Our brain, rhythm and kAlapramANam - scientific basis

[Radhika-Rajnarayan]

( Mod note: This topic was split from http://www.rasikas.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=15208 . If some context is missing from this thread, please refer to the parent thread )

As is typical of new technology pushers, you seem to have a blind-eye towards that which will be lost in the march of technology. You will be more convincing if you give it some hard thought and concede those points rather than simply being exasperated.

Sureshvv, concede what points? All I am saying is, let us use whatever means are available to improve our performance. Use the tools in whatever way you wish,but get the sruti and layam precise.
And just because you are accurate, need not mean that you lose bhavam. If you extend the same argument, someone can say, 'Oh, while singing this ragam, it sounds more plaintive if I don't touch the upper shadjam accurately, and sing a tad below it'!

Also, arguably "something" of that life might disappear if the artist has practiced with a talometer.

Uday shankar - I beg to disagree. You can 'stretch' and 'compress' WITHIN the boundaries of the layam. THAT is where your sadhana and imagination come into play.

I find it thrilling when Trichy Sankaran gallops along to the finish with Semmangudi as the latter dares him to run faster and faster !

Actually, the H-musicians are allowed this luxury and utilize it to the hilt!

An electronic tabla should be more interesting than an ordinary tala-meter, in any case.

Srikanth, they use the tabla just like we use the Talometer. Each 'bol' is pre-set and cannot be changed as long as the main artist is performing - so they listen to the 'dha' or 'tin' and decide (figuratively) whether they are on the 2nd finger or 1st veechchu! That is their system, so they need the tabla. Ours is counting on the fingers (like the dhrupadias, by the way) so we use the Talometer (if and when we are convinced that it is not a monster that is going to ruin the 'bhavam' and tradition of our music!)
As a user of the Talometer (remember, we made it initially for ourselves!) I find that once you get used to it (3-4 days) you can easily use it as a layam-talam-keeping tool. And your overall layam does improve. And you do not get addicted to it.
Nick is right in saying that you can practise at any arbitrary tempo you set - not necessarily your 'comfort zone' tempo. I do this regularly, and it really helps, since you practise at a faster tempo, so when you actually play at the slower (comfortable) tempo, it comes out better.
Basically, these are just tools to enhance and preserve our music, just like the microphone, radio, TV and recording devices do. In addition they help us improve our music which is something all of us want to do.

[sureshvv]

Sureshvv, concede what points?

Just worried that the Mridangam artistes won't have to pay attention any more! They can just play to the talometer inside their head

[Nick H]

They do have a talometer inside their heads.

That's the difference between them and us ordinary humans!

[mahavishnu]

They do have a talometer inside their heads.

That's the difference between them and us ordinary humans!

All humans have a tala meter inside their heads.The clock inside the heads of professionals and experts is probably more robust and resistant to perturbations. Much like the reward anticipation (dopaminergic) system described in another thread, the fact that clocks exist in the human cerebellum is indisputable.

I usually stay away from long technical discussions, but since this falls directly in my area of scientific expertise, I feel that I should say a few things.

There is much scientific evidence that points to differences in human timekeeping in the presence and absence of the metronome. If you entrain a human subject to a metronome, training can make a person keep time within 15milliseconds of the beat. Usually subjects arrive earlier than the metronome. Anything under about 25ms is not detectable, so it will sound as though the timekeeping is done in perfect synchrony with the beat.

For those that are interested, you can download a couple of papers from my website about the process of synchronization: Torre, K. & Balasubramaniam, R. (2009) Two different processes for sensorimotor synchronization in continuous and discontinuous rhythmic movements. Experimental Brain Research 199: 157-166.(http://sensorimotor.mcmaster.ca/wordpre ... br2009.pdf)
Torre, K., Balasubramaniam, R. & Delignières, D. (2010). Oscillating in synchrony with a metronome: serial dependence, limit cycle dynamics, and modeling. Motor Control 14: 323-343. (http://sensorimotor.mcmaster.ca/wordpre ... c_2010.pdf)

When you take the metronome away and have subjects continue with the beat, adjacent beats are long and short. This is due to natural statistical variations and noise in the brain's internal clocking system. The asynchronies or timing errors can be in the range of ± 35ms. This is actually detectable by the human ear. Musicians, especially pianists, are remarkably good at detecting their own performance since much of an individual's timing signature is seen in how these asynchronies are stretched. In fact, a number of features of musical aesthetics in improvisational music come from stretching these timing parameters. Now all of these are related to the phase of one's timekeeping with respect to the metronome (this represents accuracy to the beat). There are two isssues in maintaining one's temporal relationship with the metronome. The first is the phase which I spoke about earlier, how accurate you are w.r.t to the arrival of the beat. The other is period maintenance or kalapramanam. For example: If one cycle of adi talam took 2 seconds, how accurate is the next cycle?

In order to maintain a steady period (without long-term drift), the brain needs to develop a very strong representation of the beat. However, kalapramanam or period accuracy is what causes drift over time (Ottam in tamizh). This is something that needs to be learned and my mridangam guru (Sri Kalpathi Ramanathan) spent a lot of time training me and his other students to learning period regularity and maintenance. This is standard practice in the Tanjore and Palghat schools of mridangam playing.

Musicians who drift in this parameter (other than for aesthetic value) cannot be said to have good control over layam. Mild aesthetic drifts aside, a song sounds better having the same tempo from start to finish, unless the change is intentional like in the charanam of a varnam (or in a lighter context doubling the speed in a bhajan).

The question for music pedagogy is whether entrainment using a metronome has beneficial effects that outlast the training phase. Playing with a metronome on stage is a different issue. But the educational question is do we need a metronome to help with training. While it has not been tested rigorously in the Carnatic system, several piano pedagogy schools swear by the metronome training method.

Perhaps students of UKS can clarify (Semmu?), but I have seen the titan use metronomes to show his kalapramanam (period accuracy). See a demo here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VrrZpz8 ... re=related. See his remarkable adherence to cycle maintenance.

Here is a small clipping (since the recording is commercial) of Ravikiran playing an Latangi RTP in kanda triputa (8 kalai, we all know how hard that is) where he uses a metronome. http://www.charsur.com/charsur/index.ph ... cts_id=500. sounds better with headphones. Patri Satishkumar on the mridangam is brilliant in this piece.

I don't think the aesthetics are destroyed in either example. And I am convinced that the kalapramanam is as accurate as can be.

