Preface by Rajan Parrikar
Namashkar!
A week or so ago I sat through a spiel delivered by an American (he was,
what has come to be known as, an "advanced" student of Ali Akbar Khan)
in which he held forth that (I'm paraphrasing) whereas the average Joe
in the West is reasonably acquainted with a name such as Beethoven, very
few Indians are in the know of the great figures in their musical tradition.
I was itching to confront the worthy on this outrageous allegation. But
I didn't, couldn't, because he was absolutely right.
It is tragic that familiarity with the life and work of the likes of
Sri Tyagaraja, Swami Haridas, Alladiya Khan etc. in the land of their birth
is confined to a relatively small community of music scholars and the
unusually-curious among rasikas. Modern 'educated` Indians are, to make
a generalization, spectacularly ill-informed about their own rich cultural
and religious traditions.
Almost total absence of instruction of musical ideas and its associated
lore in our school systems, paucity of good, readable material on the topic
written in English by Indians themselves (i.e. those born into the tradition)
have been contributing factors to this abysmal state of affairs. Furthermore,
the ground socio-economic realities of post-Independence India which drive
the overwhelming majority of our bright, young minds to the safer
'security-ensuring` vocations translates to a vastly reduced intellectual
wherewithal to bring to bear on areas such as music, particularly towards
its academic and systematic study.
Be that as it may, the past few years have seen a tremendous resurgence
of interest in the classical traditions of India music among Indians. Our
music is also finding an increasing global audience, hooked to the scene
by the likes of Zakir Hussain, Mandolin Srinivas and other 'exciting`
musicians. Young college-going Indians, both in India and here in the
USofA, are a common sight at classical music concerts today. While all
of these hearts have been won over by the marvellous artistry of our
tunesmiths, the many discriminating minds among them inquire about the
formalism itself and seek to apprise themselves with the fundamentals of
the art form. This stage can be a frustrating one for the uninitiated
and it is at him or her that the following set of notes is aimed.
Mahadevan Ramesh, inundated with requests from friends and foes, to
explain to them the flesh and bones of Indian classical music, took time
out to write this splendid monograph for the complete novice. While his
treatment is primarily against the canvas of the Carnatic tradition, it
can be easily extended, mutatis mutandis, to the Hindustani tradition, since
the underpinnings of both the systems are very similar. That is to
say, a complete perusal and understanding of this set of notes will
prove very profitable EVEN TO THOSE SEEKING FUNDAE ON HINDUSTANI MUSIC!
This series comprises four parts. It is suggested that you print them
and read at your own leisure. They will also be available at a WWW
site in the very near future.
Before I sign off, a few words on the author are in order.
Mahadevan Ramesh is from Madras, India. He completed his undergraduate
education at IIT-Kanpur and then picked up a PhD in Applied Physics at
the Ohio State University. After a post-doctoral stint at Carnegie-Mellon
University in Pittsburgh, he made Colorado his home and currently lives
on the outskirts of the exceedingly beautiful and salubrious environs
of Boulder.
Mahadevan Ramesh is very well-known to the SCI-citizenry as a farceur
extraordinaire and his humour-laden ruminations over the years have
delighted thousands. Not well-known is the fact that he is an expert on
the caprices and vagaries of the stock market and is known to download
intricate fundae on innocent, unsuspecting, uninterested passers-by. Also,
his incurable wanderlust has taken him to all the 50 Unites States. In the
summer of 1993, he underwent a major heart surgery for a congenital
defective valve. However, his operating system has lost none of its zest
and vigour. He plans to soon get back to coredumping more of his facetiae.
I am appending one of his pieces at the end of this series for
'entertainment` purposes only.
Mahadevan Ramesh invites your comments and criticisms, bouquets and
brickbats at: mahadevan_ramesh@maxtor.com
Regards,
Rajan Parrikar
email: parrikar@spot.colorado.edu
rajan@anteng.ssd.loral.com
A GENTLE INTRODUCTION TO SOUTH INDIAN
CLASSICAL (KARNATIC) MUSIC
BY
Mahadevan Ramesh
(email address: mahadevan_ramesh@maxtor.com)
CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- What is the focus of this primer
- Sound and Music
- Western Music, Indian music and the keyboard
- Let us make a tune...
- Some more discussion on the Melakarta ragams
- What is a 'Ragam'
- Let us march on !! The Concept of 'Talam'
- The exotic world of Carnatic Music
- The beginning student
- The intermediate student
- The advanced student - the creative juices
- The concert musician
- A typical Karnatic music concert
- A very, very brief history of Karnatic music
- MANGALAM ! A few final words
- References
- Appendix I: Some Melakarta ragams and their derivatives..
- Appendix II: Suggested listening excercises
I owe a tremendous amount of gratitude to my music teachers, Prof.
T. R. Subramaniam and Prof. Prabhakara Varma and to friends like Surya
Prabha, Srikanth Chary and Prof. R. Pichumani (University of Connecticut)
for teaching me the fundamentals. A big thanks to Ilayaraja (no, I
dont know him personally) for many wonderful Karnatic music-based
film songs, which presented an entirely different angle to Karnatic
music. Finally, I owe it all to my friend K. S. Balaji for introducing
me to Karnatic music.
I am also fortunate to be friends with several folks who are very
knowledgeable about music. I learnt a lot from them and many of them
have been active on the music bboards one time or another. (Some are
still active). A short list of these people includes Prof. S. Mahadevan
and Monica (Vanderbilt University), Prof. Venkatasubramaniam and Vyju
(Purdue), Mukund Srinivasan, Chandramouli (A. T and T), Prof. V. Krishnan
(University of Texas), Srinivasan Gopalaswamy (Carnegie Mellon), Srinivasan
Pichumani and Kannikeswaran. And it is always a pleasure to acknowledge
how much I benefited from Rajan Parrikar and his immense knowledge
of almost every aspect of Indian music.
Many of us have grown up in India, where we were exposed to Indian
classical music in one form or another. However, if you are not from
a musically inclined family, the odds are that you perceived classical
music to be something esoteric that only a selected few could understand
and appreciate. An occassional devotional song or a 'classically tuned'
film song would have made you stop and take note. Your curiosity could
have been aroused. But, you may have quickly ignored the instinct
and made a beeline for the usual pursuits in life. Even if you were
interested enough to find out about classical music, you did not know
what books to read or who to talk to. Even if you managed to talk
to someone, it is likely that the person made you feel inadequate
about your lack of musical abilities or proceeded to give you a long
lecture about music with a million buzzwords that confused you and
weaned you off your curiosity. It is unfortunate that there is an
almost total lack of simple, readable, introductary texts on Indian
classical music, especially when compared to volumes and volumes of
elementary books available on Western Classical music. No wonder an
average college-educated person in the USA is at least mildly knowledgeable
about Western classical music whereas an average Indian is by and
large ignorant about the technicalities of Indian classical music.
This primer is a feeble attempt to introduce Karnatic music in a gentle
way, in a language presumably we all can understand. I want to be
able to rekindle your interest and help you discover some of the 'method'
and grammar of Karnatic music. Even though these notes are aimed at
introducing Karnatic music, a lot of of what I have to say also apply
to Hindustani Classical music.
This primer is obviously not meant for experts. I have intentionally
kept this text simple. The idea is to introduce the richness of Karnatic
music and not to write an encyclopedia. Some of what I will be saying
may not be entirely accurate, but the simplicity is more important
than dictionary definition of terms. This primer is only intended
to get you started and once you are on your own, there are many, many
texts you can refer to for all kinds of information. These notes are
also not meant to be complete, because I will be using only a minimum
of technical terms. I won't even attempt to discuss the 'vaadhi-vivaadhi
-samvaadhi' kind of technicalities and lose my reader.
So, lets get started !
Music is an extremely subjective, aural experience. Some sounds are
perceived by us as pleasant and some others as unpleasant. What is
considered pleasant or unpleasant can be quite personal, based on
our specific culture, exposure to particular kinds of music and perhaps
even on what our parents told us. A song could be a major hit in one
country and could be completely disliked and ignored in some other
country. Our musical tastes are indeed developed. As we grow up, and
discover music from other cultures or newer musical styles, our tastes
too change. Sometimes, we even discover a pleasant piece of music
purely by accident - because it simply happened to resonate with our
inner sensibilities. Oh, nothing like self discovery !
So how do we make sense of sound and music ? Let us try to answer
this by examining some simple concepts first. Our high school physics
tells us that sound has several features - such as pitch, intensity,
quality and duration. The pitch is just the frequency of the sound
vibration - given in hertz or cycles. The musical term for frequency
is 'tone'. The audible frequency range extends from about 25 Hz to
around eight or ten thousand hertz, although it depends entirely on
the individual. Children can hear much higher frequencies. At the
lower end of the range, even if we may not 'hear' ultralow frequencies,
we may 'feel' the vibrations as a tactile sensation.
The intensity is the same as loudness and it is related to the amplitude
of the sound wave. One should learn to not confuse the intensity with
the frequency. For example, try to recite the nursery rhyme 'Baa baa
black sheep, Have you any wool ?' When you come to the syllable 'bl'
in the phrase 'black sheep' (or 'woo' in the word 'wool') you are
hitting a higher 'tone' compared to 'Baa baa'. This is the effect
of frequency. Now, you can either whisper this nursery rhyme or shout
your guts out. In each case, you are simply changing the intensity.
The other attribute of sound - duration - is self-explanatory. It
is simply the time during which the specific frequency or 'tone' lasts.
The term 'quality' is more difficult to understand. It is simply a
signature of the source of the sound. It is a term which explains
why a violin sounds like a violin and a drum sounds like a drum. This
attribute is precisely the reason you can make out your mother's voice
over the phone even if she has a horrible cold. The bottomline is,
when you or an instrument produce sound, you not only produce one
frequency, but also produce a spectrum consisting of several 'overtones'.
This is variously referred to as 'timbre' or 'tone color'. This constitutes
the 'Quality' of that sound.
Just to explain this concept some more, let us say you try to produce
a single frequency with your voice - one way to 'produce' a single
frequency is to get a keyboard and keep pressing one of its keys and
you hum along till you resonate. If you actually analyzed the waveform
you produced, you will see not only a significant amount of the frequency
you were trying to produce but also see small amounts of other frequencies
- which are the overtones. The exact composition of overtones you
produced is in some sense the signature of your voice and constitutes
its quality.
This should also set you thinking. Just how in the world do you perceive
sounds ? How do you identify your friend's voice ? Clearly you are
not decomposing it into frequency components (Fourier analysis). How
do you sometimes make out which song it is simply by listening to
a few notes ? How is it that you can mentally 'visualize' (!) someone's
voice, laughter, sounds, some past conversations, songs ? Basically,
when you hear sounds and music, you are simply doing a 'pattern recognition'
against what you already know. Over the years, your brain has stored
a certain number of 'primitives' - this list is a dynamic one and
primitives are added or lost as you grow older - and you have an intrinsic
capability to match a freshly heard sound impulse to the basic database.
If you hear a strange sound that does not produce a match, sometimes
you load it up as a primitive.
An equally interesting exercise - think of five songs you really like.
Can you explain why you like them or what is in common with all of
them ? Can you 'explain' and define your musical taste ? Unfortunately,
however much analysis one does, in terms of frequencies and so forth,
it finally boils down to psychological factors when it comes to music
and taste. Analysis is merely a tool to understand some of its structure.
It can never explain why some musical sounds are deemed 'romantic'
or 'harsh' or why some Ragam is an evening Ragam (if you believe in
such things). Such mystique about music will come back to haunt us
and will forever prevent us from understanding its totality in an
objective manner.
This is just a simple stab at the psychology of sound perception.
Let us get back to the business on hand !
Let us examine the frequency aspect of music first. This is perhaps
the most studied aspect as well. We mentioned that all music is produced
in the audible frequency range, a range which varies from person to
person. Although human ears cannot tell very high 'tones', musical
instruments can produce frequencies (overtones) even beyond the threshold
of human hearing. Music is sometimes described technically as 'tonal'
or 'chromatic', both terms simply mean that we use a whole spectrum
of frequencies to produce music.
The audible range is divided into 'octaves'. An octave is really a
frequency range from a frequency f1 to f2 such that f2 is twice that
of f1 in terms of cycles or hertz. For some physiological reason,
the human ear is logarithmic and is sensitive to frequency octaves.
The audible frequency is then comprised of many, many octaves. We
can choose any number to be our f1 (and f2 of course is 2 times f1)
- we can define an octave from 10 Hz to 20 Hz or equally well another
one, say from 15 Hz to 30 Hz.
