How to use it
Pick your Sa — the tonic, the note everything you sing or play is measured against — and press Start the drone. The tanpura plucks its four strings in turn, the way a player does, and keeps going until you stop it. Change anything while it plays: a new key re-tunes it on the next pluck, and the fine-tune slider moves every string that is still ringing, like sliding the bead under the bridge.
You can also play it yourself. Tap a string on the drawing to pluck it, or sweep a finger across all four; on a keyboard, 1 to 4 pluck the strings and Space starts and stops the drone.
The four strings
A tanpura plays no melody. It plays one cycle, forever: the first string, the two middle strings, then the deep low Sa — and a pause while that last one rings — then round again. Written the way a teacher writes it: Pa Sa Sa Sa — Pa Sa Sa Sa —.
- String 1 — Pa, Ma or Ni, in the lower octave: the Pa sits a fourth below the middle Sa, not a fifth above it.
- Strings 2 and 3 — Sa, your Sa, the same pitch twice. They are the reference your ear holds on to.
- String 4 — Sa an octave below, the heaviest string. It carries the cycle and rings through the pause.
The first string is a pure interval, not the piano’s: Pa is exactly 3/2 above the low Sa, which is 1.96 cents wider than the equal-tempered fifth. That sounds like nothing and is the whole difference between a drone that settles and one that slowly pulses. The tanpura tuner explains why, and how to tune a real one to the same ratios.
Choosing the first string
Only the first string ever changes, because it is the only one that is not a Sa. The rule is two questions about the raga:
| Tuning | Ratio | When | For example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pa Sa Sa Sa | 3/2 | The raga uses Pa | Yaman, Bhairav, Bhupali |
| Ma Sa Sa Sa | 4/3 | No Pa, but natural (shuddha) Ma | Malkauns, Chandrakauns, Lalit |
| Ni Sa Sa Sa | 15/8 | No Pa and no shuddha Ma | Marwa, Puriya, Sohini |
The reason is simple once said: a drone that keeps sounding a note the raga leaves out is arguing with the melody. Marwa is the classic trap — it has no Pa, but its Ma is the sharp (tivra) one, so a drone on natural Ma would put a note under the singer that the raga does not contain. That is why it takes Ni.
Riyaz with a drone
The tanpura is not accompaniment in the ordinary sense — it is the ruler everything else is measured against. Three ways to use it:
- Hold Sa against it. Sing a long Sa on “aa” and listen for the moment your voice disappears into the strings. When you are slightly off, you hear a slow wobble — beating — between your note and theirs. Chase the wobble away. That is intonation practice in its purest form.
- Kharaj (low-note) practice. Sing down to the low Pa and the low Sa, the notes strings 1 and 4 are playing. The drone gives you both targets at once.
- Slow scales. Sa Re Ga Ma Pa, each note held for a whole cycle. Every note of a raga has a place relative to Sa, and the drone is what makes that place audible.
Keys, in letters and harmonium names
Indian singers are usually taught their key by the harmonium key they start on, counted up from C along the white (safed) and black (kali) keys. The keys above show both names:
| Letter | C | C♯ | D | D♯ | E | F | F♯ | G | G♯ | A | A♯ | B |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Harmonium | Safed 1 | Kali 1 | Safed 2 | Kali 2 | Safed 3 | Safed 4 | Kali 3 | Safed 5 | Kali 4 | Safed 6 | Kali 5 | Safed 7 |
The instrument follows the key: C to F plays a large (male) tanpura with its deeper gourd, G to B a small (female) one. Override it under The sound if you prefer the other body — a large tanpura tuned high is a common choice for instrumentalists.
The jawari, and what the slider does
The strings of a tanpura run over a broad, gently curved bridge, the jawari, with a thread placed under each string so that it just grazes the curve as it swings. That grazing is the tanpura’s sound: acousticians describe it as a narrow band of strong overtones that appears just after the pluck and then slides slowly down in pitch as the string loses energy. It is the shimmer you hear “moving” inside a well-set drone.
The Jawari slider sets how strongly the string touches. At zero it is a plain plucked string — what a tanpura sounds like with its threads pulled out. Around the middle it blooms; fully open it buzzes the way a freshly adjusted instrument does. On a real tanpura this is set with the thread, not the pegs; the tuner page covers that adjustment.
Frequently asked questions
How do I find my Sa?
Press Find my Sa and sing the note you would comfortably start a song on — low and relaxed, not the lowest note you can reach — and hold it for two seconds. The tanpura is set to the nearest key, with the exact number of cents if you want the drone tuned to your voice rather than your voice to the drone. If you already know your key from a harmonium, pick it directly: every key is labelled with its harmonium name, so Kali 5 is A♯ and Safed 1 is C.
Which key should a man or a woman sing in?
There is no key for a voice type, only for a voice. As a rough guide, many men sing Sa somewhere between C and E, and many women between G♯ and A♯ — but a baritone, a teenager and a trained tenor are three different answers, and the right Sa is the one where your lower and upper octaves are both comfortable. That is what Find my Sa is for. Start there, then move a semitone at a time until the low Pa and the high Sa are both easy.
What tempo should the tanpura be?
Slow and even. The default is one full cycle every 4.8 seconds — four plucks and a rest — which sits comfortably under an alap or slow practice. A drone is not a metronome: the point is a continuous cloud of sound with no gaps, so if you hear the strings as separate events, slow it down or open the jawari. Faster cycles suit a brisk khayal or bhajan; the slider goes from 2.4 to 12 seconds a cycle.
Why does a concert have two tanpuras?
Because one tanpura has a gap. Every cycle ends on a rest after the low Sa, and a second instrument plucked half a cycle later fills it, so the drone never thins out. The two are also never perfectly identical — tuned by two people, or by one person by ear — and the slight difference between them makes the sound wider and livelier. Switch on Second tanpura to hear both: the second one is set half a cycle behind and a little under two cents apart, and sits on the other side of the stereo field.
Is this a real tanpura recording?
No — it is a physical model, and that is deliberate. A recording is one instrument at one pitch, and moving it to your Sa means stretching it, which smears the very overtones that make a tanpura sound like one. This drone is built fresh for your exact Sa, down to the cent, from what the jawari bridge physically does to a string: a narrow band of strong overtones that appears just after the pluck and slides slowly downward as the string settles. The Jawari slider sets how open that band is. What is modelled rather than measured is said plainly: the exact frequencies of the band, the body resonances of the two instrument sizes, and the pluck.
Can I use it while I practise on another app or record myself?
Yes. On a computer it keeps playing in a background tab. On a phone, keep this page open: the screen is kept on while the drone plays, and on iPhone, browser audio stops when the screen locks. If you want a drone for another app, a video or a DAW, download it as a loop — it is this exact drone, as a WAV file that repeats without a gap, free to use for anything.
Is it free?
Yes — every key, every tuning, the tempo, the second tanpura, the timer and the downloads. No sign-up, no adverts, nothing to install. It works in any modern browser on a phone, tablet or computer.
Playing the sitar or the sarod against it? The sitar tuner and sarod tuner work from the same Sa, and our tuning-systems page explains where the 22 shrutis come from.