Bowed strings and sympathy, from violins to indian sarangis

Matthias Demoucron , Stéphanie Weisser

The sarangi is an indian bowed string instrument that is characterized by a large set of sympathetic strings (sometimes up to over 30), called taraf, going below the three main strings. The tuning of the taraf varies among players, but generally one part is tuned chromatically and diatonically, while the other part is tuned according to the rag of the performance, resulting in a rich and highly reverberant sound when the main strings are bowed. The goal of this research is to determine how the sympathetic strings affect the resulting sound, as well as their possible musical, perceptual and aesthetical implications in classical Indian sarangi music. Starting from the simple case of western classical violins, in which sympathetic vibrations occur because of the interaction with adjacent open strings, we will examine changes occurring in the timbre of the instrument when one string is allowed to vibrate in sympathy. Then, we will present sound analyses of several sarangis played by various musicians, with and without taraf, in order to characterize the role of the sympathetic strings on the resulting sound.

Mots clés: musical acoustics; bowed string; sympathetic string; ethnomusicology

Domaines: Acoustique [physics.class-ph]

Matthias Demoucron, Stéphanie Weisser. Bowed strings and sympathy, from violins to indian sarangis. Acoustics 2012, Apr 2012, Nantes, France. ⟨hal-00810608⟩