Do rules define how good you are?

In those days, music was discovered, instruments were invented and playing
was standardized. The grammar of each music form was defined and was taught down through the generations. The expectation from a musician was to follow the grammar rules and improvise within the framework. With the advent of light music, rules were broken. It created infinite possibilities of mixing different music forms. Advancements in technology aided by introducing new sounds. But have all the combinations been utilized? Is the majority of the light music industry settling into one discovered path and not exploring new options? Can the new generation pick up these possibilities and will they be recognized? Has society realized this?

I am not suggesting however that a person can right away start creating/performing music without knowing some forms at least to some detail. It is necessary to know what exists to create something else. Also, the rules of classical music preserve our tradition and uniqueness. I am talking about bringing out this uniqueness in a different way.

Even in light music, singing and playing started having unwritten rules/notions - for example the rules of olden days were having a carnatic base and a high pitch voice. As times changed we got newer voices and different styles of singing in, but the majority expectations made all the singers sound alike with a specific set of criteria. I feel the general notion around an ideal singer is curbing natural voices and expressions. Why should everyone follow this notion laid down by a few to be a good singer? There are a few exceptions to this who have made it big - I feel the exception should become the majority and vice-verse.

There are a lot of debatable opinions above. The point I am trying to make is that the younger generation need not always stick to well trodden paths and society should drop its general notions and accept people naturally.

The song that you speak..

If every note is a pitch, so is the word you speak or even the different syllables in the word you speak. Every voice has a natural scale. Depending on moods and expressions it may change. For example, when you are excited u might talk at a higher scale( Its not just a higher note cause all your variations now are with respect to that higher pitch hence it is a scale). So essentially you may say a sentence you speak is a collection of pitches which correspond to some note in some octave. Hence talking expressively is close to singing.

You can actually note down every syllable and its pitch when you speak. Your normal tone might even follow a pattern. :) Major/Minor? A particular ragam? - maybe an overkill ;) The possibilities are endless when you actually think of it this way :)

Singing is just more intellectual speaking. In speaking, you don't care what pitch it is but in singing you need to tune yourself to the specific pitch of the scale first and then produce a sound at the different pitch of the tune. This is as simple as it can get.
There are people who hum along with songs. Some understand tuning to the scale and some understand just the notes of the tune. The knowledge of how to tune, how to lower and higher your voice pitch is all that takes to start singing. Of course after that comes gliding of notes, gamaka for classical and practice. So its never too late to start learning to sing as its just an extension of what you are doing already :)

And the winner is...

Everybody has a raaga that is closest to their heart - singing or listening. For some it may be a very happy and delightful raaga and for some it may be a touching raaga with a melancholy strain to it. I like raagas that fall under the second category more( no wonder i wrote about charukesi in the previous blog :) ). But of all the raagas in that category the one that moves me the most is Panthuvarali in carnatic --> Poorya Dhanashree in hindustani.
The carnatic version touches the equilibrium Sa and Pa more than R1, M2, D1 and N2. The glides include Pa and Sa mostly i.e N2 is sung with gamaka from Sa and M2 sung with gamaka from Pa and rarely some flat touches on M2 and glides from D to M , M D N etc This makes the raaga less sad and more pleasing for an average listener.
On the other hand, the hindustani raaga touches the non-equilibrium notes totally and beautifully before settling at equilibrium.
The aarog goes like - N2 r1 G2 M2 P M2 D1 N2 S
and avarog - R2 N2 D1 P M2 G2 M2 R1 G2 R1 S
- hence the flows of MDNRNDP, MRGRS etc produce a strain that makes you say "wah". The vaadhi swara is still Pa and samvaadhi is Sa. The usage of Pa and Sa is high but the notes that lead to Pa and the way glides are sung in hindustani make the difference. A splendid example is "payaliya jhankar" before hey raama in rangeela, kaahe ched in devdas. My first exposure to poorya dhanashree was kaahe ched and I was touched totally by the way the raag was handled and the amount of emotion it conveyed.
Not everyone gets touched by this raaga or such sad raagas and even if they do its not something they would want to keep listening to.
A friend of mine pointed out how the non-equilibrium notes raise the tension in a listener and their mind calms down only when equilibrium notes are touched. Another awesome observation by him was that these non-equilibrium notes occur when notes are one semi-tone or 3 semi-tones apart(odd semi-tones). Example S, R1 - half, R1 G2 - one and half -- poorya dhanashree is full of these intervals :)

Baluchi classical music

Reading about different music forms from different regions is very interesting, especially when you discover similarities with Indian classical music.I found a very interesting link about Baluchi music( music of a group of people originally from Iran who migrated and settled in Baluchistan and Afghan).
The genre shervandi is the equivalent of our classical music. They perform very similar to our classical concerts by starting with an alhan(alaap) in one of the different modes called zahirigs(equivalent to our raga). They may also link several zahirigs together. This is followed by a composition known as zimol which is measured just like our Indian thumri/khayal/keerthanai. After the composition there is a measured zahirig very much like in hindustani and neraval in carnatic.
The big difference I found was that they may or may not sing the zimol in the same zahirig as the alhaan. Another very interesting thing is that the musicians mostly don't know the name of the zahirig they are singing. They follow the melody of the composition. Only the shervandi fiddle performers, have an extended and clear view of the zahirig-s as modal types.

