Singing in different sruthis

Rasika911 · Post by **Rasika911** » 01 Nov 2009, 21:15

I was wondering if it would be bad to sing in different sruthis. Say you are singing at 1.5 would it be detrimental to the voice to sing at 2 or 2.5 while practicing or for occasional practice sessions or is this a recipe for disaster?

chalanata · Post by **chalanata** » 01 Nov 2009, 21:31

shruthi is like wife; as long as you are loyal to it it is loyal to you.

Music · Post by **Music** » 01 Nov 2009, 23:18

I believe it depends on the comfort level of the voice. As long as the singer is able to align with the changed sruti with no strain, I don't see why not. But what would be the benefit of occasionally trying a different sruti anyway? I'd rather spend energy on expanding the range within the regularly practised sruti instead of trying a new sruti.

VK RAMAN · Post by **VK RAMAN** » 02 Nov 2009, 02:53

Is sruthis only set for voice and not for pakkavadyam, especially mridamgam?

mohan · Post by **mohan** » 02 Nov 2009, 05:32

VK RAMAN wrote:Is sruthis only set for voice and not for pakkavadyam, especially mridamgam?

The main artist (vocal & instrumental) usually sets the sruti. Sometimes there may be some compromise if for example the correct sruti mrudangam is not available, but this is rare.

Rasika911 choose a sruti where you can 2 and a half octaves in (from lower Sa to the upper Pa) If you can sing Viriboni varnam (which ranges from the lower Ma to upper Ma) comfortably, it will give you a good guide!

sivapriya · Post by **sivapriya** » 02 Nov 2009, 10:43

Sruti is the true reflection of your voice and vocal ability.

It is best to practice at one sruti always. Better to figure out what is comfortable to you as a singer and get a grip of it by regular practice. There should not be a strain in the upper and lower octaves. This is good for protecting your voice and also attaining perfection in singing.

Also one needs to watch and practice intermittent swara sthana srutis, to check if your rendition of the G, D , N, R in relation to the S, P is right for every raga.

Mostly people only align their voices to S, P, but ignore the rest, which is why sometimes the raga gets into wrong zones or the listener feels that the singer is off sruti.

Unless you are thorough professional , better not to alter srutis between practice.

thenpaanan · Post by **thenpaanan** » 04 Nov 2009, 08:37

Music wrote:I believe it depends on the comfort level of the voice. As long as the singer is able to align with the changed sruti with no strain, I don't see why not. But what would be the benefit of occasionally trying a different sruti anyway? I'd rather spend energy on expanding the range within the regularly practised sruti instead of trying a new sruti.

I believe that CM tradition/culture unnecessarily dissuades people from such experiments. While it is true that there is no obvious benefit to a CM performer to change sruthis in a concert (even if a vocalist can change sruthis at will in the middle of a concert the accompanists will not be able to do so easily), there could be other uses. Varying the sruthi allows you to explore the range of your voice to a fuller extent. Different parts of the voice instrument come into play at different parts of the range even for the best singer and by expanding your range you can strengthen your vocal apparatus and improve your singing. For example, suppose you have practiced and can sing a particular kriti with ease in say B, C, and D as tonics, then when you sing the same kriti in C during a performance it will almost surely sound much better than if you had not done this practice. This is the same principle as used in "kharaj" in HM (practicing holding notes at ultra low end of your range) -- it strengthens your voice muscles making the sound better even when you sing within your normal range. However the important caveat is that you should do this without hurting your voice box while practicing. In principle trained singers should be able to sing with at least this much flexibility in voice (2 full notes from B to D as in my example is hardly a stretch) and yet I have rarely come across someone in CM who can do this (I cannot do it myself). Kids seem to be able to do it but not adults. This may be precisely because we are taught to stick to one sruthi in CM and never try and go beyond two octaves (mantra Panchamam to tAra Panchamam), anything else being considered gimmicky. Other vocal traditions show us that there is no real limit of two octaves to the human voice, it is just what we seem to have assumed in CM somehow. Pity.

-Then Paanan

bhavarasa · Post by **bhavarasa** » 12 Nov 2009, 23:49

thenpaanan wrote:
I believe that CM tradition/culture unnecessarily dissuades people from such experiments. -Then Paanan

I don't think anyone consciously dissuades a person from experimentation. I agree with you that practicing in various shrutis increases your vocal range and you can then easily sing in your own shruti with a more strong voice. I have experienced this personally. My wife's shruti is G and mine is C#. When we sing together, we sing at A and I've noticed that reaching the mandara sthAyi in C# has become easier for me since I've been practicing a lot in A trying to reach mandara panchamam.

But I do object to a vocalist changing shruti (other than obviously switching to a madhyama shurti) in the middle of a concert because he/she cannot reach certain notes comfortably. If that is the case, they should not pick that song to perform OR better yet, practice till then can sing it in their primary shurti before attempting to present it in a concert.

