Parts of a sitar, diagrammed

A sitar can carry close to twenty strings, two gourds and twenty frets, and from a distance it's hard to tell what any of it is for. Up close it sorts into a few groups: a body that resonates, a neck that carries the frets, two bridges, and three sets of strings with three different jobs.

1. Tumba — the main gourd

The large round body at the bottom is the tumba, traditionally a dried pumpkin gourd, cut and hollowed. It's the sitar's main resonating chamber, like the body of a guitar. Its top is closed by a thin wooden soundboard, the tabli, which carries the bridges. The tumba is also what the sitar rests on when you sit with it — the posture guide shows how.

2. Upper gourd

Many sitars have a second, smaller gourd fixed behind the top of the neck. It adds a little resonance, but its main job is balance: it keeps a long neck from tipping and gives the instrument something to rest against near the left shoulder. Sitars built in the Vilayat Khan style often leave it off.

3. Dandi — the neck

The dandi is the long, hollow wooden neck, usually made of tun or teak. The frets are tied along its front, the main pegs sit at its head, and the pegs for the sympathetic strings run down its side. Because it's long and hollow, it moves with humidity — one reason sitars need a stable room.

4. Parda — the frets

A sitar's frets (parda) are curved brass or steel bars, usually around nineteen or twenty of them, tied on with cord rather than set into the wood. Two consequences follow. First, they can be slid up or down the neck to adjust their pitch, which is how a player sets a fret for a raga's particular shade of a note. Second, the curve and height leave room under the string to pull it sideways across the fret, which bends its pitch. That pull is meend, the sitar's singing slide — the what is meend guide lets you try it.

5. Jawari — the main bridge

The jawari is the main bridge, a flat, gently curved plate of bone or horn on a wooden base. A guitar bridge touches the string at a single edge; the jawari lets the string graze along a tiny curved surface as it vibrates. That grazing is what makes the sitar buzz and shimmer, and it's filed by hand, in tiny passes, until it sounds right. A sitar with a bad jawari sounds thin whatever else is good about it — the maintenance guide explains how to tell, and why "why does my sitar buzz?" is usually a jawari question.

6. Taraf bridge

A second, smaller bridge sits in front of the jawari, lower and narrower. It carries the sympathetic strings, which pass under the main strings and the frets. It's shaped the same way as the jawari, on a smaller scale, so the sympathetic strings shimmer too.

7. Main playing strings

The strings you pluck with the mizrab (the wire plectrum on your index finger). On a sitar with bass strings there are four of them: the baj tar, the melody string you fret, tuned to Ma; and three drone strings — jor, pancham and kharaj — tuned to Sa and Pa in lower octaves. Each one runs over a small bead near the bottom of the tumba, the manka, which slides for fine tuning.

8. Chikari strings

Two or three short, high strings on pegs part-way up the side of the neck. They're tuned to Sa and Pa and strummed for rhythm — the bright "ching" between melody notes, and the driving pulse of fast jhala playing. The tuning guide gives each string's note.

9. Nut

At the top of the fingerboard, the nut is a small bone bar with a groove for each string, holding them at the right height and spacing. A badly cut groove lets a string rattle sideways — one of the "wrong" buzzes a technician fixes.

10. Tuning pegs

Wooden pegs (khunti) at the head of the neck tune the main strings; smaller pegs along the side of the neck tune the chikari and the taraf. They're friction pegs with no gears, held by being pressed into a tapered hole as they turn. That's why they need occasional fitting, and why they should never be forced.

What isn't numbered

• Sympathetic strings (taraf). Eleven to thirteen thin strings under the frets, never plucked while playing. They're tuned to the raga's notes and ring on their own when you play one of those notes. There are usually more of them than of the playing strings.
• Tailpiece (langot). The fitting at the bottom of the tumba where the main strings are anchored.
• Taraf eyelets. A row of small holes along the neck, where each sympathetic string comes up from under the frets to reach its peg.

Why it's built like this

Every unusual part of the sitar serves the music. Movable, curved frets exist because a raga needs notes bent and shaded, not just stopped. The jawari exists because Hindustani music sits over a drone and lives on overtones. The taraf exist because a sitar is tuned to a raga, not just a key. When you learn the instrument, you're learning to use all three — the anatomy lesson is where the course takes that up.