Hello, am new to this chat board. Am new to sitar. Basic question . . on Ravi Shankar's Sounds of India CD when he plays the basic scale of the raga he is doing something with the melody string, but I can't fiqure out exactly what. He is not meending it , but he is not straight fretting it either. It seems he is touching/ vibrating to adjacent notes as he plays the scale. Would he be just hinting on the next note as he ascends and hinting on the prior note as he descends???
KC
Hi KC;
That record/CD is one of the few early ones I haven't heard. But from what you describe, I believe the technique is called andolan. Its neither a meend nor a straight stop. It oscillates about a single note, using upper and sometimes even lower grace notes. Very characteristic of all Indian music.
An update of my own. .In Ravi's movie Raga, there is a scene where he initiates a new student and asks the student to play a scale. The student does so- Ravi interjects, "No.No that's all wrong" and then proceeds to show the new student how to play the notes of the scale- this is what he is doing on the CD Sounds of India as well. And relates to my original question DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT I AM REFERRING TO?
Hello, am new to this chat board. Am new to sitar. Basic question . . on Ravi Shankar's Sounds of India CD when he plays the basic scale of the raga he is doing something with the melody string, but I can't fiqure out exactly what. He is not meending it , but he is not straight fretting it either. It seems he is touching/ vibrating to adjacent notes as he plays the scale. Would he be just hinting on the next note as he ascends and hinting on the prior note as he descends???
KC[/quote]
Well of course we know what you're talking about! I don't have that particular CD though.
Ravi is bending the note as you say, very fast . . . a quick embellishment. That's a characteristic sound of the sitar. You generally don't just play straight notes as in the west, you put an embellishment on them, like in descending he's bending up every note as he goes down the scale very quickly. I find it more difficult to do it when ascending . . . . it's not called meend or gamak, not sure if there is a name for it, perhaps Amitava would know?
Oh, that's what you mean. We're not talking about bent notes at all! You're right. Ravi does use that technique quite a bit. My best guess in this case is that its a specific type or krintan called sparsha, a type of "hammer" technique (Lars, check page 54 in Manfred Junius's book. What do you think?)
Russ, he wouldn't use krintan on every not in a demo of the scale I don't think.
Not having heard this . . . . .
KC, you've got it I think . . . . he strikes Da on ascend as he's moving from Re to Sa, know what I mean?
And on descend, strikes Da on SA, quickly moves up to RE before going down to Ni and so on . . . .
Does this make sense?
Lars
KC (Jan 05, 2003 08:27 p.m.):
Oh, thank you.
When he's ascending (SRGMPDNS) is he e.g. touching on Re then stikes Sa, touch upon Ga then strike Re?
When he's descending (SNDPMGRS) is he touching upon Sa then strikes Re, touch upon Ni then strikes Da?
Yea, I think ol' Raviji can be a hotdog when he wants to. He's one of the biggest cutups on stage. Part of his charm. Well, Indrajit did teach me how to play krintan on each note pair when ascending and decending a scale. He said it was a bol for me to practice to get a bit of dexterity. It takes a while to get it to sound right, but when you do get it down, it begins to flow.
