sitar

Sitars

Miraj sitar
String instrument
Other names	sitar
Classification	Necked bowl lutes String instruments
Hornbostel-Sachs classification	321.321-6 (Composite chordophone sounded with a plectrum)
Developed	13th century
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The sitar (Hindi: सितार, Bengali: সেতার, Urdu: ستار, Persian: سی تار ) is a plucked stringed instrument predominantly used in Hindustani classical music, where it has been ubiquitous since the Middle Ages. It derives its resonance from sympathetic strings, a long hollow neck and a gourd resonating chamber.

Used throughout the Indian subcontinent, particularly in Northern India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, the sitar became known in the western world through the work of Pandit Ravi Shankar beginning in the late 1950s, particularly after George Harrison of The Beatles took lessons from Shankar and Shambhu Das^[1] and played sitar in songs including "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)". Shortly after, The Rolling Stones used sitar in "Paint It, Black" and a brief fad began for using the exotic instrument in pop songs.

Etymology and history

The sitar is often said to have been developed in the thirteenth century CE by Amir Khusrau from a member of the veena family of Indian musical instruments called the tritantri veena and to have been named by him after the Persian setar.^[2] The sitar is, like the setar, a member of the lute family while the north Indian veena is a zither, but it shares the veena's resonating gourds and sympathetic strings. Amir Khusrau does not mention the sitar but he does mention the tanbur and, by the mid 18th century, Indian tanburs were referred to as sitars.^[3]

In his Bharatiya Sangeet Vadya Dr. Lalmani Misra traces its development from the tritantri veena through the nibaddh and anibaddh tanpuras and later the jantra. Construction of the similar tanpura was described by Tansen. During the time of Moghul rule Persian lutes were played at court and may have provided a basis of the sitar. However, there is no physical evidence for the sitar until the time of the collapse of the Mughal Empire.

Sitar mechanics

The mechanics of a sitar

The sitar's curved frets are movable, allowing fine tuning, and raised so that sympathetic strings (tarbs, also known as "tarif" or "tarifdar") can run underneath them. A sitar can have 21, 22 or 23 strings, among them six or seven played strings which run over the frets: the Gandhar-pancham sitar (used by Vilayat Khan and his disciples) has six playable strings, whereas the Kharaj-pancham sitar, used in the Maihaar gharana (Ravi Shankar), has seven. Three of these (or four on a Kharaj-pancham sitar), called the chikari, simply provide a drone: the rest are used to play the melody, though the first string (baj tar) is most used.

The instrument has two bridges; the large bridge (bada goraj) for the playing and drone strings and the small bridge (chota goraj) for the sympathetic strings. Its timbre results from the way the strings interact with the wide, sloping bridge. As a string reverberates its length changes slightly as its edge touches the bridge, promoting the creation of overtones and giving the sound its distinctive tone. The maintenance of this specific tone by shaping the bridge is called jawari. Many musicians rely on instrument makers to adjust this.

Materials used in construction include teak wood or tun wood (Cedrela tuna), which is a variation of mahogany, for the neck and faceplate (tabli), and gourds for the kaddu (the main resonating chamber). The instrument's bridges are made of deer horn, ebony, or very occasionally from camel bone. Synthetic material is now common as well. The sitar may have a secondary resonator, the tumba, near the top of its hollow neck.

Tuning

Tuning depends on the sitarist's school or style, tradition and each artist's personal preference. Generally, the main playing string is tuned to the tonic (approximately B#/C - D#/Eb), called Sa or vada and the drone strings both to that tone and to the samvada or second note, which is usually the perfect fifth. The sympathetic strings are tuned to the notes of the raga being played: although there is slight stylistic variance as to the order of these, typically they are tuned:

• I Sa= B#/C,
• VII Ni= B/Cb,
• I Sa= B#/C,
• II Re= D,
• III Ga= E/Fb,
• IV Ma= E#/F,
• V Pa= G,
• V Pa= G,
• VI Dha= A,
• VI Ni= B/Cb,
• I Sa= B#/C,
• II Re= D,
• III Ga= E/Fb,

(the last three in the upper octave). The player should re-tune for each raga. Strings are tuned by tuning pegs, and the main playing strings can be fine-tuned by sliding a bead threaded on each string just below the bridge.

Jawari

In one or more of the more common tunings (used by Ravi Shankar, among others, called "Kharaj Pancham" sitar) the playable strings are strung in this fashion:

• Chikari strings: Sa (high), Sa (middle), and Pa.
• Kharaj (bass) strings: Sa (low) and Pa (low).
• Jod and baaj strings, Sa and Ma.

In a "Gandhar Pancham" (Imdadkhani, school of Vilayat Khan) sitar, the bass or kharaj strings are removed and are replaced by a fourth chikari which is tuned to Ga. By playing the chikari strings with this tuning, one produces a chord (Sa, Sa, Pa, Ga).

To tune the sympathetic strings to raga Kafi for example: I Sa, vii ni (lower case denotes flat (komal) I Sa, II Re, iii ga, III Ga (Shuddh or natural, in Kafi the third is different ascending and descending), iv ma, V Pa, VI Dha, vii ni, I Sa, II Re, iii ga. However, there is a lot of stylistic variance within these tunings. An artist will develop a particular tuning for a particular piece but there is no guarantee that other musicians will choose the same tuning.

Playing

Sketch of how the sitar is positioned when played.

The instrument should be balanced between the player's left foot and right knee. The hands should move freely without having to carry any of the instrument's weight. The player plucks the string using a metallic pick or plectrum called a mezrab. The thumb should stay anchored on the top of the fretboard just above the main gourd. Generally only the index and middle fingers are used for fingering although a few players occasionally use the third. A specialized technique called "meend" involves pulling the main melody string down over the bottom portion of the sitar's curved frets, with which the sitarist can achieve a 7 semitone range of microtonal notes.

Variants

The surbahar is a larger sitar with a broader fret-board and thicker strings. It has a deeper tonal quality as it is tuned two to five whole steps below the normal sitar and the agile finger work characteristic of the sitar is not possible on this. A recent variant is the ranjan veena which uses a slide.

Digital representations

Patch number 105 in the General MIDI Level 1 Instrument Patch Map^[4] is specified as a sitar. The accuracy of the sound produced by a General MIDI tone generator will vary from model to model. Also, due to additional frequencies generated by the interaction between the main strings and drone strings on the acoustic instrument, any accurately synthesized model would have to be extremely complex.

See also

• Electric sitar
• Sitar players
• Sitar in popular music
• Sitar in jazz
• Surbahar
• Hiren Roy
• Nishat Khan

Notes

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Sitars

• Sitar information
• Sitar and Classical Music Resource with Rich Internet Content
• Sitar FAQ