Indian Music Theory/Stringed Musical Instruments

Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

You can Google "Indian Ragas." There's also a book on the topic: The Ragas of Northern Indian Music by Alain Danielou.

I know you would prefer pre-Mughal music, but for the hand positions, you might want to take a close look at Mughal miniatures. Many of them feature musicians.

Hope that helps.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

I can't help much with Indian music, though I do have a friend who studied it briefly. If you have any questions, I could ask him for you. I could tell you all about baroque, classical or romantic music though.
I do play a string instrument - a double bass - so I could tell you aaaaaall about those. Though if you're looking at plucked instruments, it might be more of a guitar/ukelele thing, or a maybe a harp.
Again, I only know the basics of guitars and harps and the like, but I know friends who play them. So if you've got any questions, I know people I could ask.
There are, I think, a few different types of harps. I've only tried the sort with pedals which change the notes to make them sharp, flat and natural, but apparently there's another type where you don't do that, there are little pegs you turn at the top. Don't take my word on that, since I learned that around 7 years ago in a primary school musical instruments introduction session and I've pretty much forgotten everything. The only point I scored in my favour when I had a go on the harp was that I didn't manage to drop and break it.Pretty complicated instruments... I've got someone I could ask for you if yo have any harp related queries.
On instruments like guitars and ukeleles, or I suppose mandolins and banjos (never tried one of those), there are frets, and you need to land your finger between the right ones. Any space between two frets is the same note. So their big danger is not landing on the right note. But there are soooo many more things, like using the most effective fingering or, sometimes, just moving your fingers fast enough to find new notes for the next chord. It's a bit difficult to explain without using a real guitar, but sometimes, starter guitar players, as with starter double bass players, move around unnecessarily on the fingerboard. A lot more often than they need. Because there is more than one way to play the same note, experienced guitar players can think of an efficient fingering much faster than beginners.
Another big thing is tuning. You need a reasonable ear for music so you can at least get the open strings right before you start playing notes. An out of tune instrument is bad bad bad.
I hope that helps, though it was probably just a lot of blab containing not much information. And my sincere apologies if there's anything in there which is false and someone points it out later, because that's just as much as I know. But I do know a lot of people I could ask, if there's a specific thing you're after.

Rachel Udin said:

If someone is of higher level, I'm kind of looking for the Music theory/philosophy behind the music. i.e. how is it culturally parsed. (I know it's fuzzy, but if you asked someone the difference between Baroque and other styles and why it was thought and created that way... that's the same kind of thing I'm kind of fishing for.)

Click to expand...

I think that is a huge topic that could take up lifetime of study and research.

Imagine a similar question about Western music -- the influence of religion, the development of the flat seventh, (so integral to out music, was once considered "the diabolis") the effects of numerology on ratios in musical scales, early motets that contained coded messages, etc. More than a lifetime of study..

One simple difference between Indian and Western music is that Western music depends on hugely on harmony as its foundation, i.e. the relation between two or more notes played at the same time, while in Indian music harmony is negligible and unimportant.

Here's a simple link I found, however.

Indian music can be said to philosophically7 be a manifestation of the divine, but the same could be said of William Byrd's masses and motets

http://www.indianetzone.com/47/philosophy_indian_music.htm