सरोद
The sarod is one of the two primary instrumental concert instruments of Hindustani classical music (the other being the sitar). Its fretless metal neck, played with the fingernails, produces a distinctive sound — deeper and more resonant than the sitar, with a powerful bass register and the ability to execute precise, extended meend (glides) across the fingerboard.
The sarod has a small waisted body with a skin head (rather than the wooden soundboard of the sitar), a metal-fingerboard neck (rather than a fretted wooden neck), and typically twenty-five strings: four main melody strings, one chikari string, a jod string, two drone strings, and fifteen sympathetic strings. The body is typically made of seasoned teak or sagwan wood.
The sarod is played with a triangular plectrum made from coconut shell or plastic. The left hand stops the strings on the smooth metal fingerboard using the fingernails, allowing for the smooth glides essential to classical music. The fretless neck means the musician must develop an internal sense of precise intonation without any visual or tactile markers — a demanding technical requirement that takes many years to develop fully.
The sarod developed in the nineteenth century from the Afghan rabab brought by the court musicians of the Afghan rulers of north India. The musician Ghulam Bandegi Khan Bangash is credited with transforming the rabab into something closer to the modern sarod. His descendants — particularly Ustad Hafiz Ali Khan and his son Ustad Amjad Ali Khan — have been the most important custodians of the sarod tradition. Ustad Ali Akbar Khan (son of Ustad Allauddin Khan) developed a parallel tradition that is equally significant.
The sarod's deep, resonant sound gives Hindustani classical music a tonal dimension that the sitar, with its brighter character, cannot fully provide. The two instruments together — as in the famous Ravi Shankar-Ali Akbar Khan collaborations — cover the full range of what the melodic tradition requires. The sarod's technical difficulty means that those who master it fully are among the most complete musicians the tradition produces.