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Bansuri - Indian Bamboo Flute: Fingering Chart.
Reproduced here for educational purposes from Bansuri Player - David Philipson's Web Site.

In Indian music, the Sargam system corresponds to the European Solfege system's names of the notes.
Here is a chart which shows the names of the degrees of the Bilawal 'That' [parent scale] in Sargam and
the corresponding names of the degrees of the major scale in Solfege :		 
1.  Sadhjya    abbreviated as      Sa     corresponds to      Do
2.  Reshab     abbreviated as      Re     corresponds to      Re
3.  Gandhar    abbreviated as      Ga     corresponds to      Mi 
4.  Madhyam    abbreviated as      Ma     corresponds to      Fa  
5.  Pancham    abbreviated as      Pa     corresponds to      So 
6.  Dhaivat    abbreviated as      Dha    corresponds to      La
7.  Nishad     abbreviated as      Ni     corresponds to      Ti

A line below the note lowers the note by a half - step . This is known as a Komal swar :
A vertical line above the note raises the note by a half - step :. This is known as Tivra Ma.
 A dot below the note means the note is in the register below middle Sa : 
A dot above the note means the note is in the register above middle Sa : 

The above chart shows the basic fingerings for the bansuri. This is for the Kalyan 'That', which corresponds to the Lydian mode in European music. [A major scale with the fourth degree raised by a half - step.]
Sa [Do] is played with the first three finger holes closed.
On a bansuri with seven holes [as shown above] Tivra Ma [] in the middle and upper octave
can be fingered with all the finger holes closed or with all the finger holes open [in the higher
octave the first finger hole is uncovered].

Shuddh [lit.= pure] Ma [the unraised fourth degree] and all other flattened notes [komal Re, komal Ga, komal Dha and komal Ni] are played by uncovering the necessary portion of the finger hole.

For a printable Adobe Acrobat PDF Format Version of these instructions.
 
 
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