Monsoon, a worn bridge, and three days to the practical
Three days before his Madhyamik practical, a sitar player finds that his instrument - a seven-string sitar with eleven sympathetic strings - has developed a harsh buzzing javari on Pa and Dha of the first (baj) string, while Sa, Re, Ga and Ma still sound clean. The sitar has stood near an open window through three weeks of monsoon rain. The chikari pegs slip, so that the upper Sa falls by roughly a quarter tone within twenty minutes of tuning. The first string was fitted four months ago and shows a flattened, shiny patch where it crosses the bridge; the bridge groove under that string is visibly deepened. His teacher is out of town, the school has a spare set of strings, and the nearest repairer is 60 km away. He must decide what to change, in what order, and what must not be touched before the exam.
1. Diagnose the buzzing and draw up a prioritised plan for the next three days, distinguishing what may be done at home from what must not be attempted.
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Diagnosis. Two causes are stacked. The shiny flattened patch on the baj string means the string's bearing surface at the bridge has worn and lost its clean edge; a worn contact point produces exactly this note-selective buzz, because each note uses a different length of string and therefore a different point of contact with the bridge. The deepened groove in the bridge is the second cause and the more serious one: the string is sitting in a valley rather than riding a ridge, so its edge cannot vibrate cleanly. The monsoon adds a third factor - wood takes up moisture, the pegs and the bridge swell, and tuning stability collapses.
Plan, in order.
- Day one: move the instrument out of the draught, keep it in its case with a sachet of silica gel, and stop tuning it repeatedly. Stability first.
- Day two: fit the spare baj string from the school set. Tune up gradually over several hours rather than in one pull, so the new string settles. If the jod string (second) is also old, change it now, not on exam morning.
- Day two evening: treat the slipping pegs with peg chalk or a proprietary peg compound. Never oil them - oil swells and softens the wood and makes slipping worse.
- Day three: tune, play for twenty minutes, retune, and stop.
Must not be touched. The bridge. Filing or re-cutting a javari requires a specialist and is irreversible; done badly three days before an exam it can ruin the instrument. If the buzz survives the string change, he plays around it and explains the condition honestly in the viva.
2. Explain why only Pa and Dha buzz while Sa, Re, Ga and Ma remain clean, and why the sympathetic strings are part of the same problem.
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A plucked string does not rest on a single point of the bridge: it leaves the bridge at the point where it bends, and that exit point shifts slightly as the string is stopped at different frets, because the angle and tension change along the string. When the bearing surface has a flattened, worn facet, some speaking lengths ride on the flat and rattle against it, while others clear it. That is why the fault appears on some notes and not others rather than across the whole instrument. The deepened groove sharpens the effect: it holds the string in a channel, so the edge cannot ring free at the lengths used for Pa and Dha.
The sympathetic strings matter for two reasons. First, they are tuned to the raga's notes; if Pa and Dha are among them, the buzz from the main string excites them and they reinforce the noise instead of masking it. Second, in humid weather those strings slacken and begin to sound on their own, so what the player hears as a dirty Pa may be partly sympathetic resonance rather than the baj string alone. Before the exam, the tarab should be checked and any string that buzzes or rings sympathetically out of tune should be muted, not left to add to the problem.
3. On stage, the chikari slips mid-performance and the upper Sa drops. What should the candidate do, and what does this reveal about preparation priorities?
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He should keep playing. Stopping to tune in the middle of a gat breaks the tala, and the examiner is marking continuity of gat presentation with accompaniment. The correct response is to shift the melodic line onto the strings that are still true, keep the rhythmic skeleton intact, and finish the item. Tuning belongs between items, not within one - and then briefly, with the tanpura running as reference.
The episode reveals a preparation error rather than bad luck. A sitar whose chikari pegs slip by a quarter tone in twenty minutes was never exam-ready, and the fault was visible at home. A candidate who discovers instability a week out has options: new strings with time to settle, peg treatment, humidity control, a borrowed instrument checked against the tanpura. A candidate who discovers it on the morning of the practical has none.
The transferable judgement is about the order of risk. Irreversible work on an instrument - bridge, fret tying, jawari - needs weeks; reversible work - strings, pegs, humidity, tuning - needs days. A student should never let a reversible problem become urgent by ignoring it, and should never let an irreversible repair become urgent by attempting it late.