Fleeting Shruti-Bhedam quiz #2

uday_shankar · Post by **uday_shankar** » 27 Mar 2009, 13:07

I know there are requests pending for other demos but I really had this super-wicked idea yesterday when listening to some really good music and had to experiment with it

. So please indulge me this time.

First, with an open mind listen to this "mohana kalyani". Preferably just once.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/33lkqc

And try to guess what I really might have been trying to play.

If you want to find out what I really was trying to play, wait till you completely forget what you listened to and then listen to this

. Hopefully the answer should be obvious and interesting.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/5pi43s

Again, the flute parts in both clips are exactly the same.

One more request, keep the answers to yourself.

Disclaimer:
As usual, I wouldn't really play either raga this way

.

vainika · Post by **vainika** » 27 Mar 2009, 18:39

brilliantly wicked - this should be criminalized under both Sections 65 and 28 of the Penal Code!

arunk · Post by **arunk** » 27 Mar 2009, 20:08

I (think I) got only after some math. Assuming I am right, to me, the original was too masked and threw me in another direction (even after a few listens), which did not make sense because you said fake was mohanakalyani (which actually was more easily discernible), and based on my initial take on the difference in sruthi

But then once I caught on, the original (and intent here) became more obvious. Wicked indeed.

Arun

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 28 Mar 2009, 06:14

quite creative ( wickedly creative ). Very nice.

This time, when I strictly followed Uday's guidelines, I did sense both ragas, though the fake one sounded a little bit contrived but nonetheless the raga bhava is very much there without any doubt.
After getting the raga of the second piece, I had to refer to a raga charts to figure out why.

Do musicians perform this kind of sruthi bedam maneuvers? Or we are looking at a new idea being discovered?

After seeing this property with this pair of ragas, I tried to look for others with similar relationship, but have not found anything yet. Are there any other pairs consisting of well known
ragas like the above one?

uday_shankar · Post by **uday_shankar** » 28 Mar 2009, 08:08

vasanthakokilam wrote:Do musicians perform this kind of sruthi bedam maneuvers? Or we are looking at a new idea being discovered?

This is not different from any other kind of shruti bhedam maneuver. The only difference here is that for the sake of better illustration, I have actually mixed in different shurtis for the same audio track (I had to play the flute without any shruti reference which I hate to do).

Do you mean it is somewhat more complex and funky than a simple hindolam-mohanam mapping ? True but vidvans experiment with unusual shruti bhedams too (say getting a little Bouli out of simhendramadhyamam with Sa varjya). Actually I dislike shruti bhedams in Katcheris because many vidvans make a melodrama out of it. It is OK if it is fleeting and understated, like a sort of wink between "experts" that went by unnoticed by all (even the violinist perhaps!) but the most attentive listener.

I think this experiment is a partial failure. People in my family and perhaps Arun above were not at all satisfied with the raga swaroopa of the "original". I personally thought the very first phrase itself was an unmistakable stamp of that rAga (RMPN with that characteristic halt at N2 which you wouldn't in other close ragas). In my quest to keep the "mohana kalyani" in focus I refrained from playing other phrases like NNSNDP, etc.. Perhaps that was a mistake.

Here's what happened...I heard a renowned artist start the "original" rAga with the characteristic grand opening phrase RMPN,N,. And I thought to myself...hey this could well be GPDS,S, and then though about what rAga could be twisted out of it based on acceptable phrases of the "original" which would pass muster in the fake - in this case it was obviously mOhana kalyani. Sort of

.

Would like to hear vainika's thoughts.

vijay · Post by **vijay** » 28 Mar 2009, 11:49

I caught on to GDPS,S, in the fake fairly easily - sounded more like Mohanam although there might have been a fleeting pratimadhyama in DPMG,,R?? that follows. The second was much harder since the phrase was sort of fixed in the mind - the challenge was to fix the tonic - once you do, the rest is just math....

