Spezifische Kunstform

Sitar

सितार

Learn to shape raga phrases with the mizrab, movable frets and meend.

Fretted strings Melodic study
Kurse
4

The sitar is a plucked, fretted, long-necked lute of Hindustani classical music, with movable frets, sympathetic strings and a gourd body, played with a wire mizrab.

Kurse entdecken Show interest
Sign in to follow
Teilen

Entdecken Sie Klang, Bauweise und Pflege im Instrumentenführer.

Übersicht

The sitar (सितार) is a plucked, fretted, long-necked lute of Hindustani classical music. It has curved, movable frets, a set of played strings with sympathetic strings beneath them, and a gourd resonator. Players pluck it with a wire plectrum called the mizrab, worn on the right index finger.

The right hand sounds each note with a mizrab stroke while the left index and middle fingers stop the string at the frets or pull it sideways to bend the pitch. Together they shape the phrases of a raga, the melodic framework of a performance.

Much of the repertoire rests on the gat, a fixed instrumental composition set in a taal (rhythmic cycle) and often accompanied on tabla. The player returns to it between variations. A widely described concert order opens with alap, an unmetered exploration of the raga, moves into jor, where a steady pulse enters, often reaches jhala, a fast passage, and then turns to gats.

The tradition passes from teacher to student through the guru-shishya relationship, and formal curricula stress learning face to face. Before choosing lessons, ask how you will practise on a sitar at home and how the teacher introduces tuning and fitting the mizrab.

Teil von Hindustani Classical: Hindustani classical instrumental music is North Indian raga music played on instruments such as sitar, sarod, sarangi, bansuri and tabla, each with its own technique.

History & Evolution

Sources disagree on who developed the sitar, and none read here supports a single inventor. Popular belief credits the poet Amir Khusrau (1253 to 1325), yet the word sitar does not occur in his writings, and no written or pictorial source shows the instrument for more than three centuries after his death. Later oral sources name an eighteenth-century musician, Khusrau Khan. The name comes from Persian words meaning "three strings". The historian Allyn Miner tentatively concludes that the sitar reached Delhi from the northwest in the first half of the eighteenth century, developing from the Persian and Central Asian setar.

Indian musicians widened and lengthened the setar's neck, replaced silk frets with raised metal bars and fitted a flat platform bridge, borrowing features from the bin, or rudra veena. First an accompanying instrument for singing and dance, the sitar took on bin technique and replaced the bin as the leading solo instrument. After the Second World War, radio, recording and air travel carried the sitar to Europe and the United States, and Ravi Shankar began international tours in the 1950s.

1730s

Muraqqa-i Dehli account

The Muraqqa-i Dehli, Dargah Quli Khan's Persian account of Delhi in 1738, names a sitar player as the brother of the bin player Niyamat Khan 'Sadarang'. It is the earliest known written mention of the instrument.
Late eighteenth–nineteenth centuries

Masitkhani gat repertoire

Masitkhani gats are slow sitar compositions associated with Masit Khan, a Delhi musician of the late eighteenth century, whom Miner credits with the first solo sitar style. Musicians in Jaipur and elsewhere in Rajasthan later developed the style.
Late nineteenth century

The Lucknow sur pyar

The sur pyar, made in late nineteenth-century Lucknow, joins a sitar, a tambura and an esraj in a single instrument. Its inventors called it sur pyar, "lovely sound". The esraj section carries sympathetic strings; the sitar section has none.
1905

Imdad Khan's gramophone recordings

The Gramophone Company recorded Imdad Khan (c.1848 to 1920), one of the earliest sitarists on disc, in 1905, according to the historian Allyn Miner.
1997

Calcutta sitar by Murari Adhikari

Murari Adhikari built this sitar in 1997, with seven melody and thirteen sympathetic strings. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which holds it, notes its older style, popular in the early twentieth century, with a sound hole under the strings.

Technical Aspects

Strings, bridge and jawari

The buzzing tone comes from the main bridge: the strings touch its broad, slightly curved top as they vibrate, and this contact, called jawari, shapes tone and sustain. Players pluck a main melody string and drone strings, including the high chikari. Sympathetic strings (tarab) beneath the frets ring without being plucked.

The mizrab stroke

A mizrab is a wire plectrum worn on the right index finger. The left index and middle fingers stop the main string at the frets. One teaching system names the strokes da (inward) and ra (outward), combined as dir and rda. Their patterns play against the cycle of the tabla.

Frets and meend

The frets are curved metal bars tied to the neck, movable to suit each raga. In meend, the player pulls the string to one side at one fret, raising the pitch in a continuous glide. In ghaseet, the finger slides along the fingerboard under one stroke.

Chikari, jor and jhala

The chikari strokes change through alap, jor and jhala. In alap the player brushes the two chikari strings with another string for a tanpura-like backdrop. In jhala, melody and chikari strokes alternate at speed.

Der Weg zur Meisterschaft

Folgen Sie diesem strukturierten Weg, um diese Kunstform zu meistern

  1. Posture, mizrab and first strokes

    With your teacher, settle a seated posture on the floor and the angle at which you hold the sitar, then fit the mizrab on your right index finger. Practise the basic inward and outward strokes on the main string. Pause between attempts, compare the sound, and repeat the stroke your teacher demonstrates.

  2. Sargam and hand coordination

    Play a simple sargam pattern on the note names Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni, each note repeated up and down the scale. Land the mizrab stroke as your left finger reaches each fret. Keep a pace at which every note sounds clean, and listen as well as watch your hands. Repeat any change of fret that needs more control.

