It is a quiet afternoon when we catch Nadaka practising his ragas at a Malabar Hill apartment. “Vaango (welcome),” he says in Tamil, throwing the first surprise our way in this musical interaction. A guitarist, innovator and a musicologist, Nadaka is travelling across the country on a nine-city music tour. We met him before his performance organised by Alliance Francaise de Bombay on March 30 to learn about his unique innovation.

The instrument

The raga guitar, or geet-taar as he calls it, looks like a guitar at first glance. But upon closer observation reveals distinctive veena-like frets with more strings running along the body. We count  four tanpura strings, six guitar strings accompanied by two additional chikari (taalam/minor note) strings and a 12-string swaramandal, too. “I often say there are 23 strings, with me being the 24th,” he jokingly adds.