About the project

The music instrument creates sound when part of it vibrates rapidly. The column of air inside a wind instrument, the string of a string instrument, or the stretched skin of a percussion instrument all vibrate when played. Sound generated from the musical instruments not only changes emotion but also basic chemistry of the human being. In the traditional south Indian musical instruments, most of the materials are made out of organic materials, from parts of the plants, trees, animals. Earlier string instruments of south Indian music instruments including venna were made of vegetable fiber, animal gut, silk, horse hair for violin bows. Similarly, traditional percussion instruments were made out of jack wood, rosewood, bone, cowhide leather. The thavil consists of a cylindrical shell hollowed out of a solid block of jackfruit wood. Layers of animal skin (water buffalo on the right, goat on the left) are stretched across the two sides of the shell using hemp hoops attached to the shell. The stick used on the tavil is hard and is made from the purasai tree wood. There is lot of scope to understand the science behind these materials, treatment for sound generation. Other than material, there is a scope to understand the shape and geometry on the configuration design on the sound generation. In this proposal various traditional organic materials will be taken for the characterisation, various sound creating characteristics at various condition (as received, after specific treatment, and under stretched condition and under various interaction) will be evaluated. Similarly, all these instrument shape, geometry size, and form will be analysis and correlated with sound generation characteristics

Current requirements No. of PhD Student required: 1 (full time)