Long-necked stringed insturment of northern India, the Sitar dominant intrument in Hundustani music. Sitar is the most popular plucked stringed instrument of India and has been in use for about 700 years. Sitar is used in a variety of genre. It is played in north Indian classical music Hindustani Sangeet Bollywood music and western fusion music. It is not commonly found in south Indian classical performances or folk music. The sitar developed during the collapse of the Moghul empire and it reflected the culture of the times in that it showed both Indian and Persian characteristics. It is crafted of natural materials by extremely talented and well trained craftsmen.

This long necked instrument has an interesting construction. It uses sympathetic strings along with a gourd resonating chamber to produce a very lush sound. It has a varying number of strings but 17 is usual; It has three to four playing strings and three to four drone strings. The approach to tuning is somewhat similar to other Indian stringed instruments. There are also a series of sympathetic strings lying under the frets, these strings vibrate whenever the corresponding note is sounded. The frets are metal rods which have been bent into crescents. The main resonator is usually made of a gourd and there is sometimes an additional resonator attached to the neck. It is used in esembles and as a solo intrument with the tamboura and Tabla.In the 13th century, Amir Khusru, in order to make the instrument more flexible, reversed the order of the strings and made the frets moveable. Ravi Shankar, the great musician-artist brought changes and a new perspective.

The tuning of a sitar varies depending on sitarists school or style. There are a number of options in tuning and stringing the sitar. Even the same instrument will be tuned differently from piece to piece, according to the requirements of the rag. The sympathetic strings are tuned to the notes of the raga being played, although there is slight stylistic variance as to the order of these. The player will usually re-tune the sitar for each raga. The strings are tuned by turning the pegs that hold the strings. The main playing strings are fine-tuned by sliding a bead fit around each string. However, it may be rather difficult to tune a sitar, bacause there are many different tunings, each based on the cadre of traditional and emerging tonal patterns or on the music of eminently influential sitar players.

While playing the sitar, the dominant hand is used to pluck the string using a metallic plectrum called the mezrab. When playing sitar, the thumb of the plucking hand should stay anchored on the top of the fretboard just above the main gourd. The instrument should be balanced between the player`s left foot and right knee. The hands should move freely without having to carry any of the instrument`s weight. Generally only the index and middle fingers of the left are used for fingering although a few players occasionally use the third. Thus it demands a very high degree of technical mastery to play even simple melodies with clarity and accuracy. However, for learning the sitar, the traditional approaches involve a long period of apprenticeship under the tutelage of a master during which the apprentice would accompany the master with a tambura, providing a droning chord harmony for the sitar`s melody.