Bhairavi Swarajiti on chitravenu

[uday_shankar]

VIDEO DOCUMENTING THE CHITRAVENU JOURNEY -

https://youtu.be/Qt9N2qUlM5Qsi=1cWtWcZ9NAF9aSHO

Healing myself with the sound of musical instruments...

I've had some health setbacks over the last three years but I'm back working on chitravenu.

The last few months have been intense in the chitravenu workshop. Endless experimentation to create a design that can take on more serious Carnatic music. The dynamic capabilities of a lighter slide, solving endless problem of slide, tonal clarity, ergonomics... I cannot even begin to describe. Any attempt to practice music is always interrupted, including in this recording, by technical problems. If I had a crack engineering team and manufacturing facility at my disposal, these issues could be addressed 10x faster . Hey, one can dream on and then crash land in reality !

The Bhairavi Swarajiti has been a fragmented earworm, often with atrocious sahitya, since my boyhood days when I had the blessing of listening to the venerable Semmangudi - Lalgudi combination in several live concerts. Just thinking about those mahavidvans gives me the goosebumps. To learn this, I took the sahitya and notation and let the instrument direct whatever gamakas/ ornamentation that it allowed. This is the result. To keep it compact I've only played the sahitya in the charanam, or at least keeping the sahitya in my mind !

NOTE: Two questions came about the instrument:

1) WHY AM I WEARING A WRIST STRAP ?

The hand-rest on which I rest the right hand slides back and forth along the strings, to access the correct string. It has a friction grip strip to help secure the hand to it's surface without relative movement. The strap is an additional precaution to help the hand feel more secure, with so many strings ! If the friction strip fails a bit, the strap helps drag the hand-rest along up and down.

2) WHAT AM I WEARING ON MY RIGHT HEEL ?

I am wearing a silicone heel pad to prevent my foot from creeping forward. I tap both my feet according to some pattern, to keep track of the tala or rhythm cycle. However, since the resultant movement of the right foot is complex, it keeps creeping forward and before I know, I have it stretched out in front of me in an uncomfortable posture. The silicone heel pad prevents that slipping and keeps the heel in place.

[rajeshnat]

Nice the blow part certainly reminds a significant melodious flute like texture . Swarajati is breezy and also deep . Great attempt uday.

[thenpaanan]

Thanks for sharing, @Uday.

If I may be so bold, I like a slightly slower kAlapramANam for this composition. There are some songs like this one where there seems to be palpable competition between melodic movement and the attack on individual notes. Most Carnatic kritis focus on the first, at the cost of the second. I feel that many don't realize that the value of a note in our music is not just in how the held note ends up (with the characteristic "Carnatic shake"), but also how it was reached (and also how it was exited, but that seems even less important to our musicians). When speed increases, the attack part of the note is either standardized for efficient playing or skipped altogether at staccato-like effect at high speeds.

For example, in the pallavi itself in this kriti, there are several slides across multiple note intervals sa to chatusriti Dha or Ni to Pa etc that you rarely find in other kritis. And this gliding approach sustains throughout the charanams of the kriti. The standard way this was rendered by SSI prioritized movement over subtlety, which was probably the right thing to do in the circumstances of a noisy stage and percussion that tends to drown out subtlety. But in the world of Youtube and single instrument recordings such as yours, we have an opportunity to recover that subtlety and reach for that lost fruit.

Just a thought.
-T

[uday_shankar]

@rajeshnat thanks a lot !

@thenpaanan, thanks for your remarks. I just shared this as a step in the progress of the "playability" and capabilities of a fledgling instrument, without much thought about the deeper musical aspects such as the ideal kalapramanam. A time will come for that ! I am not a pedagogically "trained" musician, I don't know the basics, not a single varisai, alangaram, geetham, etc.. Comparitiviely late in life, I was fortunate to learn handful of kritis and a couple varnams from great vidvans. I learn primarily by obsevation and scientific reasoning. I am targeting Hindustani (khyal) sangeet as the primary vehicle to showcase chitravenu. This is a lifetime project that I have worked in fits and starts, and just made some progress with the design to make it more playable for the rapid Carnatic type of gamakas, so I put it out there

[thenpaanan]

@thenpaanan, thanks for your remarks. I just shared this as a step in the progress of the "playability" and capabilities of a fledgling instrument, without much thought about the deeper musical aspects such as the ideal kalapramanam. A time will come for that ! I am not a pedagogically "trained" musician, I don't know the basics, not a single varisai, alangaram, geetham, etc.. Comparitiviely late in life, I was fortunate to learn handful of kritis and a couple varnams from great vidvans. I learn primarily by obsevation and scientific reasoning. I am targeting Hindustani (khyal) sangeet as the primary vehicle to showcase chitravenu. This is a lifetime project that I have worked in fits and starts, and just made some progress with the design to make it more playable for the rapid Carnatic type of gamakas, so I put it out there

For a person who has not trained formally you are doing superlatively well. This is not an easy Kriti to handle and you’ve done very well.

I’m curious as to your choice of Khyal. Can you elucidate? Somewhere on these pages is my argument that CM would do well with a Khyaal equivalent but there were no takers.

-T

[uday_shankar]

I’m curious as to your choice of Khyal. Can you elucidate? Somewhere on these pages is my argument that CM would do well with a Khyaal equivalent but there were no takers.

-T

Khyal is the dominant mode in HM. Small banishes/gats and elaborate improvisation... A small alaap, thematic improv. of the gat line, gamak taans and in the case of instrumental music jor, jhala, etc..
The bandishes don't have the complexity or size of Carnatic kritis. However, a tremendous stress is laid on pitch perfect meditation on notes, meends, and the chalan of the raag. All this is very very close to my spiritual preference. Even in CM my most memorable experiences are the neravals by KVN.

Again, in HM each instrument has its own repertoire, not just repeating the vocal repertoire. Instruments are always second tier in CM. In fact philosophically they make no sense. No other genre in the world has instruments that just repeat vocal repertoire ! What IS the point in trying to play sahitya on an instrument. Even while practising the above Swarajati, I was reminded of the silliness of it... the Swarajati is best felt by trying to live the experience Shyama Shastri's pouring of devotion to Kanchi Kamakshi, singing those evocative sahitya, deeply embedded in the raga bhava and laya. It is a great spiritual amalgam of so many parts. why reduce it to an instrumental refrain ?

Chitravenu is a very limited instrument to showcase CM, when compared to the Carnatic flute. The great loss of versatility and speed far outweight the small gains in continuity of tone. Add to it the unweildiness and the tremendous difficulty to master it (needs a fanatical devotion to pitch perfection in addition to very superior flute tonal skills) it is absolutely a waste of time for a Carnatic concert artist to try play it. At best, it will be reduced to a gimmicky mongrel to showcase a song or two and gain two minutes of fame.

For HM, it offers a unique perspective, coupled with the strings. Takes a loooong time to develop coordination but the tonal nirvana at the end of it is worth it and HM folks would be willing to work for it. For playing standard Carnatic repertoire it is a burden. I just practised this Swarajati to get a long standing earworm out of the way. Also, the development with the more dynamic sliding capability paves the way for better gamak taans in HM.

Last but not the least, and this is only a barely working workshop prototype, even after 12 to 15 years since started. Needs some serious reengineering for robustness, reliability.

As for your proposal for khyal style in CM, there is absolutely not a chance. Such a practitioner will sing to an audience of one, the mike man ! Loud, strident music belted out, albeit with great skill and technical complexity rules the roost in CM.