In terms of sound production, a typical human voice can produce several
frequencies, although it is usually limited to about three or four
octaves - even if we have a drum-like, groggy 'morning voice' at the
low end of the range and a shrill, ear-piercing shriek at the high
end. Only the exceptionally gifted people can produce a wide spectrum
of vocal sounds spanning several octaves. (Of course, there are those
female Indian movie playback singers who can produce ultra high frequencies
which only dogs can hear clearly !) By the way, here we are only talking
about 'primary' frequencies and not overtones associated with the
'quality' of our voices - remember, overtones are higher frequency
components, but produced in much lower intensities.
A piano or a keyboard is a typical Western musical instrument.
All we see is a bunch of keys, some in black and some in white.
However, upon a closer look, we see that there is a periodicity.
As we go from the left of the keyboard to the right (and here I
am assuming you know how to sit in front of a keyboard) the keys
produce higher and higher frequencies. In fact, the key frequencies
are arranged in such a manner that they are in a geometric series.
That is, the frequency between any key and the key immediately to
its left (irrespective of the color of the key) is a
constant, the constant being equal to the twelfth root of two or 1.059.
For example, typically, there is a white key in the keyboard set to
240 Hz. Then the adjacent key on the right, a black one as a matter
of fact, is set to 240 X 1.059 = 254 Hertz.
By the specific choice of this ratio (twelfth root of two) we see
that by the time we reached the thirteenth key, we have doubled our
frequency and thus spanned a whole octave. In fact, if you look at
the keyboard you see that the key pattern repeats every twelve keys.
If you chose the white key at 240 Hz, then the thirteenth key will
be at 480 Hz and your octave ranged from 240 to 480 Hz. Equally well,
you could have started counting from the black key at 254 Hz and twelve
keys later you would have still spanned an octave, except that this
time your octave ranged from 254 to 508 Hz.
This division of the octave into twelve 'tones' which have specific
ratio between adjacent keys (the ratio equalling 1.059) is peculiar
to Western music. This geometric arrangement of frequencies of the
keys in an octave is called an 'Equally tempered' arrangement. And
besides the keyboard, most Western musical instruments are also tuned
to such an arrangement.
Even though there is a degree of freedom about what you want to be
the range of an octave (whether it is from 240 to 480 Hz or 254 to
508 Hz etc.) the Western music defines a standard octave called the
'Middle C octave' (also called the Middle C scale etc) starting from
the white key set to 240 Hz. The entire octave (the twelve key pattern,
that is) is shown in Fig. 1. On your keyboard, this octave is located
somewhere near the middle. Once you figured out where this octave
is, you can quickly identify the first key of this octave (set to
240 Hz). And because we know the ratio of the key frequencies now
we can pretty much compute the frequency generated by ANY key. You
will also notice that the keyboard has about three to four octaves
(between 36 to 48 keys, depending on how much you paid for it) The
upper octave, starting from 480 Hz is the Upper C octave and the lower
octave starting at 120 Hz is the Lower C octave etc.
(safed C# D# F# G# A#
ek) r g m d n
| _________________________________________________
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
|-----> | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | 2 | | 4 | | | 7 | | 9 | |11 | | |
|---------> | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | |___| |___| | |___| |___| |___| | |
| | | | | | | | | |
| | 1 | 3 | 5 | 6 | 8 | 10 | 12 | |
| | | | | | | | | |
| |_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|
| S R G M P D N S" <--|Indian
(kali (Sa) (Re) (Ga) (Ma) (Pa) (Dha) (Ni) (Sa) <--|Notation
ek)
C D E F G A B C <--|Western
(Do) (Re) (Mi) (Fa) (So) (La) (Ti) (Do) <--|Notation
Figure 1
From Table I given below, we notice that the keys in the octave have labels
for identification. Of the white keys - and there are seven of them
in an octave - the first one is called C (and hence the name 'Middle
C' octave) and then we progress alphabetically to G and then back
to A and B, after which, the present octave ends and the C key of
the next octave begins. The same labeling system is repeated for the
keys in the other octaves as well. If you noticed, the five black
keys have ambiguous labels, because each one of them has two labels.
The first black key, for example, is called 'C sharp' (C #) or 'D
flat' (Db) - it is obvious that 'sharpening' essentially is a technical
term for being 'one key higher' and similarly 'flattening' is one
key lower in frequency than the white key in the prefix. The labels,
frequencies etc of all the twelve keys in the Middle C octave are
provided in Table I.
Table I Arrangement of keys in a keyboard
Key # Key color Frequency (Hz) Name
1 White 240 C
2 Black 254 C # (D b)
3 White 269 D
4 Black 285 D # (E b)
5 White 302 E
6 White 320 F
7 Black 338.5 F # (G b)
8 White 358.5 G
9 Black 380 G # (A b)
10 White 402 A
11 Black 426 A # (B b)
12 White 451 B
Now here is a set of bizarre technical terms - by definition, each
key is supposed to be a 'semitone' or 'half tone' apart from its adjacent
key. Thus, keys which are second nearest neighbors are considered
a 'whole tone' apart. (Note that the sense in which we use the word
'tone' here is quite different from our earlier usage of it to mean
frequency). For example, the first white key ('C' key) and the first
black key ('C sharp') are a 'semitone' apart, whereas the first white
key ('C key') and the second white key ('D key') are a full tone (whole
tone) apart. And the 'C sharp' and 'D' keys are a semitone apart,
as well.
Yet another aside: All keyboards are not necessarily tuned to the
middle C key (which is set to 240 Hz). You can build keyboards which
have a different reference point. Fixing the middle A key to a particular
frequency (440 Hz) is a common alternative.
You can play with the keys and produce music. The keys and the 'tones'
they produce are the basic building blocks of music. You can even
press the same key twice or stay on one key for an extended period
of time. You will also notice that although some 'melodies' are pleasant
to the senses, some other sequences are not. If it is the very first
time you are tinkering with a keyboard, the odds are that whatever
melody you produce sounds 'musical' to you and of course, extremely
unpleasant to the others around you. If you increase the volume on
the electric keyboard, you are changing the intensity. If you choose
different 'instruments' the modern day keyboards simulate, you are
then changing the 'quality'. Basically, you now know how to manipulate
the essentials of music, namely the pitch, intensity, duration and
quality.
Having said all this, we should also realize that there is nothing
inherently scientific or sacred about this 'Equally tempered, twelve
key per octave' Western music system, where an arbitrary set point
is created at 240 Hz. There are other alternate systems and creative
musicians are always experimenting with unconventional systems -
in music it is 'cool' to break tradition ! For example, there is no
need to have just twelve keys in an octave. In fact, the traditional
Indian music system over thousands of years is based on a 22 key per
octave system. Even if you chose twelve keys to fill in an octave,
there is no reason to tune them in a geometric progression. In other
words, you don't have to have an 'Equally tempered scale'. You can
locate your frequencies based on some other non-geometric criteria
which might 'sound' even better. Such scales in fact, exist and they
are called 'Just tempered scales'. In fact, the Indian musical system
uses one such scale. And in the final analysis, there is no need to
even stick to the concept of octaves when producing music. In short,
to produce music, there is no need for a grammar and rules ! If it
sounds pleasnt, you are on. However, let us first learn the established
grammar and tradition, before we attempt to break them !
Even though Indian musical systems are very different from the traditional
Western Music system, we can still get a lot of insight into Indian
music using the Equally tempered, twelve keys per octave methodology
- essentially because it makes things simple. (Also, the keyboard
is probably one of the easiest instruments to play). This has always
been a bone of contention between the traditional Indian musicologists
and the 'quick and dirty' folks like us. The Indian traditionalist
will argue that we are compromising by limiting ourselves to just
twelve 'tones' per octave, when tradition, dating back thousands of
years, categorically spells out twenty two 'tones' per octave. The
twenty two 'sruti' for the middle C octave is given in Table III.
By the way, the Indian word for frequency or pitch or 'tone' is 'Sruti.
A word of caution though - the term 'Sruti' has several other
interpretations and meanings. We will come across some of them later.
Why, some Indian schools of thought even propose that there are infinite
frequencies in an octave. The basic reason for such demands for more
than twelve 'srutis' per octave is that Indian music, (not just Karnatic
music) seems to 'flow' through the frequencies, whereas a Western
song seems 'jumpy'. Take for example, 'Baa baa black sheep' and compare
it to an Indian song, say, a movie song like 'Roop tera mastaana'.
The Indian song seems to involve a lot of vocal acrobatics and nuances
and not just go through piano-like jumps. This is the main difference
between the Indian and Western music and we will return to this point
again and again in this primer.
This is the reason why Indian classical music cannot be played effectively
in a twelve key per octave instrument like a piano. Of course, several
Western instruments have been 'adapted' with a little modification
here and there, to play Indian classical music - violin, mandolin
and guitar, for example. Some other instruments have been simply 'used',
without modification, such as the harmonium and its latest cousin,
the keyboard. Indian purists abhor such blatant use of Western, 'equally
tempered' instruments. Expert harmonium player, Rajan Parrikar, points
out that 'Just tempered' harmoniums, harmoniums with 22 tones per
octave, even over 50 tones per octave etc have been built by various
people.
Now let us come back to this basic difference between the Western
and the Indian classical music system. We noted that in Indian music
it is not enough to produce just twelve or even twenty two 'tones'
in an octave. One ought to produce even the intermediate frequencies.
These intermediate frequencies, which do not have any keys to produce
them, are called 'microtones'. The Indian word for the 'microtone'
is 'gamakam'. (of course, 'gamak' in hindi) It is often very difficult
to explain this concept clearly and precisely. If the C key produces
240 Hz and the C# key produces 254 Hz what intermediate frequencies
are we talking about ? Does Indian music use sounds produced at 247
Hz ? Treatises have been written in India about such microtonal apects
of music. Suffice it to say that microtones or gamakams tend to be
clustered around the primary key frequency, although this need not
always be the case.
Note that if you postulate that an Indian music octave has twenty
two or two hundred keys or infinity per octave, then what used to
be a 'microtone' in a twelve-key system could now very well be a key.
Of course, you can make a piano with such large number of tones per
octave. It may be a long piano and you will need a superhuman dexterity
to play it. But the positive side of it is that you will be able to
play Indian music on it. The bottomline is, the piano produces just
twelve frequencies in one octave and that is enough to compose a lot
of Western songs. Whereas, to make Indian music, twelve keys are not
enough in an octave.
Let us talk some more about microtones or gamakams. The vocal gliding
and rolling in Indian music, (Remember Kishore Kumar's yodelling ?)
whether it sounds good or not, are again examples of microtone usage.
In fact, the microtones add variety to the Indian classical music
- an extra dimension. From movie songs to folk music to classical
music, the very heart of Indian music is this 'continuous flow' or
'gliding through a continuum of frequencies' or gamakam or microtonal
excursions. Thus it is often said that Indian music is 'melody-based'.
Since microtones are so important in Karnatic and Hindustani music
and very few instruments can produce all the frequencies in an octave,
the best enunciation of Indian classical music is in vocal singing.
Many instruments like the violin, Gottuvadhyam (called Chitra Veena
these days) and even the simple bamboo flute can produce a lot of
gamakams, of course.
Just to drag the concept a little farther - some of you who have grown
up in India may have developed a taste for Indian music, be it movie
songs or highly classical songs. When you were exposed to Western
rock and roll music you may have been drawn toward the numbers rich
in gamakams (The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel et al have produced
many such pieces) rather than the rhythm oriented heavy metal numbers.
In the same breath, people say that the Western music is 'harmony-based',
which brings out yet another difference between the two systems. 'Harmony'
is produced when several instruments play different melodies or pieces
simultaneously like in an orchestra. Harmony is also produced when
more than one tone is produced at the same time. In the Western Music,
'harmony' is an important element.
Orchestration and 'harmony' are absent in Indian classical music.
People have tried out orchestration of Indian classical music time
and time again with limited success. (and there have been probably
as many Western attempts to compose and play 'Indian style' melody
based classical music) There is not much of a market for such 'Fusion'
music, except perhaps among the fringe elements of the immigrant Indian
community :-) Even if there is a 'Jugal bandhi' - a standard fare
in Hindustani classical music where two instruments (or even two vocalists)
are featured together, the musicians usually follow the same melodic
pattern one after another with minor variation rather than play different
melodies simultaneously.
