sitarpla's blog

Tempus fugit. I bought a Srishti sitar 4 years ago and it has been the gem of my collection ever since. As I get older and space around the house becomes a premium with a young son, I have changed my focus from collecting a few good instruments to keeping only the ones I play. I just don't play sitar anymore, at least not often. This is largely due to the fact that I have only a finite amount of time daily for riyaz , but mostly it is because from the moment my surbahar arrived, I haven't had the desire to play anything else. "This is my instrument.", I thought, and I think I am right!

Project: Delrin Jawari
Recently, I bought a nice piece of black delrin and made a jawari. Granted that my bias is for ebony, but I really like the idea of using something that will maybe last a year or more before a touch up is needed. So, that was my motivation. Good ebony is hard to find at an affordable price, so that is another one.

Working Delrin:
Delrin is an absolute dream to work with, apart from the smell. I use only hand tools to work it due to the fumes. It takes the file nicely and the sanding block. I find it to be a lot softer than ebony. You can rough out the shape in about 15-20 minutes. I am a bit allergic to ebony dust, even when I wear a mask, so this is a welcome change.

Here are some thoughts for surbahar strings.

Remco, from the sitar forum, was kind enough to share his string sizes:

A Double Bill Concert Featuring

Gauri Guha – vocal
Adam Duncan – sitar/glissentar
Lou Frattaroli – tabla

7:30 p.m.
Sunday, August 26th, 2007
65 University Drive
Frieman Hall – Perez Building
Ottawa University
(LAURIER & CUMBERLAND ENTRANCE 2ND BUILDING ON YOUR LEFT)

$20 adults , $15 students/seniors

Reservations 613-237-4520

Ottawa Sitar School proudly presents its second concert of the 2007 season. Gauri Guha has studied singing with Pandit A.Kanan, a resident teacher of Sangit Research Academy in Kolkatta. The ICCR sent her as a teacher to Guyana, then to Toronto as an ambassador for music.

swartala.blogspot.com
A very professional site with excellent interviews

Toronto Gharana
The name "Toronto Gharana" is more tongue and cheek name, but Toronto is really a hot bed for ICM.

When I began learning sitar, there were a few hobbyist sites around with a little information largely scavenged from google searches. In the past few years, there have been more and more good sites popping up (see my links section). E.g. youtube.com is full of great performances.

However, one of the holes has been critical interviews with the artists of the day. I have to say that most of the interviews I have read have been a bit empty, but every now and then something pops up that really leaves an impression. This happened just the other day. A gentleman name Mr. Deepak Raja sent me an email referring to his site. I have to say that this happens quite a lot and my hopes were not very high, but I was very pleasantly surprised at what I saw. http://swaratala.blogspot.com is filled with excellent information. The Vilayat Khan and Shahid Parvez articles are excellent reading. Mr. Raja is able to to elicit details that are not normally disclosed. This is largely due to his experience in ICM as a performer and musicologist. Plainly stated, he can relate to top artists on their level. That being said, he also has a style of writing that is critical yet engaging. Surprisingly, artists are really candid and open.

This is a beautiful instrument. Tuning up 36 tarabs was quite the process! I found out the hard way, that since the bridge is "floating" on a skin, order of tuning IS significant. Tune to the top first and then tune the bottom. See the review. Ok, it is not really a review since I really don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to sarangi. Consider it a showcase.

So, I ordered another instrument, a "sarangi". I have always loved the sound produced by a master player, and I am sure my shrill sine curves will make them wish the sarangi had never left India!

It has not arrived yet, but is apparently a professional model that was made for Pandit Ram Narayan and played by one of his students for several years. I shall post some pics when it arrives and no, I shall not post any sound files!

Having run a server at home for years, and having complained about it for years, I decided to do something about it. Namely, get a hosting provider. There are a lot of options these days for hosting and it has become quite cheap considering all the disk space and bandwidth you can use. This is probably why I never did it before, yes the "cheap" part. One of the issues for the newly hosted site is that it doesn't support .ca domain names. I am not sure if I will keep sitarplayer.ca and just move to the .net variant yet, there is no rush. I have payed for them. I use a custom DDNS service to point to my domain currently.