All about Indian Classical Music

Glossary of Terms:

GLOSSARY OF TERMS: This vocabulary is essential to understanding conversations about music. We will be periodically adding to this.

12 main notes

Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni makes a saptak of 7 notes (Octave when you include the next Sa) The natural octave is called the madhya saptak, the one lower is called the mandra and the upper octave the taar saptak

Sa and Pa have only 1 form Re Ga Dha and Ni have a shudh and a flat (Komal) form. Ma is called shudh in its natural form and is sharper or tivra in its altered form

Laya: Vilambit (slow), Madhya (Medium) and Drut(fast)

Tanpura: the ultimate accompanist

Years ago, when I first started learning music, after the 1st yr. or two my guru in Hubli, R.G Desai, had a tanpura made for me in Miraj. My own tanpura! I was learning how to tune it. I broke a string and cried bitterly because I thought I had done irreparable damage to it! My teacher taught me how to change the strings and all was well.

The tanpura hand-made using a specially grown gourd, wood and strings, is an instrument to beat all instruments. It has no frets like the sitar, no bow like the violin. It has 4 or sometimes 5 strings that play a drone when the strings are plucked sequentially. The 1st string plays the Mandra Pa or Ma; The 2 middle strings the madhya Sa and the last string plays the mandra Sa. The drone supports the vocalist. With experience the musician hears increasingly rich overtones. This supports the vocalist. What you get out of it grows as your perception matures.

The tanpura note is like a silken thread in softness and pinpoint in accuracy. In comparison, the harmonium note is broad more like a line drawn with a magic marker.

Technical advances have made wonderful electronic and digital tempuras that can self-tune and change at the touch of a button. These save us a lot of time in tuning and transporting cumbersome real tanpuras. Inspite of this, tuning of a mechanical tanpura should be an essential skill for all musicians. Let us not forget the artisans and craftsmen we endanger in this specialized cottage industry if we forget how to use real tanpuras.

Indian Classical Music and Jazz

  People familiar with western music always ask if Indian classical music is akin to Jazz. This question is so common, I decided to go looking for some explanations. What follows is the result of some reading, mainly Pt. Ravi Shankar’s book "My Music My Life " and my own conversations with Indian classical musicians who also work with Jazz musicians

Jazz started in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, jazz has its musical roots in New Orleans, Louisiana where it combines American and European classical music with African and slave folk songs with a touch of West African culture. It originated in the early 1900s in New Orleans with the African American musicians. It draws from Afro American music of the late 1800s and has complex vocals, chords, rhythms, harmonies, and improvisation. This term improvisation causes all the confusion. The improvisation in Jazz has wild freedom and an exhilarating abandon.  Jazz music was originally fast, dance music and didn’t incorporate melodic threads until the 1940s or a modal structure until the 1950s.

Indian Classical or Raga music is essentially modal. It is based on melody. It works within a scale with an unchanging tonic. The melody explores the relationship between the tonic and the other notes with microtones and grace notes. The existence of Indian music and musical instruments goes back to 2000 BC or earlier. Written accounts of raga date back to 5th-7th century AD.  

The framework of a raga is drawn from one of many parent scales. The number and type of notes in the scale, the two most prominent notes, their relationship with other notes, the specific characteristic phrases etc. are ALL specified and cannot be violated. Within this framework the artist has immense freedom to improvise!