Vichitra veena

• Wikipedia: Vichitra veena
• Family: Strings
• Description: The vichitra veena a plucked string instrument used in Hindustani music. It is similar to the Carnatic gottuvadhyam (chitra vina). It has no frets and is played with a slide.
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vichitra veena
Large North Indian fretless stick zither
it has two large sound gourds
body teak, sisam, tun
fretless it is played by the strings slide, is a glass ball. named batta
carved as fashioned into peacock heads,
4-4-6 main/ string
3 supporting + 1or 2 chikari (bordun) (little finger)
15 tarab 13 resonance/13 sympathetic strings
mizrab plectrum batta glass orb slide
it is played like the ancient ekatantri vina

The vichitra veena is a North Indian instrument used in Hindustani music and looks quite similar to the rudra veena. The difference is that the vichitra veena has no frets - it is played with a "slide"

The body is made from teakwood, more wider than the round shape of the rudra veena, and with a small body. Also both ends have a wood carving (often of a bird). Besides the 7 main strings, there are about 12 resonance strings, with the pegs on the side of the neck (facing the player).

It is played sitting down with the instrument horizontally in front of the player. The right hand picks with a wire plectrum, while the left hand "frets" with some piece of rounded glass.

It has, like the Rudra-Vina, two large pumpkin resonators, however does not have a resonant tube across which the strings are running. Instead, it has a fretless, very wide neck-body, on which the resonant strings, the pegs and the bridge are positioned. The player puts the Vichitra-Vina on the floor in front of himself for playing and plucks the strings like the Rudra-Vina with picks on the index and middle fingers. The drone strings are played with the little finger. The pitch is varied, like the bottleneck technique of the slide guitar, by moving a smoothly polished stone across the playing strings.

Vichitra-vina: An instrument whose structure is similar to that of the bin but without frets. It lies on the ground on its two resonators and is played by sliding a polished stone or a glass sphere on the strings. The playing technique is reminiscent of that of the ancient ekatantri-vina.

A stringed instrument used in Hindustani music. This is the rudra veena but without frets and is played like a gotuvadyam of the South.

The Vichitra Veena emerged towards the beginning of the twentieth century and is descended from the ekatantri veena or the ghoshvati veena as it was known, prior to the 6th century. It shared the same sound production techniques as the ekatantri.

Until the 6th century, stringed instruments were not fretted. The first fretted veena, created by Matunga, the writer of Brihaddeshi, was called the kinnari veena. The Rudra Veena which has its roots in ancient times and which probably obtained its finals shape towards the beginning of the Mughal period has evolved from the kinnari veena. The main difference being in the arrangement of frets and the number of gourds used. The ekatantri veena which had its roots in Bharat’s pratyanga type of veena also attained prominence around this time and reigned supreme till about the thirteenth century. The popularity of the ekatantri veena waned between the 13th and the first half of the nineteenth centuries, giving way to the kinnari veena

the northern vicitrā (colourful) vīṇā is structurally a hybrid of the bīṇ sitār type: it has a wide neck (about 10 cm) which is flat on top and rounded in section beneath (about 3 cm), and pegs for the sympathetic strings set in proximal side (the playing position is as for the goṭṭuvādyam; fig 6) . the neck terminates on the right in an integrated, wood-covered resonator, which in some cases is smaller and pear_shaped, in others larger and similar to that of the sitar. The instrument rests on two large bottle-gourds which are screwed into the back of the neck. The main strings are tunes in descending 4th and 5ths (see §7); the slider (baṭṭā) is a glass egg.