The timple is a traditional Spanish plucked string instrument

Plucked string instrument

Plucked string instruments are a subcategory of string instruments that are played by plucking the strings. Plucking is a way of pulling and releasing the string in such as way as to give it an impulse that causes the string to vibrate...

 of the Canary Islands

Canary Islands

The Canary Islands , also known as the Canaries , is a Spanish archipelago located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa, 100 km west of the border between Morocco and the Western Sahara. The Canaries are a Spanish autonomous community and an outermost region of the European Union...

.

In La Palma

La Palma

La Palma is the most north-westerly of the Canary Islands. La Palma has an area of 706 km2 making it the fifth largest of the seven main Canary Islands...

 island and in the north of the island of Tenerife

Tenerife

Tenerife is the largest and most populous island of the seven Canary Islands, it is also the most populated island of Spain, with a land area of 2,034.38 km² and 906,854 inhabitants, 43% of the total population of the Canary Islands. About five million tourists visit Tenerife each year, the...

, many timple players omit the fifth (D) string, in order to play the timple as a four-string ukulele

Ukulele

The ukulele, ; from ; it is a subset of the guitar family of instruments, generally with four nylon or gut strings or four courses of strings....

, though this is considered less traditional by players and advocates of the five-string version. The players of the four-string style, in return, say that they are simply playing the timple in the old-fashioned way from before the time when a fifth string was introduced in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. The common tuning is GCEAD.

Timple players (timplistas) of note are Benito Cabrera

Benito Cabrera

Benito Cabrera Hernández is a Canarian timple composer and virtuoso.Born in 1963 on Lanzarote, in 1982 he moved to Tenerife to study psychology in University of La Laguna....

, José Antonio Ramos, Pedro Izquierdo.

External links

• Timple Para Todos at Guitarraline.es, online timple lessons