INTRODUCTION TO TAMBURA/TANPURA HARMONICS

[uday_shankar]

Not rocket science but may be useful to say it / point them out. @thenpaanan duty done

https://youtu.be/FJIbnXGv3I0

[thenpaanan]

Excellent! The only nits (and that is what they are) I could find to pick are

(i) for the uninitiated it may be important to specify explicitly that when you pluck the string with a finger placed somewhere on the string to generate a harmonic, you should remove the finger as soon as the pluck is done otherwise you will hear only a partially or completely muted sound (you were doing it yourself in the video but it may bear pointing out).

(II) a simple way to test your tuning (which was where the end of the video was trending to when you say that you can hear all the harmonics in the open strings) is to see how long the sound sustains after your have plucked all the strings once. The longer the sustain, the better the tuning. An approximately tuned tambura's sound will die out relatively quickly.

These are just nits really. Now for some more substantive comments.

(iii) the idea of showing Hamsadhwani via the harmonics I thought was sheer genius. All these years I never thought to do that!

(iv) for advanced students it might be worth noting that the notes like the Ri and Ga that you hear in the harmonics are the note values that Carnatic musicians traditionally use (or are supposed to use) which are slightly different from what you will get from a piano or harmonium (the subject of your other video). If one is particular about such things then an acoustic tambura is the only place these days you can get this well-tempered sound. The sound of a well-sung _natural_ antara gAndhAram can produce quite the thrill that one does not get with the tempered (piano) version, which is only (very) slightly different in pitch. I still don't know why that is so. The human brain much prefers well-consonant sounds for some reason.

Hindustani singers seem to have more or less gone completely to the tempered note values these days due to the harmonium accompaniment, so one cannot easily have this conversation with them (even though they are just as adept at tuning tamburas).

Thanks again for creating the video.
-T

[uday_shankar]

@thenpaanan, thanks for taking the time to listen, and for the detailed feedback including nits which are just as important. We live and learn .

One prominent tambura harmonic that shows up often, swamping all other sounds, esp. in the bass string is the 7th harmonic. It is not "pleasant" in the conventional sense but reassuring ! I got lucky during the demo in that it didn't rear its head. Otherwise some mention would have had to be made of it.

Also, I left out the higher harmonics and focused on the basics.

In another YouTube video I have specifically demoed the 7th harmonic and it's bluesish flavor. Here it is:
https://youtu.be/5JmK0FFLzdI?si=H1-Loih_RNH7C_f_

I may have shared it here before.