Making musical instruments

Ideas and innovations in Indian classical music
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rshankar
Posts: 13754
Joined: 02 Feb 2010, 22:26

Making musical instruments

Post by rshankar »

I watched a program called Note by Note, a PBS program on the manufacturing of a Steinway concert grand piano - awe-inspiring to say the least - with just amazing snippets from interviews with a whole host of concert pianists seamlessly woven in.
I wonder if there are similar programs showing how our instruments are made...

Nick H
Posts: 9379
Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 02:03

Re: Making musical instruments

Post by Nick H »

I have seen some short films on youtube about such things, including mridangam, but I can't find them just now.

Once upon a time, people would not tell. Trade secrets!

One of my guruji's childhood stories is that he paid some money to a mridangam maker to show him the stones that are crushed to make the black paste. That man took him to some place and picked some pebbles which my guruji took home to show to his father. His father threw them away, beat him, and told him he had been swindled!

Things have changed: a generation, even a decade or two ago, these things were known only to the families in the trade; now the cameras enter the workshops and the results are on youtube! The mridangam makers, it seems to me, need never have worried. If you watch the painstaking making of that black circle it is plain that knowing the composition of the paste is about 0.0001% of the ability to actually do it!

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