Chords, Carnatic and
Film music – 1
Introduction to western
and Indian notations
This set of articles I have planned along with some of our fellow DFers, is intended to introduce some of the basic concepts of usage of chords for particularly Indian melodies. It will be ensured that the language is simple and technical jargon be used consistently at a later stage before which we shall tighten our grip on the fundamental principles. These articles are also an integral part of the learning process for me and my friends and hence there may be some errors which if pointed out will be corrected gladly. These articles are primarily to help those people who tend to think of songs basically in the “sa ri ga ma” or (“do re me”) pattern and not in the western notation (“c d e f”). After a thorough introduction on how chords are made starting from a carnatic standpoint, we shall move on to explore the world of ragas and how possibly we could orchestrate them taking one raga at a time. Since some ragas have been used by film composers in a masterly fashion ( Ilaiyaraja, MSV and ARR predominantly), apt examples with some audio clips shall be added to improve our understanding. Some statements would have been borrowed from other sites in order to be precise and hence we expect you not to be surprised if you find them elsewhere while you googleJ
Carnatic music is predominantly
monophonic. The lead tune dominates the
entire song and rendition. The greatness
of this form of music lies in the way it handles microtonal variations and in
amplifying subtle differences which impart unique feel to the innumerable
scales (or ragas) which form the core of this genre. Apart from this, the calculations (kaala pramaaNam) pertinent to the beat ( or thaaLam ) are very well laid out. The permutations and combinations of these
have been utilized by the great composers to a large extent to produce some
soul stirring numbers. It is the classical music of
Chords on the
other hand, are a part of the Western harmony.
They add “completeness” to any song and have been used extensively by
the film composers. They are polyphonic
and their usage pretty much dictates the mood of the song. A lead tune could be orchestrated to sound
sad or happy depending upon the composer’s wish. But chords are not the only harmony stuff
that decide the mood of the song. The beat, pace, string section, vocals and
lyrics also offer their inputs. Then why
are chords so important ? The reason is that they form the basis for
the orchestration. All the other
sections including strings and all are sort of based on the theory of chords
and in essence chords pretty much decide how the song would sound. Of course there are cases especially in carnatic
where the lead tune (i.e raga) gives you pretty much
the “mood” of the song. But as we shall
see later, the chord progressions could sometimes alter the mood of the song to
an extent that the raga, even though may have had an inherent mood, it would
sound very different with different chord progressions.
So how do
we start? Before we try to understand
both carnatic and chords, we need a consistent notation. All the discussions to follow shall mostly be
pertinent to a Keyboard (or piano or harmonium) with some occassional
guitar examples. A keyboard looks as
follows:
This pattern you see above repeats itself over and over to
form a big keyboard or piano. For those
who know just carnatic notation, this is new.
Keys and notation
– Western
At first glance, a keyboard is simply an assortment of black and white keys of two different lengths, usually the black keys being the short ones. A closer examination shows a pattern of keys repeating a few times to produce the full keyboard. The repeating pattern is shown in the following figure. Many keyboards indicate the location of the 'C' key as shown in the figure. In any case, a C key can be identified as the white (or long) key immediately to the left of a group of two black keys or the first key in the above figure. Evidently, there is more than one C key (perhaps 4 or even more) on the keyboard. The C key is so called due to the notation used in western music for the notes. The successive white keys to the right of C are labeled D, E, F, G, A and B. As a first example of harmony, play a C key and the next C key simultaneously and listen carefully (It is assumed here that the keyboard is polyphonic i.e., has the ability to produce more than one tone at a time. Many inexpensive keyboards lack this ability and are not suitable for this demonstration). The combined sound has an oneness. Playing a C key and the white key next to it (the D key) does not produce a similar effect and the two tones stand out separately. They do not merge as in the case of the two C keys. Total disharmony is difficult to demonstrate using a keyboard due to the discrete nature of the notes that can be played. One would have to produce a sound that is located 'between' two keys in order to hear a set of highly disharmonious (apaswara) notes but the preceding demonstration is a simple example of two levels of harmony. (Courtesy : Dr. Parthasarathy Sriram )
In western notation all the white
keys are labeled with no suffixes or prefixes.
The black keys are denoted “relative” to the white keys. They can be either “sharp” (#) or “flat”(b). For e.g. C# is
to be understood as “C key sharpened”.
Thus black keys have two different ways to be notated – either as the
sharp of the preceding white key or the flat of the succeeding white key. So Csharp (C#) is
same as Dflat (Db).