And here I will give you an example of total Ottam: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45IzUv_H ... re=channel. You can see part 1 of that video to get a sense of the kalapramanam that he started with. Could this be stabilised with a metronome? I will leave it up to you to judge the aesthetics.

The question of whether people become reliant on the metronome (develop a dependency for it like in sleeping pills) is something that we don't know. However, research suggests that once a person learns to use a metronome appropriately the long-term results are good even in the absence of the metronome.

So, as Radhika says if we can strive to be better at something such as keeping the beat we should do everything we can to achieve it. We should not reject the technology that could enable it but instead see how best we can adapt it into our system.

[vasanthakokilam]

Excellent mahavishnu. You have provided a lot of relevant points pertinent to this discussion. I will read up on your papers over time. Thanks for those references.

With respect to my own tala keeping to a song, my problem is I take the cues from the strong and weak stress points in the song itself. If the song stress points go off beat intentionally (syncopation), there goes my tala keeping. And in nadaswaram concerts, that boy with the jAlra ( small cymbals ) is my best friend and savior!! He is my metronome and I can latch on to that and everything is fine!!

How does this figure in the brain functioning.. namely.. when there is this 'disturbance' to my cues due to syncopation? Is there scientific basis if practicing with a metronome helps with keeping to the beat in the midst of intentional syncopation? This is from a rasikas/listener point of view and not the artist..

Extending the above, do you have any recommendations for rasikas who want to improve the ease and accuracy of tala keeping, based on the scientific knowledge we have about how this internal talameter works in our brain?

[arunk]

Excellent info. A devil's advocate in me whispers, sure we all know tempo must remain steady (because that is what we have been told, taught AND we think we want), but I know some musicians (including the one featured), whose music has a very discernible acceleration between the start of the krithi vs. the high-speed sections of neraval and kalpanaswarams. However, it always is lapped by many (including me) and receive standing ovation. Now, in spite of the tendency for many to dismiss this appreciative part of audience as "ignorant" or "lazy", or "music-values-challenged", i would venture that many of them know what the standards are etc., and are just reacting with their emotions to the situation (Of course I also know that some frown during the ovation - about the OTTam - I have also done that )

Sure, we can certainly validly argue this positive reception of OTTam as standards slipping and that just because something is positively received doesn't necessarily make it "healthy". I can see that point. Also, if the said musicians performed the same without any discernible OTTam, the same audience probably would still lap it up and the frowners wont be frowning. However, I do know that in other forms, the acceleration in tempo has an accentuating effect on the energy of the rendition in particular, the portions where song builds up. So acceleration in tempo isn't inherently the father of evils, and if we consider that, maybe if there is no OTTam (intentional or not), the effect on the audience could be "different", and perhaps not necessarily guaranteed as "better" for all.

I guess the point is that music is all about perception and taste, and hence is subjective in practice.
So if many people, including some/many who "know" find the unintentional acceleration not only "tolerable" but actually quite palatable and thrilling, the does it lead to the question: Is the original premise that "what sounds good is one where there no unintentional, discernible tempo drift" somewhat flawed since it ignores perceptions and taste?

Arun

[Nick H]

mahavishnu, that is fascinating.

Perhaps, then, the difference between the mridangist and the mere mortal is that the mridangist has a talameter in his brain, and the mortal has a metronome. I have often reflected, and even told others, that, of course we all have a sense of rhythm: without it, we would fall over when we try to walk, we could not breathe, and our blood circulation would be unreliable, just to name some of the most obvious manifestations.

VK, can you keep talam throughout a korvai, especially a long one at the end of a tani? I'm guessing, from your post that you will say no, and I won't claim to be able to either. But here is another difference between "us" and "them": to us, keeping the tala is a friend and a helper: to us, it is a challenge. Of course, there are many rasikas that can keep talam, even through complex syncopations. Many of them may have practised since an early age, quite possibly as music students.

[vasanthakokilam]

VK, can you keep talam throughout a korvai, especially a long one at the end of a tani? I'm guessing, from your post that you will say no

Yes, my answer is a no ( but with the dear jAlra kid as my lifeline, yes ).

[mahavishnu]

VK: Perhaps we should move the items from veeyens's post about talometer to another thread.

Arun, You make an interesting point. Ottam is not new and it is not going to go away completely with metronome training. But such training is important in establishing a good representation of cycle time. Everyone from Viswanatha Iyer to the newbie in the noon slot engages in some Ottam. However, there are two independent phenomena here. One is that the Ottam is "discernible" and the second is that it is "tolerable" as in it does not affect musical enjoyment. In the extreme case, one could entertain the hypothesis that Ottam even adds to the enjoyment.

Most musicians are very good at linear phase correction or timing acccuracy (landing on samam or an arbitrary eduppu etc). This can be extended to syncopation also (VK: I can elaborate on this further). But there are several musicians whose period correction or kalapramanam maintenance is equally extraordinary. Alathur Brothers, LGJ, MMI and Vellore Ramabadhran come to mind. MMI is excellent at maintaining tempo even in his lightning fast sankarabharanam (GMPMGG RGSRG) crescendo swarams. Ramabadhran despite playing simple kanakku (sarvalaghu) is extraordinary at correcting for period drift. I would vote for his accompaniment any day if I was singing at that level. When one listens to those musicians, one gets a satisfactory feeling of layam execution and sometimes (also) excitement.

So, why does a musician speed? The period correction mechanism can be affected by other neural functions. The dopaminergic system discussed in the thread on songbirds and epinephrine based systems that work on arousal/excitement can make the clocking process noisier. My colleague Robert Zatorre in Montreal studies this phenomenon quite extensively. Recently their group reported that audience excitement when listening to a crescendo increases in anticipation of such a crescendo. For example, an expected thirmnam can increase the excitement levels in neurons of both the performer and listener at the same time. This creates a feeling of euphoria when the music lands on an expected eduppu, even when the kalapramanam has gone awry. In some cases it is this excitement that causes the kalapramanam to go beserk in the first place.

Let us take for example the abovementioned artiste whose kalapramanam is in question. He is quite infamous for Ottam and we have discussed this in a concert review of his from Cleveland in 2009 Please see: http://www.rasikas.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=9208 While the Ottam was duly noted, most at the concert walked away immensely happy. Yours truly included.

