Drumhead lutes

thumb|Tokyo geisha with , thumb|Kitagawa Utamaro, "Flowers of Edo: Young Woman's Narrative Chanting to the ", thumb|A Japanese people|Japanese man playing a while another sings thumb|A accompanying the traditional Kouta (music)|kouta

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The sarangi is a bowed, short-necked three-stringed instrument played in traditional music from South Asia. It is said to resemble the sound of the human voice through its ability to imitate vocal ornaments such as Gamaks or Gamakam (shakes) and meends (sliding movements). The Nepali sarangi is similar, but is a four-stringed, simpler folk instrument.

The () or lahuta (; related to English lute) is a bowed single-stringed musical instrument (and musical style) traditionally used in the Dinarides region of Southeastern Europe (in the Balkans). The instrument is always accompanied by singing; musical folklore, specifically epic poetry. The player (; ) holds the instrument vertically between the knees, with the left hand fingers on the string. The string is never pressed to the neck, giving a harmonic and unique sound.

thumb|A 19th century sarod, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The sarod is a stringed instrument, used in Hindustani music on the Indian subcontinent. Along with the sitar, it is among the most popular and prominent instruments. It is known for a deep, weighty, introspective sound, in contrast with the sweet, overtone-rich timbre of the sitar, with sympathetic strings that give it a resonant, reverberant quality. A fretless instrument, it can produce the continuous slides between notes known as meend (glissandi), which are important in Indian music.

thumb|upright|Kamancheh The kamancheh is an Iranian bowed string instrument used in Persian, Azerbaijani, Armenian, Kurdish, Georgian, Turkmen, and Uzbek music with slight variations in the structure of the instrument.

Middle Eastern and Central Asian long-necked, waisted string instrument

lute-like musical instrument

The ' or esraaj (from the Shahmukhi: اسراج Bengali: এস্রাজ) is a stringed instrument found in two forms throughout South Asia. It is a relatively recent instrument, being only about 300 years old. It is found in Pakistan and North India, primarily Punjab, where it is used in Sikh music, Bangladesh and West Bengal, India where it is used in Rabindra Sangeet and Classical Music. The is a modern variant of the ', differing slightly in structure.

thumb|upright=0.6|A sanshin The is a Ryukyuan musical instrument and precursor of Japanese (). Often likened to a banjo, it consists of a snakeskin-covered body, neck and three strings.

The (, literally "three strings") is a three-stringed traditional Chinese lute. It has a long fretless fingerboard, and the body is traditionally made from snake skin stretched over a rounded rectangular resonator. It is made in several sizes for different purposes and in the early 20th century a four-stringed version, the , was developed. The northern is generally larger, at about in length, while southern versions of the instrument are usually about in length.

musical instrument

The masenqo (; Tigrinya: ጭራ-ዋጣ (ዋጣ), also known as masinko or mesenko, is a single-stringed bowed lute commonly found in the musical traditions of Eritrea and Ethiopia. As with the krar, this instrument is used by Ethiopian minstrels called azmaris ("singer" in Amharic). Although it functions in a purely accompaniment capacity in songs, the masenqo requires considerable virtuosity, as azmaris accompany themselves while singing.

Chinese bowed string instrument

The cümbüş (; ) is a Turkish stringed instrument of relatively modern origin. It was developed in 1930 by Zeynel Abidin Cümbüş as an oud-like instrument that could be heard as part of a larger ensemble.

The kobyz or qobyz, also known as the kylkobyz, is an ancient Turkic bowed string instrument, spread among Kazakhs, Karakalpaks, Bashkirs, and Tatars. The Kyrgyz variant is called the ).

The gaohu (高胡; pinyin: gāohú, ; Cantonese: gou1 wu4; also called yuehu 粤胡) is a Chinese bowed string instrument developed from the erhu in the 1920s by the musician and composer Lü Wencheng (1898–1981) and used in Cantonese music and Cantonese opera. It belongs to the huqin family of instruments, together with the zhonghu, erhu, banhu, jinghu, and sihu; its name means "high-pitched huqin". It is the leading instrument of Cantonese music and opera ensembles. Well known pieces for the gaohu include Bu Bu Gao (步步高, Higher Step By Step) and Ping Hu Qiu Yue (平湖秋月, Autumn Moon on Calm Lake).