It applies to all the black keys.
When you sharpen, you increase a semi-tone and when flatten you decrease
a semi-tone.
Note that this notation is “fixed”
or absolute. D key is D all the
time. It cannot be called B or E or F. Any keyboard / piano has
the same set of keys and are called by exactly the same name. The reason why I stress this point shall be
made clear in a little while.
Two
successive C keys are separated by what is called an octave which corresponds
to a ratio of two in frequency. That is, the frequency of a C note is exactly
double the frequency of the C immediately below (to the left of) it and exactly
half the frequency of the C immediately above it. Two sounds are perceived to
be very similar if they are separated by an octave and the only explanation for
this is that that is how mother nature has made it!
The
concept of harmony is closely related to the notion of harmonics. Consider a string
fixed at both ends and vibrating at a fundamental frequency f. From basic
physics, the upper harmonics of the string are at integral multiples of f,
namely, 2f, 3f, 4f etc. Harmonious tones have common harmonics and this implies
that the tones have fundamental frequencies that are related as a ratio of two
integers. A high degree of harmony is associated with ratios involving powers
of 2 (2:1, 4:1, 8:1 etc.) and small integers (eg.
3:2). The ratio 3:2 signifies that the second harmonic of the higher frequency
tone coincides the third harmonic of the lower
frequency tone and such a relationship is very easily detected by the human
ear. Two tones related through a ratio 91:85 are not perceived as being very
harmonious because the common harmonics are the 91st and 85th. Such high
harmonics typically have very low intensity and may even be beyond the
frequency range of the human ear. The principle of integral ratios is inherent
in our perception of sound. A tune is identified by the ratio of frequencies that
appear in succession to produce it and only special training develops the
ability to perceive the absolute pitch (frequency) of sounds.
Next
we observe that there are a total of twelve keys in the repeating pattern (or
twelve swara sthanas in an
octave). This division of an octave into twelve swara
sthanas has evolved over a period of millennia. This
is evident from the fact that while some ancient forms of music use fewer swara sthanas, the current forms
of many styles of classical music which evolved independently (including
Western, Hindustani and Carnatic) use only twelve swara
sthanas to an octave. In ancient Vedic chantings, we have only three swara
sthanas, denoted as normal, low and high.
Interestingly, the pitch steps corresponding to these three swara
sthanas can be represented by the F, G and A keys.
Vedic chants of later periods use as many as seven swaras and are often
described as the precursors of the raga system. The twelve swara
sthanas are generally considered to be the maximum
number of sthanas that a normal human ear can
perceive to be different without too much difficulty.
Western
music believes in specifying the absolute
pitch of all swaras and thus, the frequencies of all keys are fixed and the
same for all keyboards (in fact, all instruments, if one can locate the
corresponding notes). Indian music is based on relative positioning ( will be explained in detail later) and thus, notes are not of fixed pitch. The
note Sa is the analog of the note C. The white key
marked C is called as one kattai and the successive white keys are assigned
values of two kattais, three kattais and so on. The black keys are assigned
fractional values (one and a half, two and half and so on). Note that there is
no three and a half kattai pitch. The shruthi accompaniment (tampoora or shruthi box) provides the reference pitch and
we indicate the reference pitch by saying that somebody sings at one and half
kattai pitch, or a veena is tuned to four and half kattais. This simply means
that the Sa has been set to that pitch and all other
swaras occupy corresponding sthanas. The importance
of the Sa is that it provides the fixed foundation
note upon which the rest of the music is built. Such a foundation note exists
in classical Western music also and is indicated by the scale name eg. F-Major indicates that the tune is built using F as the
base note. The base note can be discriminated with a little practice since the
music generally returns to dwell on the base note every now and then. (Courtesy : Dr. Parthasarathy Sriram
)
Keys and notation
– Indian - Carnatic
In the
Indian notation we have two schools : Carnatic and Hindustani. In fig 2 the corresponding carnatic notations. Indian notation uses S R G M P D N to denote seven notes. As you may see, there could possibly arise a confusion using G
and D in western and Indian
notations. Hence I have chosen to use K instead of G and T instead of D for Indian notations. Thus we shall use “S R K M P T N” to denote Indian swaras. The notes of Carnatic music are not usually
fixed. In this sense they are much like the do re mi fa so la ti
of western music. A performer tunes an instrument to the desired pitch
(accompanists of course tune to the main performer's pitch) or sings at
whatever pitch is most comfortable. This is called the kaTTai. Traditionally, the G
above middle C is kaTTai 5, F is 4, A is 6, etc. Most
Indian instruments do need tuning for each performance, according to the main
artists' pitch - even percussion instruments are tuned.
