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S R U T I The India Music and Dance Society PA, DE and NJ |
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| sruti by Mark Butler - 9/25/2006 Post a Response |
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Hello, I have some questions about sruti boxes. I play guitar in an Irish folk band. Last weekend I attended a music festival at which a performer was playing the flute while accompanying himself with a drone from a sruti box. He was sitting down and had one foot resting on top of his box to hold it in place, while his other foot pushed in the bellows of the box. I have been looking for an instrument like this for a couple of years now & have even toyed with the idea of using a custom-made harmonica with the same notes on the blow & draw holes. Anyway to get to the point, I would like to use a sruti box while accompanying Irish fiddle tunes on my guitar. Since I would like to be standing up on the stage rather than sitting, I have a problem with how to operate the box bellows. My initial idea is to construct a shallow open wooden box for the sruti box to sit in (lodged up against one end of it) and to fasten a bass drum pedal onto the bottom of the other end of the wooden box so that when I depress the pedal, the bass 'drumstick' pushes in the bellow and when I release the pedal the bellows come back out. There are probably much better solutions, but this is what I have at the moment. Here are my questions... 1. Are all sruti boxes tuned to standard western pitch (A=440hz)? 2. I have read that some sruti box bellows are spring-loaded while others use the force of gravity to move them in & out. Which of these 2 types of sruti box would be the best for operating while standing up? 3. I have read that there a different types of tuning buttons- some you pull out others you turn, and that some tuning devices allow you to produce a drone with more than one note. Which would be the best for the purpose of accompanying Irish tunes- playing 1 or 2 notes (the tonic & dominant)? 4. Do all sruti boxes produce a constant drone without interruption as the bellows switches direction, or are some better than others? 5. How much can I expect to pay for a good quality functional box? 6. Who/Where are some good sruti box sellers? 7. Are there any considerations for obtaining a sruti box which I have overlooked? This is quite a lot of questions. If you can answer any of them I would be very grateful. Thanks! |
| Responses |
  RE: sruti -- Uma Prabhakar, 10/12/2006 RE: Shruti Box -- Mark B, 10/21/2006 |
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