OFF/HW: double bass...who's on first? what's on second?

[Chris Gibbs]

Hi ya,


> > A sitar has moveable frets... you slide the frets up and down to get
> > different tunings.
> >
> Are you sure of this?  I don't know a hell of a lot about sitars, but I
> thought that the frets were very high, which allowed for differing
> finger pressure, making it possible to vary the pitch of the note by
> pressing the string closser to the fretboard.  This is the same effect
> sought by guitarists who have the fretboards of their guitars
> scalloped [e.g. Yngwie and Ritchie Blackmore]...

Yes I'm certain!!!

I know of two types of sitar,  the only difference is one type has a
single gurd at the bottom as a sound box the other type has a second
smaller gurd at the top.

There are loads of sympathetic strings that can't be played, they
resonate to the main strings to make the full sound you hear.  The frets
slide up and down to give different tunings.  The frets are much higher
than the fret board because you got the sympathetic strings under.   I
don't think you can push the playing strings onto the fret board for
that reason but I could be wrong

The bass strings are not or seldom played in Indian classical music
because as I said they are for meditation only.   In Indial classical
music there are parts that must be played as fast as possible (faster
you play the better you are and Ravi Shankar is f%^&ing fast!,  a good
player can do over 600 notes per minuite...  Jimi eat yer heart out)
You have to keep dipping your fingers in some weird liquid or they get
cut to shreds as you slide em up and down the strings

This is the sum of my knowledge it came from I guy I met who spent 6
years in Indea learning to play...  I thought he was good... he thought
he was shite
--
Plato, by the way, wanted to banish all poets from his proposed Utopia
because they were liars.  The truth was that Plato knew philosophers
couldn't compete successfully with poets.
                -- Kilgore Trout (Philip J. Farmer) "Venus on the Half
                   Shell