There
are seven swaras in Carnatic music, namely, Shadjam
(Sa), Rishabam (Ri), Gandharam (Ga or K as we denote),
Madhyamam (Ma), Panchamam
(Pa), Dhaivatham (Da or T
in our notation ) and Nishadam (Ni). There is some
theoretical basis for why there is an odd number (seven) of swaras and we will
deal with this subsequently. For simplicity, let us fix the Sa
at one kattai and place the remaining swaras at the successive white keys. This
provides us with a scale or a raga (in this case, containing all the seven
swaras). As mentioned previously, ancient Vedic chants have but three swaras
and somewhat later forms of music (Indian as well as other forms, eg. Chinese) use five swaras - eg.
the Sa, Ri, Ga, Pa and Da of the scale we
just created. Our present system is based on seven swaras, and perhaps, a few
thousand years from now, the human race will advance to a point of
discriminating scales of more swaras (unlikely). The seven swaras are mythologically associated with the sounds produced by
certain animals and the names of the swaras are related to the names of these
animals. The name Madhyamam appears to be related to
the central or madhya location in the seven notes and
Panchamam is most probably derived from the number
five, denoting the position of the note.
We observed
earlier that doubling the pitch of a swara by a
factor of two results in going up in pitch by one octave. Thus, doubling the
pitch of Sa (say Sa1) results in another Sa (Sa2)
which is one octave higher than our original Sa. A further doubling produces
Sa3 which is one octave higher than Sa2 and two octaves above Sa1. Three times
the original Sa produces the Pa located between Sa2
and Sa3. In other words, the pitch of the swara Pa is
one and half times the pitch of the Sa below it (and
three fourths the pitch of the Sa above it). Now we come to an important
limitation of the keyboard - the way the octave is divided into the twelve swara sthanas. Since it is based
on current western music norms, the division is done on a logarithmic basis
(which is just a more technical way of saying that the pitch values of the
successive swara sthanas
form a geometric progression). An octave is a factor of two and there are
twelve intervals in it. If we make all the intervals equal to a multiplicative
factor x, then the pitch corresponding to any key will be x times the pitch of
the key (white or black) immediately to the left of it. Extending the procedure
we arrive at what the value of x should be. The thirteenth swara
sthana results in an octave, or, stated
mathematically, x12=2. Then, we have x to be the twelfth root of two or a
factor of approximately 1.06. Using this logarithmic division procedure, Pa
(the 8th swara sthana)
corresponds not to a ratio of 1.5 but 1.498. Though the discrepancy is very
small, a well trained ear (eg. professional musician)
can pick out this difference.
Carnatic
music is based not on logarithmic division but on rational division. An octave
is based on the ratio 1:2; Pa is located through the ratio 2:3; similar
definitions exist for all the twelve swara sthanas. A few centuries ago, Western classical music too
was based on rational division (the resulting scale was called as the natural
scale), but this has given way to the equally tempered (also called chromatic)
scale produced by logarithmic division. The difference is subtle, but quite
important. The rational division claim is supported by the fact that tuning of
instruments (for example, in setting the frets of veena) is performed mostly by
the ear and not by reference to standards. Further, the swara
sthanas of Carnatic music define only nominal
locations for the swaras. Depending on the raga in which the swara is used, it manifests a deviation from the nominal sthana. Actually, the deviation from the nominal sthana depends on the swara
phrase in which the swara occurs; thus, a single swara in a given raga can appear at different deviations
from its nominal sthana when occuring
along with various other swaras of the same raga. In a general sense, this
deviation is called gamaka. Gamaka
can refer to a constant deviation from the nominal swara
sthana or a time dependent deviation or the path
taken in reaching the nominal swara etc. Truly, gamaka is the life blood of Carnatic music and the raga
system. Ragas are defined more by the gamakas and the
way in which certain swara phrases (chain of swaras)
are used than by the mere presence or absence of certain swaras. Thus, playing
the keys corresponding to the swara sthanas of a certain raga will not reproduce the true
character of the raga but only provide a general idea of what it sounds like.
This is the reason why purists object to the use of keyboard instruments in
Carnatic music - the lack of gamaka, which leads to a
mutilation of the raga swaroopa. The use of gamaka also implies that the method used for defining
nominal swara sthanas
(rational or logarithmic division) is not too critical as long the correct raga
swaroopam can be accommodated.