There are a number of other differences as well between the two systems
of music. Indian classical music, for example, does not use what are
called chords, or pressing more than one key simultaneously. Chords
are a major aspect of Western music and producing harmony via chords
is a natural consequence of the Equally tempered (geometric series)
arrangement of the keys. If keys were arranged in a Just tempered
sequence, pressing more than one key at a given time might produce
an unpleasant sound pattern resulting in what is called 'Besur' (in
Hindustani music) or 'Abaswaram' (in Karnatic music). By the way,
one more advantage of Equal temperment of pianos and keyboards is
that it makes it easier to 'tune' them, (they go out of tune every
once in a while and need to be tuned periodically) since each key
is harmonically related to the other keys. In case of Just tempered
arrangement, since the key ratio between adjacent keys is not a constant,
most keys will have to be tuned individually.
Also absent is 'polyphony' - where several instruments (melodies)
come and go asynchronously instead of at periodically predictable
times. Also, the Western scales are standardized. The middle C octave
ranges from 240 to 480 Hz. There is no reason to stick to these frequencies.
In fact, in Indian music, you have the freedom to choose the frequency
range of the octave from anywhere to twice anywhere. You can start
at 230 Hz, if you wish. Also, in Western classical music, most musicians
have music notated on sheets of paper and 'read' it when performing.
Indian music is always played by 'ear'.
Just to summarize, the essential differences between Indian classical
music system and the Western music are (a) the Western keyboard is
'Equally tempered' whereas the Indian keyboard ideally should be 'Just
tempered' (b) Only twelve keys per octave are used in the West, whereas
to play Indian music one needs to produce several intermediate microtones,
not represented by a conventional keyboard - This is the most major
difference (c) Harmony, chords, polyphony etc are absent in Indian
classical music (d) In Indian music, there is no need to standardize
an octave to begin at 240 Hz.
We have enunciated again and again that we need many, many microtones
to produce Indian music. Still, in this chapter, we are going to use
a conventional, Western keyboard to learn about Indian music. It is
almost like the Indian music is an analog entity and we are trying
to quantize or digitize it into twelve keys, knowing fully well that
we will have something akin to truncation (approximation) errors.
But before we begin, let us define one more term - the 'note'. The
'note' is just a primitive element of a musical phrase. An analogy
will be the concept of a 'syllable' in a spoken word or a letter in
a written word.
For example, in the nursery rhyme 'Baa baa black sheep' there are
four 'notes', namely 'baa', 'baa', 'black' and 'sheep'. By a curious
coincidence, this line also has four syllables - and we have managed
to make a 'note' for each syllable. The concept of a note is so simple
that even if you know nothing about music, you may be able to tell
how many notes there are in a (simple) melodic pattern.
On the other hand, consider 'Roop tera mastana, pyaar meraa...' When
spoken, the word 'roop' has only one syllable. However, when sung,
it is distorted to sound like 'roo - pu' and uses TWO 'notes'. Similarly,
when the singer goes 'pyaar meraaaa', he glides the end of the word
'meraaaa' into several 'notes'. The term 'note' and 'tone' are different
and make sure you understand it. The word 'tone' is essentially a
frequency, whereas the 'note' is the smallest part of a melody and
could last one 'tone' plus possible microtones. The Indian word for
'note' is 'Swaram' or 'sur'. Now we are ready to get more technical
and tinker with any commercially available keyboard to learn about
Indian classical music. A diagram showing a typical keyboard octave
is given in Table II, except that now we have labeled
the keys with Indian names. Onceagain, eight out of the twelve keys
have unique labels, whereas four of the remaining keys - keys 3, 4,
10 and 11 - have ambiguous (two possible) names. Unlike the Western
notation, the keys with ambiguous labels are both black and white
(two of each).
In the Indian system, we do not use alphabets to label keys. Instead,
we use short, meaningless (please don't beat me to death on this -
I know there are etymological reasons for choosing these set of syllables)
syllables which go - Sa ri ga ma pa dha ni. These seven syllables
are actually mnemonics to represent the 'notes' or 'Swarams' in Indian
music. They are referred to as the 'Saptha Swarams' or 'Seven Swarams'.
So, confusing as it may sound, in Indian music, we use the 'notes'
to represent the 'tones'. Upon looking at Table II some more, we see
that some THREE keys can be designated as 'ri', (even though they
are designated as ri 1, ri 2 etc, they are all 'called' ri) three
keys as 'ga', two as 'ma', three as 'dha' and three as 'ni'. However,
there is no ambiguity when we want to press the keys corresponding
to 'Sa' or 'Pa' - they are unique.
This notation (and this set of seven 'notes') is also called the 'Solfege
notation' (in the West). Remember, even in the West, there is a
solfege notation which goes do, re, me, soh etc. Basically,
the solfege notation is a 'singable' set of syllables which helps
us describe a musical melody. It will sound quite ridiculous to sing
out words like 'C, C sharp, E flat' - instead of 'do fa la' when
we hit the keyboard keys.
(An aside: The complete names of the Indian notation are as follows:
Shadjam for Sa, Rishabham for ri, Gandhaaram for ga, Madhyamam for
Ma, Panchamam for pa, Dhaivatam for dha and Nishaadham for ni - This
information is provided just so that you don't get too zapped when
someone uses these full names)
Even in case of Indian music, we can extend our labeling of the keys
to other octaves, much like in the Western system. In Indian music,
the main octave is called 'Madhya stayi', the octave above it (higher)
is called 'tara stayi' and the octave just below the Madhya stayi
is called 'Mandra stayi' (based on the way 'mantras' were chanted
in low frequencies in the centuries past). In terms of notation, the
keys in the higher octave are labeled with a dot on TOP of the notes.
The keys in the Mandra (lower) stayi are identified with dots BELOW
the solfege notes.
Many good Indian musicians have voices spanning the entire three octaves,
although most Indian compositions use up just the complete Madhya
stayi scale and the top half of the Mandra stayi (only half an octave
below) and the bottom half of the Tara stayi (just half an octave
above the Madhya stayi).
We also see that the twelve keys of the octave divide into two halves.
The four keys which are designated as ri and ga are called the 'bottom
tetrachord' (in Indian terminology, 'Poorvaangam') and similarly the
four keys corresponding to dha and ni are called the 'upper tetrachord'
or 'Uttaraangam'. There is some kind of a symmetry between the bottom
and the top tetrachords and key label assignment.
Just when you thought you had seen enough of the buzzwords, here is
one more ! The starting frequency of your personalized octave relative
to a 'standard' octave determines the 'pitch' of your voice. Your
signature 'pitch' or 'sruti' (here we are using the word 'sruti' to
mean 'the starting frequency of 'your' octave') is measured in a weird
sounding unit called 'kattai'. Half a 'kattai' is a semitone and a
full kattai is a 'whole tone'. If your octave happens to start at
240 Hz then you have a 'four kattai sruti', by definition. If your
voice is very low pitched then you can have lower than four kattai
as in case of many males. Women and children are high pitched and
can have higher than four (even six) kattai srutis and their octave
will start at frequencies higher than 240 Hz. An approximate Western
equivalent of this is called 'Register'. In Indian classical music,
the octaves are 'free floating', varying from person to person. The
starting points are not pegged at 240 Hz.
Table II Karnatic names for keys in a keyboard
Key # Western name Karnatic Karnatic
(Notation 1) (Notation 2)
1 C Sa S
2 C # (D b) Ri 1 R1
3 D Ri 2 (Ga 1) R2 (G1)
4 D # (E b) Ri 3 (Ga 2) R3 (G2)
5 E Ga 3 G3
6 F Ma 1 M1
7 F # (G b) Ma 2 M2
8 G Pa P1
9 G # (A b) Dha 1 D1
10 A Dha 2 (Ni 1) D2 (N1)
11 A # (B b) Dha 3 (Ni 2) D3 (N2)
12 B Ni 3 N3
It is also common to abbreviate the seven notes sa, ri, ga,
ma, pa, dha, ni to letters S, R, G, M, P, D and N.
The way to use this table is to realize that when you hit the first
key of the octave (the C key) you will sing out 'Sa'. When
you hit the first black key (C sharp) you will sing out 'Ri'.
On the third key, you will sing out 'Ri' or perhaps a 'Ga'
depending on the context. More about this 'context' later.
Table III 22 Sruti scheme
Sruti Frequency Frequency
ratio (Hertz)
Sa 1 240
Ri 1 32/31 252.8
Ri 2 16/15 256
Ri 3 10/9 266.6
Ri 4 9/8 270
Ga 1 32/27 284.4
Ga 2 6/5 288
Ga 3 5/4 300
Ga 4 81/64 303.7
Ma 1 4/3 320
Ma 2 27/20 324
Ma 3 45/32 337.5
Ma 4 64/45 341.3
Pa 3/2 360
Dha 1 128/81 379
Dha 2 8/5 384
Dha 3 5/3 400
Dha 4 27/16 405
Ni 1 16/9 426.6
Ni 2 9/5 432
Ni 3 15/8 450
Ni 4 31/16 465
We have learnt about the keyboard, labeled the various keys under
the Eastern and Western schemes and even quarreled about whether it
should have 12 keys or 22 to an octave. We now know that these keys
are like the alphabets in creating music. How then do we compose
music?
Before we answer this question, let us see if we can say something
about the structure of a 'tune' or the 'melody' itself. If we listen
to any musical piece such as 'Jana gana mana' or 'Roop tera mastana',
we notice that their second lines and subsequent lines are not just
mindless imitation or repetition of the first lines. There is an
elaboration of a theme as the song unfolds. You could listen to any
line of 'Roop tera mastana' and feel that it is connected to the first
line, in a musical sense. If someone played a musical phrase from the
song at random, the odds are you would guess that it is from 'Roop tera
mastana'. And it may sound trivial, but you also notice that 'Roop
tera mastana' does not at all sound like 'Jana gana mana'. There is
a character, a structure and an identity to the song, however vague
the concept may sound. (note the pun on the word 'sound' !) If you
have grasped this abstract concept, you have almost understood the
concept of a 'Ragam' (or 'raga' or 'rag') because a Ragam is also
an embodiment of a particular musical identity.
For example, if you heard the song 'Vande maataram, Shujalaam shuphalaam...'
you can tell that it has its own identity, which is different from
the way 'Jana gana mana..' or 'Roop tera mastana ..' sound. This song
is in fact, based on a Ragam called 'Desh'.
How do we forge such special musical identities using a keyboard ?
The answer lies in choosing just a SUBSET of keys out of the twelve
keys available in an octave (instead of all twelve) and sticking to
just this subset of keys while making music. If you used all the keys
in the keyboard to compose one song, you may not create anything with
an identity. (You will see, as you understand more about music that
this statement is strictly not true. There are nice-sounding musical
compositions where almost all the keys are used)
Let us take an example. Let us choose just all the white keys in an
octave - that is, use only seven out of the twelve keys. And let us
play the keys in any order, even stay on one key for whatever length
of time if we choose to do so. Let us allow ourselves to go to the
white keys in the octaves below and above the standard octave as well.
After a few minutes, you may sense an 'effect', a 'whole-ness' ('Gestalt'!)
or a personality to the sound. If you don't believe me, have your
friend play the keyboard with only the white keys. Now close your
eyes and ask him (or her) to occassionally hit any black key. You
can easily tell whenever the black keys are hit, because you are now
sensitive to the 'structure' or 'character' produced by the seven
white keys.
Is there a lower limit on how FEW keys we can choose in our subset
and still get by ? If we chose a subset of just three keys (say, the
first three white keys) in an octave and limit ourselves to those
keys, we see that we don't have much variety to the melodies we can
produce. It may sound like a drum beating. But is devoid of any special
melodic personality. In general, (note that this is not an absolute
law) one chooses five or six or seven keys out of the twelve keys
available in an octave. More about these selection rules later. Once
these keys are selected, the corresponding keys in the other octaves
are also automatically selected and used in melody making.
In the context of Indian music, one has an extra degree of freedom.
One can choose one set of keys to go up in frequency in the octave
and choose an entirely different set to come down the octave, if we
so desire. The key sequence to go up is called 'Arohanam' and the
key sequence which forms the descending order is called the 'Avarohanam'.
More about it later as well ! Let us now stick to 'symmetric' choices
while going up or down. At the risk of sounding repetitive, let me
say that you can always decide to be a non-conformist and follow none
of these so-called rules and conventions. Music is after all, a creative
art and the final criterion is whether it sounds pleasing.
How do we select the 'subset' of keys ? Our ancestors have done quite
a bit of research on such selection rules and have come up with algorithms.
Let us look at the Western music first. The 'Major' Scale is a very
typical selection algorithm. This helps you select seven keys in an
octave. The rules are as follows:
First key - Choose ANY key in the octave.
Second key - Skip the adjacent key to the right, choose the one after
that. In effect, you have moved a 'whole tone' from the first key.
Remember the concept of 'whole tones' and 'semitones' from the previous
chapter. And that the whole tone equals shifting two semitones.
