Sarod

The sarod (or sarode) (सरोद) is a stringed instrument of India, mainly used in Indian Classical music style along with the sitar, it is among the most popular and prominent instruments in Hindustani Classical Music. The sarod is known for a deep, weighty, introspective sound, in contrast with the sweet, overtone-rich texture of the sitar, with sympathetic strings that give it a resonant, reverberant quality. It is a fretless instrument able to produce the continuous slides between notes known as meend (glissandi), which are important in Indian music.

Origins

The sarod is believed by some to have descended from the Afghan Rubab, a similar instrument originating in Central Asia and Afghanistan. Many scholars of Indian classical music believe that sarod is a combination of the ancient Chitra veena, the medieval Rabab and modern Sursingar. Some scholars even contend that a similar instrument may have existed about two thousand years ago in ancient India during the ages of the Gupta kings. In fact, a Gupta period coin depicts the great king Samudragupta playing a Veena, which many believe to be the precursor of the Sarod. Traces of similar Rabab style instruments can also be found in southern India, especially in the states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka, where it is known as the Swarbat. The folk Rabab, an instrument popular in north India, had a wooden fingerboard, its strings were made of silk, cotton or gut, and it was played with a wooden pick. In history, reference is also made to a Sharadiya Veena from which the name Sarod may have been derived.
The word sarod roughly translates to "beautiful sound" or "melody" in Persian, one of the many languages spoken in Afghanistan. Although the sarod has been referred to as a "bass rubab" its tonal bandwidth is actually considerably greater than that of the rubab, especially in the middle and high registers. Lalmani misra opines in his Bharatiya sangeet vaadya that the sarod is a combination of the ancient chitra veena, the medieval rubab and modern sursingar. There is also speculation that the oud may be the origin of the sarod.
Among the many conflicting and contested histories of the sarod, there is one that attributes its invention to the ancestors of the present-day sarod maestro, Amjad Ali Khan. Amjad Ali Khan’s ancestor Mohammad Hashmi Khan Bangash, a musician and horse trader, came to India with the Afghan rubab in the mid-18th century, and became a court musician to the Maharajah of Rewa (now in Madhya Pradesh). It was his descendants, notably his grandson Ghulam Ali Khan Bangash, a court musician in Gwalior, who changed the rubab into the sarod we know today. A parallel theory credits descendants of Madar Khan, Niyamatullah Khan in particular, with the same innovation around 1820. The sarod in its present form dates back to approximately 1820, when it started gaining recognition as a serious instrument in Rewa, Shahjahanpur, Gwalior and Lucknow. In the 20th century, the sarod received some finishing touches from Allauddin Khan, the performer-pedagogue from Maihar best known as sitarist Ravi Shankar's guru. However, as is the case with most young, evolving instruments, much work remains to be done in the area of sarod luthiery in order to achieve reliable customization, and precise replication of successful instruments. This reflects the general state of Indian instrument-making in the present day.

Khyal

Khyal (or Khayal, Urdu: خیال, Hindi: ख़्याल) is the modern genre of classical singing in North India. Its name comes from an Arabic word meaning "imagination". It is thought to have developed out of Dhrupad introducing frequent taans and alankars in it. It appeared more recently than dhrupad, is a more free and flexible form, and it provides greater scope for improvisation. Like all Indian classical music, khyal is modal, with a single melodic line and no harmonic parts. The modes are called raga, and each raga is a complicated framework of melodic rules.