Dunno for sure but I think the shadjam was fixed 2 notches lower in the fake --- that gives us a janya of the 28th Mela, as Vainika has pointed out

Frankly I think the fake is more convincing than the "original" if the above assumption is correct

uday_shankar · Post by **uday_shankar** » 28 Mar 2009, 13:48

If you have to "do the math" to figure things out, then my experiment is a resounding failure

. On the other hand, if you didn't follow my instructions of "completely forgetting" what you heard, then too the results may be skewed.

Keep in mind that if such experiments are done with clips from real shruti-bhedam episodes from concerts, the "original" would be totally unrecognizable, esp. if it is a non-scalar raga like this one. This is the challenge I'm trying to explore here

.

vainika · Post by **vainika** » 28 Mar 2009, 15:58

The mohana-kalyANI/**** transpose was clever because it was non-obvious. I had to do an internal Ctrl-Alt-Del after listening to mk before I listened to the Other one.

uday_shankar · Post by **uday_shankar** » 28 Mar 2009, 16:45

Deleted

vijay · Post by **vijay** » 28 Mar 2009, 19:10

No I was too curious so I did listen to the clips serially...but the Mohanam/M Kalyani was sort of nice

so the phrase stuck and I thought I was hearing more of the same but with a different sruthi. So I heard it after some time and again I could not get the Mohanam out of my mind. Then I just played the pitches one after the other to try and "get" the other one...

arunk · Post by **arunk** » 28 Mar 2009, 19:12

Uday_Shankar wrote: In my quest to keep the "mohana kalyani" in focus I refrained from playing other phrases like NNSNDP,

IMO, it may have more to do with the purvanga in descent. I think i cannot perceive the gandhara in the original strong enough and to my ears its almost as if its missing. I am only talking from what the viewpoint of what I perceive rather than what was really in there! Anyway, this meant srmpns|snpmrs - which leads you somewhere that doesn't make sense. I mean. I felt that the raga obviously could not be this although it certainly gave whiffs of it to me in this clip - or atleast ragas in that mela. So then I was thrown thinking this must be a raga *like* that srmpns|snpmrs, in that (wrong) mela, and I couldn't think of any that made sense since i felt that the ga of that mela would have stuck out.

So I had to resort to the math. Then I could see the point of s r m p n....

Now, after a 12-hour break I listened to only the original. The s r m p n ... is now obvious but later on in the clip once again my ears (incorrectly perceive) whiffs of the wrong raga in the wrong mela! I think again if my ears could have perceived the ga better, this may not have happened.

Arun

venkatpv · Post by **venkatpv** » 28 Mar 2009, 19:44

it had to be mohana kalyani and not mohanam, because the upper S has the flavour of Ni, atleast thats how it felt to me. as for the original raga, its identity was clear in the opening phrase itself. IMHO, though, i felt the original raga "went away" after the opening phrase...

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 28 Mar 2009, 23:03

All these discussions with swaras of the original make me now realize I perceived the wrong raga in the original and the confirmation I had with raga tables was due to an error on my part. So yesterday I had deluded myself into thinking I got the original raga right. I am back to square one. I will wait for the 'reveal' of the original raga.

Until then, the above discussion leads me to conclude that the original raga is from Mela 28 and I can infer what that raga is by looking at janya raga tables. I am not good at swara identification or tonic-picking etc. so I was strictly going by own perceptions. If my guess thru janya raga table look up is correct today, then I do not get that raga feel. I still get what I thought the raga was yesterday, in mela 29 ( don't laugh how I could have reconciled all that, as I said my attempt at confirmation thru raga tables was wrong yesterday ).

