Sitar Technique in Nibaddh Forms

Students of Indian music are well aware of the emphasis their gurus places on the development of correct technique through rigorous practice. This book focuses on the sitar technique and shows how that technology comes into play during the improvisatory music-making endeavors of master sitarists.

A series of systematic descriptions and analyses reveal how instrumental technique acts as a generative structure at the broad level and provides a corpus of factors of variation at the specific level. A unique feature of this study is the inclusion of musical transcriptions detailing not only the line of melody but also the physical gestures (techniques) necessary to produce a melody. Though technically complex in appearance, these transcriptions and the accompanying analyses provide valuable information to students interested in learning Sitar and to musicologists and ethno-musicologists inquiring into the basic improvisational processes that underlie contemporary styles of Sitar performance.