Indian classical music
- Principally based on melody and rhythm, not on harmony, chords and the other basics of Western classical music
- To Indians, music can be a spiritual discipline on the path to self-realisation; for we follow the traditional teaching that sound is god.
- The ancient Vedic scriptures teach that there are two types of sound. One is a vibration, the upper or purer air near the celestral realm .The other sound is the vibration of air in the lower atmosphere closer to the earth.
- The tradition of Indian classical music is an oral one. It is taught directly by the guru to the disciple, rather than by the notation method used in the west.
- The very heart of Indian music is the raga: the melodic form upon which the musician improvises. The framework is established by tradition and inspired by the creative spirits of master musicians.
- Ragas are difficult to explain, though Indian music is modal in character, ragas should not be mistaken as modes that one hears in the music of the middle and far eastern countries.
- A raga is a scientific, precise, subtle and aesthetic melodic form with its own peculiar ascending and descending movement consisting of either a full seven note octave, or a series of six or five notes in a rising or falling structure called the Arohana and Avorohana. IT is the subtle difference in the order of notes, an omission of a dissonant note, an emphasis on a particular note, the slide from one note to another, and the use of microtones together with other subtleties that demarcate one raga from the other .
Raga anandi Kalyan – Ravi and Anoushka Shankar
Pitch
- Melodic ornamentation, pitch bends and slides
- It does not sound as though it is using a normal western scale structures
- There are repetitions of ascending scale runs
- The pitch is fairly high
- The melody incorporates both leaps and steps
- There is a repeated tonic note used as underlying sound
- The three layers include the Citar, and the accompanying citar. There is also a table which is a un-tunned instrument although has a pitch range. The way the drum is played gives different pitches.
