Explaining the concept of Sruthi to a first time music student

[hamsadhwani]

Hello

This might be a post for the member lounge, but I need some help quickly, hence posting it here in General Discussions.

Can anyone tell me how to explain the concept of Shruti to a 5 yr old about to start learning music? My daughter, Dhwani is about to start her first music lessons (acceptance pending) this Vijayadashami and we have an assessment session prior to the actual class.

In an effort to make her practice, I put on the tambura sruthi and tried to see if she could match it, she seemed to have trouble. However, if I sing with the Sruthi, hearing me, she is able to match it, but seems to have trouble matching the sruthi on her own. I tried changing the pitch several times when I was singing and she was able to match each time correctly, but has trouble directly being able to from the tambura sruthi. She also listens to these bhajans from youtube and sings along with pretty perfect sruthi. When she sings on her own, if the sruthi she started off with is too high for her on reaching some particular point, she is able to correctly switch to the lower octave of the swaram and all that. But when it comes to matching with the tambura sruthi, she is totally off-key! Even if I manage to "sethufy" her on Sa with me singing, subsequent swarams are off-key when she sings on her own, but sings correctly when I sing with her.

Is there some way that I can correct this? I was wondering if I should start with the regular harmonium sruthi first, but someone told me that the earlier I get her used to tambura sruthi, the better. Any input would be very helpful.

I also want to mention that she is exposed to a very wide range of music from her birth, right from heavy, pure carnatic to devotional to light classical to Rafi to A.R.Rahman and everything! She does seem to show interest in singing and learning music.

[Rsachi]

Your kid is obviously muscial. Forget sruti aids just now. Make her sing along with you. On D day you give her a cue. She will perhaps do well.
If someone at 5 can match any sruti of a voice, they have got it. The sruti contraptions distract. But you should always sing with sruti aid and she can join in. Later show her how it would sound if you sang in sruti 4.5 when tambura is set at 3.5.The mismatch will drive home the point.

I am an old timer and not a tiger mom/dad so my advice may be out of place. Pls excuse.

[hamsadhwani]

Your kid is obviously muscial. Forget sruti aids just now. Make her sing along with you. On D day you give her a cue. She will perhaps do well.
If someone at 5 can match any sruti of a voice, they have got it. The sruti contraptions distract. But you should always sing with sruti aid and she can join in. Later show her how it would sound if you sang in sruti 4.5 when tambura is set at 3.5.The mismatch will drive home the point.

I am an old timer and not a tiger mom/dad so my advice may be out of place. Pls excuse.

Thank you, Sir. To omit the sruti aid seems like a good idea. And thank you for the vote of confidence that she is musical! I think it is more the anxiety of this session being called an "assessment" that is making me a little anxious, that the prospective teacher might see her inability to match to a sruthi aid and not accept her or feels she is not ready!

[vasanthakokilam]

Sachi said it. Ditto.

Matching to the sruthi may not be as easy as you may think. I can relate to the difficulty your daughter has. It is not a simple sound. Do another experiment. Play a pure tuning fork and see if she can match to that. There are a lot of tuning fork apps for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android.

And for fun, do some of these experiments with her: http://www.arborsci.com/cool/top-10-dem ... ning-forks

A trip to the local science hobby store may be in order but it is a lot of fun. Some of them will be too technical for a 5 year old, you can skip them for now and come back to them later.

[ganesh_mourthy]

VK



Matching shruti is not a big task, but theory around it, for a 5 year old kid to assimilate, is a Herculean task. i

------------------------------------
Hamsadwani,

Your 5 year old kid need not be trained already for Tambura shruti. She has to be trained for pitch only like that of Pitch box.