Characteristics

Khyal bases itself on a repertoire of short songs (two to eight lines); a khyal song is called a bandish. Every singer generally renders the same bandish differently, with only the text and the raga remaining the same. Khyal bandishes are typically composed in a variant of Urdu/Hindi, and sometimes in Marathi or Punjabi, and these compositions cover diverse topics, such as romantic or divine love, praise of kings or gods, the seasons, dawn and dusk, and the pranks of Krishna, and they can have symbolism and imagery. The bandish is divided into two parts — the sthayi (or asthayi) and the antara, with the former considered more important as it shows the melodic contours of the raga. The sthayi often uses notes from the lower octave and the lower half of the middle octave, while the antara ascends to the tonic of the upper octave and beyond before descending and linking back to the sthayi. The singer uses the composition as raw material for improvisation, accompanied by a harmonium or bowed string instrument such as the sarangi or violin playing off the singer's melody line, a set of two hand drums (the tabla), and a drone in the background. The role of the accompanist playing the melody-producing instrument is to provide continuity when the singer pauses for breath, using small variations of the singer's phrases or parts thereof. While there is a wide variety of rhythmic patterns that could be used by the percussionist, khyal performances typically use Ektaal, Jhoomra, Jhaptaal, Tilwada, Tintal, Rupak, and Adachautaal.
A typical khyal performance uses two songs — the bada khyal or great khyal, in slow tempo (vilambit laya), comprises most of the performance, while the chhota khyal (small khyal), in fast tempo (drut laya), is used as a finale and is usually in the same raga but a different taal. The songs are sometimes preceded by improvised alap to sketch the basic raga structure without drum accompaniment; alap is given much less room in khyal than in dhrupad.
As the songs are short, and performances long (half an hour or more), the lyrics lose some of their importance. Improvisation is added to the songs in a number of ways: for example improvising new melodies to the words, using the syllables of the songs to improvise material (bol-baant, bol-taans), singing the names of the scale degrees — sa, re, ga, ma, pa, dha and ni (sargam) — or simply interspersing phrases sung on vowels, usually the vowel A, akaar taans. Taans are one of the major distinguishing features of the khyal. Now and then, the singer returns to the song, especially its first line, as a point of reference. Besides the vilambit (slow) and drut (fast) tempos, a performance may include ati-vilambit (ultra-slow), madhya (medium speed) and ati-drut (super-fast) tempos. Song forms such as taranas, thumris or tappas are sometimes used to round off a khyal performance.

History

Khayal was popularized by Niyamat Khan (a.k.a. Sadarang) and his nephew Firoz Khan (a.k.a. Adarang), both musicians in the court of Muhammad Shah Rangile (1719–1748). It seems likely that khyal already existed at the time, although perhaps not in the present form. The compositions of Sadarang and Adarang employ the theme of Urdu love-poetry. The khyal of this period also acquired the dignity of Dhrupad and the manner of the veena in its glide or meend, plus a number of musical alankars that were introduced into the body of the composition[citation needed]. The gharana system arose out of stylistic rendering of the khyal by various subsequent generations of musicians. The gharanas have distinct styles of presenting the khyal — how much to emphasize and how to enunciate the words of the composition, when to sing the sthayi and antara, whether to sing an unmetered alap in the beginning, whether to do bol-alap or aakar-alap, what kinds of improvisations to use, how much importance to give to the rhythmic aspect, and so on.
With India united into a country from various scattered princely states, with royal courts and the zamindari system abolished, and with modern communications and recording technology, stylistic borders have become blurred and many singers today have studied with teachers from more than one gharana. This used to be uncommon, and a few decades ago teachers used to forbid students to even hear other gharana singers perform, not allowing them to buy records or listen to the radio[citation needed]. Today, as always, a singer is expected to develop an individual style, albeit one that is demonstrably linked to tradition.

Pakhawaj (Indian Classical instrument)

Old style Pakhawaj dated back to 14th century

                                                               (Mughal era)

The Pakhawaja or Mridang is an Indian barrel-shaped, two-headed drum, a variant and descendant of the older mridang.
It is the standard percussion instrument in the dhrupad style and is widely used as an accompaniment for various forms of music and dance performances. The pakhawaja has a low, mellow tone, very rich in harmonics. Set horizontally on a cushion in front of the drummer's crossed leg, the larger bass-skin is played with the left hand, the treble skin by the right hand. The bass face is smeared with wet wheat dough which acts as the kiran and is the cause of the vivid bass sound the pakhawaja produces.

                                                            Modern style Pakhawaj

History

The word pakhāvaja or pakhavāja is of Prakrit origin, whose Sanskrit equivalent is pakṣavādya. This instrument is always known as pakhavaj and not pakshavadya. This word is derived from the words pakṣa ("a side"), and vādya ("a musical instrument"), it is said that, during the 14th century, the great mridangists experimented with the materials used in mridang construction, and finally started using wood for the main body as opposed to the original clay. Thus, a new name pakhawaj emerged, whilst the older name, mridang was still used.

