Choose a raga and the brass frets move to its notes. Click a fret to pluck the main string, drag up to pull it into a meend, the long sliding notes of the sitar, and switch on the tanpura drone. Then start the tabla in Teentaal and play over the cycle.
A sitar alone is only half the story: here it comes with the drone that holds the raga together and the tabla that keeps the cycle.
On a real sitar the curved frets are moved to suit the raga. Here they move by themselves: choose Yaman and you get its raised Ma, choose Bhairav and Re and Dha turn flat, choose Malkauns and only five notes are left. Every fret is named in sargam, with flat notes underlined and dots for the low and high octaves.
Sitar players pull the string sideways across the fret to slide up to a higher note without plucking again. Press a fret and drag upwards: the string bends on screen and the note climbs up to four semitones, then falls back when you let go. On the keyboard, hold Shift to glide from the last note to the next.
The sitar's bridge is a wide, gently curved plate. The string brushes against it as it vibrates, which gives the bright, buzzing shimmer that fades with each note. GOONS models a plucked string with that contact built in, and lets the sympathetic strings under the frets ring softly when you play a note of the raga.
Indian classical music unfolds over a drone. Switch on the tanpura and its four strings cycle round: Pa, Sa, Sa and the low Sa, or Ma instead of Pa for ragas such as Malkauns that leave Pa out. Every note you play is heard against the tonic, which is what gives a raga its colour.
Start the theka, the basic pattern of a taal, and watch the cycle turn: Teentaal in sixteen beats, Jhaptaal in ten, Rupak in seven, Keherwa in eight and Dadra in six. The sam, the first beat, and the khali, the open beat, are marked on the circle, and the tempo goes from slow to very fast.
Aroha plays the raga going up, avaroha coming down, and Phrase a characteristic turn of the raga. Listen, then play it back on the frets. Each raga comes with the time of day it is traditionally played and its mood.
Press Tanpura: the drone gives you Sa, the home note. Keep it on all the time.
Press Aroha to hear Raga Yaman going up, then click the frets from Ni to high Sa yourself.
Press a fret and drag upwards to slide the note up, as sitar players do on long notes.
Press Play the theka in Teentaal, find the sam, the first beat, and land your phrases on it.
| Type | Sitar with tanpura and tabla, playable on this page, free |
|---|---|
| Frets | Notes of the raga from low Pa to high Pa, 10 to 15 frets, labelled in sargam |
| Ragas | Yaman, Bhairav, Kafi, Bhupali, Malkauns, Bilawal, Khamaj |
| Tonic | Sa on C, C#, D, D# or E |
| Playing | Pluck, glissando across frets, meend up to 4 semitones, chikari strings, glide with Shift |
| Sound | Karplus-Strong plucked string with jawari contact, sympathetic strings, body resonance, room reverb |
| Tanpura | Pa, Sa, Sa, low Sa (Ma for ragas without Pa), continuous |
| Tabla | Teentaal (16), Jhaptaal (10), Rupak (7), Keherwa (8), Dadra (6); 40 to 300 BPM; playable drums |
| Controls | Mouse, touch, computer keyboard by key position (frets on the middle and top rows, tabla on the bottom row) |
| Requirements | Any modern browser with Web Audio - Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari |
The sitar is the long-necked lute of Hindustani classical music, the classical tradition of North India. It took its present form around the 18th century. A sitar has six or seven main strings, some played and some used as drones, and eleven to thirteen sympathetic strings running under the curved, movable frets. A gourd, the tumba, makes it resonate, and the player plucks with a wire plectrum, the mizrab, worn on the index finger. Ravi Shankar brought its sound to audiences around the world in the 1960s.
A raga is more than a scale: it is a set of notes with its own way of going up and down, its important notes, its typical phrases and its mood. Yaman and Bilawal use almost the same notes, yet sound different because of one raised Ma and the phrases around it. Many ragas belong to a time of day: Bhairav at dawn, Yaman in the evening, Malkauns late at night. A performance usually starts with a slow, free exploration of the raga, the alap, before the tabla comes in.
Indian music names the seven notes Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha and Ni. Sa and Pa never change; Re, Ga, Dha and Ni can be komal, flat, written here in lower case and underlined, and Ma can be tivra, sharp, written Ma with an apostrophe. Sa is not a fixed pitch: choose the one that suits you, and every note follows. To go further with rhythm, open the online tabla, or try the handpan and its drone-like scales.
Yes. The sitar, tanpura and tabla at the top of this page are free, with no account and nothing to install. They run in your browser with the Web Audio API.
Press a fret and, without letting go, drag upwards: the note slides up as the string is pulled, by up to four semitones, and comes back when you release. On the keyboard, hold Shift while you press the next note to glide to it.
Bhupali or Yaman. Bhupali has only five notes, so every phrase sounds right; Yaman is the raga most students learn first, with all seven notes and a raised Ma.
The middle row of letters plays the frets from the lowest one, and the top row continues higher. Space strums the chikari drone strings, and the bottom row from Z to M plays tabla bols. Choose Keys in the labels to see each key on its fret.
The tanpura usually plays Pa and Sa. Ragas such as Malkauns leave Pa out, so musicians retune the first string to Ma, and the Raga Room does the same automatically.
The Raga Room is free, with no account. GOONS Studio adds a looper, synths, drum machines and a sequencer that play together - free for 7 days, no card required.
Free on this page, no account. Play the online tabla →