6 ms·

Here is my basic understanding of Indian music: The northern and southern parts have their own styles but with overlaps. What's amazing is that Indian classical

Here is my basic understanding of Indian music: The northern and southern parts have their own styles but with overlaps. What's amazing is that Indian classical music has no key. There is no absolute sense of middle C or whatever. It is relative to the tuning of the drone. I don't have a strong background in music, but this seems to get rid of the complexity of the notation system in the west with a much more fluid aspects - pick a note and make it the root. Off you go. That's the key you're in. Furthermore, I find the construction of these musical scales (correct me if I am wrong but there is no analog in western classical music of what a raga is) very interesting. Going up in the scale is different than going down and there are some key phrases that identify a raga. Then its all about interpretation. Is there any specific tabla percussion associated with a Raga? Some of my favorites: - Raga Bhimapalasi: Beautiful lazy afternoon raga. - Raga Tilak Kamod: I would describe this raga as a playful and less serious, very romantic. - Raga Bhairav: Intense and great for early mornings. For reflective, pensive moods. - Raga Desh: Festive feel to it. I personally like vocal renditions of ragas. Spotify has a large selection.

danans 6y ago
> What's amazing is that Indian classical music has no key. There is no absolute sense of middle C or whatever. It is relative to the tuning of the drone Yes, but practically there are standard pitch zones based on the tunability of certain instruments, particularly percussion. > Going up in the scale is different than going down and there are some key phrases that identify a raga. Then its all about interpretation. Sometimes but not always. Most ragas are the same ascending and descending. They are more like the western modes system. > Then its all about interpretation. There is actually a huge body of fixed compositions, for both melodic and rhythmic instruments, especially in Carnatic and Dhrupad traditions. Of course improvisation still plays a more important role vs. western classical music, but it is driven by a set of standard canonical themes. > Is there any specific tabla percussion associated with a Raga? Not formally, but as one develops as an Indian classical percussionist, you develop an ear for what sorts of rhythmic passages pair with certain types of melodic structures. For example, the rapidly rolling rhythmic structure known as a Rela pairs with steady fast pulsating melodic patterns. In terms of the actual type of percussion instrument there is a strong pairing, however. Tabla in particular is used in the Khyal style (the most prominent style of North Indian classical music and what you have likely been listening to), and is also used extensively in folk music. The Pakhawaj, a much lower pitch drum, is used with the Dhrupad style. Carnatic percussion, however, comprises a much larger variety of instruments, prime among them and closely related to the aforementioned Pakhawaj is the Mridangam.
- abdullahkhalids 6y ago
  > Sometimes but not always. Most ragas are the same ascending and descending. They are more like the western modes system. I in this list, http://soundofindia.com/raagas.asp http://soundofindia.com/raagas.asp I see half or more than half have different Arohana (ascending scale of notes) and Avarohana (descending)
  - danans 6y ago
    I stand corrected about my incorrect use of the word "most", but a great many of the popularly performed ragas are the same ascending and descending.
    - harshadwaj 6y ago
      To put a specific number, in Carnatic Music there are 72 of them and are called 'Melakarta' ragas - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melakarta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melakarta
      - crazyphoton 6y ago
        Only ~15 of them are popularly performed though. And the melakartas would form the minority of the ragas in a typical concert, although they often tend to be the centerpieces.
- fermienrico 6y ago
  > There is actually a huge body of fixed compositions, for both melodic and rhythmic instruments, especially in Carnatic and Dhrupad traditions. Of course improvisation still plays a more important role vs. western classical music, but it is driven by a set of standard canonical themes. That hasn't been my observation at all. 100% of the stuff I find on Spotify is improvised and interpretative. Could you point to some specifics? Not only is that interesting, perhaps it can also provide insight into the underpinnings of the "identity" of a raga. I think there is definitely a commonality between different people rendering the raga but I haven't come across a "cookie-cutter" of the sorts. Thanks for your comment!
abdullahkhalids 6y ago