Technique

As with the Tabla, the pakhavaj rhythms are taught by a series of mnenomic syllables known as bol. The playing technique vary from that of tabla in many aspects: in the bass face, the artist hits with his whole palm instead of the finger tip hitting which is done in tabla. In the treble face, the artist hits his whole palm with the fingers properly placed on the skin to produce different bols.
In traditional pakhavaj styles a student would learn a number of different strokes which produce a specific sound. These are remembered and practiced with corresponding syllables.
The very basic capacity is to play a theka in a particular tala or rhythmic cycle, as for instance chautala, (which is unrelated to chowtal, a type of folksong in the Bhojpuri region and sung by amateurs during the Phagwah/Holi festival) in 12 beats:

| dha dha | din ta || kite dha | din ta | tite kata | gadi gene |

Advanced students learn reelas that are virtuoso pakhavaj compositions.

Tanpura (Indian Classical Instrument)

The Tanpura (or tambura, tanpuri) is a long-necked plucked string instruments found in various forms in Indian music; it does not play melody but rather supports and sustains the melody of another instrument or singer by providing a continuous harmonic bourden or drone. A tanpura is not played in rhythm with the soloist or percussionist: as the precise timing of plucking a cycle of four strings in a continuous loop is a determinant factor in the resultant sound, it is played unchangingly during the complete performance. The repeated cycle of plucking all strings creates the sonic canvas on which the melody of the raga is drawn. The combined sound of all strings, each string a fundamental tone with its own spectrum of overtones, is a rich and vibrant, dynamic-yet-static tone-conglomerate, due to interactive harmonic resonances that will support and blend with the external tones sung or played by the soloist.
The name tanapura is derived from tana, referring to a musical phrase, and pura, which means "full" or "complete". Hindustani Musicians favour the term 'tanpura' whereas Carnatic Musicians say 'tambura'; 'tanpuri' is a smaller variant used for accompanying instrumental soloists.

History

Tanpuras form the root of the ensemble and indeed of the music itself, as the tanpura creates an acoustic dynamic reference chord from which the ragas (melodic modes) derive their distinctive character, color and flavor. Concerning its history, A. D. Ranade states: "The first unambiguous reference to the tanpura is in Sangeet Parijat (1620). It is neither mentioned by the earlier texts nor does it find a place in sculptures". Stephen Slawek notes that by the end of the 16th century, the tanpura had "fully developed in its modern form", and was seen in the miniature paintings of the Mughals. Slawek further suggests that due to structural similarity the sitar and tanpura share a related history.
An electronic tanpura a small box that imitates the sound of a tanpura, is often used in contemporary Indian classical music performances instead of, or in addition to a tanpura, primarily in Carnatic music, though this practice is controversial amongst aficionados of high level Classical music. A 2006 article in the performing arts magazine Sruti notes: "Any model electronic tanpura produces a sound that is necessarily artificial, which is the opposite of artistic. The electronic substitute has no artistic value and has nothing to teach us but repetitive unnatural boredom.

Construction

The body shape of the tanpura somewhat resembles that of the sitar, but it has no frets – as the strings are always plucked at their full lengths. One or more tanpuras may be used to accompany vocalists or instrumentalists. It has four or five (rarely six) metal strings, which are plucked one after another in a regular pattern to create a harmonic resonance on the basic notes of a key.
Bridge and Strings
The overtone-rich sound and the audible movement in the inner resonances of tone is achieved by applying the principle of jivari which creates a sustained "buzzing" sound in which particular harmonics will resonate with focused clarity. Jiva refers to "soul", that which gives life, implying that the tanpura embodies an "animated" tone quality. To achieve this effect, the strings pass over a table-shaped, curved-top bridge the front of which slopes gently away from the surface of the strings. When a string is plucked, it has an intermittent periodical grazing contact with the bridge. When the string moves up and down, the downward wave will touch a far point on the curve of the bridge, and as the energy of motion of the string gradually diminishes, these points of contact of the string on the bridge will gradually shift as well, being a compound function of amplitude, the curvature of the bridge, pitch, string tension and time. When the string is plucked, it has a large amplitude. As the energy of the string's movement gradually diminishes, the contact point of the string with the bridge slowly creeps up the slope of the bridge. Depending on scale, tension and pitch, this can take between three and ten seconds.
This dynamic process can be fine-tuned using a cotton thread between string and bridge: by shifting the thread, the grazing contact sequence is shifted to a different position on the bridge, changing the harmonic content. Every single string produces its own cascading range of harmonics and, at the same time, builds up a particular resonance. According to this principle, tanpuras are attentively tuned to achieve a particular tonal shade relative to the tonal characteristics of the raga. These more delicate aspects of tuning are directly related to what Indian musicians call raga svaroop, which is about how characteristic intonations are important defining aspects of a particular raga. The tanpura's particular setup, with the cotton thread as a variable focus-point, made it possible to explore a multitude of harmonic relations produced by the subtle harmonic interplay in time of its four strings.
Sizes and tunings 