I am sort of where Arun is, but it looks like we got different perceptions of what that original raga was, though I have a feeling arun's perception would be much more defensible than mine.

cmlover · Post by **cmlover** » 29 Mar 2009, 00:35

Tweedledom and Tweedledee

uday_shankar · Post by **uday_shankar** » 29 Mar 2009, 00:41

Well, it seems like only vainika, bilahari (via email) and venkatpv seem to have registered the "original". So I'll do a take2 with a slightly longer version with more authentic gamaka-oriented phrases. The "mohana-kalyani" will be gone of course. Any discussion of math and melakartha numbers leaves me thoroughly disenchanted with this effort

. I wasn't meant to be that complex.

arunk · Post by **arunk** » 29 Mar 2009, 02:47

I am fairly sure I got the raga then itself (although after some math) - but like what venkatpv stays, even today when I listen to it, its obvious at the opening phrase, but after that - not so.

Arun

uday_shankar · Post by **uday_shankar** » 29 Mar 2009, 23:16

OK. Time for take-2.

An itinerant teenage nephew has left a guitar lying around in the house and I took advantage of it so that the experience is totally fresh. I have again recorded the same "original" rAga.

This time listen to the original first but only once please (so that you can forget it quickly). If anybody has to do the "math" to figure out this rAga, I'm calling off this whole exercise

.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/mxjzjp

Now listen to the "mohana-kalyani" mix.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/siol0d

If this also becomes a medley of math and melakartha numbers this is the end of this quiz series

.

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 30 Mar 2009, 12:42

Uday: Listened to the original first. I got it cleanly without resorting to math or Mela Kartha chart.

It is hard to forget the melody ( done well on the guitar btw ) no matter how hard I tried so I did not get much MK in the fake clip( opposite of the experience with the first go around ). I will try again tomorrow with the fake one after some considerable time gap.

Going back to the first set, the raga I immediately perceived for the original was Arabhi. It was not all the way since towards the end it did not quite jive but just mentioning it here to see if there is any reason why I may have perceived it that way ( latching on to the wrong tonic or some such thing for justification, or just plain idiocy on my part which is a good possibility)?

uday_shankar · Post by **uday_shankar** » 30 Mar 2009, 14:44

vk,

Arabhi is definitely a possibility from "original". No "idiocy" there! If the tonic is placed at M1 of the "original", the Arabhi scale, more or less (ignoring the vakras) will be fullfilled both in arohana and avarohana. This too stems from my not-so-authentic execution of the original. Especially the halting at the M1 of the "original" which could have easily been mistaken for the shadja.

More importantly, this exercise has been an invaluable learning experience for me to understand how different people get their rAga cues from a piece of melody. At one extreme, there may be somebody like me who only needs a tonic reference and is willing to ignore everything else. At the other end, there may be somebody like my FIL who is able to ignore a loud and persistent tonic and drill down to the real raga based on the prayOga !

In future demos, if any, I will play the original longer with greater emphasis on the rAga svaroopa, and then pluck a segment from it for the "fake" mix. This way both rAgas can be fulfilled. A careful listener may discern some compromise in rAga svaroopa of the original when the "questionable" segment is played but it will be smothered by the more authentic experience of the rAga that preceeded it and will succeed it.

SO the quiz may take the form...
1) Here's a clip of what appears to sound like rAga X
2) The above clip has actually been plucked from an alapana of another rAga, recorded here...
(the answer should be obvious when you hear the clip, as seems to have been the case (whew) with the guitar clip).

I have a request to everyone. Play the "fake" guitar clip to some people and see how many think it's actually M-K ?

vijay · Post by **vijay** » 30 Mar 2009, 15:58

This time the experience was the reverse! I got the original immediately (excellent job too!) but am still trying to convince myself that the "fake" is MK...the first listening biases me too much! I will try again tomorrow....

BTW, my guess for the original was Kedaragowla until I heard this piece! The notes, I realize, are the same but it shows just how much I missed the flavour of the original last time around...I tried mapping into an exactly similar scale after adjusting for tonic differences. If I had "looked" for this one, I would have got it - as I did when I heard it again now...

Keep em coming though Uday......I assure you that you will have enough prayoga-deaf responses in your data set!

arunk · Post by **arunk** » 30 Mar 2009, 17:16

The original was unambiguous throughout in this take. Of course the mohanakalyani became fleeting. I guess if i didnt know to expect it, I dont know if I would have. But maybe I would have said "dont know the raga, but seems to have faint shades of mohana kalyani" and that itself would make this a success I think.

