mangala vadhyam namastubyam|
sri brahmapathni hastha viharam||
adhi goraroopam naadhaadharam|
sakala chalachala vastu mohitam||
That implies: take my respects the spiritual instrument. You rest in the hands of saraswathi (brahma pathni). You are the most beautiful and you are base for the mighty music. You are successful in attracting all the stationary and dynamic (living and non living) things. These four lines are part of the song I am about to compose later.
I have said almost all I want to say in the above four lines. Though I wish to continue my article.
VEENA... a lovely instrument with melodious tones made wood and strings. Everybody would have seen veena atleast once in their life time... She is wonderful creation believed to be made by lord paramashiva himself.
There are several types of veena found in our history viz. Rudra veena, saraswathi veena etc. Veena is one of the greatest asset of indians. Let us restrict our focus to the most common veena of today i.e. saraswathy veena. It has 7 strings, 4 for main notes and 3 will be used similar to chords. The strings have names and they are
1. main strings :
a. sadjama string
b. panchama string
c. mandhara string
d. anumandhara string
2. sarani strings or chord strings:
a. aathara sadjama string
b. aathara panchama string
c. thara sadjama string
The main strings are used for playing the main notes whereas the sarani or chord strings will be played according to the period of tala or beat. For this reason veena is also called as sakala vadhyam.
Our Indian carnatic music has one more prestigious feature called GAMAKAS. Gamakas is quite a difficult topic to speak about and understand. So for now let me stop with the simple detail of this. Gamakas are classified into 10 types and veena is the only instrument which supports all the 10 gamakas.
Octaves and strings:
1. The sadjama string gives 24 different frequencies in the aathara stayi and thara stayi. The notes starts from aathara sadjama to shiva thara stayi sadjama. It corresponds to the normal octave and the octave above of the keyboard.
2. The panjama string gives the frequencies from madhira stayi panchama to thaara stayi panjama. It corresponds to the notes in the range between 'G' in the octave below the normal octave and 'G' in the octave above normal octave.
3. The mandhara string gives frequencies from mandhara sadjama to thaara sadjama and this corresponds to the octave lying below the normal octave and normal octave of the piano or keyboard.
4. anumandhara string gives frequencies from anumandhara panjamam to the sadharana panjamam. To speak in terms of octaves it starts one and half octave below the normal octave and lies till the 'G' of the normal octave.
Working:
Almost everyone will be aware of the relation between frequency and length, thickness etc. of the vibrating element. The frequency is inversly proportional to the length and thickness of the vibrating element. This is the basic principle of operation in the veena. The vainikar (veena player) will change the length of the vibrating element by pressing the string with his two fingers above mettu in order to produce notes with different frequencies.
The property of thickness of the string and different natural frequency of different elements is exploited to make the different strings to have different free natural frequency (the frequency achieved with full length).
To conclude, It is not easy to restrict the veena to a single article. It is just a start. We will be in constant touch.