I think several factors contribute to people walking away with satisfaction after witnessing Ottam; the artiste’s confidence, internal rhythm consistency and being amidst people that are excited (the live experience). However, listening to the same music in a recording (especially one I have heard before) makes me less comfortable. A good example is in Charsur’s Dec Season 2008 commercial release of the artiste in question performing Teliyaleru Rama. After the kalpanaswarams, the tempo almost doubles and what more he took Mysore Manjunath and Kamalakar Rao (both laya giants) with him on this speed cruise. The piece is beautiful, but would have been even better had he stuck to the original tempo.

The question of how to educate the brain's tala meter remains. But there is a lot of research being done in this area, some even in my lab, mostly inspired by efforts to rehabiliate individuals who have lost timing functions of the brain due to focal neurological damage or degeneration.

Nick: Just saw your post. Yes, the difference between having a metronome and a sophisticated tala meter is that the latter allows one to subdivide beats and do a lot of "kannakku (arithmetic and algebra)" with time intervals. The former is just a dumb counter. But you can't have the latter without the former

[arunk]

Excellent again. I can relate to "not enjoying something at the same level as it was/is live". This happens even in other cases. So many things come into being for a special moment.

Ironically, teliyaleru rama from Cleveland was the one time I was frowning - because I felt the jet speed (not necessarily the acceleration to it), and the resultant volcanic-level energy were at odds to the plaintive nature of the overall import of that song. I love that song (have learned it), and find it to have an especially powerful message.

But on the other hand it did have a great effect even to a part of me (and gained an extra long ovation) in the sense that dhENuka can indeed be shown and shone that way. But a bigger part of me was still evaluating it in the context of that song. And I remember thinking - now I can know how VGV must feel for so many other songs !!

Arun

[uday_shankar]

Ramesh
Excellent. Your posts have taken this discussion to a whole new level. Just curious, in the part where you talk about linear phase correction of certain musicians, say VR, are you speaking based on your analysis of data or on the basis of your musical intuition or a combination ? I would be really interested in the data . Maybe, I'll visit Ottawa next time.

It appears that in general, an experience of long drawn steady tempo is not part of Carnatic music much as we make a hullaboo about "laya pita" and all that. For example, African drummers can go for hours tapping very simple syncopated rhtyhms that most Carnatic folks will sneer at for its utter simplicity and "boringness" (and to be fair I've called it boring too). But there is a deep meditativeness that comes out of such steady syncopated rhythm, especially if you're watching the drummers. Such meditativeness is usually absent in Carnatic tani avartanams for example. Except when the mrdangam player takes his time to play many many avartanams of sarvalaghu patterns every round and bring about that calming mood before launching into moras and korvais. In general, it's all about showing off how clever one is in kanakkus.

[mahavishnu]

Uday, you make an interesting point about sustained rhythms in other cultures that provide a trance like experience. Mridangam vidwans are quite proud that they do not repeat the same pattern over and over (unless it is bhajana sampradayam where it might be required). However, experienced vidwans like the late Palghat Raghu often spoke of the need to establish the kalapramanam of the kriti using sarvalaghu patterns, the kanakku in the neraval line and theermanam in the final korvai to be consistent with that of the singer's manodharmam while setting up the tani. However, the art of sarvalaghu playing in a tani is definitely on the wane. TVG and Karaikudi Mani make it a point to present a few rounds of just synchronized 4/4 rhythmic sequences in addition to serious kanakku. It is a great way to bring out the nadam of the instrument also. Talking of which, the stuff I mentioned about Ramabadran is from repeated listening (with active talam) to some of his early work with MMI. It is not based on experimental data. But you are more than welcome to visit Toronto (not Ottawa anymore) to do some analysis in my lab and listen to the rhythmic stimuli that we use in brain scanning.

VK: The issue of syncopation is indeed an interesting one. The brain treats syncopation very differently from synchronization. During syncopation, it appears as though the brain imagines/induces that there is a strong beat between two strong beats and synchronizes to it. Scott Kelso and his colleagues in Florida did an amazing experiment that was published in Nature a few years ago. They had subjects entrain to a rhythm by tapping along with it and then stopped the metronome. Using a combination of brain imaging methods they looked at the brain responses, in particular the clocking circuitry, post-metronome after the subjects had learn to synchronize to the beat. The same subjects were then entrained to tap between beats (simplest form of syncopation) and once they were entrained, the metronome was switched off. Now, one would expect that since the finger keeping the beat in both conditions was moving at the same pace that the brain’s clocking responses would be similar. But they found to everyone's surprise that imagining a beat between beats produces a much more complex brain activation pattern. Thus, keeping a rhythm by subdividing beats or imagining beats involves wider scale computations on the part of the brain. Said differently, the brain recruits more “clocks” to solve the syncopation problem.

So, IMHO practicing with a simple metronome will not be hugely beneficial in developing syncopation skills. However, people like Duke Ellington argue that the best way to syncopate to a rhythm is to imagine that the strong beat is actually physically present where the weak beats are. To some extent, the Kelso study confirms Duke’s basic intuitions about syncopated rhythms. Several clues to the location of strong and weak beats exist in the sahityam content of major composers, especially in St Tyagaraja’s works. Some argue that the best way to develop good kalapramanam is to sing Trinity compositions that were meant to be sung at that tempo. The syllable structure provides nice cues for where cycles end and begin. Some say that LGJ’s razor sharp timing skills came from his careful following the strong and weak beats in Trinity compositions with his bowing technique that emphasizes not just the sahitya bhavam, but its intrinsic rhythmic content also.

[srikant1987]

But there are several musicians whose period correction or kalapramanam maintenance is equally extraordinary. Alathur Brothers, LGJ, MMI and Vellore Ramabadhran come to mind.

The Alathur Brothers usually sang so fast that a further OTTam would be difficult anyway. But point taken.

And I would add Trivandrum R Venkataraman and Kalyani Ganesan to this list.

In some cases it is this excitement that causes the kalapramanam to go beserk in the first place.

Aside from this, I would also say that it might get boring (!) to play if we by mistake chose a somewhat slower speed. Both to the artiste and the rasikas.

And then again, on the violin, graceful gamakas become difficult (to those with a sense of gracefulness, that is) when it's played very slowly.

For singing, too, singing slowly would increase singing time and the aggregate stress on vocal cords.

syncopation

Would leaving an "early" quarter-beat kArvai and playing a bunch of slow swarams leading to, say, "ceDE buddhi mAnurA" be an example in it?

