The History of Stringed Instruments

[peter]

Last night I watched the 2014 Darbar Festival from the South Bank [alas only on television] in which a very talented indian lady played a huge stringed insrument with two huge resonating bowls known as the rudra veena. The lady said that legend had it that the rudra-veena was the oldest stringed instrument in the world and that it had originally been given birth by Lord Shiva in the dawn of history. Charming though it was, the complexity of the instrument belied this, and set me to wondering. Surely there must be a common scource for all stringed instruments somewhere in the mists of human history - or are the similarities of string and sounding bowl and tuning keys simply a musical form of 'convergent evolution' pertaining to the physics of sound and applied to a discovery that has been made in numerous places and at numerous times over the course of human history. If the former were the case [ie common scource] then the original exemplar must have existed early in the dawn of human history in order for it to have percolated through to most areas of the world by at least medieval times.

On a different note [pun intended], as I watched this lady play the rudra-veena with consumate skill [she is the only female maestro of this instrument in the world and in her own country not even her neighbours know she plays it] I wondered; her fingers were flying over the frets and plucking the four main and three lesser strings with such rapidity, what would be the effect of giving this lady an electric guitar - an instrument one assumes she has no knowledge of how to play - and leaving her alone with it for a month. What use would she put it to and what would be the musical effect of her just picking it up and seeing what her classical indian training brought out of this western strung [and tuned] instrument. That I'd like to see!

[aliantha]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washtub_bass



For any stringed instrument, you need a string to makes the noise, and a resonator box of some sort to amplify the noise. So yeah, it's a pretty simple concept, and it was likely invented in multiple places.

[michaelm]

A subject close to my heart!

I didn't know of the instrument, but it appears to be a forerunner of some of the more recent Indian instruments, but I believe that the oldest stringed instruments originated in the Middle East in the form of the lyre. Most other stringed instruments can count the lyre as its forebear.

However, I don't know that it traveled East and I think that Indian instruments developed independently, but it's very hard to tell how instruments traveled around the world.

What you have to remember though is that instruments evolved, and the modern form of an instrument might bear little resemblance to a very ancient form of the same instrument. A good example is one that you mentioned - tuning keys - which have evolved a great deal over time.

[Avatar]

Hey, we have both a history and a music forum...

...just saying...

--A

[peter]

Yes - sorry Av . When something is a sort of 'cross-boundry' subject I always worry that by placing it in one of the specialised forums some of the 'target audience' will miss it - hence my decision to post here [and you mods are pretty damn good at shifting stuff around to it's most apropriate place at need ].

Any observations on the second part anyone; do you think this ladys great skill at both fingering and picking would make her well placed to draw music from a stringed instrument with which she had no familiarity, and could an almost 'new form' of say Indian classical music result.

Going back to the rudra-veena - in the performance I was fascinated to note that the playing of different notes and the blending of one note into another charachteristic of the 'Indian sound' was achieved by the 'pulling' of a [probably looser stretched] string up and down a particular fret rather than fingering from fret to fret as is [more] the case in the guitar. Although both tecniques are used in both instruments, the proportion of one to the other seemed approximately oppossit in the rudra-veena compared to the [electric] guitar.

[michaelm]

Going back to the rudra-veena - in the performance I was fascinated to note that the playing of different notes and the blending of one note into another charachteristic of the 'Indian sound' was achieved by the 'pulling' of a [probably looser stretched] string up and down a particular fret rather than fingering from fret to fret as is [more] the case in the guitar. Although both tecniques are used in both instruments, the proportion of one to the other seemed approximately oppossit in the rudra-veena compared to the [electric] guitar.

Sounds like the same technique as the sitar (which is a relatively modern instrument), but the bending of the string is much more than on a guitar, often about twice the number of semitones. It's also generally in the opposite direction to a guitar, where you bend upwards on a guitar, a sitar is generally downwards (so that you don't hit the strings above the main string).

[Vraith]

Any observations on the second part anyone; do you think this ladys great skill at both fingering and picking would make her well placed to draw music from a stringed instrument with which she had no familiarity, and could an almost 'new form' of say Indian classical music result.

Adapt to a new stringed instrument? Extremely likely. And probably very rapidly. And probably non-string instruments, too. Instrument talent seems to have a wide sub-structure, much like sports. If you are good at one, you can probably be pretty good at all of them. If you've played piano for a decade, and you're good at it, you can probably learn to play a lively tune on the fife in about a day.
[not to displace specialization/specificity...people also tend to have a niche, a thing that they "get" more than other things...]

In the case you mention, the player would probably have some interesting tricks/techniques that would sound cool/different applied to guitar...
But a whole new hybrid of music? Depends on the kind of musical brain she has...is she ONLY a great technician, or a great player all around, and/or a great writer/composer? Have knowledge of multiple forms/styles, or not?

Something revolutionary....or at least evolutionary...might come out of it.
Or it might be more like Eddie Van Halen---his keyboard work, whatever other qualities it had [or didn't] still pretty much always sounded like a guitar player banging on keys.

[michaelm]

Any observations on the second part anyone; do you think this ladys great skill at both fingering and picking would make her well placed to draw music from a stringed instrument with which she had no familiarity, and could an almost 'new form' of say Indian classical music result.

Adapt to a new stringed instrument? Extremely likely. And probably very rapidly.

Definitely - I have done that. I started on guitar and played for many years, then about 10 years ago I bought a mandolin, and it took me much less time to get good at it than guitar. A few years ago I bought a 5 string banjo, and I was up and running with that in no time at all.

It gets easier for sure.

[peter]

I had the impression in the rudra-veena that the string pulling was more upward than downward, but could well be wrong here. It's funny how Insian classical music is far more accessable to the western ear than chinese [or I find it so at least]. To sit and listen, even at my low level of familiarity was no chore at all, where on the odd occasion I have attempted to sit through a chinese opera......

[michaelm]

I had the impression in the rudra-veena that the string pulling was more upward than downward, but could well be wrong here. It's funny how Insian classical music is far more accessable to the western ear than chinese [or I find it so at least]. To sit and listen, even at my low level of familiarity was no chore at all, where on the odd occasion I have attempted to sit through a chinese opera......

Possibly as I haven't seen anyone play one. I just know that with a sitar you can't bend upwards as you have the other strings in the way.