Tambura

A tambura (South India) or tanpura (North India) is a long-necked Indian lute, unfretted and round-bodied. The neck is hollow, and it has four or five (rarely, six) wire strings, which are plucked one after another in a regular pattern to create a tonic resonance field (bourdon or drone function) Hindustani classical music tanpuras come in different sizes: bigger "males" and smaller "females". Male players/musicians pitch their tonic note (Sa) to C#, female singers usually a fifth higher. The male instrument has an open string length of one metre, the female is sized down to 3/4. The standard tuning is 5881 sol do' do' do or in Indian sargam: PA sa sa SA. For ragas that omit the fifth, the first string will be tuned down to the natural fourth: 4881 or Ma sa sa Sa. With a five-string instrument, the seventh or NI (natural minor or major 7th) is added: PA NI sa sa SA (57881). Both the instrument and how it is played look very simple, though in fact it takes a lot of experience and a very good ear to tune and play the tanpura. The special overtone-rich sound is achieved by applying the principle of jivari which creates a rich buzzing sound in which particular harmonics will ring out clearly.

It is designed in three different styles:

Miraj style: the favorite form of tanpura for Hindustani performers; it is usually between three to five feet in length, with a well-rounded resonator plate (tabali) and a long, hollow straight neck. The round lower chamber to which the tabli and the neck (dandh) are fixed is actually a selected and dried gourd (tumba).

Tanjore style: this is a south Indian style of tambura, used widely by Carnatic music performers. It has somewhat different shape and style of decoration from that of the Miraj, but is otherwise much the same size. Typically, no gourd is used, but the spherical part is gouged out of a solid block of wood. The neck is somewhat smaller in diameter.

Tamburi: this style has became more popular recently, due to its small size and portability. It is two to three feet long, with a shallow resonator and a slightly curved tabali. It may have from four to six strings. The small five-string tamburi are tuned to the higher octave and are the preferred instruments for providing the drone for solo-performances by string-playing artists, as the lighter, more transparent sound does not drown out the lower register of a sitar, sarod, or sarangi.