> Is there any specific tabla percussion associated with a Raga? I have recently started tabla, so I can perhaps answer correctly. Whenever you play a piece on a melodic instrument, like sitar, it has a cyclic nature, where after X notes you come back to the same "sum" note. The tabla player matches this cyclic nature. X is commonly 16, so then the tabla player will play in "teen taal". This is any percussion of 16 beats (or 32/64/128 beats) that obey a very particular structure. For teen taal the structure being that notes 9-12 are played without the left tabla (no bass).
- OJFord 6y ago
  तीन ताल? मतलब 'three beats'?
  - abdullahkhalids 6y ago
    Teen taal means three claps. The idea is that you can divide 16 beat cycle into 4 parts. The first, second and fourth parts are played with the left/bass tabla, while the third without. Now, an audience member clapping along is supposed to clap at the start of the first, second and fourth parts, but not at the start of the third part.
    - OJFord 6y ago
      Ah, makes sense, thanks! I was just confused by thinking I understood, and '16 beats' almost but not confirming that. For others, you can hear it here from around 1m40s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9Rm9ayMhb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9Rm9ayMhb4 (I don't know if it's a great example or anything - just the first I found. But there's definitely a 'boing' sounding beat in the background with that third part gap.)
jariel 6y ago
It has a 'key' it's just not standard. It doesn't matter though. What it does is make use of specific scales, or one scale, in particular, the minor scale or maybe one of it's variants. The problem is actually ... they stay in that one scale, forever. This is a limitation of this music. This music is: take a scale, and have someone play a very long, intuitive solo overtop in that one key, effectively one chord. The structure is really quite limited unfortunately.
- snickell 6y ago
  Tuning (at least in our universe, due to the distribution of the prime numbers) is an exercise in tradeoffs. Indian classical music makes a different tradeoff than western classical (or its direct and indirect descendants), which gives it GREATER freedom than western some areas, and less in others. Its true that Indian music doesn't modulate (~change keys). If your goal is modulation (~changing keys), than Indian classical is limited. If your goal is amazing perfectly tuned chords, intricate tuning patterns, and complex relationships between the tuning of notes and rhythms, then Indian classical is MUCH freer than a western-style equal temperament scale. Modulation (changing chords), as a priority, was a choice made in western music in the 1600s. That choice had downsides, in particular western classical lost access to a larger palette of beautiful "edge of consonance" tone and chord coulors. Analogy: at its extreme Western classical paints complicated rapidly shifting geometric patterns using a tiny set of "sort of meh" slightly-gray primary colors (think: Escher), Indian classical paints colour fields using a vast array of rich colours (think: Rothco). The holy grail would be complicated shifting geometries, and complicated shifting colours. These turn out to be in direct tension for math reasons. (Can explain more if there's interest, Pythagoras (yeah, that one) thought there was no tension between the two, but he measured wrong, and the roman catholic church actually encoded "there is no tension between the two owing to the power of God" as dogma, which caused no end of pain for pipe organ makers, who directly knew the two were in tension). Western classical used to use less regularized tunings, even Bach played (and comnposed for, and imo should be played in) a not-fully-modernly-even tuning. These tunings came from the ratios of integers (directly, or prime numbers, indirectly) and while the chords are unfamiliar in a modern context, looooong held notes tended to be very satisfying to listeners in these "ratio of integer" tunings (or integer ratio) tunings. That's where gregorian chant comes in, if you hit these exact ratio tunings, once your ear is used to it, chords seem to glow so beautifully you could listen to them "forever". The problem is that switching root notes on a fixed-pitch layout like a pipe organ or harsichord keyboard isn't fully regular.... very roughly (and this is wrong, but conveys the idea) "holding a base note, and the note five keys above it" will sound totally different depending on the base note you pick. This comes necessarily from the math. So you either end up with an almost infinite variety of physical keys..... or you fudge (tamper, temper, temperament) the pipe organ pipes to "split the difference" and share a key between two not-quite-fully-consonant chords rooted at different base notes. Unfortunately, now all your chords are a little.... fudgey sounding.... so nobody likes to hear them for a loooooong time (the longer you listen, the more clear the mistuning becomes), so you tend to move faster between chords. In a nutshell, as European