Vichitra Veena
विचित्र वीणा
Set each pitch with a glass slide, then shape the phrase with a wire plectrum.
The vichitra veena is a fretless Hindustani zither played with a glass slide and wire plectra. Learn how slide placement and each pluck shape a phrase.
History & Evolution
Aneesh Pradhan, a tabla player and historian, reports that the introduction of the vichitra veena into Hindustani music has been attributed to Abdul Aziz Khan (1881 to 1946), a sarangi player from Patiala. Pradhan hears sarangi phrasing in his recordings, which pair Darbari Kanada with lighter pieces in Pilu, Jogia and Bhairavi. His younger brother, Habib Ali Khan, also played the instrument.
Deva and Lalmani Misra both link the instrument to the ekatantri veena, a single-string zither of the Sanskrit texts played with a sliding bamboo piece. Deva, writing in 1977, judged the present name probably less than a century old.
Lalmani Misra (1924 to 1979) took up the vichitra veena after hearing Abdul Aziz Khan on All India Radio, Lucknow, and practised it on his own. He had trained first in dhrupad singing, a style often linked with the instrument, though Abdul Aziz Khan's lighter recorded repertoire shows the instrument was not tied to dhrupad alone. A third-party transcription of the Sangeet Natak Akademi roll of honour lists Ahmed Raza Khan and Gopal Krishnan as vichitra veena awardees.
- 1937
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Habib Ali Khan on film
Aneesh Pradhan presents a 1937 Wadia Movietone film recording of Habib Ali Khan, younger brother of Abdul Aziz Khan, playing the vichitra veena with tabla accompaniment by Ahmed Jan Thirakwa. - 1950
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Lalmani Misra's first vichitra veena programme
Lalmani Misra gives his first vichitra veena programme at the annual music conference of Marris College, Lucknow, according to the 1996 booklet by the recordist Laxmi G. Tewari. - 26 April 1976
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Live recording at Sonoma State
Laxmi G. Tewari records Lalmani Misra live at Sonoma State University, California, playing raga Kausi Kanhada as alap, jor, jhala and two gats. UNESCO and Auvidis publish the recording in 1996 as India: Vicitra Vina. - July 1977
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Deva's Musical Instruments published
The National Book Trust, India, publishes B. C. Deva's Musical Instruments, which describes the vichitra veena as a fretless zither that Hindustani musicians play with a moving glass ball.
Technical Aspects
Slide contact and movement
The strings run along a broad hollow board with two gourd resonators beneath it and no frets. The player presses a glass slide on the main strings and moves it. Deva describes a glass ball and the recordist Laxmi G. Tewari a glass egg; an instrument in the Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin, has a 6.5 cm glass sphere. Tewari likens this hand action to playing a slide guitar.
Plucks and glides
Each stroke of a wire plectrum gives an attack. Moving the slide while the string still sounds carries the pitch to the next note, a glide called meend. A plucked note fades, so the player chooses where each fresh stroke falls. In jhala, a fast section built on rapid right-hand strokes, the open drone strings (chikari) sound between melody notes and keep the pulse.
Played and sympathetic strings
The main strings carry the melody under the slide. Chikari strings, plucked open, give drone and rhythmic filling. Thinner tarab strings beneath the main strings vibrate in sympathy once tuned. Counts vary between instruments: Deva describes four main strings, two chikari and a dozen or more tarab, while Tewari's notes on Lalmani Misra's instrument give six, five and ten or eleven.
Journey to Mastery
Follow this structured journey to master this discipline
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Listen with the slide still
Ask your teacher to check how you sit and how the instrument is supported, then to show how the batta, the glass slide, rests on a main string. Hold one position and pluck that string several times. Listen to how each note starts and fades. Keep the slide still so that movement does not blur the comparison.
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Return to a reference pitch
Your teacher sounds a reference note. Find it with the slide, lift your hand away, then find the same note again before adding any glide. With no frets to fix the pitch, your ear tells you whether the slide has landed in the right place, so compare each attempt with the reference.
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Compare attack and movement
Choose two neighbouring notes. First move the slide to the second note and pluck once it arrives. Then pluck the first note and move the slide while it sounds, so the pitch glides across. That glide is meend. Compare the two versions with your teacher and listen for where each places the attack.
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Give the phrase a resting point
Learn a short phrase from your teacher that joins two notes with a glide and ends on a resting note. Mark each point where the teacher plucks afresh. Play just that phrase until its resting point sounds settled, then compare the spacing of your strokes with the teacher's model.
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Play a measured phrase
Take a short phrase from a gat, an instrumental composition set in a rhythmic cycle such as teentaal. With your teacher, count through one cycle before you enter, then play the phrase from the agreed point, checking the first pitch and the timing of the pluck. Practise this apart from alap, the slow opening without a fixed beat.