Posture for Playing Tambura

Video Transcript

We're going to talk for a few minutes now about posture in relation to playing the tambura. Posture is very important to be able to maintain your stamina while you're playing. The posture I'm sitting in now, is the side posture. Both of my legs are going off to one side and most of my hip area is sitting on the cushion, just on one side of my hip. Another simple position is the cross-legged position. So you bring your legs together with one under the other and sit on your sitz bones on the cushions. Some people prefer to be up on both knees. And actually, the cushions are not really a part of this posture. You're just sitting back on your heels and that tends to be a really good way to stretch your muscles and to get those kinks out as you're playing. The tambura itself is set either in front of the player on the floor and balanced this way to keep the playing posture very, very stable. Or, in some postures, you may want to bring the tambura up onto your lap. And I've seen this done with some players where they will turn the tambura away from them, sitting the hollow of the gourd on one side. The other option is sitting on a chair. You can still incorporate the cushions that I was sitting on while you're sitting in the chair. And you'll notice that I used a wedge pillow, but you can also just use two regular or three regular pillows to sit on the floor. Then, if you're sitting in a chair, you would take one of the pillows and just place it under your feet. Just to give you some comfortable height for your legs. You want your legs to come straight out and down and then bring the tambura in front of you, slightly between your legs, placing it near your feet and you're ready to play.

Community Members who...

• Favorited this Video
• Rated This Video

Top Tags