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 ;) )