Raga Jaunpuri - alap
Performer:
Brigitte Menon
Culture or Origin: This is an Indian Raga. It is thought that is sometimes takes years for performers to really understand and connect with what they are playing.
Orchestration: sitar
Connection:
This weeks readings talked a lot pitch and the differences of pitch in different cultures and country's music. Pitches are not always fixed when setting it. This is what you find a lot with sitars. A lot of times music styles from different traditions often dictate where the pitch placement is going to be. In Western Classical music I think we are so used to fixed tuning to A 440 that we really don't get a chance to be exposed and try many other tunings and pitch variants. In many Arab and Indian music you hear the oriental scale. They use the augmented second. Also when you listen to the above example you can hear the pitch bends and pitch functions talked about in the chapter. Specific pitches were given more importance in a set.
I think it's really interesting to learn about the traditions and customs of other people's cultures. We have our own traditions with the traditional Western Classical orchestra set up. Our instruments are fixed and we follow a fixed set of pitches. To be able to experience some of the other systems and methods would be beneficial and interesting especially as educators.
I think it's really interesting to learn about the traditions and customs of other people's cultures. We have our own traditions with the traditional Western Classical orchestra set up. Our instruments are fixed and we follow a fixed set of pitches. To be able to experience some of the other systems and methods would be beneficial and interesting especially as educators.
Wow, I've never actually watched a sitar being played before, and that is impressive! There are so many different forms of pitch bending in that piece. I hadn't anticipated the degree to which the pitches could be bent, including parts of the melody that I can now see are bends.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your intrigue of different pitch sets. Far too often we hear a piece from a different culture and immediately dismiss it because we are not familiar with the tuning systems used. We should be willing and excited about hearing such pieces and comparing and contrasting them to works from our own culture so that one day we may be able to adapt and perform using such techniques.
ReplyDeletePitch sets, and tuning in general, is such an interesting thing, and aspects of it still baffle my mind. For example, even in Western music where A is 440Htz, if you don't have a good tone on the instrument, but on your tuner you nail the needle straight up and down, your sound isn't going to blend with others as well as if you had a beautiful, open, resonant tone. That's really what tuning is all about: playing the same note as the other person, or at least being able to blend sounds with another person. I really like the idea of pitch bending and quartertones in music, because they're there for personalized effect. You're never going to see a performer go up a chromatic quartertone scale, you're more likely to see them just use these notes to give more flavor or color to the note, and I think that's what makes music way more interesting than just trying to play the "right note" with your tuner.
ReplyDeleteFor my own blog this week, I posted a video on Balinese Gamelan music, so hearing you talk about pitch sets is interesting. In gamelan music, each instrument is made with different tuning, meaning that no gamelan can be interchanged with another. I will admit, I found it hard to listen to at first..but after a while I was able to get past the tuning differences and appreciate the musical form and really listen to what I was watching. We should teach our students to get to this point as well, and teach them that just because it sounds different than we are used to, it still has important musical and cultural merit that should be, if not enjoyed personally, at least appreciated.
ReplyDeleteI feel like in all western cultures we are too focused on the tempered scale to really expand our horizons. I have listened to very little Indian music as it all sounds "weird" to me. I find the pitch bending to be quite interesting but the use of semitones, augmented intervals, and other non western elements make the music to foreign to fully enjoy. Until there is a shift in our culture and the mechanics of our instruments, I don't think we will be performing music of this music. Like you said Cat, our instruments are fixed to a set of pitches. Yes, small manipulations can be made, but nothing drastic enough to authentically perform this music.
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