Saturday, February 20, 2010

Pitch difference in sarangi in pull/push bowing

Any stringed instrument follows one simple law of physics that pitch produced from the string is inversely proportional to its length, provided other factors like caliber of string, tension in the string, material of string are kept same. i.e. longer the string, lower the pitch & vice versa.

Now let us see what happens at the ends where string of resting, i.e. effective length of string. Lower down it is limited by the main bridge with the direction same as direction of bowing.i.e. in pull or push , string is always pushed against the bridge edge.

Coming to the upper boundary of string, it is created by soft skin of finger of convex nature from the side, i.e. in almost perpendicular plane to the edge of main bridge. so during pull movement of bow, the gut- string is initially dragged away from the finger, changing the point of contact of gut with finger i.e.increasing the effective length (=lowering the pitch) of string. Exactly opposite happens during push phase of bowing reducing the length (=raising the pitch). Thus in the beginner there is always a pitch difference in push & pull phase of bowing.

Obviously this does not happen in open notes like Sa, PA, SA as upper bridge is in the same plane as main bridge.

This is unique to sarangi & not found in violin, esraj, or other stringed instrument where string is pushed against the bridges in the same plane. This may make learning the sarangi more difficult apart from other factors.

Then what is the remedy ?


4 comments:

  1. Is the remedy, to push the finger a little inward in the pull bow motion so that it maintains contact with the gut and push the finger out that extra bit during the push bow to maintain the pitch?

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  2. good logic, but unfortunately not the answer.

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  3. Then it has to be the bowing which takes care of this.

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  4. It affects very partly, but how ? Just try to think how situation differs in beginner & somewhat seasoned player.

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