music started wanting total freedom to move around, from anywhere to anywhere, and have each 5-note-pair have EXACTLY the same ratio (resulting in our completely regularized modern tuning equal temperament), the chords themselves were less solid, so you move faster and faster. Once the chords aren't quite as nice, you want to move faster and do elaborate patterns, and the cycle fed back on itself until we got where we are today. Indian classical made the opposite tradeoff, they traded off harmony, and the ability to root harmony at any point in a fixed keyboard, in return they got a larger variety of VERY interesting tonal colors. I found western classical tuning VERY limiting due to the lack of colour palette (and, personally, very subjective naturally, I don't find increasing the number of colors to 22-edo or whatever to help, its just 22 muddy colours to my ears... I only need a few colours but I want them to be gorgeous lol ;-)
sfifs 6y ago
Some thoughts: > What's amazing is that Indian classical music has no key. There is no absolute sense of middle C or whatever. It is relative to the tuning of the drone European music actually was largely relative too until keyboard instruments (organs and later pianos) became common and popular which forced standardizaton. In North Indian classical, you can see the popularity of the harmonium in recent years driving a similar effect. Singers in popular western music often transpose scales freely. Many live performers tune half down or full down vs. their studio recordings and many singers transpose their songs down as they age. > I find the construction of these musical scales (correct me if I am wrong but there is no analog in western classical music of what a raga is) very interesting. Going up in the scale is different than going down and there are some key phrases that identify a raga. Yes-ish. If you look at the scales in different "modes" of western music, you'll find they do correspond to foundational ragas in Indian classical music (eg. Ionian = Shankarabaranam, Aeolian = Nata Bhairavi, Mixolydian = Harikamboji etc) . The core raga in Carnatic classical (maya-mayava-gowla) has the same notes as the double harmonic scale (think Misirlou from Pulp Fiction). The ragas with different notes going up and down or having fewer than 7 notes are considered derived or synthetic ragas and some artists still create new ragas. However, as you correctly recognise ragas are not themselves scales. It's more correct to think of ragas as frameworks to present and improvise on scales. There is a concept of "pakad" for example as it's called in Hindustani classical which is a characteristic sequence of notes for a raga etc. This is easiest to spot and understand this if you listen to recordings by top artists in Raga Jog - it comes in the avarohana (descending notes). > Then its all about interpretation. "Freedom within a framework" is how I'd best describe it. A typical Hindustani "Khayal" (literally meaning "thought") concert begins with a heavily improvised "Aalap"/"Jod"/"Jhala" section that presents the main raga followed by the main composition ("bandish") in which also the artist improvises to a certain extent. After this main presentation, the artist typically presents other compositions in other ragas (with some improvisation) often ending with a "bhajan" (simple devotional song). A Carnatic classical concert often starts with smaller compositions and has the main piece in the middle which also has "Aalapanai" and composition sections. Usually the "aalap" is shorter and more improvisation happens within compositions vs. Hindustani. The closest analogies to this style of performance in Western music is Blues and Jazz.
- 6y ago
selimthegrim 6y ago
I have to say that is least threatening characterization of Raag Bhairav I’ve heard in a while
trianglem 6y ago
There is no key per say but the relative differences map to modal variations in western music. Keys in different modes are explicitly defined as such in western music but not in Indian music.
jojobas 6y ago
>What's amazing is that Indian classical music has no key. That's pretty much the same as hitchhikers tuning their guitars by ear with no perfect pitch skill. Anything within a couple of steps is good enough. What fascinates me is that they are ok with staying in the same chord for the entire repertoire, that some perceptions (i.e. minor scales/chords are "sad" while major ones are "happy") seem to be universal.
arunix 6y ago
> Is there any specific tabla percussion associated with a Raga? No, percussion (meter) has it's own framework called Taala [1], which is orthogonal to Raaga. As a concrete example: Raaga Hamsadhwani in Rupak Taala (7 beats) [2] vs Teental (16 beats) [3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tala_(music) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tala_(music) [2] https://youtu.be/8YNveaC2ADc https://youtu.be/8YNveaC2ADc [3] https://youtu.be/X1T1psiWer0 https://youtu.be/X1T1psiWer0

