Simple Introduction to South Indian Classical Music - Part 2

07/01/2006 05:47PM

Author: Suresh Sri

In this part, we go a bit deeper into the melody and rhythm concepts. We'll see what makes a melody major or minor, and how rhythms are classified, etc. We'll also provide pointers to resources for more information.

(Conventionally, the first note of the next octave is also included in the list of notes of a melody, just to round up the number of notes to eight. The eighth note is usually written as Sa'.)

Some Carnaatic music literature use an alternate convention, referring to certain notes with multiple names (similar to referring to the same note as C# or D flat). We won't use the alternate convention in this article, but will later briefly see why it exists.

Unlike in western music, there is no specific frequency attached to an octave note. An octave note merely indicates the position of the note within an octave.

A major melody is one that uses exactly seven octave notes in each octave. In the context of the melody, these seven notes are referred to as melody notes (svaram), and are referred to using the names Sa, Ri, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha, Ni. Thus, a melody note acts as an alias for an octave note in the context of the melody (the melody provides a 'name space' for the notes of the melody). The combination of a melody name and a melody note uniquely identifies an octave note. (Think of the melody notes Sa, Ri, Ga, etc. as a Carnaatic version of Do, Re, Mi, etc.)

Henceforth, when we use the term 'note' in this article without any qualification ('octave' or 'melody'), it is assumed to mean 'melody note'.

The example below shows how the same note (say Ga) in two melodies could map to different octave notes.

In addition to using exactly seven notes, there are some other rules that make a melody major: a) the same seven notes must be used during both the ascending sequence (moving from a low note to a high note) and the descending sequence (high to low), b) the melody notes must be mapped to the octave notes according to the scheme shown below:

Thus, twelve octave notes, using the above rules, give rise to to 72 major melodies (1 x 6 x 2 x 1 x 6 x 1). The first such combination of octave notes (i.e., the first melody) is numbered 1, and so on.

Here are the octave notes of the first two major melodies:

Every minor melody is derived from a major melody. Minor melodies are defined as follows: a) in any octave, the melody must have at least five unique notes (of its parent melody), b) the notes Sa and Pa must be among the five, c) the melody may use different notes during ascension and descension, d) backtracking is allowed - i.e., the ascending sequence could descend momentarily, and/or the descending sequence could ascend momentarily, e) the melody could include all the seven notes of a major melody, plus one or two notes from another major melody (in this case its parent is arbitrarily chosen to be one of the two major melodies). There are a few additional rules/relaxations, but these are the main ones.

These rather lax rules result in thousands of minor melodies. However, only a few hundreds of them are actually in vogue. here are a few examples of minor melodies:

Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow....
And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go...

The first line starts in sync with the beat, but the second line starts with the word 'And', a little earlier than when the rhythm cycle starts (with the word 'everywhere').

Late Start (anaagatha): Similarly, a line of a song might be longer than a cycle of beats causing the next line to start later than the start of the rhythm cycle.

If a song's description states neither an early start nor a late start, it can be assumed to start concurrently (sama) with the start of the rhythm cycle.

Multiple Beats (kalai): Sometimes a single line of song is long enough to occupy multiple cycles of a rhythm. In such cases, each beat in the rhythm cycle is repeated to make a single cycle last for the duration of the line. For example: if the line of song is sixteen beats long and the composer has chosen an eight-beat rhythm cycle (12341212), the rhythm cycle will be played as 1122334411221122. The most common multiple is 2 (each beat played twice as we just saw - this is referred to as 2-kalai), but could be more.

Gait or sub-rhythm (nadai or gathi) - While the meter of the song dictates the rhythm cycle, the lengh of a phrase dictates the length of each beat (i.e., the interval between successive beats). For example: the rhythm cycle could be 4 beats long (1234), but the interval between two successive beats may be long enough to be counted as three sub-beats, as in:

The four beat, three sub-beats rhythm cycle is pretty common in other music systems too. For example, the following song in the film "Sound of Music" is set to a four beat, three sub-beat rhythm cycle:

• South Indian Music - a multi-volume book series by Prof. P. Sambamurthy.
• South Asia: The Indian Subcontinent South Asia (Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Volume 5) by Alison Arnold. Publisher: Garland; 1 edition (November 1999). ISBN: 0824049462
.
• Violin Techniques in Western and South Indian Classical Music. Author: M. Lalitha; Publisher: Sandeep Prakashan (January 30, 2005) ISBN: 8175741511
• Fundamentals of South Indian or Karnatic Music Author: E M Ramakrishnan; Publisher: Madras (1967)
• Historical Study of Indian Music. Author: Swami Prajnanananda. Publisher: Munshirm Manoharlal Pub Pvt Ltd; 2nd Rv&Enl edition (January 1, 2002). ISBN: 8121501776
• South Indian music Author: P Sambamoorthy Publisher: Indian Music Pub. House; 7th ed., rev. and enl edition (1966)
• A dictionary of South Indian music and musicians Author: P Sambamoorthy;

• Carnatica.net is a portal of information about Carnaatic music.
• Wikipedia contains a lot of information about Carnaatic music, melodies, and rhythm cycles, and is being constantly updated.
  

Related articles:

• Simple Introduction to South Indian Classical Music - Part 1
• No Previous Reptilian Experience Necessary
• Sweet as honey: Classical Indian Women Violinists
• Mahalaxmi at Sree Sanmukhananda Sangeetha sabha Festival, Delhi
• Exploring music from the sub continent

World Music Central
http://www.worldmusiccentral.org/article.php/20060701174708376