ütőgardon

Playing with a stick instead of a bow provides a droning accompaniment. The gardon is regularly though not exclusively played by a woman, often the wife of the soloist (violinist) who would teach her or one of his close relatives to play it, or hire someone for that purpose on occasion.

Musically there are similarities between the violin-gardon ensembles of Hungarians and some Roma in Transylvania and the zurna-davul widespread throughout the Balkans, Anatolia, and the Near East. The gardon was primarily played by the Székelys, a Hungarian ethnic group in Transylvania, and the Csángós of the Gyimes region. We can only have guesses about the instrument's past, perhaps taking on the role of 17th or 18th century dance accompaniment drums, which were used to accompany the Turkish whistle and which were struck on two sides with two different—one thick and one thin. The beaten cello has also been used in the Romanian Banat until 1980s. The Romanian name for it was ”bandă” and the playing was similar—it was plucked with one hand and beaten with the other. Under the name of "gordon", it is still used in Bicaz region. A similar stringed instrument struck with a stick is the tambourin de Béarn in the south of France, which the musician plays with one hand while simultaneously playing a one-handed flute called the galoubet.