Third key - Again, skip the adjacent key to the right, choose the
second one (again, you have moved a 'whole tone')
Fourth key - select the adjacent key. (you have moved a 'half tone'
or a semitone)
Fifth key - Skip the next key, but select the one after that. Onceagain,
you have have moved a full tone.
Sixth key - Skip the next key and select the one after that.
Seventh key - Select the adjacent key.
In short, your frequency selection is:
Select a key and then move,
Whole tone - whole tone - half tone - whole tone - whole tone - whole
tone - half tone
If you started with the usual C key, the first white key, you will
see that the 'C Major scale' is simply all white keys. This is a very
'major' scale, really, with a lot of popular compositions. And in
the process of introducing this algorithm, we have also defined the
term 'scale', which is simply a sequence of keys. Also, the algorithm
'wraps around itself'. That is, if you started out with the F key
for example, and created the F Major Scale, you will spill over to
the next octave. But that is okay, because you can fill up the rest
of your scale by starting out with the F key of the PREVIOUS octave.
That is, with this algorithm, you will always select seven keys in
an octave. A question to ask is - will we get unique sequences using
this algorithm every time we start off with a new key ? Or is there
a possibility of our sequence repeating itself for two different starting
keys, i.e, is the C Major scale different from D Major and are there
twelve unique Major scales ? (I will leave this as an exercise for
the very enthusiastic reader !)
Similarly, other algorithms can also be defined. One other choice
is called the Minor scale - which is in reality a generic name for
three different algorithms. One of them goes as,
Whole - half - whole - whole - half - whole - whole (with the freedom
to choose the first key)
I am not giving the selection rules for the other two 'Minor' algorithms.
Again there are twelve keys we can select as our first key and therefore
we can generate twelve sequences per Minor algorithm and there are
three such 'Minor' algorithms, bringing a grand total of twelve times
three, thirty six possible Minor scales. But we discover that many
of the scales repeat themselves and in reality the number of unique
'scales' are fewer than thirty six Minor plus twelve Major scales.
Coming back to Indian system, even the ancient Tamil literary work,
Silappadhikaram talks of an algorithm called 'Ilikramam', fascinating
as it sounds. The rules of Ilikramam are quite similar to the selection
of Major and Minor scales. It is really fun to work out this algorithm
and derive a bunch of scales. (If you are more interested in this,
refer to Prof. Ramanathan's book in the Reference section) In fact,
nothing stops you at this point to go ahead and create your own selection
rules to choose seven keys out of the twelve in the octave.
But let us turn our attention to Karnatic music. (Also, at this point,
I will depart from talking about Indian classical music in general
and stick only to South Indian music. Wherever relevant, references
will be made to Hindustani music)
In Karnatic music, a very famous algorithm exists to select the keys
in an octave, which forms the basis of important scales, which are
called the 'Melakarta Scheme'. The Melakarta scheme selection algorithm
is as follows: Please refer to Fig. 3 or Table II)
Rule 1: Always select the first white key ! The 'Sa'.
Rule 2: Always select the Pa key. This is a convenient midpoint of
the octave, sort of.
Rule 3: Select one of the two Ma keys (Ma1 or Ma2 - note that one
of them is black and the other one is white) Once selected, this key
is your 'Ma'.
Rule 4: Select ANY two keys out of the four keys in the lower tetrachord.
(From Keys 2, 3, 4 and 5) Once selected, the first of these two keys
will be your 'Ri' and the second your 'ga'.
Rule 5: Select ANY two keys out of the four keys in the upper tetrachord.
(From keys 9, 10, 11 and 12) Once selected, the first of the two keys
will be your 'dha' and the second will be your 'ni'. This rule is
exactly like Rule 4.
Once all the seven keys are chosen, you have your complete sa ri ga
ma pa dha ni.
Let us see how many Melakartas or scales we can build this way. By
Rule 4, you can choose two keys out of four in SIX different ways
going by the elementary combination theory. Similary, going by Rule
5, we can choose two keys out of four in SIX different ways. By Rule
3, you can choose one key out of two in TWO different ways. So we
get,
SIX times SIX times TWO = Seventy Two Melakartas or Melakarta ragams.
And they are all unique.
By definition, the Melakarta Ragams are symmetric with respect to
going up in octave or down. Saying the same thing more technically, in
Melakarta Ragams, the Arohanam and the Avarohanams are simply reversed.
The sequence Sa ri ga ma pa dha ni is Arohanam. The reversed sequence
Sa ni dha pa ma ga ri is Avarohanam. The Melakarta Ragams are also
called 'Sampoorna ragams' or Complete ragams.
Interestingly, even the Melakarta selection algorithm allows us to
choose all seven white keys, the same as the Western C Major scale.
In Karnatic music, we call the resulting Melakarta ragam as Shankarabharanam.
(You may have even heard of this ragam) In Hindustani music, the set
of all white keys is called the 'Bilaval thaat', one of the major
building blocks of Hindustani musical system.
Let us now go back to Table II and see why notation 1 makes sense.
For example, you can pick up any two keys from the keys 2, 3, 4 and
5 and still call the first one of those as Ri and the second one as
Ga. If you chose keys 2 and 5 then, you will sing out 'ri' when you
strike key 2 and 'ga' when you strike key 5. On the other hand, if
you chose keys 3 and 4 you will say 'ri' for key 3 and 'ga' for key
4. Finally if you chose keys 2 and 3, then key 3 will be a 'ga' (and
not 'ri') in this situation. The rule is, the first key used among
these four keys is a 'ri' and the second one is 'ga' no matter which
absolute position the keys are located at. Keys 3 and 4 have the dubious
honor of being a ri or a ga depending on the situation. These arguments
are also valid in the upper tetrachord and in the choice of 'dha'
and 'ni'. Now perhaps we can understand why three keys were designated
as 'ri' or 'ga' or 'dha' or ni.
A caveat. I am using the word 'Ragam' in a loose sense here. A Ragam
is not just a scale or a bunch of keys - it is more than that. Remember,
I told you over and over and over that microtones are everything in
Indian classical music and keys in a keyboard are simply digitized
approximations. The seven white keys alone are not enough to give
the resulting music the flavor of ragam 'Shankarabharanam' - it is
those seven keys PLUS all the associated microtones (I know, I am
being vague, but there is no simple way to get around it !) which
constitute the 'Shankarabharanam' ragam. In fact, you may hear shades
of Shankarabharanam when someone plays the Western C Major or Hindustani
Bilaval. But the 'shades' are different for C Major and Bilaval and
Shankarabharanam. C Major does not have any gamakam, Bilaval has some
and Shankarabharanam has another set of gamakams. It is important
to listen to some music and figure out if you can identify an artiste
go through gamakams. A simple rolling of the tongue, subtle jumps
and modulation or vibrattos are all indicative of gamakams.
Also, if you are the type that questions authority, you may equally
well question the Melakarta selection rules. Why should we include
Pa always and why can't we include BOTH the Ma1 and Ma2 keys in the
same scale ? In Hindustani music there are ragams which use both
the Ma keys, although it is a no-no in Karnatic. (once you become
more advanced you will see that even in Karnatic music some pieces
use both the Mas)
Finally, we should notice a fundamental difference between the Western
system of scale building compared to the Melakarta scheme. In the
Western classical music, you started off on a specific key, used the
algorithm to generate the next key, which in turn led you to the third
key of the scale and so forth. You sequentially generated the keys
one after another by just shifting a whole tone or half a tone. By
a curious coincidence even the Ilikkramam algorithm in Silappadhikaram
is a similar 'Mode shifting' or 'tone shifting' algorithm. By contrast,
the Melakarta scheme is a brutally mathematical scheme where you selected
7 keys out of a possible 12 keys, subject to certain constraints -
here you figured out the frequency relationship between the keys much
later. One important consequence: In the Western scale system, the
keys in a scale are not more than a 'whole tone' apart, i. e, in any
Major or Minor scale, you 'skip' at the maximum just one key. Whereas
in Melakarta scheme, you can choose Key 1, Key 2, Key 3, Key 7, key
8, key 11 and key 12 by the algorithm. (This corresponds to Ragam
Raghupriya) Notice the big gap between key 3 and key 7 (between the
'ga' and 'ma') where we skipped over three keys (This amounts to skipping
two whole tones or four semitones). Also, we skipped two keys between
'pa' and 'dha'. (keys 8 and 11) Such large 'Intervals' ('Interval'
is yet another musical term !) can produce 'unpleasant' listening
experience. And although Raghupriya is a legitimate Ragam, it is about
as popular as rain during a picnic.
(Skip this chapter if you want to during the first reading ! But,
on other hand, the Melakarta scheme is a fascinating piece of classification.
You might want to read it for the fun of it)
A scholar named Venkatamakhin invented the Melakarta scheme, way back
in the seventeenth century. He was the first to comprehensively classify
Ragams in a 'Periodic table' like arrangement. A complete list of
the 72 Melakarta Ragams is given in Table IV with the corresponding
scales. When Venkatamakhin devised his Table, only a few of the 72
Ragams were known. Using his schematization Venkatamakhin not only
cataloged the existing Melakarta Ragams, but also filled in the 'gaps'
by coming up with the key sequence for the rest of the Melakarta Ragams.
Thus this scheme helped 'discover' new Melakarta Ragams, which in
turn led to even newer derivative or child Ragams using those. Composers
and performers lapped it up and made songs in the newer, hitherto
unknown Ragams. In Table IV, the ragam number 29 is our friendly
ragam, Shankarabharanam, although its less well-known official name
DhheeraShankarabharanam is used in the table.
Table IV The 72 Melakarta Ragams and their scales
--------------------------------------------------------------------
# Name Ri ga Dha ni # Name Ri ga Dha ni
Suddha Madhyamam (M1) Prati Madhyamam (M2)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Kanakanki R1 G1 D1 N1 37 Salagam R1 G1 D1 N1
2 Ratnangi R1 G1 D1 N2 38 Jalarnavam R1 G1 D1 N2
3 Ganamurti R1 G1 D1 N3 39 Jhalavarali R1 G1 D1 N3
4 Vanaspati R1 G1 D2 N2 40 Navaneetam R1 G1 D2 N2
5 Manavati R1 G1 D2 N3 41 Pavani R1 G1 D2 N3
6 Tanarupi R1 G1 D3 N3 42 Raghupriya R1 G1 D3 N3
7 Senavati R1 G2 D1 N1 43 Gavambodhi R1 G2 D1 N1
8 Hanumatodi R1 G2 D1 N2 44 Bhavapriya R1 G2 D1 N2
9 Dhenuka R1 G2 D1 N3 45 Subhapantuvarali R1 G2 D1 N3
10 Natakapriya R1 G2 D2 N2 46 Shadvigamargini R1 G2 D2 N2
11 Kokilapriya R1 G2 D2 N3 47 Suvarnangi R1 G2 D2 N3
12 Rupavati R1 G2 D3 N3 48 Divyamani R1 G2 D3 N3
13 Gayakapriya R1 G3 D1 N1 49 Dhavalambari R1 G3 D1 N1
14 Vakulabharanam R1 G3 D1 N2 50 Namanarayani R1 G3 D1 N2
15 Mayamalavagoulai R1 G3 D1 N3 51 Kamavardhini R1 G3 D1 N3
16 Chakravaham R1 G3 D2 N2 52 Ramapriya R1 G3 D2 N2
17 Suryakantam R1 G3 D2 N3 53 Gamanasrama R1 G3 D2 N3
18 Hatakambhari R1 G3 D3 N3 54 Viswambhari R1 G3 D3 N3
19 Jhankaradhwani R2 G2 D1 N1 55 Syamalangi R2 G2 D1 N1
20 Natabhairavi R2 G2 D1 N2 56 Shanmukhapriya R2 G2 D1 N2
21 Keeravani R2 G2 D1 N3 57 Simhendramadhyamam R2 G2 D1 N3
22 Kharaharapriya R2 G2 D2 N2 58 Hemavati R2 G2 D2 N2
23 Gourimanohari R2 G2 D2 N3 59 Dharamavai R2 G2 D2 N3
24 Varunapriya R2 G2 D3 N3 60 Nitimati R2 G2 D3 N3
25 Mararanjani R2 G3 D1 N1 61 Kantamani R2 G3 D1 N1
26 Charukesi R2 G3 D1 N2 62 Rishabhapriya R2 G3 D1 N2
27 Sarasangi R2 G3 D1 N3 63 Latangi R2 G3 D1 N3
28 Harikambhoji R2 G3 D2 N2 64 Vachaspati R2 G3 D2 N2
29 Dheera- R2 G3 D2 N3 65 Mechakalyani R2 G3 D2 N3
sankarabharanam
30 Naganandini R2 G3 D3 N3 66 Chitrambhari R2 G3 D3 N3
31 Yagapriya R3 G3 D1 N1 67 Sucharitra R3 G3 D1 N1
32 Ragavardhini R3 G3 D1 N2 68 Jyotiswarupini R3 G3 D1 N2
33 Gangeyabhusani R3 G3 D1 N3 69 Dhatuvardhini R3 G3 D1 N3
34 Vagadheeswari R3 G3 D2 N2 70 Nasikabhusani R3 G3 D2 N2
35 Sulini R3 G3 D2 N3 71 Kosalam R3 G3 D2 N3
36 Chalanattai R3 G3 D3 N3 72 Rasikapriya R3 G3 D3 N3
This brings out another interesting aspect of the Melakarta Scheme.
