Vollistan Music (Classic Journeys Era)

Most commonly heard only on Vollista (or in performances given by musicians from that planet), the style of Vollistan music tends to fall somewhere between Old Earth classical and Old Earth jazz, as far as it can be compared to Terran styles. The scoring for this style tends to be biased towards high strings (like harps), woodwinds, percussion, and vocals. The method for creating the strings for their instruments is a closely-kept secret; it is rumoured that Vollistan hair may be used, and treated to improve the tensile strength - but most Vollistans deny this. What is known is that most of the strings look similar to horse-hair string, asides from a metallic bronze sheen. It is possible, however, that they use specially treated gut-string. Vollistan stringed instruments are usually restricted to those that are plucked or bowed; there are a handful that are struck, but these are similar to tsimbals in nature - none bear any resemblance to a piano. Percussion instruments are carefully tuned, due to the Vollistans' racial (and rather sensible) preference for living underground; while this tuning allows the instruments to resonate without damaging the caves (in fact, some even use the caves as amplifiers), it tends to lead to a rather muted sound above ground. Woodwinds are usually similarly tuned, although they don't seem to suffer from this muted sound above-ground - possibly because, with woodwinds, the tuning is as much a matter of how the instrument is played as anything else.