VISUALISING HINDUSTANI CLASSICAL MUSIC
VISUALISING HINDUSTANI CLASSICAL MUSIC Documentation of Design project two
HINDUSTANI CLASSICAL MU
Project Introduction • Hindustani Classical music is taught in ou in stages; varying in the complexity of the as well as the concepts taught. This curric not just the practical but the theoretical k genre of music as well.
As a student of Hindustani Classical Music experienced a bottleneck in trying to not j pursue my learning of the music but also the nuances of it. This, for me springs fro a gap between retaining the theory and fi in the ragas and thus appreciating them.
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Intial Brief
Hence as a part of this project I attempt t humanise the theory of Hindustani Classic in order to make it easier and more appro for not just students( who also prepare fo on this theory) but also people who would knowing more about this subject which st restricted to the skilled and trained and ap its beauty.
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Timeline PHASE 1 PHASE 2 PHASE 3 PHASE 4
Student
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Design Prop
Target Audience • I primarily attempt to address this project of Hindustani Classcial music as well as m who possess or wish to possess an interes the subject.
Data Collection
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WEEK 1 WEEK 2 WE
Ancho
Initial Ideati
USIC
Sukanya Baskar Graphic Design Semester 5 S1200008
ur country e ragas culum entails knowledge of this
Scope of Work • An opportunity to attempt to document a tradition that has been oral and restricted to students of the art. Understanding data visualisation for vast information that is not just factual but also instinctive in terms of its treatment.
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posal
to students music enthusiasts st in
Methodology • Phase 1 Gathering existing data on a specific ‘Thaat’ (mode) with variations from different Gharanas(Schools) and analysing any gaps between the practice of music and understanding the theory . understanding the non-textual and non-theoretical aspects of music from the operatives. Phase 2 Identifying the patterns and narratives in the system of Music and translating this information into a visually appealing and easily comprehensible manner.
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Phase 4 Validating this system with target group, faculty and peers to check if the system is functional and trying incorporating ga dha the suggestions.
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EEK 3 WEEK 4 WEEK 5 WEEK 6 WEEK 7
or Faculty
ions
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Research
Phase 3 Studying various possible methods of representing this information and to create a system that could later be used for other ragas as well.
re Ga Pa Dha ni Sa8ma Ma Ni WEEK
Re ma Pa Sa ni re Ma Dha Ni dha Ga ga Guide(s)
Date
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Final solution
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Initial Brief he knowledge of music and the ability to appreciate it’s beauty is highly sought after and helps if cultivated. This was the starting point for my second Design project. I have had eight years of training in Hindustani Classical music. The training method was very traditional— with a single teacher training a small group of about five to six students. While the teacher rendered the raga through its aaroha and the avarohana( the ascending and the descending consisting of the characteristic notes of the raga), Aalap, Bandish and the Taan. Now when I look back, inspite of faring satisfactorily in exams that supposedly test my skills about my knowledge of music, Eight years, 4 exams and numerous ragas later I bear in my mind only one memorised piece of information- Gaayan, Vaadan aur Nritan ki samshti ko Sangeet kehte (roughly translated, the combination of vocals, instruments and dance is termed as music)
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A sample from my music notebook. The notations for a particular raga, with curved lines below a set of notes showing the set of notes that need to be sung together
Visualising
HINDUSTANI CLASSICAL MUSIC Project Introduction • Hindustani Classical music is taught in our country in stages; varying in the complexity of the ragas as well as the concepts taught. This curriculum entails not just the practical but the theoretical knowledge of this genre of music as well. As a student of Hindustani Classical Music, I have experienced a bottleneck in trying to not just pursue my learning of the music but also appreciating the nuances of it. This, for me springs from, there being a gap between retaining the theory and finding patterns in the ragas and thus appreciating them. Hence as a part of this project I attempt to humanise the theory of Hindustani Classical Music in order to make it easier and more approachable for not just students( who also prepare for exams based on this theory) but also people who would be open to knowing more about this subject which still remains restricted to the skilled and trained and appreciate its beauty.
Target Audience • I primarily attempt to address this project to students of Hindustani Classcial music as well as music enthusiasts who possess or wish to possess an interest in the subject.
