Sitar guides

Practical answers about the sitar — buying, tuning, care, and the ideas behind the music.

Each guide answers one question. For the course itself, in order, go to Learn.

Buying a sitar

What a playable beginner sitar costs, what to check before you pay, and the listings to walk away from.

Every part of the sitar named and explained — gourds, neck, frets, bridges and all three sets of strings.

The sitar's wire plectrum — which finger it goes on, how it should fit, how to pick a size, and the two strokes it plays.

The seven playing strings and the sympathetic strings, in order, with a tuner that listens right here on the page.

When a string needs replacing, which strings to buy, and how to restring a main string or a taraf without disturbing the rest.

Daily care, storage and humidity, what the jawari is and why it buzzes — and how to tell the good buzz from the bad one.

What's genuinely hard about the sitar, what isn't, and a realistic picture of the first month, the first year and beyond.

You're not too old. What changes when you start later, what adults are actually better at, and how to build a practice around a busy life.

What carries over from guitar, what you'll have to unlearn, and how to think about frets, bends, picking and harmony on the sitar.

An honest comparison of the two instruments — the first month, the first year, and the skills each one demands.

The traditional seated position, where each hand goes, the alternatives if the floor hurts, and the mistakes worth fixing early.

A raga is a set of notes plus the rules for using them — the notes it leans on, its signature phrases, its ornaments and its time of day.

Meend is the glide from one note to another on a single pluck — how the sitar does it, and what it sounds like.

Gamak is the heavy, repeated shake on or between notes — how it differs from meend and andolan, and where you hear it.

A tihai is a phrase played three times so its last note lands exactly on beat one — how it works, with the arithmetic.

Norwegian Wood, Paint It Black, Within You Without You — how the sitar got into rock and pop, and what those songs borrowed from Indian music.

What a gharana is, and how the two great sitar lineages — Maihar and Etawah — differ in sound, instrument and approach.

The players who shaped the sitar's sound, and the sitarists to listen to now — with a note on each one's lineage.