Building a Morin Khuur — The Mongolian Horse-Head Fiddle

The morin khuur is Mongolia's horse-head fiddle: an upright two-string bowed fiddle whose strings and bow are all horsehair, over a hide-faced box, topped with a carved horse's head.

Build a trapezoidal wooden box, a little wider at the bottom than the top, for the sound-body. Leave the front open to take the skin.

Soak rawhide and stretch it drum-tight over the open front of the box, glue and lash it, and let it dry hard. This skin radiates the sound like a drumhead. (A thin wooden soundboard also works.)

Fix a long neck rising straight up from the top of the box, tall enough to hold the strings clear of the skin.

Carve a horse's head at the very top of the neck. This emblem gives the instrument its name and, the herders say, its spirit.

Bore two holes in the neck just below the head and fit a friction tuning peg into each.

Each string is a whole BUNDLE of horsehair twisted together — a thicker bundle of about 130 hairs for the low string, a thinner one of about 105 for the high string.

Carve a small bridge and stand it on the middle of the hide. Tie each horsehair string at the base, run it up over the bridge, and wind it onto a peg.

Tune the two strings a fourth or a fifth apart. Twist the pegs slowly — horsehair strings stretch, so give them time to settle.

String a springy stick with a ribbon of horsehair to make the bow, and rub it well with pine rosin so it grips.

Hold the fiddle upright on your lap and draw the bow across a string. There is no fingerboard: stop the strings from the SIDE with your fingertips and nails, sliding to bend the note.

Slide smoothly between notes and let the horsehair-on-horsehair rasp sing. The morin khuur is famous for imitating a horse's neigh and carrying Mongolian long-song.

The morin khuur is a bowed fiddle, so it sings by the same stick-slip friction as the erhu and the violin: the rosined bow grabs a string, drags it until its tension tears it free, and the string snaps back to be caught again hundreds of times a second — the Helmholtz motion that keeps a bowed note singing for as long as you draw the bow. But almost everything about this fiddle is made of horse. Its two strings are not gut or metal but whole bundles of horsehair twisted together — roughly 130 hairs for the thick 'male' string and 105 for the thin 'female' one — and the bow is horsehair too, so hair bows against hair, giving the morin khuur its soft, breathy, whinnying tone. The sound-box is traditionally faced with stretched hide that radiates the strings' vibration like a drumhead, though many modern makers now use a thin wooden soundboard. And there is no fingerboard: the player stops the strings from the side, with fingertips and nails, so the pitch slides smoothly — which is why the morin khuur can imitate a horse's neigh and carry the long, gliding notes of Mongolian long-song and throat-singing. Its close cousin is the Chinese erhu, and its wider family is the spike-fiddles of the whole Eurasian steppe. Named for the carved horse's head that crowns it, the morin khuur is a national emblem of Mongolia, recognised by UNESCO as a masterpiece of humanity's living heritage.