[Nick H]

Entrainment in the biomusicological sense refers to the synchronization of organisms to an external rhythm, usually produced by other organisms with whom they interact socially. Examples include firefly flashing, mosquito wing clapping as well as human music and dance.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrainment_(biomusicology)

Is this the technical sense in which you have been using the words entrain and entrainment? They had been bugging me: luckily I googled before complaining :$

[mahavishnu]

Nick, that is exactly correct. Thanks for looking it up. Here I was, thinking that it is not a technical term.
Incidentally, there are only two species that have brains that can "entrain" to auditory rhythms. One is us and the other is the cockatoo.

Srikant, syncopation is defined as being off-beat (by a specific measure) on purpose. So anything that falls under that definiton goes. The most typical form of syncopation in CM is enhancing the weak beat. If you are playing ta ka di mi, if you made the strong beat fall on anything but ta, it would qualify as syncopation. This can be done by varying the nadai, the eduppu or altering the stress.

[arunk]

Incidentally, there are only two species that have brains that can "entrain" to auditory rhythms. One is us and the other is the cockatoo.

Interesting and makes sense as I have seen YouTube videos of cockatoos bobbing their heads in sync to the rhythm of some funky numbers. But there also goes my plan to get our pet Conure to keep tala via bobbing - he does bob once in a while but sort of in his own beat !

Arun

[uday_shankar]

Interesting...cockatoo's have rhythm ! Since they are related to parrots, I wonder if they can be entrained for pitch (or at any rate human like vocalizations) also. I know most parrots and macaws can be. Therefore we could have a "complete" cockatoo musician, i.e., one who has pitch and rhthym ?

[mahavishnu]

Arun, The guy who made the cockatoo discovery is a wonderful scientist named Aniruddh Patel, who is based in the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego. Incidentally, he is an amateur tabla player. The original paper is actually quite readable: http://vesicle.nsi.edu/users/patel/Pate ... iology.pdf

Here is a nice interview with Ani from the NY times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/scien ... .html?_r=1.
We had him for a talk at our institute recently. Fascinating scientist and person!

Interestingly, head-bobbing might be a very interesting way to learn rhythms. My colleague Laurel Trainor and director of our Institute (http://mimm.mcmaster.ca) has shown that when you listen to music without strong or weak beats (isochronous rhythms) bobbing your head every second beat makes you hear a march (duple meter) and every third beat gives you the sensation of a waltz (triple meter or tisram). The theory behind it is that the vestibular system in your inner ear (designed to pick up changes in rotational acceleration to the head) also helps encode changes in rhythmic content of the musical signal.

Uday, the scientific community is divided on what evolutionary benefit there would be for a cockatoo to synchronize to a beat. However, the animal that has a specialized auditory system that can best process pitch and human "speech" like sounds is a furry animal from the Andes called the chinchilla. Somehow, evolution has not given us singing parrots, including the ones with the privilege of being on Madurai Meenakshi. Thatthai mozhiyAl, yes but no singing parrots.

Now, if you can cross a chinchilla and a cockatoo, I think we can produce the next generation of un"beat"able musicians. Let's just say that they will not make it to the "good looking musicians" thread.

[Nick H]

So... people should keep talam not by beating their legs (which is not defined as any kriya anyway) but by punching themselves in the face! Yes... I can go for that

The most typical form of syncopation in CM is enhancing the weak beat. If you are playing ta ka di mi, if you made the strong beat fall on anything but ta, it would qualify as syncopation. This can be done by varying the nadai, the eduppu or altering the stress.

Or by playing phrases of a different count to the underlying beat. Quite often fives, over any beat other than five.

Please say, and put adi talam, always stressing the Tha...

| - - - -|| , Tha Dhi Ghi Na Tom Tha Dhi Ghi Na Tom Tha Dhi Ghi Na Tom | Tha.

Everybody knows that one!

mahavishnu, serious work you guys are doing, but it does sound like you get some fun along the way

[rshankar]

A fascinating thread. Absolutely wonderful....
Mahavishnu - seems like you have found a wonderful way of marrying your passion to your work - this way, all the time you spend on the forum counts as research, right?
This is completely out of my grasp, since I am not a technical appreciater of music - but a person who responds in an intellectual-emotional amalgam to the music in-toto. So a couple of points from my completely 'un-entrainable' mind:
The meditative and contemplative aspect of rhythm is why the TQ used the alArippu as the first piece in the mArgam they standardized. The Sollus, the naTTuvanAr's cymbals and the beats of the mRdangam are supposed to calm the dancer's mind even as he/she warms up the angas and upAngas - I think the concept is that as the dancer's mind calms down, it becomes enslaved to the rhythm from then on. In some of the alArippus the dancer's job is made harder, by overlaying a song (like a hymn or SlOka) over the recitation of the Sollus. I for one love the plain, unadorned alArippu.
In a lec-dem, Smt. Nandini Ramani, one of Smt. Balasarasvati's prime disciples mentioned that in the tanjAvUr style of dancing, the vocalist was expected to keep singing even when the naTTuvanAr intoned the Sollus for the jatis in padavarNams - to keep the kAlapramANam under tight control, I presume.

[mahavishnu]

Nick, Ravi: Yes, research is fun. In my case, doubly so. My research stems most directly from my failures at vocal music, ineptitude with rhythm, lack of any artistic instincts and uneasiness with technology . I came to this profession seeking reasons why things that seemed to come so easily to others were so difficult for me. Fortunately, it has not been a complete catastrophe.

The study of music in cognitive neuroscience is still very new and the excitement is all about being part of it at the moment. There seems to be a lot of public interest in it, so a number of people out there like to fund this research. This comes from unseemly sources such as the Grammy foundation (interested in global music literacy) and the usual suspects in Washington.

I just wish more people were studying Indian music (outside of the ethnomusicology framework), much of the research in the science of music seems to be dominated by Western classical music (as we see in the parallel BBC music test thread). Although the number of Indians in this profession is now growing and includes high profile people like Ani Patel and Jamshed Bharucha @ Tufts/Dartmouth.

Ravi: Interesting point about alArippus. I know very little about classical dance, but it is interesting that you mention how when someone is enslaved to the rhythm their clocking process becomes unperturbable. Most amateurs lose track of the beat when they are distracted by a secondary melody, especially in more complex sequences.

