Index
 

Part 2
 
Let us learn music-- Part 1

Dear Folks,

 

This series of articles was initiated by a discussion between MS (dhool.com) and me to write a set of articles on Western and Indian form of Music.  We split the task into two subsections – Beginner and Advanced.  This is an attempt to explain things to a newbie who has just got a Keyboard and wants to romance with it.  In my opinion, both Western and Indian music forms are complex subjects in their own league and any simplification will indeed be a tough task. Frankly my expertise in both forms is limited and through my constant exposure over the period of years I have a learnt few basics of both. It is indeed a great pleasure to share the knowledge that I have acquired from my gurus with the DF community.

 

The first in the series of articles for advanced level can be found @ Chords, carnatic and film music-1.

Any error can be notified and I shall stand corrected.  Any further explanation on any of the terms which are incomprehensible may be asked for and I shall try to make it a little clearer. 

In this series of articles I will explain the terminology common to both forms.  A primer to understand some basic and advanced concepts in western form of music will be provided and a comparison with the corresponding Indian counterpart shall be done. I will be ending the story with another primer of “how to compose music yourself  ?” which shall help all those aspiring start-up composers.

Listening to music is a pleasure that most get from birth. This increases to a great extent when you understand the basics and appreciate. But let us go one more step, what if you could create your own music, something really special to achieve but not rocket science. After all, by nature we are all very creative. Keeping the above introduction in mind let us jump in.

 

Music can be defined as collection of small pieces of regular sound played at predefined time interval. Ah! very simple! 
“Every sound I hear is music to me ” – Ilayaraja, 1984 , Pretty much true.

Try this take few glass tumblers or beakers fill it with different levels of water and tap them with a spoon, you will amazed it will be fun for few minutes.  (An advanced version of such an instrument is jalatharangam which you may have seen being performed on stages)

As the common Tamil proverb goes  “Siru thuli peru vellam”  - it is the small water droplets that make the ocean, like wise music is also an ocean that is made up of small parts, it is called “note”. An ingenious collection of these notes played over a period of time results in a melody which could be a Dikshithar Kriti or a Beethoven symphony or an Ilayaraja song or a Rahman song or even Back street boys show piece number. Hence both western and Indian or for that matter any form of regular music has a set of basic notes from which they grow, something like alphabets for a language. 

If you see I used the world “regular” music, so you might wonder is there something called irregular music. Answer is no.  However there is new concept evolving called “computer music” where a musician explores beyond the basic notes that are defined in music.  We shall discuss at a later stage.

 

Let use see more on Notes. - “Notes” what are they?  Note can be technically explained as a sound frequency. Yawn! No! Let us get it straight.  The sound that is produced when you press a key on musical keyboard is called as “NOTE”. It does not matter if you press the white key or the black key. Each key plays a predefined frequency. The note gets its shape by the amount of time you hold down the key and release it.  This is called the note length or duration.  Hence to make a “tune” or a “melody” or “song” or a “Symphony” you should play a bunch of these notes at proper duration and length.

 

Before going more into it, let us explore the keyboard.



A standard semi professional music keyboard has 48 keys.  You will see 4 sets of 12 keys.  This 12 set of notes is technically called an octave. Why 12, why not 13?, Good question. The aim of this article is to keep it simple; Advanced details can be found here.  Just remember - Carnatic is based on Rational Division (like PA is always at 2:3 ratio in a scale) while Western is based on logarithmic division. Read the boxed information below, and try to remember it.

Theory: An octave is divided into 12 equal intervals such that the logarithm of the frequency ratio of two neighboring intervals is the same. This interval is called a semi tone. There are 12 mutually exclusive half notes in the system. The following table represents the 12 notes and their relative positions in the 12 note scale.





 

Is this Octave common to all musical forms around the world? Answer is almost 99% Yes. These systems are time tested and have evolved over thousands of years.  In fact the sound frequencies of these 12 notes are pretty much the same, however some scales like Arabic are slightly different in their frequencies. Those details are unimportant currently. An interesting similarity  -  the fifth note from SA which is Pa is called the “Panchaman” note  -- in western music also, Fifth note from C is as 5th . In Carnatic music “Sa” note is based on your Sruthi (reference note) or the key. Meaning Swara Sthanas change based on Key or to put it in simpler terms “Sa” does not “map” always onto “C”.  It could  start at F and still form a S R G M PD N scale in which case the corresponding western notes also change.   In the western music system the “C note” itself does not change and  “scales” denotes the pitch changes. Observe the table below. This is an octave.  Thus Western music system has an “absolute” naming for the keys whereas in Carnatic the notation is “relative”.  We will come back and visit this principle of scales in a detail later.  Presently you may relate the “Sa” of carnatic to “C” of Western.