Tanpuras come in different sizes and pitches: larger "males", smaller "females" for vocalists, and a yet smaller version is used for accompanying sitar or sarod, called tamburi. These play at the octave so as not to drown out the soloist's lower registers. Male vocalists use the biggest instruments and pitch their tonic note (Sa), often at D, C♯ or lower, some go down to B-flat; female singers usually a fifth higher, though these tonic notes may vary according to the preference of the singer, as there is no absolute and fixed pitch-reference in the Indian Classical music systems. One female singer may take her 'sa' at F, another at A, sitariyas tune mostly around C#, sarodiyas around C, sarangiyas vary more between D and F#, and bansuriyas mostly play from E. The male tanpura has an open string length of approximately one metre; the female is three-fourths of the male. The standard tuning is 5-8-8-1 (sol do' do' do) or, in Indian sargam pa-SA-SA-sa. For ragas that omit the fifth tone, pa, the first string is tuned down to the natural fourth: 4-8-8-1 or Ma-sa-sa-Sa. Some ragas require a less common tuning with shuddh or komal NI (7th major/minor), NI-sa-sa-SA or 7-8-8-1, or even with the 6th, Dha-s-s-S, major or minor. With a five-string instrument, the seventh or NI (natural minor or major 7th) can be added: PA-NI-sa-sa-SA (5-7-8-8-1)or MA-NI-sa-sa-SA (4-7-8-8-1). Both minor and major 7th harmonics are clearly distinguishable in the harmonic texture of the overall sound, so when the Ni - strings are tuned into these harmonics, the resultant sound will be perfectly harmonious. Usually the octave strings are in steel wire, and the tonic, 4th or 5th strings in brass or bronze wire. If a string will be tuned to the 6th or 7th, a steel string is advised instead.

Variants

Tanpuras are designed in three different styles:
Miraj style: the favourite form of tanpura for Hindustani performers. It is usually between three and five feet in length, with a carved, rounded resonator plate (tabli) and a long, hollow straight neck, in section resembling a rounded capital D. The round lower chamber to which the tabli, the connecting heel-piece and the neck (dandh) are fixed is cut from a selected and dried gourd (tumba). Wood used is either tun or teak; bridges are usually cut from one piece of bone.
Tanjore style: this is a south indian style of tambura, used widely by Carnatic Music performers. It has a somewhat different shape and style of decoration from that of the miraj, but is otherwise much the same size. Typically, no gourd is used, but the spherical part is gouged out of a solid block of wood. The neck is somewhat smaller in diameter. Jackwood is used throughout; bridges are usually cut from one piece of rosewood. Often, two rosettes are drilled out and ornamented with inlay work.
Tanpuri: small-scale instruments, used for accompanying instrumental soloists. It is two to three feet long, with a flat bed-pan type wooden body with a slightly curved tabli. It may have from four to six strings. Tamburi are tuned to the higher octave and are the preferred instruments for accompanying solo performances by string-playing artists, as the lighter, more transparent sound does not drown out the lower register of a sitar, sarod, or sarangi.

Tamburi for accompanying sarod and sitar

A male pitched Tanpura

A pair of female pitched Tanpura

(Smaller)

Tanjore style carnatic tambura

Top view of Tanpura bridge

Side view of Tanpura

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