The names of the ragams are not arbitrary. The names contain mnemonics
which spell out which keys are used in the ragam. From the name DhheeraShankarabharanam,
we could figure out that it is all white keys ! (Venkatamakhin was
lucky that most of the 72 ragams were not known then, so he could
assign names to them or add a prefix to the existing ones. Imagine
if all the ragams were to exist first and then you try to group them,
you may not have such mnemonics possible) In fact, in Hindustani music,
such schemes were not invented and now we have hundreds of ragams
which are tough to classify using such simple mnemonics. Of course,
the absence of such a comprehensive scheme is by no means a negative
or a deficiency on the Hindustani musical system. In music, like in
most things in life, we don't (and should not) want to make value
judgements !
Let me now explain you the mnemonic or the Katayapadi System. (Thanks
to R. Pichumani for the notes in this section) A look-up table is
created, given in Table V that assigns syllables to numbers.
Table V Katayapadi system of naming the Melakarta ragams
------------------------------------------------------------------
Number 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
------------------------------------------------------------------
Syllable ka kha ga gha - cha chha ja jha
ta tta da dda - tha thha dha ddha
na pa pha ba bha ma
ya ra la va sha shha sa ha
------------------------------------------------------------------
The above scheme works as follows:
- Assign numbers to the first two syllables of the Melakarta ragam.
Example, Harikambhoji, the syllable 'Ha' is 8 and 'ra' is 2 and thus
Hari is 82. The melakarta number of this ragam is obtained by simply
interchanging the digits, i. e 82 becomes 28 and in fact, Harikambhoji
is the 28 th melakarta ragam.
- A few more example, Kanakangi. Ka is 1 and Na is 0 and thus Kana
is 10. Interchanging the digits we get 10 -- 01 and thus this is the
first melakarta ragam.
DhheeraShankarabharanam, here Dhha is 9 and ra is 2 and thus Dhheera
is 92, transposing which we get 29 which is the position of the ragam.
You can see that Shankarabharanam probably existed before the scheme
was invented and thus the author had to alias it to conform to his
look-up table scheme. There are other such aliased ragams. The popular
ragam Todi is aliased to become Hanumatodi and Kalyani is officially
Mechakalyani, just so that they follow the Katayapadi naming scheme.
Another example, Mayamalavagaulai, (used to be called just Malavagaulai)
has Ma which is 5 and Ya which is 1 and thus yielding 51, which when
inverted gives 15, which is the place in the order.
Take SimhendraMadhyamam. Sa is 7 and Ma is 5 and thus Simha is 75
and the melakarta number is 57. However you must notice that the second
syllable, Mha is a compound syllable combining ma and ha. In these
cases, we usually take the first of the two sounds. There are some
exceptions too. In Ratnangi, Ra is 2 and we take the 'Na' part of
'Thna' and arrive at the destination 02. If you used 'Th' instead
of 'Na', you will get the number 62 for this melakarta, which is firmly
occupied by ragam Rishabhapriya.
What are the advantages of such mathematical and almost 'hackers'
kind of scheme ?
- The melakarta scheme does not tell you if a given ragam is a melakarta
or not. If you know it is a melakarta ragam, you can find out what
number it has in the sequence. For example, you can try to see what
number is ragam Poorvikalyani, which is not a melakarta. This would
be 21 if you consider Pa ra. (or if you considered Pa and Va it is
41) However, it is not even a melakarta ragam and you cannot use
the above look-up table.
- Incidentally, if you look up Table IV which lists all the melakarta
ragam, you will see that the two very famous ragams Shankarabharanam
(called DhheeraShankarabharanam) and Kalyani (called Mechakalyani)
have almost identical notes except for the Ma. Shankarabharanam uses
Ma1, which is called Shuddha Madhyamam, whereas Kalyani uses Ma2 which
is called Prati Madhyamam. Thus the table is divided into two groups
of 36 ragams each and the only difference between the ragam on the
left and the one on the right is the Ma key used. The first 36 from
Kanakangi to Chalanattai are called Suddha Madhyamam ragams and the
other 36 are called Prati Madhyamam ragams. Melakartas which differ
from each other by 36 (Such as Harikambhoji and Vachaspati, Keeravani
and Simhendramadhyamam) have the same Arohanam and Avarohanam except
for the Ma.
- How do we figure out the Arohanam and Avarohanam or which keys
to use from the name of the melakarta ragam ? If somebody tells you
Keeravani, can you quickly locate the keys on a keyboard corresponding
to the ragam ? You just have to look at the Table IV to see how cyclical
the whole thing is. All melakarta ragams in the same group of six
(i. e, 1 to 6, 7 to 12, 25 to 30 etc) have the same Sa ri ga ma. All
ragams which differ from each other by six have the same Pa dha ni
sa. (Karaharapriya(22), Harikambhoji(28), Hemavati(58), Nasikabhoosani(70)
all have the same Pa dha ni sa, because they all leave a remainder
of 4 when divided by 6)
Just to summarize:
- All Melakarta Ragams from 1 to 36 use Ma 1. Those from 37 to 72
use Ma 2.
- The ri ga assignment is as follows:
Ri 1 - Ga 1 Melakartas 1 through 6, 37 through 42
Ri 1 - Ga 2 Melakartas 7 through 12, 43 through 48
Ri 1 - Ga 3 Melakartas 13 through 18, 49 through 54
Ri 2 - Ga 2 Melakartas 19 through 24, 55 through 60
Ri 2 - Ga 3 Melakartas 25 through 30, 61 through 66
Ri 3 - Ga 3 Melakartas 31 through 36, 67 through 72
- The dha ni assignment is as follows:
Take the Melakarta number and divide it by six and look at the remainder.
Dha 1 - Ni 1 if the remainder is 1
Dha 1 - Ni 2 if the remainder is 2
Dha 1 - Ni 3 if the remainder is 3
Dha 2 - Ni 2 if the remainder is 4
Dha 2 - Ni 3 if the remainder is 5
Dha 3 - Ni 3 if the remainder is zero
So all you have to do is take a melakarta ragam. From its name determine
its number in the scheme. From the number, figure out the Arohanam
and Avarohanam. Simple enough !
Again, among the 72 such major ragams, not all of them are equally
popular. Some of them are quite obscure, especially the ones whose
keys are not spread apart well throughout the octave. However, many
musicians have composed in all 72 melakartas - Koteeswara Iyer for
one. Musicians like M. S. Subbulakshmi and S. Balachandar have recorded
all 72 melakartas. The Suddha Madhyamam (Suddha Madhyamam is just
the official name for Ma 1) group of 36 ragams are by and large more
popular than the Prati Madhyamam (Prati Madhyamam is the same as Ma
2) group. The Ma2 is supposed to be more 'negative' and 'sad' !! The
more unpopular ragams are the ones like Kanakangi, which use closely
spaced keys. The ragam Mayamalavagaulai on the other hand has a well
spread out keys - Sa-ri1-space-ga2-ma1-space-pa-dha1-space-ni2-sa.
This is the ragam all beginners are taught, essentially because such
a dispersed set of notes is more easy for a beginner to learn.
From these complete ragams, you can derive 'child ragams' omitting
a key here and a key there in the arohanam or avarohanam. Some melakartas
are parents of a large number of popular 'child' or 'Janya' or 'derived'
ragams - melakartas like Natabhairavi, Kharaharapriya, Harikambhoji
for example. We will see this in the next section.
You may wonder how just one key makes a difference. I just told you
that the ragams Kalyani and Shankarabharanam have identical arohanam
and avarohanam, except for the key used to produce the 'ma' syllable.
You have to listen to your keyboard. Play Kalyani and Shankarabharanam
on the keyboard (and even though you don't produce the 'microtones'
and even though you are playing an 'eqully tempered instrument') you
can tell the two apart. The ma key makes a big difference and one
has to simply listen to music a lot to train one's ears.
Since melakartas have the maximum allowed seven notes in a ragam,
they have an enormous scope for melody making, compared to a derived
ragam which may have less than seven notes. Thus melakarta ragams
are very popular in concerts. Musicians choose them for the 'heavy'
part of the concert and try to exhibit their mastery.
Now that we have studied the Melakarta scheme inside and out, let
us go on to generate the secondary or 'janya' or derived Ragams (the
rest of the Ragams, that is) based on some simple guidelines. These
are only guidelines and are not hard and fast rules:
(1) A Ragam should use at least five keys in an octave and utmost
seven keys in the Arohanam as well as the Avarohanam.
(2) The Arohanam or ascending order of the notes (or Avarohanam or
descending order, for that matter) is obtained by simply taking a
Melakarta scale and omitting none or one note or two notes. (Remember,
the Melakarta scale has seven notes and so we can end up with seven
or six or five notes in the derived scale)
For example, let us (yet again !) take Ragam Shankarabharanam. If
we omit the keys 'Ma' and 'Ni' and use only the five white keys Sa,
Ri, Ga, Pa, Dha then we obtain a famous Ragam called Mohanam. (Hindustani
equivalent is Bhoop or Bhopali)
(Usually, the the next octave's Sa is also included for completion
and hence the Arohanam will be more correctly given as Sa-ri-ga-pa-dha-Sa.
Similarly, the Avarohanam is given by Sa dha pa ga ri sa. You will
notice that almost all ragams start with the key Sa. Also, from now
on, we will omit saying 'Ri 1' or 'Ri 2' etc. IF THERE IS NO AMBIGUITY
AS TO WHICH KEY WE ARE USING.
If we used Sa, Ri, Ga, Pa, Ni, Sa then we get Ragam Hamsadhwani.
If we used Sa, Ri, Ma, Pa, Dha, Sa then we get Ragam Suddha Saveri.
(The Hindustani equivalent for this scale is Rag Durga)
If you have a keyboard try to play just these keys and see if you
can get a feel for the identities of these Ragams. For example, in
Mohanam, the jump from Ga to Pa or for that matter Dha to upper Sa
is quite characteristic. Besides Karnatic and Hindustani music, a
lot of Oriental tunes are based on the scale of Mohanam !
(3) The five note scale, such as Mohanam, is called a Pentatonic Ragam.
The Indian equivalent term is 'Oudava Ragam'. Similary, the six note
Ragam is called Shadva Ragam in India or Sextatonic in Western terminology.
And the seven note Ragam is called Septatonic or Sampoorna. While
the Ragam Mohanam is pentatonic with an implicit assumption that Arohanam
and Avarohanam are reverses of each other, other asymmetric possibilities
are allowed.
A ragam can have five notes on the way up (in Arohanam) and seven
on the way down. (Avarohanam) For example, you can have a ragam which
is exactly Mohanam in terms of Arohanam (Sa ri ga pa dha sa) but is
Kalyani (Sa ni dha pa ma 2 ga ri sa) on the way down. This oudava
- sampoorna Ragam is called Mohanakalyani. So you can have oudava-oudava,
oudava-sampoorna, sampoorna-shadva etc. combinations. (Melakarta Ragams
are of course, Sampoorna-Sampoorna) Also, the Avarohanam need not
be the reverse of the Arohanam. For example, you can have a ragam
that goes Sa-ri1-ma1-dha1-ni2-Sa (Arohanam) and Sa-ni1-dha2-pa-ma2-ga2-Sa.
(Avarohanam) A good lot of ragams are however symmetric. (The same
keys used to go up the octave or down the octave)
Once you have chosen the keys, you are restricted to play only those
keys, however you can play them any way you want. You can compose
a phrase that goes Sa-ma1-ma1-dha1-Sa-dha2-dha2-ga2. You can skip
notes if you wish.
(4) Some other ragams, instead of going up or down simply, can go
up or down in a zig zag manner - such as Sa-ri1-ma1-ga2-pa-ni2-dha1-sa
etc. That is, you cannot simply go up in scale by merely pressing
the keys, but you should spiral to the top of the scale. There are
not too many such ragams, but such a meandering structure is called
'Vakram', which literally means crooked. This is an additional constraint
imposed on the Ragam, besides the key selection.
