Music · 2
According to accounts of its origin, what acoustic effect did Indian musicians notice that led them to deliberately add sympathetic strings to the sitar?
Answer
Open strings vibrating in resonance with played notes
Musicians observed that the sitar's open strings would ring out sympathetically whenever certain notes were played, and this natural resonance was later engineered deliberately by adding a dedicated bank of sympathetic strings beneath the frets.
💡 Did you know?
The sitar's sympathetic strings were added after Indian musicians noticed open strings vibrating in response to played notes, then deliberately engineered this effect.
Other options people guess
- Echoes bouncing off temple stone walls
- Overtones produced by bamboo flutes nearby
- Vibrations carried through tabla drumheads
Topics
- sitar
- indian-music
- acoustics
- instruments
- world-music
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