Incidentally, my academic interests in music began when I met T. Viswanathan in Connecticut, when I was a graduate student living in New Haven in the early 90s. I just love the way he accompanied Balasaraswati (and her descendants later), where he would go on playing the melody line during the jatis, just the way you heard Nandini Ramani describe it. The aesthetic effect of it is quite special.

The concept of kalapramanam in the compositions of the TQ school is also quite extraordinary. It probably began with the Dikshitar style compositions that some of them imbibed, where subdivision of the beat is very common (e.g compositions like mAyatita swarUpini, where there is an intentional tempo change in kAyajuni vairiki prANa...).

[rshankar]

My research stems most directly from my failures at vocal music, ineptitude with rhythm, lack of any artistic instincts and uneasiness with technology . I came to this profession seeking reasons why things that seemed to come so easily to others were so difficult for me.

That should apply to a ton of us! Good to see that you have made a success out of it.

Most amateurs lose track of the beat when they are distracted by a secondary melody, especially in more complex sequences.

A good dancer must have a split brain - one part to direct the feet so that they remain enslaved to the beat, and the other to direct the arms, face and the rest of the body to interpret the lyrics. Even a laya-challenged person like me can see that some of the best of the dancers are able to maintain different tempos for their feet (in sync with the beat) and the arms - otherwise, the movements in third speed will seem like frenzied epileptiform discharges, or the excursions of the arms will seem incomplete - in either case the grace and charm of a dance disappear and the movements take on what can best be described in my grandfather's rather dismissive take - 'adu aTTam illai - adu SANi midikkaradu'! [/quote]

The aesthetic effect of it is quite special.

I have not heard/seen that style of singing, but I wonder if it will be distracting for me - it is hard enough for someone like me to keep track of the jatis and watch for kArvais (beats without steps)...

[Nick H]

You mention the "split-brain" phenomenon.

I have wondered at this when watching my mridangam teacher compose. It is not only having the built-in timer, it is having a built-in timer that is able to operate the hand in putting talam, while the konnokal-creating part of the brain is entirely dissociated from it.

Whilst he does not need the external check for tempo, he is using to check the progress of his calculation, and the effect is that of watching a person who is observing a completely external check such as a metronome. It is almost slightly spooky!

[vasanthakokilam]

If you are playing ta ka di mi, if you made the strong beat fall on anything but ta, it would qualify as syncopation. This can be done by varying the nadai, the eduppu or altering the stress.

Regarding Nadai and syncopation, I assume you are talking about things like trisram singing in varnam and RTPs, right? Here the tala is kept the same, the stresses on the sahitya syllables are kept the same but the inner beat interval is expanded so the sahitya stress does not fall on the beat until it all comes back together.. Correct?

Second, on the eduppu, the normal 1/2 eduppu etc. is not syncopation, right? Because though the eduppu is in between the beat, the stress still falls on the beat. But often, towards the end as they are wrapping up the song, the artists will change the eduppu so that the stress does not fall on the eduppu. That will be syncopation. Did I get that right?

Third, this is a bit speculative, many carnatic songs seem to have alternating strong and weak stresses that map to the beat of the thala itself ( and not the internal beat intervals ). This is the reason that a 1/2 eduppu song, if kept as a 1 1/2 eduppu song, will feel syncopated. Is this correct?

[uday_shankar]

vk
Before we wait for Mahavishnu to take his next avatar in this thread, I think syncopation is better explained with respect to purely rhythmic contexts. It's a term quite loosely used, and we need not overthink it for a precise definition, especially in the context of complex Carnatic concepts. Syncopation is at a much simpler level that all that. For example, the case of playing chatushram in thishram (any talam, say Adi or rUpakam) would qualify as one - where the background nadai goes thakita thakita but the mrdangam player is playing thakadimi thakadimi. Here every third major beat (i.e., every 12th minor beat) the "tha" will come at the right stress. Similarly, the mrdangam player can play more interesting things like khandam within thishram (you put out an excellent diagram sometime of Khanda koraippu in thishram). Even simple odukkal can classify as syncopation - the basic exercise that is taught about saying/playing successive avartanams of takadimi that are 1, 2, 3 beats off (you effect this quarter beat shift by saying a thakathakita at the end of each cycle). Why, even a tyagaraja kriti in desAdi talam is syncopation !

In this wikipedia article they list many cases of syncopation and you can see how simple and basic the whole thing is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncopation

By these definitions, a whole lot of things that happen routinely and absent-mindedly in CM would qualify as syncopation!!

But there's a major difference in that many syncopation situations in non-Indian contexts happen concurrently, for example african drummers. It would be as if the mrdangam player played sarvalaghu patterns of charushram while the ghatam player simultaneously played thishram patterns (without changing nadai) within this chatushram.

[srikant1987]

But there's a major difference in that many syncopation situations in non-Indian contexts happen concurrently, for example african drummers. It would be as if the mrdangam player played sarvalaghu patterns of charushram while the ghatam player simultaneously played thishram patterns (without changing nadai) within this chatushram.

This aspect of percussion accompaniment could indeed be a hurdle in appreciation of CM. We would often like some indication of the original rhythm's flow -- in a vocal-music concert we get that by watching the vocalist. In HM the tabla might be playing a sarvalaghu pattern, just keeping the beat when the main artiste is doing some layakAri. However, everyone on stage joins the vyavahAram in CM.

Though some percussionists (especially ghaTam vidwans) sometimes try to put tALam these days while playing with the other hand.

[mahavishnu]

VK, you are right on all three counts. But as Uday says, anything that falls between beats by design is syncopation. And yes, most things that happen without much thought in CM would fall under the syncopation umbrella. I have very little to add to what Uday has already said on this.

Uday: I was also thinking about the Tyagaraja kritis in desAdi and the syncopation involved in them. Probably the recent JayaTV performance by the duo violinists primed the idea. It is very interesting that Tyagaraja uses consonants on the first off beat in the laghu and vowels in same off-beat location at the start of the drutam, which makes for excellent and easily reproducible sangatis (he also rotates them on occasion). Easy to notate and teach as well in the CM framework.

Interesting digression: Ani Patel claims that there is a connection between the rhythmicity in the musical structure and the native language of the composer. He finds that composers like Elgar (British) and Debussy (French) use very different timing signatures that is characteristic of the spoken cadence of their languages. I would like someone to test this in Tyagaraja compositions, specifically in the desAdi tAlam kritis.