Timeline PHASE 1 PHASE 2 PHASE 3 PHASE 4
Student
Sukanya Baskar Graphic Design Semester 5 S1200008
Scope of Work • An opportunity to attempt to document a tradition that has been oral and restricted to students of the art. Understanding data visualisation for vast information that is not just factual but also instinctive in terms of its treatment.
Methodology • Phase 1 Gathering existing data on a specific ‘Thaat’ (mode) with variations from different Gharanas(Schools) and analysing any gaps between the practice of music and understanding the theory . understanding the non-textual and non-theoretical aspects of music from the operatives. Phase 2 Identifying the patterns and narratives in the system of Music and translating this information into a visually appealing and easily comprehensible manner. Phase 3 Studying various possible methods of representing this information and to create a system that could later be used for other ragas as well. Phase 4 Validating this system with target group, faculty and peers to check if the system is functional and trying incorporating the suggestions.
WEEK 1 WEEK 2 WEEK 3 WEEK 4 WEEK 5 WEEK 6 WEEK 7 WEEK 8
Anchor Faculty
Design proposal document
Guide(s)
Date
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Design Proposal t the stage of designing my design proposal I tried to focus my project on ‘Visualisation of Hindustani Music’. To ‘humanise the theory of Hindustani Classical Music in order to make it easier and more approachable’ was one of the attempts of this project. The initial target audience for the project were students training in Hindustani Classical Music. Another attempt was to represent the extensive work done by Bhatkhande of having documented the various ragas in a form that would facilitate the appreciation of this form of music better.
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One of my first research startpoints— Paola Faoro’s project on representation of notes for opera singers.
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Research had come across this project by Paola Faoro on her visualizations of opera music being a Soprano singer herself, and this project in ways was a start to my reasearch. The later stages of the research also directed me to understanding that in the context of Hindustani Music, which as mentioned earlier has never had a written culture, a notation system as a solution would not suit .
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Music as an experience With the challenges in hand like, handling a primarily intuitive medium like music, I started off with looking at Music— ‘the experience’. Starting with the kind of people who are indifferent to their experience of music and wouldn’t go out on a limb to express their opinions. Second, the ones who are picky about the kinds of music like and lastly the kinds who take the whole nine yards. This brought me to the proposition that my project could in a way address all the three kinds of people experienceing music. The project would have to include not just the technicalities of the
music but also bring out the subtlities of the genre that could generate more interest in this form of music.
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Representations of Music Some previous visualisations of one particular aspect of Hindustani classical music— the ragas have been the Ragamala paintings. Another method of making the ragas of Hindustani music more approachable has been highlighting the use of ragas in Indian film music. For eg: Yeh zindagi usee ki hai” from “Anarkali” is a song with the touches of Bhimpalasi. These visualisations also translate into some teaching methods, for eg- Suzuki methods, Dalcroze Eurythmics, etc. Particularly
the Dalcroze Eurythmics is one method that involves simple actions like walking, running, clapping, etc to teach music. A more mathematical representation was a program called ‘Praat’ which converts a piece of music into a graph, whose elements can be customised.
Above: The ragamala painting of the Raga Hindolam ; Left: Poster of the movie ‘Anarkali’ which has the song ‘Yeh zindagi usee ki hai’ with touches of raga Bhimpalasi.
Opposite page: Above: Dalcroze Eurythmics, one of the methods used to teach music by the use of simple actions. Below: A graph prepared on the program Praat for the song ‘Tere mere milan ke ye raina’
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D. V. Palustkar: Started formal education in Hindustani Classical Music.
Explained the ragas in an easy-to-understand language and explained the grammar of the ragas.
Notation Systems One of the first distinguishing features between the Indian and Western forms of music is the presence of a notation system. So the primary question was— Is it a notation system that we need next? I also came across various attempts to develop a notation system and some historical evidences of documentation attempts. Even the current formal education system does involve writing the notes of ragas, but this also is not a standardised process across all schools.
Creating a notation system?
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Above: Walaja inscriptions from the 11th century. Below left: Sample page from my old notebook showing notes of a particular raga. Below right: A symbol developed for a double khatka in a ‘new system of notation’ by Nikhil Ghosh.