WESTERN

C

C#

D

D#

E

F

F#

G

G#

A

A#

B

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CARNATIC

SA

RE1

RE2

R3

K3

MA

MA1

P

T1

T2

T3

N3

 

 

 

K1

K2

 

 

 

 

 

N1

N2

 

HINDUSTANI

SA

RE1

RE

K1

K2

MA

MA2

P

T1

T2

N1

N2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can see same notes are called differently in Carnatic, keep this in mind.  A Scale is a set of 7 notes in a proper order and interval.  Something similar to Melakartha  Raga. So by now you might wonder about is a Scale and a Melakartha?  Following points will shed some light on it.

 

  • Like scale, a Melakartha is a parent raga that has all the 7 notes. 
  • Sometime around 16th century Venkateswara Dikshitar came up with a work called “Chaturdandi Prakasika” in which he is said to have defined or grouped all ragas under 72 Melakarthas. He defined that every Mela had Sa (called as reference) and PA  (being the 5th or secondly reference). As you can see from the notation table above, there is only one kind of SA and one kind of PA , however, the note Re, Ga, Dha and Ni have 3 types each. 
  • Hence to form a  Melakaratha raga, 1 sa , 1 pa and one of the 3 types has to be picked  for the other 4 notes . So 4x3x3=36 combinations, and Ma note has 2 types hence 36x2=72 was arrived. From these Mela’s we can extract more ragas called as Janyas. These are “child” ragas.
  • Just like scales of western music each raga has an ascending set of notes and descending set notes. However the number need not be equal in each direction.  It is this “Aarohanam” and “Avarohanam” (ascend and descend) that define a basic structure in a Raga. Ragas are also group based on the number of notes in ascend and descend.

 

For a more complete and detailed discussion on mELakarthas, refer here.

 

From the above we understood that a Scale is something similar to a Melakartha. Just remember this, a scale is set of 7 notes with predefined intervals; something similar is a “Melakartha Raga”. The distance between each note is called as interval.  Remember Kanadasan’s words  “7 swarangalil ethanai pAdal”, it makes more sense now.


Simple! alright., But all said and done, scales and ragas are not same. Next big question that arises is - How is a scale different from a Raga?


Apart from having seven different notes, there are not many similarities. There is a huge difference between a scale and raga in tonal quality or the sound density. 

Raga has many dimensions to it. First,  it has an emotional overtone or “Bhavam” followed by  a structure I call it as “sAyal” meaning “resemblance” and these are characterized by a disciplined usage of the microtones which are characteristic of that raga.  Remember apart from these two aspects, we should get the proper expression for the raga.  Just mere traversing SA to SA can be called as a major scale.  Though the notes and intervals are just the same we cannot or should not call it Sankarabaranam”. To get the raga Sankarabaranam  proper emphasis should be given to get the “bhavam”. This is done by note embellishments called as “Gamakas”, (which will see later). This feature is very special to Indian music. A raga can have 4 or more notes with intervals. This kind of reduction of notes in a scale is called as modes in Western classical music.  So modes are something like janya ragas.

 

Experts believe proper training is required to play Ragas fluently. This comes by good practice and understanding of note usage (“prayogams”). A western trained top-notch musician will be able play a phrase of 1/64 note at a good speed but will find it difficult to play raga without proper training. Recently, It took me about 4-6 hrs to explain the raga “Dharmavathi” to a western trained cello player. She finally hit it however some seasoned pundits will not certify it to be “Dharamavathi” at a few places.

 

That is lesson one.  : In this section we learnt some basics about note, scales Melakartha ragas. In the lessons to follow, we will see more about, Gamakas, semitones, scales, types of scales and much more.

Index
 

Srikanth
(c) Studio1234, USA 2003

Dhool.com & Tfmpage.com 2003