can you all give me some insights to the seacret world of Sitar books? Im getting the Junius book from Lars but i want to get a book for a friend aswell. He is not a sitarist but i hope he will start to play in the future.
What book do i get him? it must be informative, answer the basic questions, and be a good fun reading adventure that will end with him devoting less time to the Guitar and start of on the Sitar.
Jan (Sep 16, 2003 05:35 a.m.):
. . it must be informative, answer the basic questions, and be a good fun reading adventure that will end with him devoting less time to the Guitar and start of on the Sitar.
Jan
That's asking alot! I think Ravi's "My Music My Life" would be a good choice.
Jan, can I ask, why do you want him devoting less time to the guitar? Maybe he likes guitar.
Well that sounds a little bad i have to agree. He is a very good guitar player, and i hope it stays that way. But he would not mind to learn to play sitar.
My Music My Life is at amazon for 55$. its a mint first issue, but a little over the top for me.
The "Classical Music of North India" swansong mentioned seems interesting to me. Also give you some insight to the culture behind the music. I never knew what all those terms meant either.
I too am primarily a guitarist, but no one had to coax me to learn after I played the sitar for the first time, it truly changed my life (I'm sure it's the same for all of us, how could it not??)
"Classical Music of North India. ." is an excellent book on the music, but it's not necessarily sitar-oriented. I figure the playing technique itself can be learned fairly easily (ha!), but more importantly one must understand the notion of Hindustani music through vocalizing to practically apply these techniques, such as meend and krintan, etc. It gives a great description of the context of the art with a biography of Baba Allaudin Khan and Ali Akbar Khan, descriptions of the different forms (khyal, dhrupad, thumri, etc.), thorough descriptions of bols and sargam notation, tons of scale/permutation exercises, and the greatest part is the full notation of multiple compositions in 10 ragas (Bhairav, Bhairavi, Asawari, Alhaiya Bilawal, Todi, Kafi, Khammaj, Kalyan, Puriya Dhanashri, and Marwa), including variant forms and tals. Also very handy is the glossary with a lot of technical and theory terms, as well as the emotions to describe each raga. A wealth of information for the complete novice, and I would guess much more immediately useful than Ravi's autobiography, but I haven't read that yet so how would I know. .
I know the sargam is challenging at first but after a while of practicing you begin to "think" the right interval when you see the letters. The rhythm is a little tricky for some compositions, it makes you realize that clapping is a necessity. . clap clap wave clap And maybe you could suggest tuning his guitar to CGCGCC to use as a tanpura, it's almost like the real thing, well not really. sorry I guess I tend to ramble sometimes.
Good luck with your guitarist friend, hopefully he won't need too much nudging and you two will be able to jam together. . I was lucky enough to find a copy at my school library, and I feel so bad about beating it up from taking it everywhere that I might just finally buy my own rather than renewing it a 4th time. :-)
There is also the issue of my having to start from scratch since I will be studying the Imdadkhan method and not Maihar/Allaudin Khan, but at least I won't be overwhelmed with completely foreign material. Though I doubt anyone else will have to worry about this. .
You will find out that over 90% of playing technique is the same between the two gharanas. You will definitely NOT be starting from scratch! I hope somebody did not tell you that.
Got myself a new book today. My music My life (eBay)
Its a reprint of the original from 1995. I have read the book before but ist been a loong time, now i finally have ny own copy : ) Even me not beeing a RS head im happy to be the owner of this fine reference to sitar playing. I spent 35 US to get it and its well worth it. If you dont have a nice reference book i would recomend the Manfred Junius book or the RS. Actually i like the Junius book more, but hey� thats just me.
So to make me happy, please someone write an autobiografi on Vilayat Khan�s music and life and include a nice DVD with the book.
Hey,
I just ordered one from abebooks.com. It is $20USD, but has a nice coffee stain on the cover ;-0 The text is clean apparently. I am looking forward to it.
I just got the raga guide from amazon. It looks good for general raga knowledge. There is the usual aroha/avroha, and some discussion, mood/sargams (5-8 lines per raaga). There is also a fuller dictation of Alhaiya bilawal, not to mention the 74 raags on cd.
Pb
Jan (Apr 01, 2004 09:19 a.m.):
Hi you guys : )
Got myself a new book today. My music My life (eBay)
Its a reprint of the original from 1995. I have read the book before but ist been a loong time, now i finally have ny own copy : ) Even me not beeing a RS head im happy to be the owner of this fine reference to sitar playing. I spent 35 US to get it and its well worth it. If you dont have a nice reference book i would recomend the Manfred Junius book or the RS. Actually i like the Junius book more, but hey thats just me.
So to make me happy, please someone write an autobiografi on Vilayat Khan�s music and life and include a nice DVD with the book.
