I was fascinated by this beautiful instrument called SAROD !.
I took to this beautiful instrument for its superb tonal quality.
Sarod is one of the difficult instrument to play because as you can see there are no frets, so you are required to have a very refined ear which can catch the right notes while playing ( yeah, i know it sounds scary :) ).
Secondly, due to the accessibility problem you face while playing.
But as they say no gain without pain ( but the pain over here is sweet one ;) )
Sarod has a very interesting history which i would like to share with you all.
Let's discuss the development of the modern sarod and its ancestry -
(taken from interview of the great sarod maestro Pt Buddhadev Das Gupta)
Let us start right from the beginning: we have all our researches and explorations pointing to primitive man's bow and arrow as the first stringed instrument. Then bows sometimes had 2 strings, sometimes different bows of different sizes emitted different sounds which triggered the science of pitch, octave, the difference in notes, and all that. The next important discovery was that the stem of the instrument was in 2 parts basically: One was a piece of wood, strong enough to hold the tension of the string, and the other was the string itself. When this frame, or yoke, or the stem of the instrument accidentally was a hollow one, or was placed on some hollow object, the vibrations of the strings were magnified, the sound increased in volume. From here started the science of the air chamber of the instrument. Sometimes the stem itself was hollow, which itself was the air chamber; sometimes a specially big air chamber was introduced at the end of the hollow stem which gives you the sitar, tanpura and this family. And sometimes the air chamber was extended partially down the stem or right down the length of the stem, being the biggest and broadest at the base and tapering away; this gives you the sarod, the guitar, the lute also to some extent and a few other instruments. Quite a few instruments all over the world have similar shapes and sizes with minor variations. Now coming to the Indian instruments, all stringed instruments, whatever their shapes and sizes, were generally termed as veenas. Depending on the shapes, sizes and other things they acquired different names: Saraswati veena, Rudra veena, this veena, that veena, Tritantri veena. Two or three names stand-out in particular which have relevance to the sarod: one was the Sharadiya veena, the other was the Rudra veena. I have some slides of these instruments taken from the Calcutta Museum; I do not know the actual age of the specimens shown there but some of them might have been made up from descriptions received from old books and other things. However, the Sharadiya veena and the Rudra veena were much alike and nearly three or four hundred years ago, or even earlier, they had travelled to Afghanistan and been adapted for their own special purpose. Side by side, there was an evolution of the Indian rabab. The Indian rabab was somewhat like the Afghan rabab but much larger in size. Instead of steel strings there were cat-guts; instead of a steel plate there was a polished wooden fingerboard. This rabab also had its limitation in the same way as the Afghan rabab-it could not have long glides, but it had some glide which was utilized to the best advantage. Tansen's descendents streamed out into two basic branches of rababiya plus dhrupadiya, and beenkar plus dhrupadiya. Tansen's daughter, Saraswati, was married-off to one beenkar named Misri Singh, or Nabat Khan-their descendents played veena, and of course, sang dhrupad. Tansen's son, Bilas Khan, and his descendents were rababiyas plus dhrupadiyas. Dhrupad was common to each. Now come over to Afghanistan; the Rudra veena, Sharadiya veena or whatever it was, or even the Indian rabab-there were frequent exchanges of these instruments across the boarder-the derivative in Afghanistan was the small Afghan rabab, and it was played in the martial way. Martial tunes or compositions were played on it while marching into battle. We had three or four of these Afghan equestrians coming over and settling down in India. One was Ghulam Bandegi Khan Banghash; his grandson was Ghulam Ali Khan. Ghulam Ali Khan had three sons: Hussain Ali, Murad Ali and Nanhe Khan. Hussain Ali's son was Asgar Ali Khan. Murad Ali's son was Mohammed Abdullah Khan; and his sons were Ameer Khan and Wazir Khan. From Nanhe Khan descended Hafiz Ali, Amjad and his brothers. Likewise there were two others, one settled in Shahjehanpur and the other settled somewhere near Lucknow. The earlier rabab players in each of these families were inducted into Tansen's musical training particularly through their discipleships with two or three important Ustads of Tansen's family-Zaffar Khan, Barsat Khan, Chhaddu Khan, and so on and so forth. They were rababiyas, beenkars, and when these people learned dhrupad, they naturally wanted to translate dhrupad into their instrument but the instrument was not obliging, which was what lead to the exploration for a better instrument. Eventually, the sarod evolved from here, not merely the sarod but through another channel the sursringar also evolved; before that the rabab was there. Do you know how the sursringar was invented? Either Barsat Khan or Zaffar Khan, he played rabab, and because the rabab drum has got a hide on it-and is a very big drum-during the rainy season the hide got damp and the vibrations were shorter lived. He replaced the hide with the top of a sitar or surbahar, and replaced the wooden fingerboard with a steel plate. This instrument was no longer vulnerable to the rains or damp. Sarod was likewise developed in all these three families; each family claims that they were the originators of the modern sarod but the latest finishing touches to the sarod were given by somebody belonging to a totally different gharana, Ustad Allauddin Khan. He made the drum bigger and rounder, and added four extra strings, which were called tanpura strings. The tonality of the instrument improved, and the mirs, the glides were longer sustained and all that.
Checkout more on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarod
