Musical instruments have always created curiosity, amazement and admiration among those artistes who invented, played and enjoyed their sounds. The ancient Greeks attributed their invention to gods or to legendary figures.
Therefore, those who mastered their secrets (of playing) were held in high esteem, as they were believed to have possessed supernatural powers.
A musical instrument is a man-made device that is capable of producing sweet sounds and launching vibrations into the air. Each instrument, according to its capacity, enables a musician to control the four essential properties of musical sound - pitch, duration, volume and timbre.
Before man invented his first instrument, his body served as his musically expressive mechanism both for vocal melody and, through slapping and stamping, for rhythm. To increase its impact, he created rude rattles, drums and clappers with which the history of musical instruments began. In no other musical device the contact between a performer and the mode of melodic expression is so intimate as in a human voice and in none other expression so personal and direct.
Voice is the ideal exponent of lyric melody and has consistently remained a model for those who made musical instruments and for those who used these for venting their creative melodic ideas. Musical instruments can do things that are some times impossible for voice to execute, yet while expressing praises for a performer one often says that he have made his instrument sing.
The most popular indigenous instruments in vogue in Pakistan are flute, sarod, sitar, sarangi, rubab, iktara, alghoza and taanpura. There were some others instruments such as dilruba, taoos, been and vichter veena, which have already been consigned to the dustbin of history. This piece of writing concerns itself with musical instrument sarod, which is made by carving a 1.3 meter long piece of wood. The top portions of sarod, which resemble a peacock, are crowded with a set of wooden pegs. Some sarods have top portions, which are different in shape. An ivory piece is fixed on it through which iron strings are passed.
The portion below is called a 'daant', or the main body, upon which a metallic plate is laid. This is called fingerplate, which is used while playing this instrument. The volume of a note produced by a sarod depends upon the length of the 'daant'. On one side of this metallic sheet is the place, which is designed for resting the 'tarabs', the resonant strings. On the lower portion of the 'daant' are fixed wooden keys to which the resonant strings are linked.
Beyond these there is the remaining part of sarod, which is round in shape and is called the belly. It is covered with animal skin upon which a special bridge made of ivory or animal bone is placed. On the other side of it, a small 'toombi' (resonant gourd) is attached.
The larger the size of a sarod's base the greater becomes the volume of its pitch. A large sarod generally is 2.5 feet long, whereas the one used for producing high frequency tones is about two inches shorter in length. This instrument is tuned by manipulating its wooden keys and pegs. Out of its four upper wires, the first one is tuned to the fourth (ma), the second to the tonic (sa), the third to lower fifth (pa) and the fourth to the second (re) or the tonic (sa).
Sarod is played with the help of a plectrum (called jawwa) held in the right hand while the instrument rests on the lap of the player. The plectrum is made of coconut skin or a plastic piece.Like a sarangi, the notes of sarod are manipulated with the nails of the fingers of the left hand.
The richness of its timbre and the throbbing tones are produced when the player moves his fingers slightly away from and back to the required spot on his sarod, which produces sweet and mellow sound. Sarod is also capable of producing brilliance and dramatic effects, of subtle nuances from soft to loud, of the utmost rhythmic precision and great agility in rapid passages.
The invention of this musical instrument is attributed to the ancestors of famous sarod player late Ustad Hafiz Ali Khan, who belonged to the Bangesh tribe of Afghanistan, who produced it making some alterations in the shape of a rubab. So great was the popularity of sarod in the Afghanistan of the bygone days that many performers used to spearheaded the army columns when they marched towards battlefields.
Composer Nazar Hussain during his association with Radio Pakistan, Hyderabad, broadcast his sarod music for several years. Asad Qizilbash, the Islamabad-based non-gharana musician uses this instrument to convey his melodic expression at radio, TV and stage. In neighbouring India Ustad Amjad Ali Khan and his two sons occupy top positions in the hierarchy of sarod players in that country.