We don't know if such instrinsic rhythms can be traced back to language structures of South India since composers scored in Telugu while living in a tamil speaking environment. David Shulman (of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem), who is a phenomenal Tamizh and Telugu scholar thinks that there might be some evidence for a close connection between language and musical rhythm in trinity compositions. He is a wonderful singer by the way, and can sing a mindblowing mayatita swarupini.

Ravi, Nick: Very interesting point about interference of the movement of one limb on another.
The concept of split-brain is actually a technical term in my field that refers to a person that has their corpus callosum (the part that connects the two hemispheres of the cortex) removed or resected (surgically or otherwise). For a while, a number of people with intractable epilepsy opted for this kind of surgery and this gave them two independent hands that do not interfere with each other. The left hemisphere of the cortex largely controls the right hand and the converse is true for the left hand.

Simple demonstration. With your left and right hand draw the letter U, simultaneously. You can do with this ease. Now draw the letter U with your left hand and the letter C with your right; you will notice the shapes of both have interfered with each other. This is the same problem as patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time. This shows that the two hands prefer to do mirror symmetrical things at all times. Now, a person with split brain does not show this interference at all. Since the motor commands from the two hemispheres have no way of corrupting one another, the two limbs can do very independent things. A callosotomy patient that I am acquainted with can tap two different polyrhythms with his two hands.

For several percussion instruments and classical dance in particular, overcoming this spatial and temporal interference is a key ingredient of the complex skill acquisition process. Putting two different talams in two different hands is quite difficult for most people. AshtAvadAnis and other experts practice quite extensively to develop these skills.

This said interference is seen not just for the two hands, but the upper and lower limbs as well (as in Ravi's classical dance example). Another demonstration: With your right foot draw clockwise circles. With your right hand draw the number six in the air. You will notice that your foot changes direction (or abruptly stops). So, for a classical dancer to have the hand's abinayam and rhythmic activity of the feet not interfere is not a trivial skill.

[vasanthakokilam]

Thanks Uday and Mahavishnu. You are right, the wikipedia article attributes a lot of things under syncopation, including the 'rest' on a beat. Oh well...many of them do not quite fit our working definition here which is 'stress away from the beat'. I like our working definition..

I do not understand the syncopation of desadi thala krithis. Are you saying that all desadi thala krithis by definition are syncopated or just some and that too the specific ways T has constructed them? Asking to make sure that the 1.5 eduppu itself is not considered syncopation. I tried humming a few 1.5 eduppu songs of T and the major stresses of the song align with the beats of the thala with a nice alternating pulsing pattern but nothing seemed off-beat. Please explain. thx.

btw, those demonstrations are very cool. I did not realize the connection between the hand and leg. Now I understand what Ravi is referring to. ( side thought: Such symmetric coordination has some survival value.. Those who overcome that through training, are they in danger in some situations? Just a wild thought ).

[Nick H]

Now draw the letter U with your left hand and the letter C with your right;

Oddly, I can do that easily. I can also pat my head and rub my tummy, but it takes a pause and a mental effort to swap the patting and rubbing hands.

For several percussion instruments and classical dance in particular, overcoming this spatial and temporal interference is a key ingredient of the complex skill acquisition process.

The pianist must learn that "up" for the right hand is the "opposite" direction to "up" for the left. The string-instrument player must learn to do completely different things with both hands. This latter always caused me to put down a guitar within five minutes of deciding to try it.

VK... I think we can say that off-beat in the evenly divided sense, is not really syncopation, it is just division of the beat, and the brain copes easily with regular subdivision. You may not be able to keep talam through a thadhiginathom sequence; you may not be able to clap exactly 1/4 after each beat; I bet you could easily clap on the half beats, or all the 1/4 beats.

It would be as if the mrdangam player played sarvalaghu patterns of charushram while the ghatam player simultaneously played thishram patterns (without changing nadai) within this chatushram

I've seen my teacher demonstrate playing different nadais simultaneously with each hand, therefore I guess mridangam players would be able, in general to do this. I don't know if they do this on stage ever: it is one thing to see a demo and have it explained, it is another to be aware of what is being played in a concert

[rshankar]

Mahavishnu, just to clarify (I am sure you got it!!), I did not mean to use split-brain literally, as in agenisis of the corpus, or Aicardi (I do not think someone with Aicardi can maintain rhythm, let alone sing or dance!), or post-surgical division, but rather in the lay usage of someone who has trained themselves to do two separate things.
By the way, is the ability to keep two separate rhythms (2 separate tALa beats for instance) in the same composition simultaneously a more evolved version of the U and C test you suggested?
The U and C is very like the dancer who makes the right hand held in the patAka gesture go in circles, while rapidly pronating and supinating the left arm while holding the Sikhara hasta to denote 'mangala Arati' with ringing of a bell at the completion of pUja. This is something that can be taught - comes easily to some, and others need tons of practice.

[uday_shankar]

vk
Tyagaraja's desadi compositions strike me as unique and I'm usually inclined not to keep time like regular chatushra triputa (i.e., adi with a laghu with 4 finger counts and 2 dhruthams). Instead, I like to keep "usittalam" for these dEsadi songs. I daresay Tyagaraja himself would have most likely tapped his chipla kattai in the familiar pattern of usittAlam. The usittalam way for these dEsadi songs is to group the first 2 lines of a typical dEsadi kriti, say mAjAnaki cheyybattaga, in four groups of TAP , tap tap where the upper case TAP is the dominant beat. And so in usittAlam the song falls as (this not anything anybody does not know and it is probably better demostrated by singing or using some other kind of notation and tapping but here is something I am making up as I go along!):

Code: Select all

mA      jA      na    kI       che    yy  ba    tta  ga  
------- ------  ----  -------- ------ --- ----- ---- ---------  
tap TAP ,tap    tap   TAP, tap tap    TAP , tap tap  TAP , tap

In this scheme, when the vowels like the mA in mAjAnaki start in a soft tap and get stretched as a karvai over a dominant TAP, I get the feel of a lilting syncopation. I may be using the word wrongly in this context. Perhaps a Mahavishnu avatar can throw more light .

(NOTE: the alignment is all screwed up and so this post is pointless...if somebody has a way to fix it please let me know).

[arunk]

Uday highlight the stuff you want aligned and click on Code to enclose it between Code tags. So you can do e.g.

Code: Select all

s    r    g     m    p
this will align with above

You have to have same # of characters (including spaces) to get things to align (e.g. in above "s " i.e. s with trailing space has same characters as "this " - this with trailing spaces).