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Data Collection narrowed the content of my project to the ragas of Hindustani music. Hence the content for this in terms of the notes of the various ragas, their thaats, samay(time), etc had to be gathered. There currently exist various school that impart formal training in music known as ‘gharanas’. All of these gharanas have their renditions of all the ragas and hence I had to select the gharanas that I could limit my data collection to.
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A comprehensive list of 75 ragas— showing their aarohana and avarohana, classified on the basis of their thaat.
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The data was collected mainly from my old notes as well the writings of musicologistWim Van der Meer. The final list consisted of 75 ragas, representative of all the 10 different thaats. Further the similiarties between certain ragas were identified by grouping these similiarties on the basis of — •addition or deletion of notes •Komal, shuddha or teevra notes • Order/ Treatment •Other(samay, bhava, etc). The features of the raga that were collected were—
Arohana Avarohana(ascending descending) Types of notes, Thaat (A group of ragas) And the implied information that could be gathered were : Jati(number of notes), Pakad(A defining set of notes), Samay(time), Bhava(emotion), posssible stories associated with the raga.
Roget’s thesaurus
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Classification With all the data in place the next attempt was to try classify this information. One of the first references was the Roget’s thesaurus. This is one example of classification of words where starting from a single word associated words are formed that are then clubbed together. Other classification models that were observed were— Linnaeus’ classification, Periodic table, Norman E Lewis’ classification, etc.
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Initial Ideations he next step after data collection and classification was ‘mapping’. This was to try and provide a comprehensive look at the vast data that had been collected. From here, the focus also shifted to highlighting the co-relations between ragas instead of just being informed about the individual ragas in terms of their notes.
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Some attempts to map the data; Left: A septagonal map where the notes are mapped out on the sides of the form. Below: The octagonal form shows the eight different prahars(time periods) and the notes of the aaroha and avarohana are arranged vertically.
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Mapping This attempt was also to try and give a secondary layer of information like— time, significant notes, etc.
In this method, all notes are treated alike with no distinctions based on scale.
Bilaskhani Todi
Basant
Bageshri
Bhupal Todi
Paraj
Rageshri
Patdip
Bhimpalasi
Jogia
Multani
Bhairav
Kalingada
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Forms The second attempt takes from the most obvious logical feature of the ragas which is — the number of notes in the ascending and the descending. Since each raga is essentially characterised by the notes in its ascending and descending forms, this approach deals with creating forms which show the number of notes in the ascending through their number of sides in the upper half of the form and show the number of notes in the descending through the number of sides in the lower half of the form. The colour of the form is defined by the time at which the particular raga is sung.
The possible drawbacks of this approach were that only on repeated interactions with the visual would the viewer be able to recognise the raga. The individual elements of the raga, that is the notes cannot be distinguished in this approach. Hence the sense of wonderment that there are just 12 notes that form all the numerous ragas is lost.
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Grids This approach attempts to make the individual units(notes) more readable. The orientation of these block take inspiration from the dice and i-ching. Similiar to the previous approach, the forms show the number of notes in the ascending and descending of a raga through their structure and orientation.
Re
ga
dha
re Ga Pa Dha ni Sa ma Ma Ni
Re ma Pa Sa ni Dha re Ma Ni dha Ga ga
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Final Solution he final solution—A common feature of Hindustani music is for the musician to count the number of beats of a piece of music on the lines of the fingers as shown in the image.
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Taking from that, I decided to use the spaces between these lines to depict the notes Hence this covers a total of 12 notes which is the total number of notes that are present in Hindustani music.
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4 3 2 1
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6 9 5
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Above: Image showing the denotation of notes and beats on the palm. Left: The template for how the design for various ragas would appear on a page
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Hands This solution attempts to bring the theoritical knowledge of the ragas and help you remember them on your fingertips (a little too literally). The arrangement of the notes on the right and the left hand are as shown on the right hand side of the previous page. The illustration shows the notes of the ascending in the hands with the fingers facing upwards and the descending on the one with the fingers facing downwards. The idea was that on the repeated action of matching your notes with a specified area of the finger you would not just be able to remeber the ‘areas’(notes) associated with a particular
note but also be able to draw the similiarities between other ragas consisting of the same ‘areas’(notes).
