RHYTHYMS OF THE WORLD

Indian Classical Music

What can you hear?
• On your post it note, list as many musical features you can hear in
this piece of music.
In your exercise books…
CL 28th March
Indian Classical Music
The Instruments
Aim: to identify and describe the role of the instruments in Indian
Classical Music.

STICK POST IT NOTE HERE

 Indian Classical Music
• Indian Classical music is very different to the ‘classical’ music we hear
in Europe.

• 3 main musical parts make up most Indian Classical music (we will learn
about each of these):

RAGA DRONE TALA

 Instruments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xB_X9BOAOU

Sitar Tanpura Tabla

What do you hear?
• Does this piece of music have a regular beat?
• How would you describe the way Ravi Shankar plays the instrument?
• Does the tempo change (FFW to 8 minutes)
• Has his playing changed in any way?
• How does it relate to the ladies playing?
Sitar
• Main melody playing instrument.
• Fretted string instrument. The fret positions can be altered.
• Approx 20 strings:
- 7 plucked (4 used to improvise, 3 played open to create a drone)
- Remaining strings are sympathetic strings which vibrate as the sitar is played to create the
shimmering timbre.

• The sitar improvises melodies using notes of a raga scale in many different ways.
• Pitch bends often played.
• Ornamentation often used.
• Glissandos/slides
• Fast runs and scales.
 RAGA
• A raga is a set of different pitches (like a scale) which functions as the
basis for an improvised melody.
• There are hundreds of different ragas, each will be used at a particular
time of day or at different times of the year/seasons and moods.
• Raga scales are very different to Western scales because they use
microtones (intervals smaller than a semitone)
 Exploring a Rag Bhairav
• A Raga used for the morning.

• Try this on guitar if you like.

• Explore improvising using ONLY these notes
• Aim to bend the pitch and/or add ornamentation.

• Add a DRONE using low pitched C’s and G’s as a chord.

 Tanpura
• Traditionally plays the drone.
• A drone = repeated or constant set of notes played throughout the
piece.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wF46fQPMaU
 Tabla
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtRPB8xHP8M

• The tabla plays the tala

• Tala = cycle of beats which repeat.
• There are 100’s of different tala.

• Played with the hands.

• Master tabla players are able to produce many different sounds & pitches from
the instrument.
• The tabla player will improvise rhythms based on the tala.
 TALA
• Some tala are over 100 beats long (which then repeats).
• A more simple tala is the tintal tala which is 16 beats long, divided into four sets of 4 beats.

• The 1st beat in the tala is the most important and is called the “sam”; this beat will be
strongly accented.

• SAM = strongly accented 1st beat of cycle.

• THALI = slightly accented beat
• KHALI = silent beat (often accompanied by a hand wave)
 Other Instruments

Sarod
Sarangi Bansuri