One-string Wonder

I've been teaching myself to play khsae dieu (see above), a one-string Khmer instrument with a particularly delicate and quiet tone. The instrument was once heard often in the countryside in the evenings, when elderly men would quietly play the instrument before retiring to bed. Although it only has one string, the instrument can produce complete scales through the use of overtones and pitch-bending. The picture below shows me attempting to play it.

The left hand stops the string against the wooden shaft to generate different pitches, while the ring finger of the right hand plucks the string. However, many more pitches can be generated through two special techniques in the right hand. The first is simply to push down on the shaft with the right little finger, which increases the tension on the string and thus raises the pitch as much as a fourth. The other technique is to gently touch the right forefinger to the string while plucking as usual with the ring finger. If done at the right places along the string, a particular overtone is isolated (the octave, the fifth, the second octave, the third, the fifth, etc.), allowing for a full range of three octaves and all the tones in between. When the overtone is isolated in this manner, the khsae dieu has a very pure and beautiful tone, unlike almost any other string instrument. The only other similar instrument I've heard is the Vietnamese dan bau, another one-string instrument that uses overtone isolation.

The khsae dieu is a very enjoyable instrument to play, one that is uniquely Khmer in character. The Ven. Pin Sem, abbot of Wat Bo in Siem Reap (near the Angkor Wat temple complex, northwestern Cambodia), pleaded succesfully with one of the few remaining masters of this instrument to have it taught to the wat to local students. It now looks like there are enough students to pass the instrument and the repertoire associated with it down to the next generation.

I also had my first Khmer lesson today with Rith, a sharp, enthusiastic fellow. His teaching style seems to work well, and today we acted out a scene in a restaurant to practice vocabulary and sentence building. And the lesson has already paid off, because for dinner today I went to a local Khmer eatery (not really a restaurant, more a home that turns into a noodle-serving joint in the evening) and ordered in Khmer. I am planning to go to the local market tomorrow to buy fruits, vegetables, and tofu so that I can cook for myself. I probably won't be saving money this way, as my dinner today was about 63 cents, but it will be more enjoyable and I need to improve my cooking skills.