Veena

The Veena (Sanskrit: वीणा) is a plucked stringed instrument originating in ancient India, used mainly in Carnatic classical music and Hindustani classical music. The name is used for several instruments belonging to different families, mainly the Rudra Veena (a zither) and the Saraswati veena (a necked bowl lute) but also to other types of plucked string instruments (Mohan Veena, Ancient Veena etc).

The earliest Veena was an instrument of the harp type whose type survives in the Burmese harp, whereas in the last centuries and nowadays, the word has tended to be applied to instruments of the lute type or even, recently, to certain kinds of guitars developed in India. The more popular sitar is believed to have been derived from a type of Veena which was modified by a Mughal court musician to conform with the tastes of his Persian patrons. A person who plays a Veena is called a vainika.

Etymology and history

The Sanskrit word veena (वीणा) (sometimes transliterated as vina) which is attested already in the Rigveda has designated in the course of Indian history a variety of instruments of various types, as it is a generic term for all kinds of string instruments, just as the Tamil word yaaḻ (யாழ்) (often written yaazh or yaal). In the last centuries and today the instruments designated under the designation veena of which there are several kinds, have tended to be mostly instruments of the lute or cithar type, and recently the word was even applied to modified Western guitars. But the early veenaas could be plucked string instruments of any type.

Veena (disambiguation)

The veena is a plucked musical instrument originating from India.

Veena may also refer to:

Musical instruments

Male given name

Female given name

Veena (actress)

Veena (18 July 1926 – 14 November 2004), also known as Veena Kumari, real name Tajour Sultana, was an Indian actress.

Early life and background

Veena was born as Tajour Sultana on 4 July 1926 in Quetta, Baluchistan Agency, British India. At some point of time, her family shifted to Lahore and she belonged to Lahore's Chuna Mandi.

Career

She started out playing heroine roles in Pre-Partition films. She made her debut with Garib and Gawandhi (1942) at around sixteen years of age. Garib was made in Urdu and Gawandhi was made in Punjabi and directed by Mehboob Khan. In Garib, she played the role of Lata and in Gawandhi she played heroine opposite Shyam who played the hero. She became known for her roles in Pre-Partition Hindi and Urdu films. Her early years in films came with films like Najma (1943), Phool (1945), and Humayun (1945). Her last film before the Partition of India was Rajputani (1946) in which she played a supporting role. She decided to remain in India after the partition and she acted through the mid-to-late-1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and early-1980s. She played roles in big films like Halaku (1956), Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi (1958), Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959), Taj Mahal (1963) (for which she received the Filmfare's Award for Best Supporting Actress), Do Raaste (1969), and Pakeezah (1972). She retired in 1983 after the release of Razia Sultan (1983) in which she played Empress Shah Turkhan. She died in Bombay in 2004 after 21 years of retirement when she was 78 years old after suffering from a protracted illness. She had appeared in over 70 feature films in a career spanning 41 years (1942 till 1983).

Pulse-code modulation

Pulse-code modulation (PCM) is a method used to digitally represent sampled analog signals. It is the standard form of digital audio in computers, Compact Discs, digital telephony and other digital audio applications. In a PCM stream, the amplitude of the analog signal is sampled regularly at uniform intervals, and each sample is quantized to the nearest value within a range of digital steps.

Linear pulse-code modulation (LPCM) is a specific type of PCM where the quantization levels are linearly uniform. This is in contrast to PCM encodings where quantization levels vary as a function of amplitude (as with the A-law algorithm or the μ-law algorithm). Though PCM is a more general term, it is often used to describe data encoded as LPCM.

A PCM stream has two basic properties that determine the stream's fidelity to the original analog signal: the sampling rate, which is the number of times per second that samples are taken; and the bit depth, which determines the number of possible digital values that can be used to represent each sample.

PCM (disambiguation)

PCM or pulse-code modulation is a digital representation of an analog signal.

PCM may also refer to:

Computing

Technology

PCM30

The pulse code modulation (PCM) technology was patented and developed in France in 1938, but could not be used because suitable technology was not available until World War II. This came about with the arrival of digital systems in the 1960s, when improving the performance of communications networks became a real possibility. However, this technology was not completely adopted until the mid-1970s, due to the large amount of analog systems already in place and the high cost of digital systems, as semiconductors were very expensive. PCM’s initial goal was that of converting an analog voice telephone channel into a digital one based on the sampling theorem.

PCM30 describes an application of pulse-code modulation (PCM) in which 30 telephony analog signals are binary coded into a digital signal stream. The term is used today mostly as a synonym for the encoding of 30 channels each with a signalling rate of 64-kbit/s. This rate is also used in the first stage of European PDH technique, so PCM30 is also known as E1.