Arun

[uday_shankar]

Thanks Arun. It pays to have geeks for friends.

[arunk]

I will expect a check/cheque in the mail

[uday_shankar]

An interesting way to entertain oneself while waiting at a traffic light in chennai right next to , or heaven forbid, you're riding in one of those horrid contraptions that go by the name of a "share auto" is to create what I call "random syncopations". Now as you will all have observed, the very noisy single cylinder four stroke engine of your typical share auto is very badly out of tune, both aurally and in IC engine speak. In all civilized societies it will have long been consigned to a scrapyard. But we being who we are, the share autos still ply our roads. At any rate, the out of tune idling four stroke engine will randomly fail to fire every few cycles but the overall RPM of the engine (or kaalapramanam if you will!) is maintained thanks to the flywheel. Thus the interval of the beats is fairly regular except you have one or more silent beat(s) randomly every few beats. And therein lies our opportunity. If we choose some suitable taalam and nadai (say rUpakam and chatushram) starting at any arbitrary "beat" (i.e., firing of the engine) we could let the share auto engine randomly syncopate to our mental taalam . You could try more interesting nadais...next time don't curse the share auto, use the time creatively.

[vgovindan]

share auto

uday,
Have you heard of 'phat phati'. Next time you visit Delhi enquire about it. I will not be surprised if it is still in service. It was World War II vintage motor-bike - modified as 4 seater - a share auto. Mostly driven by Sardarjis - a very industrious, deeply religious (notwithstanding Kushwant Singh) and jovial community. I don't know to which tALa you will attribute its 'phat phat' sound from which the name 'phat phati' is derived.

[rshankar]

It is so interesting to note the use of 'usi' in music and dance...in dance, 'usi' refers to starting before the beat, if I understand it correctly.

[vasanthakokilam]

Ravi: Yes and it is indeed quite appropo for this syncopation discussion. In another thread on dance I learned about what Usi is in dance. Later on, I asked my niece, a dance student, if she knows about this Usi. May be my tone sent out a signal that I am asking about something deep and complicated. She, with a tone of 'yeah, why...no big deal' and demo'd it to me in a matter of fact manner. It was quite aesthetically pleasing. I was the one who was having trouble keeping the beat as her foot was beating in that syncopated manner.

That is one of those many times in different contexts I keep realizing the significance of Veena Dhanammal's exasperated remark 'oh..they are going to TALK about music?'..

[mahavishnu]

I feel totally "outgeeked" now. 8)

Uday, you have pretty much said it all about desAdi. One could try, as you suggest, singing the pallavi line of any standard kriti (Chalamelara, Nenarunchara, Makelara, Marugelara) to that metric structure and you will see the intended syncopation off the said strong beats. Perhaps you will also see the cadence of the sahityam and its adjacent vowel/consonant placement.

Ravi, Yes I knew exactly what you were referring to, especially given your professional background. I was just using "split-brain" as a segue into talking about coordination and metric structure.
In addition to your many linguistic talents, do you actually have formal training in classical dance?

[rshankar]

do you actually have formal training in classical dance?

No - just years of 'watching' and 'listening', and picking things up in my daughter's dance class. I actually have several 'AhA' moments during those classes - for instance, when I saw how the choreography for a song like Sri GKB's SivakAmasundari with its atIta eDuppu was done. My daughter's dance teacher's forte seems to be choreographing complex patterns overlaying a simple Adi or rUpaka tALa structure but disguising it so deceptively.

[mahavishnu]

And therein lies our opportunity. If we choose some suitable taalam and nadai (say rUpakam and chatushram) starting at any arbitrary "beat" (i.e., firing of the engine) we could let the share auto engine randomly syncopate to our mental taalam

Reminds of the old Huyghens clock pendulum experiment. Here is an adapted version by scientists in Lancaster... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1TMZASCR-I

People say that collective applause emerges through similar dynamics.

[vasanthakokilam]

In this scheme, when the vowels like the mA in mAjAnaki start in a soft tap and get stretched as a karvai over a dominant TAP, I get the feel of a lilting syncopation.

Uday, Your diagram helped in understanding your point and also what mahavisnu mentioned earlier about the vowel and consonant alignment. Thanks for the effort.

My speculation on the associated syncopation is this. We seem to naturally attach an implicit strong emphasis on syllable/phoneme boundary and not so much on an elongated consonant inside a syllable/phoneme. When T plays with it wonderfully by aligning the middle of an vowel-elongated consonant on the strong beat and the phrase/syllable boundary on the soft beat or in between beats, we get that syncopated feeling. That is because that is not what we quite expect. This is true even if musically the emphasis matches the beats. I say the musical emphasis matches the beats because though I have problems in thala keeping with other forms of syncopation, I am considerably better with keeping thala for dEsaDi songs with taking cues only from the built-in emphasis in the song. Not all, some songs seem to be syncopated enough to give me trouble in thala keeping, let alone playing them on an instrument.

Uday, Mahavishnu, see if there is any merit to this observation: Some consonants, even in their vowel-less short form, are still kArvaiyable. As we know, In Tamil, there are three classifications of consonants. Vallinam/Hard ( k, ch, t, th, p, R ), idayinam,in between hard and soft ( y, r, l, v, zh, L ) and mellinam/soft ( ng, ngy, N, n, M, n ). Now the first (hard) variety is not Karvaiyable in their vowel-less form, it just stops ( except possibly R but it may not be pleasing ). The soft and the idayinam groups are definitley kArvaiyable in their vowel-less short form. Is it possible that Thyagaraja is putting this to good use when you observed that he uses 'vowels in same off-beat location in the drutham'. Many times, he will have to place a consonant on the following strong beat ( Uday's TAP , ). There he has a choice. He can make it a long consonant as a kArvai which is run of the mill or a kArvai using the short form of the mellinam or idayinam consonants. The latter may make it feel syncopated for the same reason that a regular vowel based elongation on the strong beat may feel syncopated. In Uday's mA jAnaki, it seems to be the case with 'yy' of cheyybattaga falling on the "TAP , "Does this hold true in any/many T's songs.( sorry for the huge word count to make a simple point!! )

[mahavishnu]

Some consonants, even in their vowel-less short form, are still kArvaiyable.

VK, my intuition is that you are right. However there might be some terminological differences.