Left above and below: Sample pages for two similiar ragas: Bilaskhani Todi and Bhupali Todi. As seen in the two examples given above, the notes very similiar but differ based on the komal ‘ni’ missing in Bhupali Todi and the time of the ragas being different.
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Translating the hands Taking this idea, I further simplified it as simple rectangular boxes showing the 12 areas of the fingers. The coloured areas show the notes that are present in the ascending and the descending of the respective raga. The colour is defined by the time of the day(samay) that the raga is sung in. The starting notes which in most cases is the ‘Sa’ has been coloured black for two reasons: To help easily identify the starting note and second; since the note ‘Sa’ does not have any variable forms.
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Translating the hands— Print The same two examples of Bhupali Todi and Bilaskhani Todi were printed on transparent OHP sheets to try see the similiarities by the action of physically overlap these two sheets. Finally the way forward would be print a compilation of these ragas to get the larger picture of how ragas form out of the larger context of notes.
Bibliography ■ Books G.Kuppuswami, M.Hariharan. INDEX OF SONGS IN SOUTH INDIAN MUSIC. B.R.Publishing Corporation. Delhi. 1981. Nikhil Ghosh Fundamentals of Raga and Tala with a New System of Notation” Bombay (1968) Bor, Joep 1986-87 The Voice of Sarangi; An Ilustrated History of Bowing in India. Bombay: National Centre for the Performing Arts. Bhatkhande, Vishnu Narayan 1934 A Short History of the Music of Upper India. Bombay, India: reprinted in 1974 by Indian Musicological Society, Baroda. 1993 Hindustani Sangeet - Paddhati (Vol 1 - 4): Kramik Pustak Malika. Hatras:Sangeet Karyalaya Ananda K. Coomaraswamy Essays on Music Manohar Publishers and Distributors; 2010 edition (1 December 2006) T. V. Subba Rao Studies in Indian Music Asia Publishing House (December 1965) Sourindro Mohan Tagore Six Principal Ragas (With A Brief View of Hindu Music) Low Price Publications 2006 Music east and west : [papers] Indian Council for Cultural Relations.; Sangeet Natak Akademi.; Delhi Music Society.; Max Mueller Bhavan (New Delhi, India);1966 Teaching Musical Appreciation. Terence Dwyer . Oxford University Press. ■ ARTICLES The Oral in Writing: Early Indian Musical Notations Richard Widdess Early Music, Vol. 24, No. 3, Early Music from Around the World. (Aug., 1996), pp.391-402+405.
Visions of Hindustani Music Wim van der Meer The World of Music,Vol. 47, No. 2, Notation, Transcription, Visual Representation (2005), pp. 105-118Published by: VWB - Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung Hindustani Music in the 20th Century by Wim. van der Meer Review by: Peter Manuel Source: Asian Music,Vol. 18, No. 1 (Autumn Winter, 1986), pp. 208-211Published by: University of Texas Press Hindustani Music in the 20th Century by Wim van der Meer Review by: D. R. Widdess Source: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland,No. 1 (1981), p. 101Published by: Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland Visualising North Indian Music: Looking at Khyāl Songs Author(s): Nicolas Magriel Source: The World of Music,Vol. 47, No. 2, Notation, Transcription, Visual Representation (2005), pp. 119-136Published by: VWB - Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung ■ WEBSITES AND BLOGS MUSIC IN MOTION The Automated Transcription for Indian Music (AUTRIM) Project by NCPA and UvA http://autrimncpa.wordpress. com/ Jog http://autrimncpa.wordpress.com/jog/ Marwa, Puriya & Sohini: The tricky triplets FRIDAY, APRIL 15, 2011 http://swaratala.blogspot.in/2011/04/marwa-puriya-sohini-trickytriplets.html Raga Bageshree July 15, 2014 at 5:59 am http://chriscook50. wordpress.com/raga- bagashree/
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Set in DTL Nobel designed by Sjoerd Henrik de Roos and Dick Dooijes Dimensions: 6 inches by 9 inches