A metal fingerboard with nothing on it
The sarod’s fingerboard is a polished steel plate. No frets, no inlays, no dots, no markers of any kind — and it is stopped with the fingernail rather than the fingertip, because a fingertip on steel produces a dull thud and a nail produces a note.
Every consequence of that shapes what tuning the instrument means. There is nothing on the neck to catch a wrong note, so intonation is entirely the hand. Steel on steel sustains for an extraordinarily long time, so notes overlap. And a slide between two pitches passes through everypitch in between rather than stepping through frets, which is the sarod’s voice and the reason the plate is there.
Which means the open strings are the only part a peg can fix, and everything above them is you. The cents readout is the useful tool here, because nothing on the instrument will tell you where a held note has landed.
Sa first, and Sa is yours
Nothing here has an absolute pitch. Every string is an interval against Sa, the tonic, chosen to suit the instrument, the player, and whoever is being accompanied. That is why there are no target chips under the dial: there is no fixed set to put in them.
An example, not the tuning: which main string carries which degree differs between the Maihar and Shahjahanpur lineages and between instruments. The tonic and the intervals are the point, not the string order.
Twenty strings on a skin belly
Like the tar and the kamancheh, the sarod’s soundboard is a stretched skin membrane rather than a wooden plate, with the bridge standing on it. Now add roughly twenty steel strings pulling on that membrane and friction pegs holding most of them.
Three drift mechanisms, and they leave different fingerprints:
- Everything has moved the same way by a similar amount — that is the skin responding to humidity. Retune to where the instrument now sits rather than dragging it back; the pitch will only go straight back again.
- One string has gone and the rest are fine — that is a peg that was never properly seated. Push it inward toward the pegbox as you turn, and approach the note from below.
- Everything is flat after a restring and keeps going flat — that is steel still stretching, and it takes days rather than hours.
Retuning for a raga
The sympathetic strings are tuned to the notes of the raga, not to a fixed scale — that is what makes them resonate with the melody instead of blurring it. So changing raga means moving fifteen or so pegs, which is done before a performance rather than during one.
The check once they are set is the instrument itself rather than the dial: play a note on a main string, and the corresponding tarab string should sing on its own. If it stays silent it is not in tune with that note; if several buzz vaguely when you play anything, they are close but not on it. That test is more sensitive than a needle, because sympathetic resonance is a very narrow-band phenomenon.
Tuning routine
- Choose Sa and set the tuner’s concert pitch to wherever the instrument is comfortable.
- Damp the tarab. Nothing below works without it.
- Main strings, one at a time, starting from the string that carries the tonic.
- Chikari next — they are struck in almost every phrase, so an error there is audible constantly.
- Then the tarab to the raga, undamped, checking each one by sympathetic ring rather than by needle.
- Round again, because twenty strings on a membrane means the first ones have moved.
- Finally, check yourself. Stop a note on the plate, hold it, and read the cents. That number is the only one on this instrument that a peg cannot fix.
For where the notes of a raga sit and why the 22-shruti table is a reference frame rather than a tuning, see tuning systems. If you tune a drone alongside the sarod, the tanpura tuner covers the pure-versus-tempered fifth in detail.
Frequently asked questions
What is a sarod tuned to?
To a chosen Sa, like every instrument in this tradition. There is no standard concert pitch: the tonic is picked to suit the instrument, the player and whoever is being accompanied, and the four or five main strings, the chikari drones and the fifteen or so sympathetic strings are all set as intervals against it. The exact arrangement of the main strings varies between the Maihar and Shahjahanpur lineages and between individual instruments, so treat any published set — including the one on this page — as an example rather than as the tuning.
Why does my tuner report a chord when I play one note?
Because it is hearing one. A sarod has around fifteen sympathetic strings that ring in response to whatever you play, and steel strings on a metal fingerboard sustain for a very long time — so a single stroke leaves a dense, slowly decaying cloud of pitches for the microphone to work with. Damp the tarab with the heel of your right hand near the bridge before you read anything. The needle goes from hunting to locked in the same instant.
How do you play in tune on a fretless metal fingerboard?
Entirely by ear and by hand, which is the whole difficulty and the whole appeal. There are no frets and no position markers on the polished steel plate — the note is wherever your fingernail stops the string, and a millimetre is audible. What the plate gives you in return is the sarod’s glide: because nothing interrupts the string, a slide between two notes passes through every pitch in between rather than stepping. The cents readout is genuinely useful here for checking whether a held note is where you meant it, since nothing on the instrument will tell you.
My sarod goes out of tune constantly.
Three things stack on this instrument. It has a skin belly like a tar or a kamancheh, so humidity moves the whole pitch level. It carries around twenty strings pulling on that belly, which is a large load on a soft foundation. And it uses friction pegs with no gearing for most of them. The pattern to look for: if everything has drifted the same way by a similar amount, that is the skin and the answer is to retune to where it now sits. If one string has gone and the rest are fine, that is a peg.
Do I retune the sympathetic strings for each raga?
Yes. They are tuned to the notes of the raga, which is what makes them resonate with the melody rather than blur it, so a change of raga means moving pegs rather than checking them. With fifteen or so of them it is a real job and it is done before the performance, not during it. The useful check once they are set is the sympathetic ring itself: play a note on a main string and the corresponding tarab string should sing on its own.