Delights of Rag Kalavati and Rag Des

Had ample time today for a change. Had time to sit back and practice and understand structures of Rags on my key board.

How do you begin this journey of appreciating classical music even?

Tip from a learned one (not me) - 

1.     Listen Listen and Listen. There is no substitute to that.

2.     Replace your music library with a whole lot of good music. Wipe out the Bollywood Masala, the Hip-Hop and load in as much of Classical Music you can.  Of course listen to your regular stuff when your mind is switched off;-)

3.     Create playlist's based on Rags (helps big time)

4.     Identify one movie song with each Rag to identify with a Rag

5.     Spend time, be patient and sing out every new Rag you learn.

6.     If you are not good at signing, then use a key board to understand the Rag. Play it out and see the play of keys

7.     Do not try learning everything. Focus on a few you love and go deep.

8.     Fail fail till you succeed. You will get frustrated in the journey but once you get past that, it will be fun.

9.     Understand the following terms - That, Aroho, Avaroha, Samvadi, Pakad (All simple concepts just sound complicated and dont bother about the terms as much as what they mean)

10.   Music is like Math - time however is a dominant axis! That was my way of looking at it.

I focused on Rag Kalavati to begin with. Why? This rag has lured me from the time I started to be drawn back into the world of 'Hindustani':-)  There is a rendition from Dr Prabha Atre which is beautiful. I heard it and wanted to listen to end endlessly. The most fascinating thing about this Rag is the parts where the notes NSG. SGP  brings in a kind of beauty I cannot explain. This Rag is based on the Khamaj 'That'. 'That' is a structure of notes which defines the permissible notes resulting in different beautiful Rags based on the usage of those notes. Khamaj has the following notes:

S R G m P D n S'

Rag Kalavati essentially has the following Aroha and Avaroha (you can find a whole lot of literature about this Rag around the net)

S G P D n S' and S' n D P G S respectively.

Now if you listen to the song from the hindi movie - Hai Agar Dushman Zamana Kam Nahin - You can see a resemblance to this Rag. However there are a lot of places where the rules are violated.  

When you listen carefully to the rendition mentioned above starting in the 5:57 minute going onto 7:10 minutes you will appreciate the various aspects of this Rag and probably understand the notes used better.

The next Rag tried and tested today is the Rag Des. Most of you would immediately relate to this one thanks to 'Vande Mataram' a song you immediately sing as soon as you dabble with this Rag. However on closer look and playing it was so easy to confuse this to Khamaaj and Tilak Kamod. As I played the Rag I realized that the song - 'Aaoge Jab Tum from Jab We met' is hovering around this Rag and that got me to understand Khamaaj.

The structures of all of these Rags are mentioned here for your reference

Rag Desh Aroha and Avarohana

S R m P N S

S’ R’ n D P m G R G ‘N S

See how G is absent when ascending and how the N changes when descending with an addition of D and G

Khamaaj:

'N S G m P N S'. (R of Des is absent)

S' n D P m P D G m R S 

I am yet to learn a whole lot in these Rags but the start was exciting and being able to play it and try out some of my own stuff was even better. 

Sorry to bore my non-musical readers. But well I was excited and wanted to write down notes to myself. Hopefully the next few days are about a journey through various Rags and music. 

Today was a definite 'win' day - Dad and Mum also played on my Keyboard and picked up a few basics very easily.