thinking about taking up the sitar

[Kramer]

any of you play, and if so, what are the price ranges of sitars and how easy is it to learn, relative to the guitar? thanks for any help

[Tuggan]

haha, sneaky mods.

[Kramer]

huh?

[Tossica]

Chicks don't dig sitars.

[Captain Insano]

You can play the opening to that one metallica song and that would be KOOL

[Kramer]

got a beautiful wife and kid..... not worried about chicks....

[The Kizzy]

got a beautiful wife and kid..... not worried about chicks....

She reads this board, doesn't she?

[Kramer]

HA! nope, she hates and seeks to destroy anything remotely resembling or in anyway having to do with WOW, EQ, or any other MMMOPRG.....

[liquidstayce]

I like how sitars sound.
Google search for it....... http://www.rainbowcrystal.com/music/music2.html

[Jimmy Durante]

Chicks don't dig sitars.

Negative. When I was in India several years ago, I had the opportunity to catch a bunch of performances along with European tourists. The knickers pretty much dropped around the sitar and tabla players. Don't ask...

[labbats]

Chicks don't dig sitars.

Negative. When I was in India several years ago, I had the opportunity to catch a bunch of performances along with European tourists. The knickers pretty much dropped around the sitar and tabla players. Don't ask...

That's because the knickers were on snakes, and snakes don't have waists.

[Captain Insano]

got a beautiful wife and kid..... not worried about chicks....

your wife's hot? post pics.

[brinstar]

from what i understand (and this could be completely wrong), a real sitar is a huge instrument, about the length of a small sofa, and is extremely difficult to play correctly. this is due to the fact that nearly all western music (bach etc. all the way down to britney spears) is based on a 12-note chromatic scale. in the area from northern africa to india, their music evolved with a much more complicated scale. they regularly use half-tones and even quarter-tones-- cramming as many as 40 or 50 separate and distinct notes in the space we stick only 12.

in short, a sitar is a very large, likely very expensive, and very very VERY difficult instrument to play. good f'in luck.





PS however, there are guitars to be found out there that are based on and kinda sound like sitars which would be much much easier to learn to play

[Drem]

the sitar is about as hard as the piano. it takes a lifetime to master and a lot of goddamn work. you kind of have to learn the culture to understand the instrument, too.

as far as playing it goes: the notes are really far apart and you have to move your arm all the fucking time just to play simple things. the action is extremely high so you have to press down on the strings quite a bit and you pluck the top strings along with the main string and that resonates the bottom strings. it's also really fucking hard to land on each fret correctly. one thing that's kinda cool is that there're five ways to play any given note (same with any stringed instrument), but whereas on a violin or cello, some of those sound the same, the sitar as a distinct sound for each of the five methods of rendering a note. and you pluck the strings with this thing called a mizrab that's like a piece of wire that fits over your finger.


as far as the music goes: unlike european music, indian classical music (raga) was not composed by anyone. they are pieces that have evolved over centuries and are played to invoke a trance-like state. since they aren't pieces by composers, they aren't determined already like european music (like how you have to play chopin in a certain style). they're considered pieces of the world.

like alex said, it's a really fuckin hard instrument that, like the piano, you can't really learn effectively by yourself


if you wanna just see what it looks like to tune, here's what you'd set your 16 strings to.

[Kramer]

now this is some good info... thanks and keep it coming, I am looking up info also

[Drem]

here's some sweet info: the gourd on the top of it is a dried pumpkin

[brinstar]

ok yeah you're way better off getting one of these

shit i want one now lol

[Kramer]

that is badass and cheap too

[Tuggan]

i think the sitar is a clangy headache causer, cant imagine why anyone would want to start playin that crap.

[Captain Insano]

I would rather learn how to play a xylophone make out of the bones of dead eqyptian kings and pharoahs.

[Captain Insano]

think about all the ghosts you could summon!

[Ouchyfish]