In the past,
Hindustani music also had complex gamaka schemes, but
the acceptance of the Harmonium has caused their virtual disappearance and only
a few of the gamakas remain in use. The result is
that the current form of Hindustani music has lost some of its traditional
character - perhaps forever. Carnatic music is one of the very few musical
forms in the world that have not lost their traditional character due to the
influence of western culture. On the contrary, Carnatic music has enhanced its
traditional character by borrowing good things from other systems of music. The
introduction of the violin is a very good example of a positive influence. The
instrument and its playing techniques have been successfully adapted to fit in
with the rest of the system. This adaptation is so complete that the present
day listener can hardly imagine a concert without a violin accompanying the
singer.
The seven
basic swaras occupy various swara sthanas
and produce a total of sixteen swaras that form the basis of the raga scheme.
It should be emphasized that the swara sthanas are nominal and in actual usage, depending on the
raga, the swara is not fixed at any one sthana but appears at various locations around a nominal swara sthana in different swara phrases. The Shadja and Panchama swaras are like the foundations upon which the
rest of the melody is constructed. So, these occupy fixed sthanas.
This is denoted by naming these swaras as Prakruthi
swaras (all the other swaras are grouped under Vikruthi
swaras). Further, these two swaras are usually employed without any gamakas. In order to identify the sthanas
of the various swaras, let us number the twelve sthanas.
(Courtesy : Dr. Parthasarathy Sriram )
It is evident from fig 2 that the
Carnatic notation is a little tricky assigning 2 names for the same key whereas
the Hindustani notation is straightforward without any overlap.
Fig
2. Keyboard and Carnatic notation
|
S |
R |
K |
M |
P |
T |
N |
|
Shadjam |
R1 = shuddha (ra) R2 = chathushruti (ri) R3 = shatshruti (ru) |
K1 = shuddha (ga) K2 = saadhaaraNa (gi) K3 = antara (gu) |
M1 = shuddha (ma) M2 = prati (mi) |
P = panchamam |
T1 = shuddha
(dha) T2 = chathushruti
(dhi) T3 = shatshruti
(dhu) |
N1 = shuddha (na) N2 = kaisiki (ni) N3 = kaakali
(nu) |
Table
1. Carnatic Swaras and variations
Carnatic recognizes 3 Rs, 3 Ks, 2 Ms, 3 Ts and 3 Ns. The use of sixteen swara names has led to some people describing an octave as being divided into more than twelve swara sthanas (as many as twenty two). But, as the table (table 1) and keyboard diagrams (fig 2) show, there are only twelve sthanas and certain pairs of swaras occupy the same nominal swara sthana (eg. Chatusruthi Rishabam and Suddha Gandharam). In an earlier era (or for that matter, in contemporary Hindustani music), the duplicate name swaras were not used i.e. each swara sthanam was associated with one and only one swaram. The swaras of the octave then read (in Ra-Ri-Ru notation) Sa - Ra - Ri - Gi - Gu - Ma - Mi - Pa - Da - Di - Ni - Nu - Sa. The remaining swaras, Ru, Ga, Du and Na, were considered to be tainted ('Dhosham') and their use was to be avoided. These four swaras are called as Vivadi swaras and their use is now generally accepted. The occurrence of combinations of swaras gives rise to melodies which can then be classified on the basis of the swaras that are used. This leads to the scheme of ragas. (Courtesy : Dr. Parthasarathy Sriram ). A raga is a scale used in carnatic and is defined by a characteristic ascent (aarohaNam) and a descent (avarOhaNam). These two essentially define the grammar of the raga.
Keys and notation
– Indian – Hindustani
Fig
3. Keyboard and
Hindustani notation
|
S |
R |
K |
M |
P |
T |
N |
|
Shadjam |
R1 = komal R2 = shuddha |
K1 = komal |
M1 = shuddha M2 = teevra |
P = panchamam |
T1 = komal T2 = shuddha |
N1 = komal N2 = shudhdha |
Table
2. Hindustani Swaras and
variations
It is easy to recognize that of all the sytems, Hindustani is the least confusing. But since, we are primarily interested in
understanding chord progressions for the South Indian songs which are based
primarily on the carnatic structure, we shall use western
and carnatic notations only hereafter. Now that we are through with the three
types of notations, we shall move on to the details of how the scales are built
in each of these systems.
-MS Dhool.com & tfmpage.com - 2003