Full set of 18 Top Branded Karuna Indian Sitar Strings 7+11 includes Tarafdar (Sympathetic Strings)

Product Information

Although still popular to this day, the sitar is believed to have been invented in the 13th century, over 700 years ago. A Ravi Shankar sitar is also called a Kharaj Pancham sitar in many parts of India. It has 20 strings, three of which are drone strings, four melody strings, and 13 sympathetic strings. Tuning depends on the sitarist's school or style, tradition and each artist's personal preference. The main playing string is almost invariably tuned a perfect fourth above the tonic, the second string being tuned to the tonic. The tonic in the Indian solfège system is referred to as ṣaḍja, ṣaḍaj, or the shortened form sa, or khaṛaj, a dialectal variant of ṣaḍaj, not as vād, and the perfect fifth to which one or more of the drones strings are tuned is referred to as pañcam, not samvād.

Here is a standard chart to tune your sitar by. This sitar has the usual 7 main strings and 13 sympathetic strings. Many of you will probably have one with 11 strings. In that case just tune your sympathetic strings to the first 11 strings shown. This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sourcesin this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( April 2022) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) It was also theorized in Muslim tradition that the sitar was invented, or rather developed by Amir Khusrow ( c.1253–1325), a famous Sufi inventor, poet and pioneer of Khyal, Tarana and Qawwali, during the 13th century. [7] [9] [10] [11] However, the tradition of Amir Khusrow is considered discredited by some scholars. [12] Whatever instruments he might have played, no record exists from this period using the name "sitar". [10]There is a lot of stylistic variance within these tunings, and like most Indian stringed instruments, there is no default tuning. Mostly, tunings vary by schools of teaching ( gharana) and the piece that is meant to be played. In our context, the sitar went from three, to five, to twenty-one strings during its evolution in the Indian sub-continent. All these efforts indicate that though the sitar was developed and modified a great deal from its original form, it was still not perfectly suited to the execution of the type of music prevalent in those days. Surbeen and been-sitar could not gain much popularity but the surbahar did get popularised and musicians used to perform a full-fledged alapchari of been upon this instrument before playing gat toda upon the sitar. This practice continued for more than a century. Meanwhile, instrumentalists continued to modify the existing sitar. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, tarab strings were put into the sitar. With the Jaipur Seniyas, a sitar with two additional gourds (tumbas) was common. This was done, perhaps, to enhance the volume and add depth to the tonality of the instrument. In the changing process of the sitar, as time went by, one extra gourd was dropped and one, which was fixed at the upper portion, was retained. The changing process continued until each and every technique of the been and surbahar could be well executed upon the instrument.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s Ravi Shankar, along with his tabla player, Alla Rakha, began a further introduction of Indian classical music to Western culture.In Muslim tradition, some scholars believe the sitar was invented—or, much accurately, developed—by Indo-Persian Sufi singer Amir Khusrow (c. 1253-1325). Familiarize yourself with the top strings on the sitar. The sitar has 18-21 strings in total: 6-7 top strings and 11-14 bottom strings. The exact number of strings depends on the type of sitar. Similar to a guitar, you’ll notice that the strings are attached to pegs. These pegs are used for tuning. Each of the top strings on the sitar is tuned to a different note. These notes can change depending on the key that the sitar is tuned to, but usually sitars are tuned to the key of C for beginners. When tuned to the key of C, the notes for each string are: [8] X Research source