Mumbai musician Kavish Seth patents his musical instrument Noori

Kavish Seth is not your regular musician. This 28-year-old IITian, singer-songwriter has successfully patented a musical instrument Noori. The patent by the Government of India’s, Intellectual Property India, Indian Patent Advanced Search Systems, came through a couple of days ago.
The unusual instrument can play polyphonic music or chords and also monophonic. It plays with frets and without, and if you want percussive elements it can produce percussive sound like a Djembe. It also has resonant strings called ‘Tarabein’ used in classical music to set the mood for a raag.

Kavish tells Bombay Times, “My vision was to bring music and musicians across the world closer and with Noori, any artiste from any school of music can play their music on this and collaborate with artistes of different schools of music. A guitar doesn’t sit well with a sarod or sitar, as they don’t play microtones/shrutis and one can’t play chords on sarod. While on my instrument one can do it all. You can play all three schools of music Indian classical, Western music and Arabic music.”
Kavish, who is the son of Kavita Seth (known for her chartbusters ‘Iktara’, ‘Tum Hi Ho Bandhu’ and others) has always been surrounded by music in his growing up years. And later his collaborations with folk artistes and classical musicians across the country taught him a lot about music. Kavish had begun working on this instrument around four years ago and has since made three versions of Noori, which have 14 -18 strings. He explains, “The first Noori was made with Nizamuddin Niyazi ji on whose name the first noori was named too, Nizam Noori. Nizamuddin Niyazi passed away last year. After the first noori was made, there was a lot to be done, corrected for better playing and sound. Further work on Noori was possible due to funding by Indian Foundation For The Arts, Bangalore.The second and third Noori were made with Gous ji from Miraj.”

A few other Indians who created their own musical instruments:

Niladri Kumar – Zitar

Subhasis Ghosh – Chhar Tarang

Akshay Vaidyanathan – Carbon fibre Chitravina

Dr Vidyadhar Oke – 22-note harmonium