Category Archives: listen

music, soundscapes, audio, recordings

Jazz Sitar in Delhi, a soundscape

Sitar Factory Posted on by

As every year when I am in Delhi, our dear Swedish friend Hans (Hasse) came to visit me -and this time also my new sitar- in Hari Chands sitar shop. Hans is living half of the year in India and the other half in his house on Gotland. He plays sitar and guitar in many Indian and western bands. Amongst them is Parikrama, a famous rock band from New Delhi.

Play Listen to Hans playing raga Bairagi at the entrance door of the shop.

It became a nice and realistic soundscape with live Paharganj streetnoise. For Hans it was the first time in months he touched a sitar. Considering this I think he is doing very well on a brandnew 24 parda sitar. The rich and warm sound and easy playability inspired him at once to improvise on Bairagi in the middle of the hectic New Delhi ambiance. Shame on us and sorry for you that we didn’t notice the laraj was a bit out of tune…

SAS-02 also with soundholes

Sitar Factory Posted on by

Day 61: Started with sanding the body with grid 80 & 150. Then making and fitting a tar dan out of extreme hard Indian rosewood.

Day 62: Making a new ghodi on walnut wooden feet, and fitting a chrome tailpiece and the main machine heads.

Fitting the (5) main strings on the sitar body and tune them for a test. And then the same exciting decision: drill soundholes, or not …?? So again, first I made a short recording with the closed body. After the delicate surgery I recorded in the same conditions and distance to the microphone.

The soundholes

Play the sound WITHOUT soundholes

Play the sound WITH soundholes

The recorder again registered a gain profit of +8 dB. And also again the low frequencies are much better and more in balance with the rest of the strings. This confirms the same result as when creating soundholes on the SAS-01 for the first time. The overall sound is very similar to that sitar.

Riksha Ride

Sitar Factory Posted on by

Recently I made this recording during a short ride on a riksha in Delhi. Hari Chand and I started off from his house where traffic is reasonably calm and headed for the busstop on the main road. I’m using my H2 “handy recorder” and 2 DPA 4060 miniature microphones. Play soundscape Horn Please...

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One chapati, please sir

Sitar Factory Posted on by

During my last visit to Hari Chand in New Delhi,…

One evening we take a taxiscooter home. As usual the road is very busy. At a certain moment we are standing waiting for a red light together with many more road-users. All possible kinds of vehicles on 2, 3, 4 and sometimes more, sometimes less wheels stand bumper to bumper and criss-cross, the usual way. A long, red carnivalballoon is floating over the roofs in our direction. On the rope hangs a 12 year old girl. She tries to sell her balloon, but not much success. Not with me either. Immediately afterwards a big group of about 10 very poor and young kids- about 3 to 12 years old I guess – comes up. All of them are dressed in rags, the oldest ones carrying the smaller ones in their arms. Effortless and swiftly they brave this total traffic chaos. They have a target: me, a pardesi, a white skin…

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Play soundscape here

To follow the conversation in Hindi a bit, here’s a short glossary :

chapati = main food, thin round wheat pancake
roti = idem
khanna = to eat, food
bhukh = hungry
bukhar = fever
challo = go

Tanpura Restored

Sitar Factory Posted on by

Eventually even the restoration of an anonymous tanpura gets finished…

Sound sample: Play Listen how it sounds !!

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