danans 6y ago

> What's amazing is that Indian classical music has no key. There is no absolute sense of middle C or whatever. It is relative to the tuning of the drone Yes, but practically there are standard pitch zones based on the tunability of certain instruments, particularly percussion. > Going up in the scale is different than going down and there are some key phrases that identify a raga. Then its all about interpretation. Sometimes but not always. Most ragas are the same ascending and descending. They are more like the western modes system. > Then its all about interpretation. There is actually a huge body of fixed compositions, for both melodic and rhythmic instruments, especially in Carnatic and Dhrupad traditions. Of course improvisation still plays a more important role vs. western classical music, but it is driven by a set of standard canonical themes. > Is there any specific tabla percussion associated with a Raga? Not formally, but as one develops as an Indian classical percussionist, you develop an ear for what sorts of rhythmic passages pair with certain types of melodic structures. For example, the rapidly rolling rhythmic structure known as a Rela pairs with steady fast pulsating melodic patterns. In terms of the actual type of percussion instrument there is a strong pairing, however. Tabla in particular is used in the Khyal style (the most prominent style of North Indian classical music and what you have likely been listening to), and is also used extensively in folk music. The Pakhawaj, a much lower pitch drum, is used with the Dhrupad style. Carnatic percussion, however, comprises a much larger variety of instruments, prime among them and closely related to the aforementioned Pakhawaj is the Mridangam.

abdullahkhalids 6y ago
> Sometimes but not always. Most ragas are the same ascending and descending. They are more like the western modes system. I in this list, http://soundofindia.com/raagas.asp http://soundofindia.com/raagas.asp I see half or more than half have different Arohana (ascending scale of notes) and Avarohana (descending)
- danans 6y ago
  I stand corrected about my incorrect use of the word "most", but a great many of the popularly performed ragas are the same ascending and descending.
  - harshadwaj 6y ago
    To put a specific number, in Carnatic Music there are 72 of them and are called 'Melakarta' ragas - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melakarta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melakarta
    - crazyphoton 6y ago
      Only ~15 of them are popularly performed though. And the melakartas would form the minority of the ragas in a typical concert, although they often tend to be the centerpieces.
fermienrico 6y ago
> There is actually a huge body of fixed compositions, for both melodic and rhythmic instruments, especially in Carnatic and Dhrupad traditions. Of course improvisation still plays a more important role vs. western classical music, but it is driven by a set of standard canonical themes. That hasn't been my observation at all. 100% of the stuff I find on Spotify is improvised and interpretative. Could you point to some specifics? Not only is that interesting, perhaps it can also provide insight into the underpinnings of the "identity" of a raga. I think there is definitely a commonality between different people rendering the raga but I haven't come across a "cookie-cutter" of the sorts. Thanks for your comment!

abdullahkhalids 6y ago

> Is there any specific tabla percussion associated with a Raga? I have recently started tabla, so I can perhaps answer correctly. Whenever you play a piece on a melodic instrument, like sitar, it has a cyclic nature, where after X notes you come back to the same "sum" note. The tabla player matches this cyclic nature. X is commonly 16, so then the tabla player will play in "teen taal". This is any percussion of 16 beats (or 32/64/128 beats) that obey a very particular structure. For teen taal the structure being that notes 9-12 are played without the left tabla (no bass).

