A Sympitar is a modern form of

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

combining functional aspects of the guitar and the

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

sitar The sitar ( or ; ) is a plucked stringed instrument, originating from the Indian subcontinent, used in Hindustani classical music. The instrument was invented in medieval India, flourished in the 18th century, and arrived at its present form in ...

. This instrument has a unique feature: there is a

graphite Graphite () is a crystalline form of the element carbon. It consists of stacked layers of graphene. Graphite occurs naturally and is the most stable form of carbon under standard conditions. Synthetic and natural graphite are consumed on large ...

channel which guides a series of "sympathetic" resonating strings through the

neck The neck is the part of the body on many vertebrates that connects the head with the torso. The neck supports the weight of the head and protects the nerves that carry sensory and motor information from the brain down to the rest of the body. In ...

from the

bridge A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually somethi ...

up to the

headstock A headstock or peghead is part of a guitar or similar stringed instruments such as a lute, mandolin, banjo, ukulele and others of the lute lineage. The main function of a headstock is to house the pegs or mechanism that holds the strings at the ...

. These strings vibrate or resonate against a "jiwari" bridge, which produces the sustaining drone typically associated with

Indian music Owing to India's vastness and diversity, Indian music encompasses numerous genres in multiple varieties and forms which include classical music, folk (Bollywood), rock, and pop. It has a history spanning several millennia and developed ove ...

. The instrument(s) also have at least 6 standard

guitar string A string is the vibrating element that produces sound in string instruments such as the guitar, harp, piano (piano wire), and members of the violin family. Strings are lengths of a flexible material that a musical instrument holds under tensi ...

s which traverse the length of the neck just as they do for a standard steel-string acoustic guitar. Depending on the notes played and on how the

sympathetic string Sympathetic strings or resonance strings are auxiliary strings found on many Indian musical instruments, as well as some Western Baroque instruments and a variety of folk instruments. They are typically not played directly by the performer (excep ...

s are tuned, the sympitar's sympathetic strings will produce long waves of resonating notes, either in

harmonic A harmonic is a wave with a frequency that is a positive integer multiple of the ''fundamental frequency'', the frequency of the original periodic signal, such as a sinusoidal wave. The original signal is also called the ''1st harmonic'', the ...

enharmonic In modern musical notation and tuning, an enharmonic equivalent is a note, interval, or key signature that is equivalent to some other note, interval, or key signature but "spelled", or named differently. The enharmonic spelling of a written n ...

response. The inventor of the sympitar is the master

luthier A luthier ( ; AmE also ) is a craftsperson who builds or repairs string instruments that have a neck and a sound box. The word "luthier" is originally French and comes from the French word for lute. The term was originally used for makers o ...

Fred Carlson. There are only a few sympitars in existence, all commissioned as custom builds. Notably, Alex de Grassi often plays a custom Carlson sympitar maple with spruce top.''Alex de Grassi''
/ref> Fred Carlson also spends his time in the workshop building a variation on the sympitar called the "

harp The harp is a stringed musical instrument that has a number of individual strings running at an angle to its soundboard; the strings are plucked with the fingers. Harps can be made and played in various ways, standing or sitting, and in orche ...

sympitar", the first of which, completed in January 2002, was the Oracle Harp Sympitar commissioned by guitarist Jeffrey Titus and dedicated to the memory of

Michael Hedges Michael Alden Hedges (December 31, 1953 – December 2, 1997) was an American acoustic guitarist and songwriter. Early years The son of Thayne Alden Hedges and Ruth Evelyn Hedges Ipsen, Michael Hedges was born in Sacramento, California. His l ...

References

{{Reflist

External links

London Guitar AcademyWebsite of Fred Carlson, the inventor of the Sympitar
Guitars