Just to clarify, all consonants need a vowel to follow for expression. The only exception is with stop consonants (where you end a word like \'pit\ with a hard consonant "t" and then the voicing system stops). All other consonants take vowels that follow for expression. I guess you knew all this already.

So hard and soft consonants like bilabial plosives- opening and closing of lips (\p\ and \b\): depends on voicing time. Fricatives such as (\s\ and \z\) depend on voicing onset w.r.t when the tongue touches the roof of the mouth creating friction (hence the term fricative). Consonants like \y\ are very close to \j\ where the amount of time that is spent on the roof of the mouth changes the emphasis. Some languages are different purely on this basis.

Now returning to '\y\', my guess is that the brain treats it like a soft consonant, but the onset of the vowel following it is a few milliseconds faster. Hope this makes sense.

I wish we all lived closer to each other, so we can discuss these things at length in person!

Just came home after visiting some friends, we could barely make it into our driveway. We have been in the middle of this crazy cold spell, as I am sure you Chicago folks have experienced lately. I think Nick and Uday are very smart with their choice of warm home location, not to mention all the great kutcheris/lecdems they get to attend.

[mahavishnu]

and Govindan-sir: I have traveled several times on a phat-phati. Although, syncopation was the farthest thing from my mind at that time... I was more concerned about the collective safety of all my fellow passengers!

[srikant1987]

Excuse me, I think the cEyi becomes cETTa (paTTaga) http://thyagaraja-vaibhavam.blogspot.co ... -raga.html in the song, and TT is as vallinam as anything can be.

Uday, Mahavishnu, see if there is any merit to this observation: Some consonants, even in their vowel-less short form, are still kArvaiyable. As we know, In Tamil, there are three classifications of consonants. Vallinam/Hard ( k, ch, t, th, p, R ), idayinam,in between hard and soft ( y, r, l, v, zh, L ) and mellinam/soft ( ng, ngy, N, n, M, n ). Now the first (hard) variety is not Karvaiyable in their vowel-less form, it just stops ( except possibly R but it may not be pleasing ). The soft and the idayinam groups are definitley kArvaiyable in their vowel-less short form.

y and v aren't true consonants. Maybe srkris can intervene and describe better!

The "kArvaiability" of a sound comes from whether it is voiced, actually. g, j, RD, D, d, b are also kArvaiable, but you will be running out of breath very fast when doing that.

[mahavishnu]

Srikant, That is not quite accurate. While \y\ goes both ways depending on context "yam" or "myth", patently, there is little doubt that \v\ is a consonant. The speech gesture for \v\ as in [va] requires where the teeth touch the bottom of the lip and then release the flow of air from voicing. This is very similar to the employment of a soft bilabial plosive like [ba] which is done by soft explosion of the labial opening.

Additionally, \v\ can be used as a stop consonant in most languages e.g. "give", "sieve", "leave" however that usage is lesson common in telugu and tamil (due to the tendency of vowel based u-garam endings).

[vasanthakokilam]

mahavishu: Yes to what you say about 'v'. Indians in general do not pronounce 'v' that way, it is more like the 'w' which is probably what srikant is going by.

srikant: Can you clarify how the kArvai can be done on the stop consonant for 'g', 'j', 'b' etc.

The link mahavishnu posted in the KVN thread of his varugalamo ( http://www.youtube.com/user/prakashraon ... nYuryClgc0 ) has a few instances of this stop consonant kArvai in the beginning of the piece.

That is a gem of a rendition and it is highly recommended. And consider the difficulties of thala keeping and mridangam playing for that kAlapramANam!! I had considerable difficulties there so I could not figure out if there is a hard stress on the kArvai of the stop consonants.

[uday_shankar]

Can you clarify how the kArvai can be done on the stop consonant for 'g', 'j', 'b' etc.

I don't believe it's possible under normal musical contexts but people are known to have uttered non-musical kaarvais for these stop consonants under extreme stress when gagged and bound and their lives are under threat...as in hostage situations: "ggggg...." "bbbbbb..."

Kidding aside, I think the flaw may lie in assuming that comma ',' or pause in notation automatically signifies kaarvai. Hence we may state the Vasanthakokilam law of kaarvais as follows: when there's no sound heard ,it is meaningless to call it a kaarvai.

[srikant1987]

mahavishu: Yes to what you say about 'v'. Indians in general do not pronounce 'v' that way, it is more like the 'w' which is probably what srikant is going by.

Hmm, yes, the Indian v is a kArvaiable consonant, like zh. (Indeed, I sing the cirunavvu of viribhONi with a kArvai on v, and sing the u a little later, since it's a double v and a short u.) Sorry.

Native-English 'w' would become an 'u', and native-English / Indian 'y' would become an 'i' for all practical purposes, when kArvaied.

Native-English 'v' (give, van, peevish, etc.)is something like "z", therefore it's kArvaiable too.

Note that s, sh and Sh are not kArvaiable either (no more is f) -- although you can stretch them, you cannot sing them to a given pitch. This is because they are not voiced.

srikant: Can you clarify how the kArvai can be done on the stop consonant for 'g', 'j', 'b' etc.

Do I have to post a recording for that? :$ Maybe in an email ... But yes, one can't tell what consonant's being sung (at least easily) for these kArvais until the following vowel is uttered.

[vasanthakokilam]

hhhha good one Uday.

It is indeed a wrong notion that a comma always signifies a sounded note. Silence is indeed a virtuous thing.

Or are you talking about a break on the stop vallinam consonant and then continuing on. Yes, that is definitely possible. Like hopothetically, 'pakkala' can be sung with 'pak'<silence>'kala'.. I am not talking about that.

I am using kArvai in the sense of elongation of sound and that may be a wrong usage, who knows. Of course, in the RTP context, its meaning includes some silence period: arudhi kArvai carries a meaning of 'Stress on the beat, a bit of elongation and then silence'. Right?

Anyway, my inquiry is about the elongated sound of a stop consonant falling on a stressed beat, with the beginning of the consonant away from the beat with a slight Oomph on that elongation as it falls on the strong beat and see if our brain would think of that lightly syncopated. It is just a counterpart to your example of how a regular vowel elongation falling on a stressed beat causes mild syncopation.

But yes, one can't tell what consonant's being sung (at least easily) for these kArvais until the following vowel is uttered.

There will be a break with no sound until the vowel is uttered, right?

Interesting what you say about 's','sh','Sh' etc.