(5) In some other instances, it may not be easy to define uniquely
the Arohanam and Avarohanam of a ragam. Many Arohanams and Avarohanams
(i.e, definitions) can exist for one ragam itself. An example of such
a Ragam is Ananda Bhairavi. Of course, those Arohanams and Avarohanams
will be close to each other and won't be radically apart. This situation
exists especially when we try to extract the Ragam equivalent of folk
melodies or alien tunes.
(6) And finally here is a confusing possibility. There can be two
Ragams which have identical Arohanams and Avarohanams, but DIFFERENT
MICROTONAL ASSOCIATIONS or Gamakams ! The only way to tell these two
Ragams apart is to sensitize your ears to the differences to the Gamakams.
Of course, you can never possibly play them on the keyboard as two
different Ragams !
You can go ahead and create your own ragam by selecting your own five
keys (or six or seven) following the above rules and name it after
yourself. (But make sure it doesn't already exist !) However, if you
created your own pentatonic-pentatonic ragam, you probably did not
choose just the first five keys of the octave. You might have distributed
the five keys such that they were spread out in the octave instead
of being bunched together, just so that your ragam sounded better.
In fact, such subjective criteria have given resulted in only a few
Ragams being popular.
Mathematically, there are many, many ragams possible. Choosing five,
six or seven keys out of possible twelve keys gives rise to a huge
number of combinations. Fortunately, many of the possibilities have
been deemed 'boring to the ear' by musicians throughout history. Only
about six thousand or so ragams have been even cataloged and of these,
only about two hundred or so are even used these days. A ragam's popularity
can go up and down, depending on people's taste and the existing political
climate of the Karnatic music caucus. So, it is really not a tremendous
task to learn about fifty or so of the more popular ragams and be
good at identifying them, if at least to impress your friends.
It is always possible to break down any song, even the non-Karnatic
music songs into its constituent Swarams and define a corresponding
Ragam. Even 'Baa baa black sheep' can be broken into a Ragam. Musicians
more clever than we are have done such things and created Ragams out
of truly Dravidian folk melodies such as 'Aadu Pambey' (the snake
song) or Kavadi Sindhu songs like 'Nandavanathil or aandi' and created
ragams like Ananda Bhairavi or Kurunji. Sometimes, the ragam corresponding
to songs like 'Baa baa black sheep' may not have enormous scope to
create a lot of 'characteristic phrases' and thus limiting creating
any more songs based on the ragam.
In general, if two songs sound strikingly similar, the odds are they
are based on the same set of notes and thus in the same Ragam. Their
basic Ragam is identified typically by pattern recognition, if you
are not willing to do detailed decomposition into the constituent
keys of their scale.
The basis of Ragams is (1) the use of a restrictive number of keys
in an octave (2) go up and down in the octave in a prescribed manner.
(3) And yes, throw in the appropriate microtones. These generate specific
melodious personalities. The term microtones presents a major difficulty
in understanding the totality of the concept 'Ragam'. How exactly
can one specify which microtones are involved ? What is the best way
to 'notate' the millions of intermediate frequencies ? Instead of
getting very analytical about 'microtones' Karnatic music just gets
away by omitting a precise definition of a Ragam. In some sense, the
'Arohanam'-'Avarohanam' - this is the ascending sequence and this
is the descending order defintion of a Ragam is only an 'operational
definition' at best. Since the 'associated microtones' or 'Gamakam'
cannot be defined numerically, it has also become fashionable to simply
say that a Ragam is a 'Mood' or a feeling or an emotion, if you can
even relate to such unmusical terms.
Another way to define a Ragam is by analogy or how it should 'sound'
like. And compare it with an established historical 'standard' or
'primitives'. It is always much easier to sing the 'Gamakams' associated
with the Ragam - produce the basic patterns - rather than Fourier
analyze it. A ragam is alternatively defined in terms of its 'characteristic
musical phrases'. These characteristic phrases are called 'Pakads',
(in Hindustani music) literally meaning 'catch' phrases.
All these lend a certain amount of mystery to the concept of Ragam.
Like blind men trying to figure out an elephant, we are supposed to
only know 'a part of the personality' of a ragam. Never its wholeness.
We can only know so many 'characteristic phrases' of a ragam, not
a complete set of them, even if there exists such a complete set.
One song may have twenty of them. Another song in the same ragam might
use just ten of them, but a ten other new ones. Musicians are always
trying to create newer and newer 'characteristic phrases' to bring
out newer and newer aspects of the ragam. One might have thought that
they would have composed every possible phrase in the Ragam Shankarabharanam.
But people are still making new melodies in this centuries old Ragam
! We will perhaps never run out of tunes in this Ragam.
The easiest way to identify a ragam then is by analogy and trying
to figure out if there is a recurring characteristic phrase. Figuring
out a Ragam has always been a natural thing for a Karnatic music enthusiast,
especially if the Ragam happens to be an obscure one. It is almost
like solving a crime. Some of the ragams can be so distinctive that
you can recognize them when only two or three notes are played, thanks
to the characteristic microtones.
Sometimes, life is not quite simple. Our definitions of the term Ragam
may be violated. Some talented musicians might introduce extraneous
notes occassionally into a well-defined ragam, for nice musical effect.
Such a process is called 'Misra'fying. You can have a ragam Sivaranjani
played pure - this is a pentatonic ragam. Or you can have Misra Sivaranjani
where you occassionally introduce a sixth or seventh note not prescribed
in the definition of the ragam. Note that this requires expertise.
If you or I play Sivaranjani and try to Misra-fy it, we may go so
far off the original ragam that we might sound horrible - resulting
in 'besur' or 'Abaswaram'.
Equally incredibly, we have other violations as well. Ragams like
Sindhu Bhairavi and Kapi are often played with many more notes than
just the traditional maximum of seven. On the low side, people have
laid claims to Ragams with just four notes. Again, let your ears be
the judge.
Play some classical sounding music and try to see if any particular
Ragam thrills you. Anything that turns you off completely ? Play
instrumental or light classical music at first before embarking on a
heavy-duty vocal piece. Is there a piece that moves you ? Puts you in
a sublime mood ? Helps you drive your car ? Goes well in the background
when you cook ?
The reason for asking these questions is to figure out a little bit
about the psychoacoustics. While I do not believe that a particular
Ragam could inherently be an 'Angry' Ragam or a Midnight Ragam or
bring the rains or tame an elephant, Ragams could very well produce
individual psycho-acoustical effects.
If frequency and related concepts like tone, scale and octaves form
an important ingredient in music, the other equally important element
is time and related items like speed, rhythm, meter etc. In fact,
a musical piece is nothing but a source of sound emitting soundwaves
as a function of time. If you looked into the Western system of musical
notation, (the 'Staff notation') you would have noticed that frequency
is notated on the Y axis and time is given in the horizontal axis.
Let us forget about the frequencies etc for this chapter and see how
a melody progresses in time. The first concept is 'speed'. Any song,
even 'Jana gana mana' and 'Roop tera mastaanaa..' has a prescribed
speed. 'Roop tera..' probably lasts about four minutes and if you
sing it much faster or slower, it might even sound funny. (You must
have played some old records at a slow speed or fast speed and had
a good laugh when you were small) The Western music and Hindustani
music recognize various degrees of speed or tempo, all the way from
very, very slow to ultra fast. However, in Karnatic music, we do not
talk about ABSOLUTE speed - there is no connection to an external
clock. This has often led to arbitrariness in speed when songs are
performed. Some musicians become well-known for slow rendition of
songs. And perhaps an equal number have become equally well-known
for their fast rendition of perhaps the very same songs. History and
tradition have been the guidelines for the 'speed' of a Karnatic piece.
Since the concept is hardly invoked, we will not discuss it any further.
We will not impose an Adagio (one of the many Western music tempos)
or Vilambit (a slow speed used in Hindustani music) on Karnatic
compositions.
Once the speed is chosen, Karnatic music is reasonably strict about
keeping the speed constant - you should not slow down or speed up
during the course of a song unless mandated. However, Karnatic musicians
occassionally double and even quadruple their speeds relative to their
fundamental speed during the course of certain pieces, just to build
up the mood. In fact, lately, there have been songs rendered in 'seven
speeds', much like a Hamilton Beach blender. The basic speed is referred
to as 'First kaalam', literally meaning, first speed and correspondingly,
when the baud rate is doubled it is called 'second kaalam' and when
quadrupled, it is called 'third kaalam'.
Let us now look at the other concepts such as rhythm and meter. Rhythm
is probably the most fundamental aspect of music. Ancient civilizations
beat their drums much before they made their harps and lutes. Repetitive
sound patterns, such as the pulsation of the heart, are so primitive
that everyone can relate to them. When we sing 'Roop tera mastaanaa..',
even if it is just the first line, we feel the rhythm - sometimes
even if we forget how exactly the tune went, we could still recall
its rhythm. Amazing, isn't it.
We can tap our feet or pat our thighs or clap as we sing 'Roop tera
mastaanaa..' How many times did you pat or clap during the first
line of the song ? How about 'Baa baa black sheep' or 'jana gana mana'
? How many times did you 'beat' during the first lines of these pieces
? What you have been doing by tapping or patting is simply 'meter'ing
the song to count how long each line lasted - sort of counting minutes.
Let us now look at why such metering is important.
Songs are 'structured' - they have lines, stanzas and melodic phrases,
much like prose having paragraphs and sentences and words.
A good way to write 'Roop tera.. ' will be,
Roop tera
Mastaana
Pyaar mera
Deewana
Each of the above lines is a musical phrase or melody in itself and
seems to last about TWO beats. By the time you finish singing the
above four lines, you would have counted EIGHT beats. There is a cyclical
repetition. At the beginning of the first (and the third, fifth and
seventh) beat, a new musical phrase begins. If the time interval between
your clapping or beats is T seconds, then each small melody lasts
2T seconds and the entire opening stanza lasts 8T seconds. In fact,
if you went through the rest of this song, you will see that there
are some longer melodies lasting 4T seconds.
Now, on to our next example:
Baa baa black sheep (Four beats)
Have you any wool (Three beats)
Yes sir, yes sir (Four beats)
Three bags full (Three beats)
difficult to figure out. The melodic structure lasts either three
beats or four beats. We can therefore conclude that the periodicity
is seven beats, with a substructure of Four-beats and Three-beats.
Or put another way, the melodic phrases last 7T seconds and even here,
there seems to be two sub-melodies in one phrase lasting 4T and 3T
seconds.
In the final analysis, we can say that 'Roop tera mastaanaa..' is
set to a Four-beat cycle (Two beats would actually do, but two is
too small a number to define a beat cycle) and 'Baa baa black sheep'
to a Seven-beat cycle. The periodicity of the four beat cycle is 4T
and that of the seven beat cycle is 7T. It might sound trivial, but
we cannot hope to play 'Roop tera mastana..' using a 7T cycle (if
we do so, we might end up chopping the melody in the middle to fit
our beat cycles) and by the same token we cannot hope to play 'baa
baa black sheep' using a four beat cycle.
Let us summarize our concept of beats and cycles and metering. At
the beginning of each beat cycle, a new melody seems to emerge. (Melodic
phrases emerge even in the middle of the cycle in both the songs;
however, fresh phrases almost always begin with each new beat cycle)
In fact, if 'baa baa black sheep' happened to be a Karnatic song,
it is made up of nothing but melodies which are 7T (could even be
14T or 21T) long in time. In fact, the number 7T is some kind of a
'characteristic time constant' for this song. Therefore, we see that
each song in Karnatic music is not only set to a Ragam, but is also
composed of a series of melodies which are of specific duration to
fit a beat cycle.
So if you are a music composer, you should select a beat cycle too.
Let us say you selected a five beat cycle - your melodies then are
constrained to last 5T or 10T or 15T etc long, but not 3T or 7T. This
is precisely the basis for Talam. A Talam is essentially a beat cycle.
The seven beat cycle is a seven beat Talam and so forth.
An advanced aside ! - In general, a new melody NEED NOT begin JUST
at the start of a Talam cycle. In fact, you can choose any point in
the Talam cycle, (any beat, or even in between the beats) as the starting
point to begin your new melodic phrase each time. This point in the
Talam cycle is called 'Eduppu' in Tamil.
The simplest cycle has only three beats per cycle - called Roopaka
talam. By the way, we do not consider a simple TWO beat per cycle
as a Talam. Even though Four beats per cycle is a legitimate Talam,
Karnatic music does not consider it. Instead, the popular 'binary'
talam is interestingly an eight beat cycle , called Adi Talam. You
would have sung the entire first four lines of 'Roop tera..' by the
time you completed one cycle of the Adi Talam. A version of the five
beat Talam is called Khanda Chapu. There are six beat Talams although
sometimes you may be able to get by with just two cycles of the Three
beat talam, Roopakam. One version of the seven beat cycle, (which
is appropriate for 'Baa baa black sheep') is called Misra Chapu.
