Shruti Bhedam Quiz #4

uday_shankar · Post by **uday_shankar** » 10 Apr 2009, 23:27

OK, some folks have emailed me asking for more "quizzes/demos". So here goes, this time on the chitravina (sorry if you notice the lapses, I'm totally out of practice)...

Here's the original:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/41bsfo

Here's the fake (have patience, the actual segment starts after about 1 minute of just tampura for you to soak in):
http://www.sendspace.com/file/rnb1hg

As usual the "fake" is a subset of the original. Only different tampura shrutis have been mixed in.

Instructions:
---------------
For maximizing the fun, follow these instructions to the T:

1) Listen to the clip original4f.mp3 first but only once or twice. You should readily be able to identify the very common rAga.

2) Now go and listen to some other music, perhaps a favorite piece of yours to help forget this. Or wait a day, whatever...

3) Now listen to the clip fake4f.mp3 (meditate on the shruti during the first one minute)

Questions:
-------------

1) Did you identify the rAga in the clip "original4f.mp3" ?
2) Did you notice anything unusual/weird in that clip ?
3) Did you identify the rAga in the clip "fake4f.mp3" ?
4) Did you notice anything unusual in that clip ?
5) Can you roughly identify the segment (MM:SS to MM:SS) in the "original" that fake was taken out of ?

(corrected some typos)

arunk · Post by **arunk** » 11 Apr 2009, 00:39

brilliant

!

Why the hiss in the fake?

Arun

Suji Ram · Post by **Suji Ram** » 11 Apr 2009, 00:50

I too heard the hiss, though shaky at the beginning

arunk · Post by **arunk** » 11 Apr 2009, 00:58

never mind the hiss. As I was listening to the original, I was thinking "now which raga is he going to get out of this?".

And the answer was just mind boggling

! Certainly did not expect it, and certainly couldn't believe my ears as I heard the fake.

I am not getting into "is anything wrong" sinker hole again

(5) - 1:23 onwards

Arun

uday_shankar · Post by **uday_shankar** » 11 Apr 2009, 07:17

The hiss...I was playing with the track volume setting in Audacity, when mixing in the tampura. I might have increased it too much. As it is, the "original" itself was artificially amplified from the actual recording to make room for the tampura and have sufficient overall signal strength. Cheap mike...low volume instrument.

narayan · Post by **narayan** » 11 Apr 2009, 17:02

Interesting! This was the first one that I heard, so I'm now tempted to go back to the earlier ones. Don't know what you mean by "weird in the original", but I could spot some unusual, nonstandard phrases in a standard raga in the original. Sort of made sense when I heard the fake!

uday_shankar · Post by **uday_shankar** » 11 Apr 2009, 18:06

narayan wrote:but I could spot some unusual, nonstandard phrases in a standard raga in the original. Sort of made sense when I heard the fake!

Exactly !

ramakriya · Post by **ramakriya** » 11 Apr 2009, 23:40

arunk wrote:never mind the hiss. As I was listening to the original, I was thinking "now which raga is he going to get out of this?".

And the answer was just mind boggling ! Certainly did not expect it, and certainly couldn't believe my ears as I heard the fake.

I am not getting into "is anything wrong" sinker hole again

(5) - 1:23 onwards

Arun

Very nicely done Uday - as usual

Even before listening to the fake, I sort of had the feeling that fake would be from this particular mELa, but I did not catch that till I heard the fake.

Even if you say the phrases are a bit unconventional, they don't seem so much out of places in the original.

-Ramakriya

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 12 Apr 2009, 10:54

Excellent demo again, Uday. Both ragas came out nice and clean. You have played the piece quite well on the chithra veena. I will wait for the answer to make sure I got the raga of the fake right. I did not notice anything odd with the original even on a second listen after listening to the fake.

uday_shankar · Post by **uday_shankar** » 13 Apr 2009, 09:07

I suppose the original is an open secret. So the real question is:

1) Does the "fake" sound a tad hurried ?
2) Would the "fake" be a better graha-bhedam of Manji than Bhairavi ?

narayan · Post by **narayan** » 13 Apr 2009, 19:37

Here's what struck me as unusual in the original. At say, 1:45, the D,N,SRG,R, seems just a bit unusual (because we do not usually glide past a S in this manner in any ragam, let alone Bhairavi/Manji). However, there is much more liberty given in R,G,MPD,P with respect to the M, and so OK in the 'fake'. Perhaps this is not what Uday had meant, but this is what struck me. By the way, I am a total agnostic in the whole Bhairavi Manji business and after one lec dem by Tanjavur Sankara Iyer, I just stopped singing Bhairavi for more than a year.

uday_shankar · Post by **uday_shankar** » 13 Apr 2009, 19:41

narayan wrote:(because we do not usually glide past a S in this manner in any ragam, let alone Bhairavi/Manji)

Precisely ! This is the "weird" stuff I'm referring to. The Manji stuff is about the slower extended D1 in the descent which might fit the descent of the "fake" better ? Anyways it is a secondary consideration.

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 15 Apr 2009, 05:28

> (because we do not usually glide past a S in this manner in any ragam, let alone Bhairavi/Manji).

Is that mainy for alapana? In kalapanaswarams, I hear instances of 'gliding past' S on many occasions. Or the manner in which the glide is done makes a/the difference?

uday_shankar · Post by **uday_shankar** » 15 Apr 2009, 11:12

vk
It's mainly the manner in which the glide is done. In almost all cases, S is always a flat note, whether in an alapana or in swarams.

So, as Narayan pointed out, the phrase D,N,SRG,R, is typically rendered as follows in different ragas:

a) with a gamaka on N (i.e, sort of like "dsd") in Bhairavi
b) with a plain N in Kharaharapriya

In both cases the S is flat. But in this recording we play the S as sort of "rs". This is totally inadmissible in either rAga, except perhaps very occasionally in fast swaraprasthara.

So this unusual phrasing in Bhairavi was snuck in deliberately to better authenticize the "fake", Punnaga Varali (hope you got that right!).

The Punnaga-Varali sequence used the P in Bhairavi as its tonic. In the transposed swaras, the phrase in question becomes, again as Narayan pointed out, R,G,MPD,P. Here, the original S of Bhairavi becomes the M of Punnaga Varali and it is perfectly admissible to play M as "pm" in Punnaga Varali as well as many other ragas (including Bhairavi!).

Sometime when I get a moment, I will record an explanatory "demo" if you wish.

Suji Ram · Post by **Suji Ram** » 15 Apr 2009, 11:32

punnagavarALi, I got that right... that was the hiss (snake) I was refering to in my post : )

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 15 Apr 2009, 11:33

Thanks Uday. Excellent explanation.

>Punnaga Varali (hope you got that right!).

YES!

Wonderful stuff!!

uday_shankar · Post by **uday_shankar** » 15 Apr 2009, 14:16

Suji Ram wrote:that was the hiss (snake) I was refering to in my post : )

Haha ! Very good. And "shaky" too, eh ?! I was too thick and serious to notice that slide by.

Also, what an amazing coincidence that more hiss was accidentally mixed into punnaga varali, huh ? Obviously not intentionally on my part though in retrospect I am almost tempted to take credit for it.

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 16 Apr 2009, 07:25

Good one Suji. I missed the reference the first time.

Suji Ram · Post by **Suji Ram** » 16 Apr 2009, 11:27

now this Sruti bEdham excercise is making me hum "yaro ivar yaro" in punnagavarali... this is just amazing how change in Sruti can make you forget one raga and latch on to the other...

I am also reminded of MD's navavarna -if MD too thought about such a thing while going from bhairavi to punnagavarali