Indian Classical Musical Instruments
- Indian musical instruments are themselves works of art.indian peafowl image by Madrider from Fotolia.com
Classical Indian music is preformed by three players: a tanpura player who sets the drone background; a tabla player who plays the percussion part; and a lead instrumentalist who typically plays the sitar or sarode. These three musicians can produce a sound that seems as complex as a symphony orchestra. Partly this is because of the thousands of years of Indian musical tradition, and partially because of the rich complexity of Indian classical musical instruments. - The tanpura looks like a sitar without frets. It usually has four strings tuned to the tonic and dominate notes of the raag (the musical form) that is being preformed. Each raag has its own scale and its own tonic (called the sam) and dominate (called the samvadi). The instrument is played by brushing the strings in a repeated cycle. When played correctly it produces a slowly undulating drone. If Indian music is a mountain vista, all the other instruments supply the mountains and the tanpura supplies the earth that the mountains arise from.
- The sitar is the most popular instrument in India. It has seven or fewer playing strings that are about a meter in length. The strings lie above raised metal frets and the pitch of a fretted string can be changed by as much as an octave by pressing it into the frets. Only one or two of the playing strings are actually fretted---the rest are there for drones. Approximately 19 sympathetic strings lie along the neck underneath the frets. Each sympathetic string is tuned to a different note of the scale that is being used. As the melody changes, different sympathetic strings are activated, which gives the instrument a shimmering sound.
- The sarode (also spelled sarod) looks like a short, squat guitar with lots of extra tuning pegs. It has five playing strings, four drone strings and 10 sympathetic strings. It is fretless with a metal playing board so all the micro tones between the notes of the scale can be played. The sound is darker and more profound than the sound of the sitar.
- Calling tablas "drums" is like calling the Beethoven symphonies "tunes." Tablas can be tuned by adjusting the wooden plugs that are in the bindings, and the pitch can be changed with the heel of the hand while the tablas are played with the fingertips. The two drums are played with all parts of the hands in hundreds of different ways. It takes 20 years or more to become a competent tablaist. In classical music, the tabla is silent during the first part (the alap) of a performance. When the composed part (the gat) of the performance begins the tablas join the lead instrument and the rest of the performance is a series of back and forth improvisations (based on the gat) between the tablas and the lead instrument. During this part it is apparent that the tablas are more like a lead instrument than a percussion instrument.