Another quick aside: Misra Chapu and Khanda Chapu are quite popular
in Karnatic music. 'Misra' in the context of Talam means seven and
'Khanda' means five and 'Chapu' denotes that the cycle is not uniform
! For example, Khanda Chapu goes one-two, one-two-three - here there
is a subdivision of the cycle itself into two parts. The first part
with two beats last for a different duration compared to the second
part with three beats. So the duration is 2T1 plus 3T2 and not just
5T !
There are more complex Talams than what I have mentioned thus far.
There are complexities either due to a large number of beats per cycle
(such as eleven, thirteen, umpteen) or due to their internal structure
with subdivisions (like the 'Chapu' Talams) Imagine composing musical
melodies which perfectly last a time cycle of thirteen beats ! As
improbable as it may sound, talented Karnatic musicians in fact choose
to compose and perform in extremely complicated and long beat cycles
of twenty plus beats per cycle. Legend has it that (of course, in
ancient times when kings and queens had nothing to do but to get entertained)
a musician sang in a 79 beat cycle and utterly humiliated a rival
musician.
However, the vast majority of the compositions are in the simple Talams
Roopakam and Adi. You can refer to erudite texts on the other less
known Talams. In fact, the morphology of Talams rival that of the
Melakarta scheme and one can get very sophisticated.
The Talams are 'put' or 'kept' (that is, the beats are counted) by
various time-honored ways. Even though at first it might look funny,
the familiar way still is to tap one's thighs and sweep with the right
hand while squatted. Ask your musically inclined friend to teach you
how to 'put' simple Talams like Adi and Roopakam. It is really a good
idea to 'put' Talam when you listen to a song. You can not only learn
'keeping talam' in just a half an hour or so of trying, but also see
that you are already a step above your friends who don't know about
it. In fact, although it can be quite annoying at times, you will
see that many, many people in the audience would 'put' Talam in a
concert and 'participate' - such feedback is often expected and appreciated
by the artistes. In real concerts, the rhythm is kept also simultaneously
by percussion instruments like Mridangam or Ghatam.
Thus far we examined (rather lightheartedly) the basic tools of Karnatic
music like the Ragams and Talams. It is now time to go to our stereo
systems and listen to Karnatic music with an entirely new mindset.
You can start off with classical based movie songs or play instrumental
music. Can you see the names of Talams and Ragams on the CD jacket
? From the name can you figure out whether the Ragam is a Melakarta
Ragam by looking up Table IV or a child Ragam ? Do you know the keys
used in the Ragam ? More interestingly, do you have two songs in the
same Ragam ? If so, can you see the similarities ? Can you correctly
identify your favorite melodic phrases which occur in a musical piece
EACH TIME THEY OCCUR ?
Karnatic music - the hard core classical music, that is - is divided
into two broad areas. The first one is the realm of pre-composed music
and the second one is improvisation or creative music. In Indian terminology,
the pre-existing compositions are called 'Kalpita' (literally meaning
'that which is taught') and the creative (improvisation) aspects are
called 'Manodharma'. Every performing artiste learns both the aspects
of classical music. He or she not only has a repertoire of several
(sometimes hundreds) pieces of well known songs, but he or she also
knows how to create music.
One easy way to improvise is to take an existing song and distort
it ! Just look at the way the American national anthem is sung by
various artistes in their own unique way ! But Karnatic music tradition
has reasonably stringent guidelines on such 'liberties' and where
to improvise.
In the first ('kalpita') part, the pre-existing compositions range
from the very simple to the very complicated pieces. There are Bhajan
type songs, dance songs, love songs and songs with a lot of vocal
gimmicks. Students of music start with such pre-existing compositions,
train their voice, assimilate the 'moods' of Ragams, be comfortable
with Talams and finally the training wheels come off and they move
into the territory of improvisation, where they start making their
own melodies as well. Some really talented musicians have whopping
careers as pure 'composers' whose songs are performed by other musicians.
By and large, most of the famous Karnatic musicians have left their
marks not only as performers but also as creators.
Most compositions in Karnatic music have three parts to their body.
The first two lines of the song (sometimes just one) is called Pallavi.
Like 'Raghupathy Raghava Raja Ram...' or 'Roop Tera Mastana' they
occur over and over, especially after each stanza. Usually, the Pallavi
is followed by two more lines (sometimes just one more). 'Eeshwar
Allah Tere Naam..' in Raghupathy Raghava Raja Ram is an example. This
portion is called Anu Pallavi. This is sung at the beginning for sure,
but sometimes even during the end of the song, but not necessarily
after each stanza. The stanzas of a song are called 'Charanam'.
So, a song unfolds as follows:
Pallavi
Anu Pallavi
Charanam 1 followed by Pallavi
Charanam 2 followed by Pallavi
Charanam n followed by Pallavi
Pallavi
Anu Pallavi (optional)
Pallavi
end of song.
Typically, the Pallavi is set in lower tetrachord and in the lower
octave (this is not a strict rule) and Anu Pallavi goes to the upper
keys and to the next octave as well. Notice this in the song 'Raghupathi
Raghava.'. The Anu Pallavi, 'Eeshwar Allah ..' goes to higher frequencies.
Given all this, let us see how Karnatic music education is imparted
to the students.
(Learning the simple elements - the 'Kalpita' aspects)
If you are a Karnatic music lover and if a good teacher happens to
be around, try to LEARN Karnatic music formally. Seriously. You may
not be gifted like some other people and your voice might sound like
a vacuum cleaner (many famous Karnatic musicians have lousy voices)
- and you may think you are 'tone deaf' or have no musical aptitude.
But none of these should come in the way of your attempting to learn
music. If people can be trained to learn foreign languages or to ski
or to become software programmers, they can be eqully well trained
in Karnatic music. Even if you don't become a concert grade musician,
you can learn enough to develop a deeper appreciation for music. Nothing
like hands on experience.
In the olden ('Gurukulam' or 'Gharaana') days, music was handed down
from generation to generation orally and the emphasis was heavily
on memorizing and relentless practicing. (Even now practice is a major
aspect of learning) These days, Karnatic music teaching has become
more modern and streamlined and less painful for the students. Students
are taught the theoretical and analytical techniques as well, instead
of being forced to regurgitate what the Gurus teach.
The first thing that happens when you start to learn music is figuring
out your characteristic octave. In Karnatic terminology this is referred
to as 'finding out one's sruti - note that we are now using the word
'sruti' in a completely different sense. This is because, everybody
has her or his signature octave which need not begin at 240 Hz. The
student is asked to sing out Sa - Pa - and then the sa of the upper
('Tara') octave. From this, the teacher extracts the range of the
student's octave.
After the octave is figured out, it is then 'captured' on a 'drone'
instrument called 'Sruti box' or a 'tanpura'. By 'capturing' we mean
that these instruments are tuned to produce those three notes at the
appropriate frequencies. If the student's standard octave begins at
260 Hz, the sruti box will play the 'Sa' at 260 Hz, Pa at 367 Hz and
the upper Sa at 520 Hz. Throughout the session, the 'drone' instrument
will keep playing these notes. Although this may be quite annoying
at the beginning, it is a necessary thing. Sometimes, after a lot
of singing, people can 'lose' their 'srutis' and instead of producing
the Sa at 260 Hz (or at whatever happens to be the person's sruti)
they can go completely off their octave and scales. At times like
these, you can tune yourself afresh using the drone sounds of the
sruti box and come back to your octave. (By the way, for the purpose
of writing I am assuming the student to be a male. It can very well
be a woman student too. No sexism implied) Not only do beginning students
tend to lose their 'sruti' - even experts, sometimes in the middle
of a big concert can go completely off their sruti and octave and
could sound quite miserable.
If you happen to have a sruti box or a tanpura, it is a lot of fun
tuning it to your octave or someone else's. Try it. If you get an
opportunity, jump on a concert stage and pluck away at a tanpura,
especially if the musician happens to be a big shot. (Just remember
not to fall asleep during the concert) The sruti box or the tanpura,
by its constant droning also adds an element of harmony to the Karnatic
music.
The first bunch of music lessons concern with the production of 'notes'
- much like Julie Andrews teaching the Sound of Music kids about Do
re mi. (there are corresponding Indian movie songs as well about Sa
ri ga ma pa) The emphasis here is for the student to stretch his voice
to produce different frequencies and at will. A student-friendly scale
like the Mayamalavagoulai (Melakarta # 15) is chosen where Keys 1,
2, 5, 6, 8, 9, and 12 are the Sa, Ri, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha, Ni notes. The
upper 'Sa' is always added. (Thus we produce EIGHT notes when we sing,
although the Ragam has only SEVEN notes. Among other reasons, the
eight-ness makes it easy to time this sequence in a binary, Adi Talam
which has an eight beat cycle) This particular Ragam is chosen because
the notes are 'spread out' across the octave, instead of subtly varying,
so that a beginning student can reproduce them easily. The notes are
drilled into a student in a variety of excruciating exercises, so
that at the end of the lessons, when asked, the student can utter
a 'dha' or a 'ri' at the exact frequency. (of course, in his signature
octave)
The initial lessons are purely on tone reproduction. Ragams and microtones
come afterwards. Initially, the student only learns the solfege notation
- a bunch of sa ri ga ma s - he is not taught any text or lyrics.
There will be also exercises on keeping Talam.
Then the student graduates to the simple songs called Geetams - the
nursery rhymes of Karnatic music. These are often set to mild Ragams
- again, the facets of the Ragams are hardly emphasized at this point.
The idea is to sing 'in tune' following the teacher. Usually the Geetams
are only a few lines long and they do not adhere to the Pallavi-Anu
Pallavi-Charanam structure always. The Solfege notes (Swarams) are
taught and sung out first and then the lyrics (lyrics are called Sahityams
in Karnatic music) are sung out afterwards.
The teacher might first go,
'Ma pa da sa sa ri'
and sing a line of text to fit it.
'Sreee Gana Naada'
(This can be fitted to a three beat cycle Roopakam, since there are
six notes.) This is a Geetam in the Ragam Malahari, a derivative of
Mayamalavagoulai and is usually the very first Geetam anyone learns.
If you think about it, there are several ways to express or sing out
a 'tune' (1) using the lyrics or text (2) humming using syllables
like 'la la' or 'aaa' or 'whatever'. You will see that this
forms the basis for what is called 'Alap' or 'Alapanai' and lastly
(3) you can 'decompose' the tune into the corresponding notes and
utter just the Solfege notation - this is called Swaram singing. This
version of producing the tune is useful especially if you are learning
to play an instrument where you don't care for lyrics anyway.
Once the basics like singing in-tune, keeping Talam etc are mastered,
the student is then ready for the more serious compositions. At this
point, in addition to learning a particular song, the student is also
trained to think in terms of Ragams etc. Even at this point, improvisation
is not introduced. Faithful following of the Master is strongly emphasized
so that pre-existing songs are reproduced the way they were meant
to be - tune, Talam and all. However tempting it may be and however
nicer it may actually sound, it is a big no-no for the intermediate
student to introduce his own 'stuff' and distort the song. You cannot
improve on a perfection like a Beethoven Symphony or a Thyagaraja
Composition. (What is your reaction to this ?)
The student moves on to the next set of songs called 'Varnam's. A
Varnam is a song with minimal amount of text. But most syllables will
be stretched and twisted quite a bit and a lot of vocal acrobatics
will take place. For example, a simple word like 'Swamy' might be
stretched to several beats (in terms of time) and might go through
several notes (in terms of frequency) and might actually sound like:
"Sw a a a a a a m e e e e e e .."
The idea here is to teach the student a little bit about the Ragam
structure, its characteristic phrases, microtonal variations and so
on and of course, to be able to train his vocal chords and reproduce
such features of the Ragam. The Varnam is also an exercise in maintaining
the Talam.
The Varnam consists of the Pallavi - Anu Pallavi - Charanam structure
somewhat. Interspersed with this will be a lot of plain 'notes' or
'swarams' in the Solfege nonsense syllables. That is, there will be
a lot of Sa, ri, ga, ma stuff sung out explicitly throughout the song.