  3. Raga phrases and meend

    Learn a short raga phrase from material your teacher chooses and mark the notes it arrives on. Listen to the phrase before you play it. Then work on meend, a glide in pitch made at one fret, through an exercise your teacher demonstrates. Compare the starting and arriving notes before you join the glide to the phrase.

  4. Gat and taal

    Learn one short gat in the taal your teacher chooses and find where it starts in the cycle. Recite the taal's theka, the tabla stroke pattern of the cycle, with hand beats while your teacher or a tabla recording keeps time. Then play the gat and practise its return to the starting point against that pulse.

  5. Develop a short performance

    Take a passage you can play cleanly and add one variation your teacher gives, such as a toda or a tan, played between returns of the gat. Keep it within the raga and taal. Record a complete attempt, choose one point to correct, then play the passage again with that correction.

Indian Slide Guitar

Indian slide guitar plays Hindustani raga on a guitar laid across the lap, with a slide bar and…

Kommende Veranstaltungen

Performances and concerts featuring this discipline

Ausgewählte Künstler

Renommierte Interpreten dieser Disziplin

Debaditya Chakraborty

Debaditya-Chakraborty
Sitarist der Senia-Maihar-Tradition, Debaditya Chakraborty verbindet Gayaki und Tantrakari mit Klarheit. 2023 trat er beim Purvi Festival von KalaSudha auf.
Senia-Maihar Gharana

Shakir Khan

Shakir-Khan-Sitar
Shakir Khan, Sohn und Schüler von Padma Shri Ustad Shahid Parvez Khan, ist der Erbe des Itawa Gharana in der achten Generation.
Sitar
Etawah Gharana

Tommy Khosla

Tommy-Khosla
Tommy Khosla ist Sitarspieler und Komponist. In seinem Spiel verbindet er Elemente aus Latin Jazz, Hip-Hop und elektronischer Musik. Er ist Gründer der Jawari Band und des Labels Vadi Records. Sein

Jonathan Mayer

Jonathan-Mayer
Jonathan Mayer begann im Alter von fünf Jahren mit dem Musizieren. Er lernte Violine von seinem Großvater Albert Hepton, Klavier von James Methuen-Campbell und Komposition von seinem Vater. Mit
Sitar

Adnan Khan

Adnan-Khan-Sitar-KalaSudha
Adnan Khan spielt Sitar im Gayaki Ang. Geschult in Delhi von seinem Großvater Ustad Zafar Ahmed Khan, seinem Vater Ustad Saeed Khan und dem Sänger Ustad Mashkoor Ali Khan.
Sitar

Häufig gestellte Fragen

Where can I take live one-to-one sitar lessons online?

You can take live one-to-one sitar lessons online with KalaSudha, from a teacher KalaSudha has vetted. You book each lesson in your own time zone, and the platform records it so you can play it back.

Beginners start at Foundation by settling a seated posture and fitting the mizrab, the wire plectrum, on the right index finger. One teacher guides you over years, in the guru-shishya relationship of Indian classical music. Where enough learners sign up, we also bring workshops and summer camps near them. Our online academy keeps adding courses and teachers.

Can an adult beginner learn sitar online?

Yes, an adult beginner can learn sitar online with KalaSudha, in live one-to-one lessons that assume no experience. You start at Foundation: your teacher sets your posture, then you practise the basic inward and outward strokes of the mizrab, the wire plectrum, on the main string.

If you played the sitar years ago and stopped, our courses run in levels, so you start again where you left off. Your teacher first reviews where you stand. Where enough learners sign up, KalaSudha brings workshops and summer camps near them too.

How long does it take to learn the sitar?

How long the sitar takes to learn depends on regular practice and on how soon your two hands work as one. The mizrab, a wire plectrum worn on your right index finger, has to land as your left finger reaches each fret. Ravi Shankar, for one, said he stayed with his teacher, Allauddin Khan, for more than seven years.

KalaSudha teaches the sitar online in live one-to-one lessons, and in workshops and summer camps where enough learners sign up. Our courses run in levels from Foundation, and each award records your learning hours.

How can a complete beginner, a child or an adult returning after a long break start learning the sitar?

You can learn the sitar with KalaSudha online and in workshops, and beginners start at Foundation level. That first stage covers posture and the mizrab, the wire plectrum worn on the right index finger. We teach children as well as adults, so ask us about a starting age and a sitar sized for a younger learner.

If you are going back to the sitar after a long break, our courses run in levels. You start again where you left off, once your teacher has reviewed where you stand.

How do I find a good sitar teacher?

To find a good sitar teacher, or guru, look for one who can tell you who they learned from. From your first lesson, a good teacher checks your posture and the mizrab, the wire plectrum worn on the right index finger. On KalaSudha, each teacher's lineage is on their profile. Pick one yourself, or ask us to match you.

Lessons are live and online, from £30 / $30 an hour, set by each teacher. If you have played before, your teacher first reviews where you stand. Where enough learners sign up, we also bring workshops and summer camps near them. Our courses include a sitar course in three levels. Ask about sitar lessons in the Academy.

Have more questions? Contact our support team and we'll be happy to help!

Stay close

Keep KalaSudha close.

Receive news of concerts, learning opportunities, recordings and the work taking shape at KalaSudha.
  • Concert news
  • Learning opportunities
  • Recordings and stories

We respect your privacy. Unsubscribe at any time.