This link is a very good read for those who are very intrigued by this:

http://www.tavoosonline.com/Articles/ArticleDetailEn.aspx?src=59&Page=2

A day of findings..?!

There have been a lot of thoughts going on that I have been confused as to which one to blog about :) Finally the most recent one was just too exciting to write about.
It started with me listening to Zorro theme after a very long time. The sad strain in it was so beautiful and I suddenly realized that it was none other than our very own charukesi(of course one small Ri at the very end was out) - the traditional sad strain ragam that is also used for expressing deep emotions. A very touching ragam. For those who are unfamiliar with the ragam some examples are vasantamullai pole vandhu, manmadha leelai, edho edho ondru.
It made me start thinking about what western scale would actually result in this ragam(recently I am on to scales in my western violin classes and my Sir has started to tell scales as ragam to me as I am still stuck with swaram :) ). For example C scale A note to A note is natabhairavi, in keyboard terms all white keys from A to A. I am sure somebody with good western theory knowledge would have just shouted it out the charukesi equivalent at this point but I am just a beginner so here is what I did -
I started with all the basic scales and trying to visualize all the notes in them. More from the view of the exact intervals needed for the ragam. Thats when i suddenly struck a scale with gowri manohari at A melodic minor. Of course you can get gowri manohari at any minor scale. And thats where raga bedham came in.
Thinking of gowri manohari Pa as Sa, we get charukesi. The intervals of one's SRGM is the same as the others PDNS and vice-versa. This again is quite a known fact but yes, it helped me in this particular chain of thought and brought me to A's Pa thts E.
So E to E in A minor and here i suddenly realized dominant 7th in the key of A is actually the same but without Ri Ma and Da. The best part was my sir taught me that one as starting on any scale's fifth note S G2 P N1 S N1 P G2 M1 will be dominant 7th in the key of the scale M :) He seems very much tuned to my swara style learning of western.
Anyways my final conclusion for the day was when analyzing something we miss the obvious most of the times :) ( I know it sounds a little like a Poirot dialogue - been reading a lot of Poirot lately ;) )

Finding Sa in a Song ?!

I was asked once by a friend who has learnt western but not carnatic about how i find the Sa in a song, or the scale. I didn't know what to say first because its always been an instinct, never something i could define. It may be easy by indentifying chords but well, I've never done that.

In some cases it'll be very obvious because of the ragam used in the song. But a lot of songs are there where its arguable as to which the Sa is. Some people argue saying its the note that u hit maximum in the song. I thought about it, but that never was how i ever found a Sa( not that i could defend explaining how i did). It confused me in cases only where there was a raga bedham. For example take 'konja neram' from chandramukhi. If u take the starting note as Pa u get valachi, if u take it as Sa u get abhogi ( of course the song is not purely in just this ragam but atleast starts that way). I somehow tended to go with valachi.

Sa can be fixed anywhere in a song. I guess its just the ease with which you extract the other notes compared to it , which decides its place.

When I used to take notes from a song for doing covers for our shows there were songs where in between there used to be scale changes in bgm. I used to take notes in swaram and when this happens, my Sa automatically changes and I would start confusing the hell out of the keyboardist :) For example in 'sundari' from thalapathy in second bgm, there will be a scale change with strings multiple tracks, cello and chorus. Was quite a task getting out the notes for all the tracks. There are loads of songs with such scale changes. I don't think most people ever realize.

I guess all this follows from the same confusion as my western violin classes - "Which is my Sa??" For those who did read that post, am getting better :) But its still swaram for me !!

Carnatic notations

My craze for blogging about notations is not yet gone :) The last one was about western notation and a technical view of representing sheet music using DSLs. But this one 's going to be pure music.
I recently found some websites describing carnatic notation and some even having staff notes for carnatic songs. The one describing the actual notation in swaram was quite head swarming and i felt it was still inadequate to actually render that piece effectively. Carnatic music learning as opposed to western learning has always been more vocal than notations. There is so much in each line, each touch, each transition of swara that conveying through notations is quite difficult and even if conveyed would take days for a person to understand one line completely. Just taking ragams for instance. There are so many ragams that don't actually have a rigid structure ( the janya ragas) and allow accidentals here and there. Most importantly a raga is identified more through a particular feel in it changing which kills the beauty of it. By feel i mean a particular gamakam in certain swarams. A great example would be sahana. Also a lot of sangathis are quite tough reading and learning rather than listening and learning. The chances are more of getting everything wrong when using just notations. Representing all of the gamakams, the way that fits that raga makes the notation quite tough to read and interpret as such.
Notations are important though at the basic level of learning. Especially to get the hang of swaras, the spacings between them and all the various basic ragams. But after varnam notations are too complex and inadequate. Maybe this way of learning( listening and playing or singing) has actually made it more difficult for me to just read notations, map them to western scale and play :)