Arun

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 30 Mar 2009, 20:55

Uday: On second listen after a few hours, I got Mohana Kalyani in full bloom. That was an awesome experience. I did the following two things.

1) I listened to just drone of the first 5 seconds a few times.

2) Intently focussed on what is being played second by second, consciously avoiding bringing back yesterday's memory. That is, listened in the moment.

The original raga disappeared completely and M-K revealed herself. The clincher is the reveal of kalyani in the 23-25th to 29th seconds (with the preceeding and following mohanam aspects. ) Unmistakable.

What a difference a day makes. Once this is established, subsequent listens were quite naturally M-K.

cmlover · Post by **cmlover** » 30 Mar 2009, 22:02

Uday
first my apologies since I am hearing compromised. Hence went for a visual. No math or mela were used

I promise!
Here is my visual with 'no labels'

I repeat Tweedledom and Tweedledee

...await your explanation whenever...
(Please don't be offended)
(There is no difference betwen 'ramaNa' and 'maraNa' for me

CML

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 30 Mar 2009, 22:19

CML, Exactly

The two graphs represent two different ragas though wave form wise they are the same. The background tonic makes the difference. Amazing, isn't it?

uday_shankar · Post by **uday_shankar** » 30 Mar 2009, 23:00

CML,

Without any background shruti, I recorded the unnamed raga (the "original") on the flute (and subsequently guitar for take 2) just once. Therefore it is not surprising that the waveforms are tweedledom and tweedledee!

Subsequently, I mixed in the correct shruti in the "original version" and mixed in a different shruti in the "fake" version to give an impression of a different rAga. This is the exact principle on which "shruti bhedam", "graha bhedam" and the rest of the nonsense works.

The "different" rAga in this case was mohana kalyani. The "original" is for you to guess which most people have by now.

If you didn't get the process, never mind. It is not important. I am hopeful that you will readily recognize the raga in the "original" guitar version. That's all that's important.

vk,
Exactly! This is the obvious point I have been trying to explain for days now

. With some practice, you can sense the parallel rAga concurrently without any drawn out reconditioning with the tonic. Then you can sing parallel swaras too like BMK. This is not rocket science.

cmlover · Post by **cmlover** » 31 Mar 2009, 00:08

aahaa! shrutibhedam which I like much better than mitrabhedam

The original-mix2a does sound to me like SuruTTi ! I could be way off!

ramakriya · Post by **ramakriya** » 31 Mar 2009, 01:00

I think that is what was intended, even in the first original which Uday posted. But that did not come out so well in that IMHO.

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 31 Mar 2009, 01:32

> With some practice, you can sense the parallel rAga concurrently without any drawn out reconditioning with the tonic

Quantum raga!! We will name this SchrodingerBedham .

I intellectually understood the technique from the beginning, but it took a while to experience it.

With this kind of parallel thing going on, can you mentally change the tonic and perceieve different ragas when the artist is playig Mohanam: Madhyamavathi, Hindolam, Suddha Saveri, Suddha Dhanyasi.... ( with in the raga bhava produced within the scalar structures )?

cmlover · Post by **cmlover** » 31 Mar 2009, 01:38

Is the raga dead or alive ?

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 31 Mar 2009, 01:42

Give me some tonic and I will tell you

in this case, 'dis or 'dat .

cmlover · Post by **cmlover** » 31 Mar 2009, 02:24

ha! the truth depends on the observer

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 31 Mar 2009, 02:26

Indeed, depends on the tonic you take in!

cmlover · Post by **cmlover** » 31 Mar 2009, 04:50

Since no external tonic is an option, any note can be latched on as the tonic, whence the raga is on the listener's mind rather than on the notes themselves - a profound philosophical fact.
The world does not exist, but it is all in your mind! (mAyA vAda)
brahma satyaM jagan mithyA

ksrimech · Post by **ksrimech** » 31 Mar 2009, 07:30

cmlover wrote: There is no difference betwen 'ramaNa' and 'maraNa' for me

CML, did u mean the vijayakAnth movie? 100% correct. LOL

uday_shankar · Post by **uday_shankar** » 31 Mar 2009, 09:16

cmlover wrote:The original-mix2a does sound to me like SuruTTi !