I would argue that an A-grade vocalist should be able to reach mandara Ga and thAra Da because there are certain rAgAs requiring gamakams to originate from those notes - for e.g., bhairavI - when we end the AlApanai in the mandara sthAyI - PDNDPM PDNDN.... The gamakam for mA is between Ga and Pa. Similarly for AbhOgI - the gamakam for tAra mA has to originate from tAra Da.

I've seen artists who try and showcase their range go all the way to mandara Sa during AlApanai. Now that is just showmanship I think - because there's not any new prayOgam or aspect of the rAgA that they can present there which they already have not in the other sthAyIs.

Instrumentalists (violinists especially) get away with a lot more showmanship than a vocalist can. But that's a topic for another day.

srikant1987 · Post by **srikant1987** » 13 Nov 2009, 07:21

I've seen artists who try and showcase their range go all the way to mandara Sa during AlApanai. Now that is just showmanship I think - because there's not any new prayOgam or aspect of the rAgA that they can present there which they already have not in the other sthAyIs.

Instrumentalists (violinists especially) get away with a lot more showmanship than a vocalist can. But that's a topic for another day.

No, it's not entirely showmanship. It's taking up a challenge for oneself!

Some instruments generate a different kind of nAdam in very high or very low pitches and it has a different effect. For a violinist, hitting the mantra shadjam is nothing difficult and the whole world knows that. So how can that be showmanship?

bilahari · Post by **bilahari** » 13 Nov 2009, 07:35

Also, the same prayogam can have a different effect in each sthayi. I am a big fan of artistes who use the mandra sthayi intelligently, and I find phrases sung/ played in that octave especially evocative. If all the phrases had the same aesthetic impact in different sthayis, why sing in anything other than madhya sthayi?

bhavarasa · Post by **bhavarasa** » 13 Nov 2009, 10:17

srikant1987 wrote: Some instruments generate a different kind of nAdam in very high or very low pitches and it has a different effect. For a violinist, hitting the mantra shadjam is nothing difficult and the whole world knows that. So how can that be showmanship?

Srikant, please read my post carefully. I am referring to vocalists for most of my post. Only in the last line or so do I talk about instrumentalists. I certainly am not saying that a violinist reaching the mandara Shadjam is showmanship. He/She can do so if it makes sense for that rAgA/song.

But for a vocalist, I can't think of one song/raga off the top of my head that would require him/her to go down to mandara Shadjam.

As a corollary, I am not a big fan of those violinists that go up all the way to Sa (or beyond) on the higher octave. It not only sounds squeaky but is also IMHO, unnecessary and irrelevant to the rAgA/song.

bhavarasa · Post by **bhavarasa** » 13 Nov 2009, 10:18

bilahari wrote:Also, the same prayogam can have a different effect in each sthayi. I am a big fan of artistes who use the mandra sthayi intelligently, and I find phrases sung/ played in that octave especially evocative. If all the phrases had the same aesthetic impact in different sthayis, why sing in anything other than madhya sthayi?

Again, as long as it makes sense, I have nothing against that - but the operative word in your post is "intelligently". I am in 100% agreement.

thenpaanan · Post by **thenpaanan** » 14 Nov 2009, 05:44

bilahari wrote:Also, the same prayogam can have a different effect in each sthayi. I am a big fan of artistes who use the mandra sthayi intelligently, and I find phrases sung/ played in that octave especially evocative. If all the phrases had the same aesthetic impact in different sthayis, why sing in anything other than madhya sthayi?

The different sthayis are not the same in another way as well. A strong pattern/theme in traditional alapana singing (independent of the ragam) is iteration around the tArasthAyi Ga. A great deal of alapanas have this pattern, especially in kambhoji/sankarabharanam/kharaharapriya but also in kalyani and thodi and other ragas to a lesser extent. Indeed sometimes you sense that the artist is in a hurry to climb the ladder to the tAra sthAyi and then stays there for a while. If all the sthAyis were equivalent we would expect lot of time in alapana spent in the madhyasthAyi as well, say on the middle Ga to be symmetric, which is obviously not the case. Furthermore hardly anyone ventures for any length of time in mantra sthAyi at all (MDR was the rare exception). We may have inherited this from the bajanai tradition where a lot many artists _only_ sing in tAra sthAyi or at least centered around the upper sa. Either that or we have not trained our voices to carry at the lower frequencies. Younger artists seem to moving away from this pattern and try to spend more time in madhyastAyi but I have not heard many vocalists use manthra sthAyi even today (violinists seem to be ahead of the vocalists in this regard, don't know how the vainikas fare though).

At one jam session I tried to dwell in the mantra sthAyi and lower half of the madhyasthAyi in alapana (I was _trying_ to sing chakravAham) and before long some people in the friendly audience were making upward hand gestures -- they were anxious for me to go up the scale. Obviously that experiment did not go very well.

-Then Paanan