they say music has its own language and its the musicians who love to converse in this universal language bengaluru is home to many artistes but there are only a few who love to take the road less travelled that is to play their own custommade instruments these instruments say the artistes not only enhance their music but also produce unique sounds and rhythms which are not common bangalore times indulges in a chat with a few citybased musicians who love to show off their exclusive creationsmontry manuel instrument tubelahow it all began the idea of creating something of my own came up when i started as a drummer i wanted to use my creativity and art for social awareness pvc pipes make a strange sound and it struck me that it is similar to music i thought why not give life to the trash thats lying around that is how the journey of tubela and the other instruments began i have created around 2530 instruments with trashusp of the instrument that the tubela is made from pvc pipes and produces a unique sound are its extraordinary characteristics my instrument is customised according to my needs and the idea is based on aerophones also theres no need for amplification its like an analogue synthesizerhow it helps my music my motto is to reduce reuse and retune when i first played the tubela i developed a new sound that im still working on i conduct workshops and show kids how to turn trash into instruments i communicate through this art form and believe that it does not need a language people see how i reduce reuse and retune and thats the most important thing for meaneesh vidyashankar instrument fivestring violinhow it all began when i began playing the violin there werent many options available in india even today the fivestring varieties are rare i have both fivestring and sixstring violins the idea behind having a fivestring violin for myself was to get another octave and to get my tonality right it took me over a year to make the customised my pieceusp of the instrument its the tonal quality no matter how many violins i procure the kind of tone i get with this instrument is difficult to get with other violins i finetune the violin according to my requirementhow it helps my music the instrument that i currently use was designed by me and made in the us it is an acoustic electric violin with the proportions of the western fiddle and the viola it is slightly bigger than the traditional violin but smaller than the viola and this is what gives the instrument its characteristic toneprakash sontakke instrument swar veenahow it all began as a performing artiste we have to travel a lot and that made us realise that instruments are susceptible to damages there was an incident when i landed in senegal and my guitar was broken in 32 pieces the main intention behind creating the swar