Yes, it's official !

ramakriya wrote:But that did not come out so well in that IMHO.

Yes, that's been widely acknowledged

.

vasanthakokilam wrote:With this kind of parallel thing going on, can you mentally change the tonic and perceieve different ragas when the artist is playig Mohanam: Madhyamavathi, Hindolam, Suddha Saveri, Suddha Dhanyasi.... ( with in the raga bhava produced within the scalar structures )?

It becomes easy if one is used to hearing music as swaras in a knee-jerk fashion (there are downsides to this habit, such as a potential loss of rAga bhava, etc..). Thus shifting to a different rAga is just changing one's mental conception of the swara name associated with the sound. In this fashion, it is very easy to rapidly vocalize in succession (or even sort of concurrently!) the following phrases using the same vocal frequency (i.e., sing the same tune) but different swara names:
S' , R G R S' D S' D P - Mohanam
D , N S' N D M D M G - Hindolam
etc..
etc..

This is no different from singing A B C D E F G and then twinkle little star in rapid succession.

But more importantly, the swaras themselves impart an instantaneous rAga awareness. For example, for me, the moment I vocalize (either physically or mentally) three pitches separated by 2 semitones each as Da-Ni-Sa, the hindolam consciousness is instantly implanted in my head no matter what came before.

It is important to note that exercises in shruti/graha bhedam do not in any way enhance one's experience of Carnatic bhava and in fact create unnecessary distractions from real music and should be used only sparingly if at all. Therefore, this whole thread should be treated very lightly. In fact I'm getting a little sick and need to immerse myself in the glorious bhava of a Tyagarja or Dikshitar kriti to delouse myself of the shruti bhedam intellectualizations

.

The real preservers of the Carnatic tradition are those artists and rasikas who experience rAga bhava without the taint of swara identification. Therein lies real gnyanam. Lakshya gnyanam.

vijay · Post by **vijay** » 31 Mar 2009, 13:42

Uday, isn't is also about how swaras are handled? The whose essence of raga bhava is in "how" rather than "what" as far as swaras are concerned - as you had very insightfully written yourself, about the Thodi Gandharam. Is this not why a Shruthi bedham is, in most cases, an academic ritual, unless both ragas have a "plain note" swaroopa (Sankarabharanam/Mohanam for instance) in addition to their gamaka-given shape (unlike Thodi or Madhyamavati whose plain note versions have little or no meaning in the CM context?

Thus a transition from Mohanam to Hindolam may be perceptible and valid, to a certain extent. Even here the gamaka structure is violated since the pronounced Gandara gamakas in both ragas map into the tonal constants of each other when transposed. OTOH, While a fleeting shruthi bedham is possible from the Gandharam of Sankarabharanam, one needs to be familiar with the plain-note form of the resultant Thodi to recognize it at all...

Another consdieration is the implied tonic, the importance of which I recognized after listening to the quiz clips...the impression/illusion of a swara converging into a base note/holding onto it is probably more suggestive of the tonic than the drone itself! Thus, the descending Ga,,,Ri of MK, pining for the shadjam in the "fake", would just not permit the conception of any other raga! Perhaps we should have another quiz for this

tribute · Post by **tribute** » 31 Mar 2009, 20:15

Getting too technical!! Can somebody summarize this whole thing from the start and explain it to a completely "gnanashoonyam" person??

uday_shankar · Post by **uday_shankar** » 31 Mar 2009, 23:05

tribute, your questions have to be more specific before anybody can respond.

vijay,
Indeed. Nothing wrong with swaras per se, just that it shouldn't degenerate into a "scalar" notion of a good rAga ! As you say, it is all in the usage. You have also provided practical illustrations of the first law of shruti-bhedam:

"In any given shruti-bhedam exercise, you can never preserve the total swaroopa of both the parent as well as the child rAga at the same time except in trivial cases and for fleeting durations."

