How To Tune Your Veena

Whether you want to start tuning your own instrument or want to gather some musical information, you've come to the right place. Read on and follow every word written to successfully tune your Veena!

If you play an instrument, I don't have to tell you the importance of tuning. String instruments like Violin, Guitar, Veena etc are extremely vulnerable to pitch/frequency changes, which makes tuning incredibly important. Since they consist of a number of strings, you have to tune each one of them individually.

Every Veena has a certain number of pegs or screws attached to its sides. These are the magical parts of your instrument you need to turn to get the right frequency. You'll find these pegs fixed towards the end of the arm with 2 on each side and 3 others fixed right below the frets. Here's a picture:

Pegs on one side of a Veena
There are 2 at the end of the arm and 3 in the middle of the arm, below the frets

There are 2 ways to go about tuning. The first way is to get yourself a tuner or download an app that'll indicate the frequency played by the string. This way you'll have to turn the peg/screw clockwise or anticlockwise until it indicates the desired pitch.

Clip-on Guitar/Veena tuner

The second way is to turn on a pitch pipe or 'Shruti box' and let your ears match the frequency.

Electronic Tanpura or Shruti Box

Please note:

You'll find the terms 'pitch' and 'octave' used frequently throughout this post.
There are 7 basic notes in music: Sa, Ri, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha, Ni (E, F, G, A, B, C, D). These 7 notes are of different frequencies but belong to the same pitch. By setting one of these notes to the right or preferred pitch, all other notes align accordingly. This is what we'll be doing.

Octave is every set of 7 notes 2^n times the frequency of a basic note. Many octaves can fall in the same pitch. In a Veena, you can play up to 3 distinct octaves.

Before you begin tuning the instrument, you must know the notes played by each string. I'll talk about this during the course of the article.
I'm going to explain the main strings first and then move on the drone/Tal strings. If you remember from the previous post, the main strings are 4 in number and run parallel to each other along the arm. The Tal/drone strings are 3 in number and run vertically below one another, under the main strings.

Tuning the main strings:

Take a look at this picture of the 4 main strings. The string numbers are marked and we will be tuning them in this order. 

4 Main strings running horizontally

First String:
Pluck the first string without touching any fret. This plays the note 'Sa'. Set it to E or F, preferably E. And I say E because it creates lesser tension on your string, enabling you to play with greater ease.

To tune it, play turn the peg clockwise or anti-clockwise, depending on its current pitch and set it to E. 

Done?
Let's move on to the next string.

Second String:

Pluck the second string which runs right behind the first. Again, don't touch any fret. Relative to the first, this produces the lower 'Pa' note. Set it to B on your pitch scale.

Third String:

Tuning this string is similar to the first. In terms of pitch, the first and third are the same but differ in octave. The third string when plucked plays lower 'Sa'. This corresponds to lower E on the pitch scale.
Has it been easy so far?

Fourth String:

Just like the 3rd is similar to the 1st, the 4th string is similar to the 2nd. They share the same pitch but differ in octave. The 4th string plays lower 'Pa' or B. Turn the corresponding pegs to tune it right.

Tuning the Tal strings:

Good job! You've now successfully tuned the 4 main strings of your Veena. Look at your Veena. Do you find 3 strings arranged vertically below one another? These are the 'Tal' strings. Let's now learn to tune them.

The Tal strings ideally represent the pitch your Veena is set to. Any selected pitch consists of 3 different notes, i.e, 'Sa', middle 'Pa' and upper 'Sa'. These 3 notes correspond to the 3 Tal strings.

In this picture, I've marked the Tal strings in the best way I can. We'll be tuning them in this order.

3 Tal strings

Tuning the Tal strings is far simpler than the former main string because 2 of these 3 strings are tuned to the same pitch and 1 to a different pitch, as you'll see below:

First string:
The first string is tuned to the lower 'Sa' or E.

Since you've already tuned the first of the Main strings to the same pitch, just pluck that, compare it to the first Tal string and turn the pegs accordingly.

Second string:
The next component in the selected pitch is the note 'Pa'.
To set tune this string, set it to B. In this case, the 'B' belongs to a higher octave than the second main string.

Third string:
This is the bottommost string numbered '3' in the picture. Pluck it and turn the pegs to tune it to upper 'Sa' or E. Again, this E belongs to a higher octave than the first Tal string.

Confused?
Don't worry... Read the article again and you'll do just fine!

The one hard thing about tuning however, is that it is not a one-time process.
You need to tune your instrument almost every time you take it out to practice. Sometimes when you're playing, you may find the pitch dropping a little. This happens because of the decreasing tension in the string.
To keep the pitch fairly constant, you may need to turn those pegs every few minutes or whenever needed. And this is why you need to learn to tune your own instrument.
Tuning may seem like a lot of work initially but you'll get used to it in no time, since you'll be doing it very often.

Hope this post taught you something about tuning a Veena, even if you don't play one. If you think it may help someone else tune their instrument, feel free to pass it on!

Have a great day!

Thanks for reading