Sruti box

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A sruti box is a small wooden instrument that traditionally works on a system of bellows. It is similar to a harmonium and is used to provide a drone in a practice session or concert of Indian classical music. Adjustable buttons allow tuning. Nowadays, electronic sruti boxes are commonly used, which are called sruti petti in Tamil and Telugu and sur peti in Hindi.

[edit] History

Before the arrival of the harmonium in India, musicians used either a tambura or a specific pitch reference instrument, such as the othu nadaswaram, to produce the drone. After the harmonium became popular, musicians would modify the harmonium to automatically produce the reference pitch. Typically, one would open up the cover and adjust the stop of the harmonium to produce a drone.

Later, the keyless version of the same was invented for the specific purpose of producing the drone sound. These also had circular wooden controls on the top and below the cover for controlling the pitch.

The modern version, however, is a compact battery-powered electronic device. It consists of an integrated loudspeaker and the necessary electronics to produce the drone. Almost all of these electronic instruments allow adjustments and fine-tuning. In a concert, the sruti box's sound is fed via a microphone to the audio mixer. Rarely does one come across a sruti box which can be wired directly into the input of the mixer unit. In the early 1990s, traditional Irish singer Noirín Ní Ríain brought the sruti box to Ireland, giving it a minor place in traditional Irish music.

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