Online Tanpura

A free online tanpura and shruti box online, right in your browser — no app to install, no account. Pick your Sa below and press Play.

What this online tanpura actually is

This player is built on a real recorded tanpura — one authentic loop per pitch class — pitch-shifted to the exact Sa you choose, so the instrument's characteristic "jivari" buzz and the slow beating between strings come from a real instrument, not a synthesized approximation. If a recording can't load (for example, briefly offline before it's cached), the drone falls back automatically to a real-time plucked-string model tuned to match measurements taken from real tanpura recordings, so it keeps working either way. Set your Sa — any of the 12 pitch classes, across several octaves — and the drone re-tunes to it, the same way you'd tune a physical tanpura or an electronic sruti box.

How to use it

1. Pick the pitch class and octave for your Sa in the selectors above.
2. Press Play and let the drone play through headphones while you practise, or use it alongside a physical tanpura.
3. Sing or play against the drone the way you would with any shruti box or sruti box: settle on your Sa, then explore the raga around it.

Why a shruti drone helps practice

A steady, correctly-tuned shruti is the foundation of Carnatic singing — every swara you sing is judged relative to it, and gamakas only sound right against a fixed Sa. Keeping an online tanpura a click away means you always have a reference drone tuned to exactly the Sa you need, without carrying a physical instrument or a separate shruti box app.