There may be other laws too.

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 01 Apr 2009, 20:26

>The real preservers of the Carnatic tradition are those artists and rasikas who experience rAga bhava without the taint of swara identification. Therein lies real gnyanam. Lakshya gnyanam.

Substitute 'taint' with 'talent' that will describe me. But I have been working hard, without much luck, in impoving my swara identification skills.

BTW, I would think that majority of CM rasikas experience raga bhava without worrying about swaras. They just know it when they hear it. It is only the few inside-the-circle people who know all this, isn't it?

I posted the following in the other graha bedam thread, but let me repeat it here.

In terms of 'perception management' for graha bedam ( as Uday had referred to in other threads for this business of graha bedam ), what do the musicians actually do that is different from, say, in
an alapana where they anchor on each swaras of the scale. Here they have to do it in such a way to not confuse the audience that they are doing graha bedam.

So, technically, what are the Dos and Don'ts for this perception management during graha bedam?

Second, I am intrigued by the 'implied tonic' aspect that Vijay brought out. What are the various ways in which the implied tonic is conveyed? Is that the resting or kArvai swara? If so, how does one distinguish that from non-tonic ( implied or otherwise ) resting swaras. In the past threads on swara identification exercises, there was a talk of sensing the tonic from the song itself without an external reference. What aspects of the song convey that tonic perception to us? Thanks.

uday_shankar · Post by **uday_shankar** » 01 Apr 2009, 20:57

vasanthakokilam wrote: what do the musicians actually do that is different from, say, in
an alapana where they anchor on each swaras of the scale. Here they have to do it in such a way to not confuse the audience that they are doing graha bedam.
So, technically, what are the Dos and Don'ts for this perception management during graha bedam?

vk, this a not an entirely correct premise. First, all performing musicians have a very strong tonic consciousness. So the "tune", rather than individual swaras has a definite continuous shape in the time domain with respect to the tonic. So there is no swara by swara "anchoring" except maybe at Sa, Pa etc... If you're not instinctively tonic aware, this may be harder to understand. One may have a good sense of tunes but may need to be taught tonic consciousness so that different parts of a tune form a meaningful composite whole. For example, have you noticed how some people may sing "jana gana mana" quite well. Then they start "Punjab, Sindh, etc" at the "wrong" place but continue with that part of the tune quite well again. All this happens when there's no strong tonic consciousness. Musicians (and similarly inclined rasikas) on the other hand have a very very strong tonic awareness. So everything they sing is with respect to the tonic.

As to how graha bhedam is practised in an actual concert, most of the time it is somewhat ostentatious and melodramatic, with the violinist making a show of holding steady the swara associated with the new tonic. This online experiment convinces me that all that melodrama is necessary because rasikas may not be able to rapidly switch their internal tonic awareness or rAga swaroopa awareness. This is no indication of their Carnatic gnyanam - a filmy singer may have no bhava or rAga at all but may be able to rapidly switch tonics.

cmlover · Post by **cmlover** » 01 Apr 2009, 21:16

I guess Uday's thesis is that enjoyment of CM should be Holistic. Without even thinking of what raga it is! Thus anyone can enjoy CM intrinsically without any training.
Reminds me of the Brahma Sutra (4.1.4)
na pratIkE na hi saH
(He is not in the symbols since He is not one!)
This is the ultimate concept of nirguNabrahmam vs saguNabrahmam. The commentary on this Sutra byy Sankara is simply superb which captures the ultimate essence of advaita.
The moment we think of raga and the swara components we are lost in a jungle of speculations missing the forest for the trees.
I have seen my 'foreign' friends getting lost in themselves listening to Mali experiencing the ultimate brahmananda which I could never attain with my limited intellect trying to query the notes he was playing!