OJFord 6y ago
तीन ताल? मतलब 'three beats'?
- abdullahkhalids 6y ago
  Teen taal means three claps. The idea is that you can divide 16 beat cycle into 4 parts. The first, second and fourth parts are played with the left/bass tabla, while the third without. Now, an audience member clapping along is supposed to clap at the start of the first, second and fourth parts, but not at the start of the third part.
  - OJFord 6y ago
    Ah, makes sense, thanks! I was just confused by thinking I understood, and '16 beats' almost but not confirming that. For others, you can hear it here from around 1m40s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9Rm9ayMhb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9Rm9ayMhb4 (I don't know if it's a great example or anything - just the first I found. But there's definitely a 'boing' sounding beat in the background with that third part gap.)

jariel 6y ago

It has a 'key' it's just not standard. It doesn't matter though. What it does is make use of specific scales, or one scale, in particular, the minor scale or maybe one of it's variants. The problem is actually ... they stay in that one scale, forever. This is a limitation of this music. This music is: take a scale, and have someone play a very long, intuitive solo overtop in that one key, effectively one chord. The structure is really quite limited unfortunately.

snickell 6y ago
Tuning (at least in our universe, due to the distribution of the prime numbers) is an exercise in tradeoffs. Indian classical music makes a different tradeoff than western classical (or its direct and indirect descendants), which gives it GREATER freedom than western some areas, and less in others. Its true that Indian music doesn't modulate (~change keys). If your goal is modulation (~changing keys), than Indian classical is limited. If your goal is amazing perfectly tuned chords, intricate tuning patterns, and complex relationships between the tuning of notes and rhythms, then Indian classical is MUCH freer than a western-style equal temperament scale. Modulation (changing chords), as a priority, was a choice made in western music in the 1600s. That choice had downsides, in particular western classical lost access to a larger palette of beautiful "edge of consonance" tone and chord coulors. Analogy: at its extreme Western classical paints complicated rapidly shifting geometric patterns using a tiny set of "sort of meh" slightly-gray primary colors (think: Escher), Indian classical paints colour fields using a vast array of rich colours (think: Rothco). The holy grail would be complicated shifting geometries, and complicated shifting colours. These turn out to be in direct tension for math reasons. (Can explain more if there's interest, Pythagoras (yeah, that one) thought there was no tension between the two, but he measured wrong, and the roman catholic church actually encoded "there is no tension between the two owing to the power of God" as dogma, which caused no end of pain for pipe organ makers, who directly knew the two were in tension). Western classical used to use less regularized tunings, even Bach played (and comnposed for, and imo should be played in) a not-fully-modernly-even tuning. These tunings came from the ratios of integers (directly, or prime numbers, indirectly) and while the chords are unfamiliar in a modern context, looooong held notes tended to be very satisfying to listeners in these "ratio of integer" tunings (or integer ratio) tunings. That's where gregorian chant comes in, if you hit these exact ratio tunings, once your ear is used to it, chords seem to glow so beautifully you could listen to them "forever". The problem is that switching root notes on a fixed-pitch layout like a pipe organ or harsichord keyboard isn't fully regular.... very roughly (and this is wrong, but conveys the idea) "holding a base note, and the note five keys above it" will sound totally different depending on the base note you pick. This comes necessarily from the math. So you either end up with an almost infinite variety of physical keys..... or you fudge (tamper, temper, temperament) the pipe organ pipes to "split the difference" and share a key between two not-quite-fully-consonant chords rooted at different base notes. Unfortunately, now all your chords are a little.... fudgey sounding.... so nobody likes to hear them for a loooooong time (the longer you listen, the more clear the mistuning becomes), so you tend to move faster between chords. In a nutshell, as European music started wanting total freedom to move around, from anywhere to anywhere, and have each 5-note-pair have EXACTLY the same ratio (resulting in our completely regularized modern tuning equal temperament), the chords themselves were less solid, so you move faster and faster. Once the chords aren't quite as nice, you want to move faster and do elaborate patterns, and the cycle fed back on itself until we got where we are today. Indian classical made the opposite tradeoff, they traded off harmony, and the ability to root harmony at any point in a fixed keyboard, in return they got a larger variety of VERY interesting tonal colors. I found western classical tuning VERY limiting due to the lack of colour palette (and, personally, very subjective naturally, I don't find increasing the number of colors to 22-edo or whatever to help, its just 22 muddy colours to my ears... I only need a few colours but I want them to be gorgeous lol ;-)

