Used throughout the Indian subcontinent, particularly in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, the sitar became known in the western world through the work of Pandit Ravi Shankar beginning in the late 1950s and early 1960s after The Kinks' top 10 single.
The sitar saw further use in popular music after The Beatles featured the sitar in their compositions, namely "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" and "Within You Without You". Their use of the instrument came as a result of George Harrison taking lessons on how to play it from Shankar and Shambhu Das. Shortly after, The Rolling Stones used a sitar in "Paint It, Black" and a brief fad began for using the instrument in pop songs.
The sitar's curved frets are movable, allowing fine tuning, and raised so that sympathetic strings (tarb, also known as "taarif" or "tarafdaar") can run underneath them. A sitar can have 21, 22, or 23 strings, among them six or seven played strings which run over the frets and has six playable strings, whereas the Kharaj-pancham sitar, used in the Maihar gharana, to which Pt. Ravi Shankar belongs, has seven. Three of these (or four on a Kharaj-pancham sitar), called the chikaari, simply provide a drone: the rest are used to play the melody, though the first string (baajtaar) is most used.
The instrument has two bridges; the large bridge (badaa goraa) for the playing and drone strings and the small bridge (chota goraa) for the sympathetic strings. Its timbre results from the way the strings interact with the wide, sloping bridge. As a string reverberates its length changes slightly as its edge touches the bridge, promoting the creation of overtones and giving the sound its distinctive tone. The maintenance of this specific tone by shaping the bridge is called jawari. Many musicians rely on instrument makers to adjust this.
Materials used in construction include teak wood or tun wood (Cedrela tuna), which is a variation of mahogany, for the neck and faceplate (tabli), and gourds for the kaddu (the main resonating chamber). The instrument's bridges are made of deer horn, ebony, or very occasionally from camel bone. Synthetic material is now common as well. The sitar may have a secondary resonator, the tumbaa, near the top of its hollow neck.
The instrument is balanced between the player's left foot and right knee. The hands move freely without having to carry any of the instrument's weight. The player plucks the string using a metallic pick or plectrum called a mizraab. The thumb stays anchored on the top of the fretboard just above the main gourd. Generally only the index and middle fingers are used for fingering although a few players occasionally use the third. A specialized technique called "meand" involves pulling the main melody string down over the bottom portion of the sitar's curved frets, with which the sitarist can achieve a 7 semitone range of microtonal notes (it should be noted, however, that because of the sitar's movable frets, sometimes a fret may be set to a microtone already, and no bending would be required). Adept players bring in charisma through use of special techniques.
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