The dramyin or dranyen (; ; ) is a traditional Himalayan folk music lute with six strings, used primarily as an accompaniment to singing in the Drukpa Buddhist culture and society in Bhutan, as well as in Tibet, Ladakh, Sikkim and Himalayan West Bengal. It is often used in religious festivals of Tibetan Buddhism (cf. tshechu). The instrument is played by strumming, fingerpicking or (most commonly) plucking. The dramyen, chiwang (fiddle), and lingm (flute) comprise the basic instrumental inventory for traditional Bhutanese folk music.

The is the only traditional Japanese string instrument played with a bow. A variant of the instrument also exists in Okinawa, called () in Okinawan.

West African harp lute

left|thumb|100px|Igil made by Oktober Saya The igil, also known as ikhel (Mongolian: ихэл, (Tuvan: игил) is a two-stringed Tuvan musical instrument, played by bowing the strings. (It is called "ikili" in Western Mongolia.) The neck and lute-shaped sound box are usually made of a solid piece of pine or larch. The top of the sound box may be covered with skin or a thin wooden plate. The strings, and those of the bow, are traditionally made of hair from a horse's tail (strung parallel), but may also be made of nylon. Like the morin khuur of Mongolia, the igil typically features a carved horse's h

thumb|alt=|A folk musician playing Dotara in Dhaka, [[Bangladesh]] The dotara or dotar ( dütüra, দোতৰা dütora, ; dotora), (literally, “Of [or ‘having’] two strings”) is a two-stringed, plucked musical instrument from South Asia, with most contemporary models having four playing strings (similar to the sarod). Comparatively, the sarod is a slightly larger and more elaborate instrument, being built with an additional set of resonant sympathetic strings. However, the dotara is still quite resonant and projective of its own sound, due to its rounded shape and overall construction. It is commonly

The sintir (), also known as the guembri (), gimbri, hejhouj in Hausa language, is a three stringed skin-covered bass plucked lute used by the Gnawa people of Morocco. It is approximately the size of a guitar, with a body carved from a log and covered on the playing side with camel skin. The camel skin has the same acoustic function as the membrane on a banjo. The neck is a simple stick with one short and two long goat strings that produce a percussive sound similar to a pizzicato cello, pedal harp, or double bass.

The goje (the Hausa name for the instrument) is one of the many names for a variety of one-stringed fiddles from West Africa, played by groups such as the Yoruba in Sakara music and west African groups that inhabit the Sahel. Snakeskin or lizard skin covers a gourd bowl, and a horsehair string is suspended on bridge. The goje is played with a bowstring.

Vietnamese bowed string instrument

thumb|Bowed zhonghu The zhonghu (), short for zhongyin erhu () is a low-pitched Chinese bowed string instrument. Together with the erhu and gaohu, it is a member of the huqin family. It was developed in the 1940s as the alto member of the huqin family (similar in range to the European viola) to increase the pitch range of the instruments used in a Chinese orchestra.

The gehu () is a Chinese instrument developed in the 20th century by the Chinese musician Yang Yusen (, 1926–1980). It is a fusion of the Chinese huqin family and the cello, essentially an erhu cello or Chinese cello. Like standard cellos, its four strings are also tuned (from low to high) C-G-D-A; it also uses standard cello strings. Unlike most other musical instruments in the huqin family, the bridge does not contact the snakeskin drum head, which faces to the side. Instead the bridge is connected to a mechanism inside the body that touches the drum head. The bridge transmits the string vib

thumb|right|Two styles of mandolin-banjo, showing a large and small head, with a full size, four-string banjo (bottom). thumb|L-R - Banjo-mandolin, standard mandolin, 3-course mandolin, Tenor mandola.

string instrument from China and Mongolia

Thai bowed string instrument

The leiqin (雷琴 or 擂琴, literally "thunderous instrument"; also called leihu) is a Chinese bowed string musical instrument.

The akonting (, or ekonting in French transliteration) is the folk lute of the Jola people, found in Senegal, Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau in West Africa. It is a string instrument with a skin-headed gourd body, two long melody strings, and one short drone string, akin to the short fifth "thumb string" on the five-string banjo.

Japanese musical instrument

The bass gehu (, ; also called digehu or beigehu , literally "bass gehu") is a Chinese bowed string instrument in the huqin family. It was developed by Yang Yusen along with the gehu in the 20th century. It has four strings and is the Chinese equivalent of the double bass.

The cimboa (), also known as the cimbó , is a musical instrument from Cape Verde. It is a bowed chordophone that was traditionally used to be played with the batuque dances.

Traditional Thai musical instrument