sfifs 6y ago

Some thoughts: > What's amazing is that Indian classical music has no key. There is no absolute sense of middle C or whatever. It is relative to the tuning of the drone European music actually was largely relative too until keyboard instruments (organs and later pianos) became common and popular which forced standardizaton. In North Indian classical, you can see the popularity of the harmonium in recent years driving a similar effect. Singers in popular western music often transpose scales freely. Many live performers tune half down or full down vs. their studio recordings and many singers transpose their songs down as they age. > I find the construction of these musical scales (correct me if I am wrong but there is no analog in western classical music of what a raga is) very interesting. Going up in the scale is different than going down and there are some key phrases that identify a raga. Yes-ish. If you look at the scales in different "modes" of western music, you'll find they do correspond to foundational ragas in Indian classical music (eg. Ionian = Shankarabaranam, Aeolian = Nata Bhairavi, Mixolydian = Harikamboji etc) . The core raga in Carnatic classical (maya-mayava-gowla) has the same notes as the double harmonic scale (think Misirlou from Pulp Fiction). The ragas with different notes going up and down or having fewer than 7 notes are considered derived or synthetic ragas and some artists still create new ragas. However, as you correctly recognise ragas are not themselves scales. It's more correct to think of ragas as frameworks to present and improvise on scales. There is a concept of "pakad" for example as it's called in Hindustani classical which is a characteristic sequence of notes for a raga etc. This is easiest to spot and understand this if you listen to recordings by top artists in Raga Jog - it comes in the avarohana (descending notes). > Then its all about interpretation. "Freedom within a framework" is how I'd best describe it. A typical Hindustani "Khayal" (literally meaning "thought") concert begins with a heavily improvised "Aalap"/"Jod"/"Jhala" section that presents the main raga followed by the main composition ("bandish") in which also the artist improvises to a certain extent. After this main presentation, the artist typically presents other compositions in other ragas (with some improvisation) often ending with a "bhajan" (simple devotional song). A Carnatic classical concert often starts with smaller compositions and has the main piece in the middle which also has "Aalapanai" and composition sections. Usually the "aalap" is shorter and more improvisation happens within compositions vs. Hindustani. The closest analogies to this style of performance in Western music is Blues and Jazz.

6y ago

selimthegrim 6y ago

I have to say that is least threatening characterization of Raag Bhairav I’ve heard in a while

trianglem 6y ago

There is no key per say but the relative differences map to modal variations in western music. Keys in different modes are explicitly defined as such in western music but not in Indian music.

jojobas 6y ago

>What's amazing is that Indian classical music has no key. That's pretty much the same as hitchhikers tuning their guitars by ear with no perfect pitch skill. Anything within a couple of steps is good enough. What fascinates me is that they are ok with staying in the same chord for the entire repertoire, that some perceptions (i.e. minor scales/chords are "sad" while major ones are "happy") seem to be universal.

arunix 6y ago

> Is there any specific tabla percussion associated with a Raga? No, percussion (meter) has it's own framework called Taala [1], which is orthogonal to Raaga. As a concrete example: Raaga Hamsadhwani in Rupak Taala (7 beats) [2] vs Teental (16 beats) [3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tala_(music) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tala_(music) [2] https://youtu.be/8YNveaC2ADc https://youtu.be/8YNveaC2ADc [3] https://youtu.be/X1T1psiWer0 https://youtu.be/X1T1psiWer0