Arab world, and is of secondary importance in Turkey, Iran, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. It plays a lesser role in Greece. It also plays an important role in North African countries, such as Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, and Sudan. http://www.necco.net/category/arts_culture/music.htm Another stringed instrument of Russian is the Domra. The Domra is a three or four stringed instrument of Mongolian heritage and could be found among the Attars, Kirghiz, Kalmyks, Altaians and other natives of Siberia. In contemporary Russian orchestras the domra usually plays the melody and is played with a pick. The domra is used in classic...