The structure of Varnam is approximately,
Pallavi
Anu Pallavi
Initial Swaram (called 'Muktayi Swaram')
Pallavi
Charanam 1
Swaram 1 Charanam 1 (These Swarams are called 'Chittaswarams')
Swaram 2 Charanam 1
Swaram n Charanam 1
There is only one 'stanza' (Charanam) so to speak. Even this stanza
is usually only one line long. The basis for the introduction of Swaram
in these songs is to teach the student the main phrases of the Ragam
without obscuring the tune with lyrics. As the song progresses, from
Swaram 1 to Swaram n, the Swarams get longer and more complicated.
It takes longer for the student to learn the latter Swarams. All Varnams
are pre-composed, including the Swarams.
Another interesting purpose of singing 'Varnam' is to practice it
in the basic, double and even quadruple speeds to get the hang of
the Talam correctly. (and also to push the student to the limit of
his learning curve) Varnams are usually very bright and lively pieces.
There are also slow paced Varnams called Dance Varnams, essentially
used in dance recitals. Instead of being in just one Ragam, some Varnams
are composed as Ragamalikai, which means it is a song which uses different
Ragams for its various stanzas. (usually about three or four Ragams)
Then the student moves on to the mainstream Karnatic songs. These
songs are called 'Kritis' or 'Keertanai's. There are subtle technical
differences between the two terms, but we are not going to quibble.
The Kritis follow the Pallavi - Anu Pallavi - Charanam structure.
Usually, interestingly there will be just one Charanam or one stanza
rendered in the Kriti. If 'Roop tera mastana ..' were a Karnatic music
Kriti, you would only sing one stanza. Of course, there are exceptions.
Also, there are songs or Kritis which do not adhere to the Pallavi
- Anu - Charanam format. Kritis are usually ornamental and
like movie songs, they are developments of a theme. Even though they
are set to a Ragam, their purpose is not bring out every aspect of
the Ragam, but simply to produce a musical impact in a listener. So
two Kritis set to the same Ragam might sound quite different, even
though you might notice many similarities because they are set to
the same Ragam. In fact, if you are not musically inclined you won't
even notice that two 'kritis' are in the same Ragam.
Sometimes, in a kriti, the first lines will be varied systematically
as the singer repeats it over and over. (This happens even in some
movie songs). That is, the Pallavi will be sung intentionally in different
melodies as it gets repeated. The text of the line will be the same,
but the music will be different. Such variations are called 'Sangatis'.
These variations or Sangatis are intended by the original composer
(or cleverly introduced by some other musician somewhere along the
line) and are parts of the song. If you listen to a Kriti like 'Vatapi
Ganapatim' in Ragam Hamsadhwani, you will notice that the singer spends
a long time mulling over the first line itself. But if you paid close
attention to details, the singer is in fact varying the melody of
that line over and over - in other words, the singer is producing
the various 'Sangati's. Sometimes, after all the variations are done,
the final version of the Pallavi could sound totally different from
what one started out with. In fact, usually, the final version of
the Pallavi is what is the official version of the Pallavi from that
point on - and this is the version that is sung after each stanza
(charanam) subsequently. Even Anu pallavi can have associated Sangatis.
By the time a student starts to learn a lot of Kritis, he or she is
already at a reasonable level of expertise. By this time, the student
knows how to decompose any musical phrase into its constituent Swarams.
They could easily tell you what notes make up 'Roop Tera Mastana'.
At this point, the teacher no longer breaks down the lyrics (the text)
into their constituent Swarams. (except when the musical phrases are
very tricky) The teacher simply sings out the songs and the student
tries to follow without making mistakes. It is no easy task, especially
given that there could be subtle variations from Sangati to Sangati.
The musical phrases, loaded with microtonal features, are simply reproduced
without anyone trying to do too much analysis.
After several Varnams and Kritis are learnt, it is time for the student
to learn to improvise - remember the technical term for improvisation
in Karnatic music is Manodharma. At this point, it is also apt to
call the student a 'musician' !
In Karnatic music, improvisation is an 'add-on' to pre-existing music.
In other words, you cannot distort a song like 'Roop Tera Mastana..',
but you can ADD to it. There are several ways to improvise. Let us
examine some of them such as (1) Alapanai (2) Neraval and (3) Kalpana
Swaram.
Alapanai is essentially a free format humming. The purpose of the
Alapanai is to bring out the total character of a Ragam. Alapanai
is sometimes simply called 'Ragam' singing or 'Raga Alapanai'. (It
is unfortunate that we tend to use the same word to mean different
things in music. If someone says Ragam, it could mean a scale like
Shankarabharanam or it could refer to Alapanai. You have to know the
context)
The Alapanai is a preamble to a kriti. For example, if the musician
is going to perform a song in the Ragam Shankarabharanam, he or she
would do an Alapanai just before the song. The musician would try
to sing out as many characteristic phrases as possible to enunciate
the features of Shankarabharanam. This is a place for him to show
his creativity. He would use no texts or words; instead Karnatic musicians
use nonsense phrases like 'Thadhari na' and so forth to hum out the
tune. (Hindustani musicians use simple 'Aaaaaa') The Alapanai is not
set to any Talam either. So there are no constraints on how long the
musical phrases are. The Alapanai can be micro-mini, lasting just
a couple of minutes and equally well, it can last nearly a half hour.
Just how exactly does one go about doing the humming and bring out
the essentials of a Ragam ? There is no clear answer to this question.
However there is a method to Alapanai singing, even though there is
no prescribed algorithm to perform it. The artiste usually starts
out in the lower part of the scale of the Ragam, constructing short
melodies in that subset of the octave. Then as the Alapanai proceeds,
he would meander into the higher notes (this meandering is technically
called 'Sanchaaram') - even here he might use just a subset of the
scale - and eventually reach even the higher octave. Then he would
make up tough melodies, essentially in the very high end of the scale
and then would come down in scale slowly and make more complex melodies
in the lower part of the scale and would grind slowly to a
halt. By the way, this need not be the case in every Alapanai.
Listen to an Alapanai and see if you can identify when the musician
is making melodies in the lower part of the scale, when he moves to
the higher notes, when he makes complex melodies and finally when
he asymptotically comes to a stop. My view is that an Alapanai should
be sung before EACH song. It is always nice to elaborate the Ragam
to be performed. Also, in a concert situation, an Alapanai lets a
musician transition from one song to the next smoothly. Imagine an
intense musician performing Shankarabharanam. He cannot abruptly move
on to the next song set in perhaps Desh. Here a little Alapanai in
Desh could smooth him into the new Ragam.
Even though the Alapanai is an improvisation, very few musicians would
walk to the stage cold and start thinking about the Alapanai. The
odds are they would have practiced at least some part of the Alapanai
leisurely at home or would have rendered them in some other previous
occassion. In fact, if you followed a musician from concert to concert,
and if he performed an Alapanai in Shankarabharanam in both the concerts,
you will see that he actually repeats a lot of phrases. A musician
is not graded on how impromptu and extempore his rendition is, but
more on what beautiful melodic phrases he comes up with in the Alapanai
segment and if some of them are truly 'out of the world' phrases.
Neraval is just a technical term given for improvised variation of
a line in a song. Typically any one line of the song is chosen and
its melody is varied intentionally over and over. Remember, this is
exactly the definition for the term Sangati, except that the Sangatis
are parts of the original song, introduced by the composer - and they
also tend to occur only in the first couple of lines of the song,
namely in the Pallavi and Anu Pallavi sections. In 'neraval' you typically
choose a line from somewhere in the middle and park out there. For
example, you can do a Neraval in the song 'Roop Tera Mastana..' by
choosing a line somewhere in the middle - such as 'Ankhon se ankhen'
- and endlessly vary the melody to bring out the features of the Ragam.
Remember also that since neravals are variations of a line in the
song, one must strictly adhere to the Talam structure and the improvised
melodies should last appropriate time intervals.
The third avenue for creativity is what is called Kalpana Swaram -
or 'creative Solfege note sequence formation'. Here the musician makes
up Swaram sequences (fitted to the Talam, of course) in the Ragam.
Sometimes the sequences can be simply mathematical (like Sa ri ga,
ri ga ma, ga ma pa...) and some other times very interesting complex
patterns.
These 'Swaram passages' are made up typically near the end of a kriti.
The musician usually launches into "Swaram singing" from a particular
point in the song, usually at the Pallavi, after the entire song is
sung. At the end of each Swaram passage, he would come back to the
Pallavi. The 'landing' back to Pallavi should be smooth. For example,
if the Swaram sequence ended in the note Ni and the Pallavi started
in Ga, there is a perceptible discontinuity and such things are not
allowed. The Swaram sequence should more appropriately end in a Ri
or a Ma to be able to smoothly go into the Ga of the Pallavi. Also,
at the end of each Swaram passage, it is not necessary to repeat the
entire Pallavi line. Sometimes just a word or two of the Pallavi is
sung.
Of course, it is not necessary choose the Pallavi as the place to
'home in'. Other lines, especially in the middle of the stanza are
often chosen as the launching points for Kalpana Swaram blitz. Even
though the Kalpana Swaram sounds very constraining (in terms of sticking
to the Talam or finishing the Swaram sequence at the appropriate 'note')
several performers earn a name for themselves in building up incredibly
creative Swaram sequences. There are enough freedoms - for example,
the Swarams can be in single speed or in double speed or higher, adding
an element of tempo-building to the performance. Sometimes, the musician
might make up a 'structure' for the Kalpana Swaram. He might start
off with a long Swaram passage and as he progresses in the Kalpana
Swaram, he might shorten his sequences to smaller and smaller phrases
- and might eventually end up in just single notes - at which point,
he would conclude his Swaram singing by launching into a long, final,
climactic Swaram passage lasting several Talam cycles. Somewhat like
a cadence. Usually, after the Kalpana Swaram, the song is concluded.
So, to summarize, let us see the structure of a Karnatic song ('kriti'),
in light of all the Manodharma or improvisation components.
Alapanai (optional and creative component)
Pallavi - Sangati 1
Pallavi - Sangati n
Pallavi - Final Sangati
Anu Pallavi and its Sangatis
Charanam
Neraval of a line in Charanam (optional and creative
component)
Rest of the Charanam, followed by (final Sangati of the Pallavi)
Kalpana Swaram (optional and creative component)
If you have ever been to a Karnatic concert, you would have noticed
that the ensemble sitting on the stage is usually only a few people
strong. If the main performer is a vocalist (let us assume this, for
the time being !) he is usually accompanied by a violinist and a Mridangam
player. If he is lucky, there is also a Ghatam player tapping on a
clay pot for accompaniment. There is, of course, a person strumming
the Tanpura or the Sruti box and if the musician is a senior artiste,
some of his disciples too sit on the stage and sing along - sometimes
camouflaging the flaws of the Guru and reaching higher notes their
Gurus cannot reach.
It is always a dream of every student to become a performing musician
and to be top notch. But before being let loose on concert stages,
they still have one final plateau of excellence to reach - the ability
to perform what is called a 'Ragam, Tanam, Pallavi' or RTP or simply
'Pallavi'. (Note again, how we use the same word Pallavi to mean two
different things) Ragam, Tanam, Pallavi is a total elaboration of
a specific Ragam and is one hundred percent improvisation and creativity.
It is the perfect place for a musician to show off his skill and mastery
in enunciating a Ragam. The Ragam, Tanam, Pallavi is in fact the centerpiece
of a Karnatic music concert.
First of, the musician chooses a 'strong' Ragam to perform his RTP.
Oftentimes he picks a Melakarta Ragam, where the scope to make creative
melodies is enormous (because they have all the allowed seven notes
in the scale - remember they are all Sampoorna or 'complete' Ragams)
He would also often choose a complex Talam to set his musical phrases
in. Let us say he chooses Shankarabharanam and set to a Talam with
a eleven beat cycle (!). In real concerts, usually the artiste does
not reveal the Ragam of his RTP before hand. The audience and often,
the accompanying musicians find out the Ragam just when the musician
begins to play the RTP.
The first part of the RTP is simply the Alapanai of the Ragam (the
word 'Ragam', is also a synonym for Alapanai, remember ?) After the
Alapanai, the singer usually takes a break (and sips 'hot water' or
milk kept on the sidelines) when the violinist takes over and tries
to play the same musical phrases the singer just sang. This calls
for a tremendous memory and ear for musical phrases. Of course, no
one keeps tabs on how accurately the violinist follows the musician.
The closer the violinists and the musicians are, the better. (This
probably explains why specific violinist play for specific musicians
because they 'know' each other well)
The second part of the RTP is called Tanam - don't confuse it with
TaLam. Here the Ragam is elaborated even more. But now, the improvisation
is in a faster tempo and set to a rhythm. Syllables such as 'Tum',
'Tanam' etc are used in this section (as opposed to syllables typically
used in Alapanai). The violinist usually follows the musician after
every passage. (unlike
