Bol Technique for the Sitar

Video Transcript

"In Hindi Bol means word and you can have Bol of a song, the words of a song, lyrics. Bol in poetry and for instrumentalists as well as for percussionists the Bol is the sound produced with your hands and also the way it is produced. And we use onomatopoeia to represent the Bols and use that we recite those, particularly Tabla players do but we also learn them. That helps us remember, it is like a pneumonic, to help us remember what to do with your hand. So the sound like Dah the down stroke or up stroke sorry, Dah is the upstroke in Sitar or Rah the down stroke or combined DahRah or combined and doubled DiDi. So those are the basics and then you combine them to make larger strings of Bols. So for example, Dah dah dah that is the most common way you would play a scale with your right hand you wouldn’t go Dah dah dah. It is like talking backwards. Dah is supposed to be followed by Rah. Right now at this stage this is just to teach your hand how to move and you actually though use these in performance only you usually play them faster. "