Santoor

String and bridge counts vary by maker and playing style, and no single figure fits every santoor. The strings run in groups, called courses, over small wooden bridges on a hollow trapezoid box, and each course sounds one note. A kalam strike sets a course vibrating, and the box resonates with it.

Shabir Ahmad Mir describes the Sufiana santoor with 100 strings over 25 bridges. Each note has four strings: two of steel, tuned an octave above two of copper or bronze. Concert instruments changed this layout. Aneesh Pradhan reports that Shivkumar Sharma added bridges to reach more octaves and cut the number of strings to limit excess vibration. Vijay Kichlu gives his modified santoor 31 bridges and 91 strings across three octaves, and Sharma’s own account, relayed by Susheela Misra, gives other figures. David Courtney records instruments with anything from about 24 to more than 100 strings.

Posture differs too. The Sufiana santoor sits on a small slanted stand. Sharma moved the instrument to his lap because the stand added unwanted resonance.

The player holds a light wooden kalam in each hand (some English-language pages say mezrab). Each strike starts a separate attack, and the string rings on through the hollow body. Phrase shape comes from stroke spacing, strike height and the balance between the two hands. Aneesh Pradhan notes that Shivkumar Sharma never struck from a great height, since a high strike gave an aggressive, distorted tone, and kept both hands even across the range.

Because every note begins with a strike, critics called the santoor unfit for Hindustani music, arguing that meend, a glide from one note to another, and gamak, an oscillation of a note, were hard or impossible with mallets. Players found different answers. Sharma slid the kalam along the strings to glide and to lengthen notes. Ulhas Bapat fixed a metal strip to his kalams and rubbed one against the string while striking with the other. The Sopori family describes pressing on thicker strings for meend and gamak, and using heavier kalams to sustain the alap, the unmetred opening of a raga.

Santoor players tune the strings to the raga, and tuning systems differ between players and schools. David Courtney reports retuning between pieces and personal tuning styles. Aneesh Pradhan writes that Shivkumar Sharma changed the tuning system to the one most santoor players now follow, without giving its details. Vijay Kichlu and Oliver Craske describe Sharma’s modified instrument as having a chromatic tuning. Craske says it reached every semitone, while the older Kashmiri instrument allowed no more than seven notes in each octave.

Ulhas Bapat took a related path. He used a keyboard-like layout with flats and sharps, and retuned single strings to the shrutis, the microtonal positions, of each raga. That let him play several ragas without retuning the whole instrument.

In the Sopori baj, as the family describes it, the left side of the instrument carries the natural (shuddh) notes and the right side supplies added flat (komal) notes.