Some of my friends who has no prior knowledge to technicalities all fared well with pitch , both Sa and PA and the upper sa was not easy for them as they were not trained to raise their note. I am talking about adults in their 30s. It was easy because they understood the concept. They had to adjust it a few times to get it to , but the face lit up . It is a cognitive effort in adults. But , in children you have to let their instinct grow , but they can outgrow the adults easily. Do not thrust too much concept into your daughter already. Let her just sing and watch the miracle

[VK RAMAN]

Rsachi's observation right on the spot. So long 5 year old is able to match you, do not worry. She will do it on her own. Have patience.

[SrinathK]

Don't use a tampura at the very beginning . Try a simple Sa Pa Sa drone or a Bellows sruthi box. For young kids, its easier as the tanpura sound is very complex.

[vasanthakokilam]

Srinath: Exactly. That was what I was trying to convey as well.

[msakella]

In general, every music teacher is used to start with Sa-Pa-Sa along with a Shruti-box and immediately proceed with the eight notes singing himself/herself and making the kid follow him/her singing. Unfortunately, no teacher realizes that the kid does not have any aid of the remaining notes while practicing on his/her own. My umpteen experiments reveal that it is always better to make the kid rely upon the keyboard where both Metronome and Transpose are provided in respect of the rhythm and note. You can very well try the following link. amsharma

AMS-Rhythmelodies for kids-16 –
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... N3-tocp4JO

[KNV1955]

I believe the best way to cultivate Sruti sense in early stages is not to listen to music which are not Sruti aligned however great the musician may be. Listen to Hindustani Music particularly of Bhimsen Joshi /Rashid Khan etc. Equally important is to pay attention to vocalisation. Open mouthed open chested singing without following any affected style of singing. Teach them the way to give the voice (Kural kodukkum vidham); Never close the eyes & sing (will tend to sway away from Sruti but will not realise. Never develop sounds produced by Nadaswara vidwans to maintain breath. Breath control should be emphasised alongwith Sruti perfection & vocalisation.Play tambura daily for 45 min playfully. After a while teach them to tune an art by itself.

Listen to this Purya Dhanshri of Bhimsen Joshi 100 times Sruti will enter all the cells in your body . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JItpuldbZGY

KNV

[SrinathK]

I would recommend the your tanpura V3 if it is still around since it had the drone option. Otherwise use a bellows sruthi box or a keyboard at the beginning.

Even with most keyboards I have issues with the ET oriented tuning which we actually never follow in Indian music as all the intervals are noticeably not perfect. You could consider buying one of these instead : http://www.22shruti.com/22_shruti_harmonium.asp

Otherwise I have an idea for you. Whatever is the child's current pitch, please tell us and I can share a soundtrack accordingly for the 12 notes we use in CM today from lower to higher octaves. But please ensure that the pitch is not so low that the child is unable to go into the lower octave -- kids can sing well into the upper octave easily almost without effort, but many a times I have seen that their Sa is at the lower end of their range making the upper octave too easy and that they can't sing down low -- if you don't take care of this now, the problem may continue well into their adult years.

My advice is to take a pitch where the child can sing down to the lower D of Mohanam and then see if she has any problems singing in the upper octave -- if the child can do it with no screaming or shouting, then your shruti should be ok. Then you let me know and I will give the sound files for all the notes with the drone in the background for that pitch. This solution is not as convenient as a keyboard -- however, when one sings long kaarvais aligned to these tones, any sruthi problems can be eliminated.

The sruthi shuddham takes time to settle in. Children are sharp observers and very good at imitating, so it is important that she first spends some time HEARING you or anyone sing all the notes in that pitch -- maybe sarali varsais until she understands the ORDER of the notes -- then it becomes much easier - she will memorize it like it is a bhajan, and then you see the difference. First and foremost it is important to work on the memory part of the training -- the concept of shruti shuddham she will grasp over time with guidance. But right now it is necessary that she has a good shruti aligned person to listen to and imitate so that she memorizes what she is going to sing. When she knows the order of swaras she will pick it up faster. Do not expose her to any music where the shruti shuddam is not so good.

[msakella]

In my extensive experiments on the methods in learning (not in teaching) our music, umpteen times it has undoubtedly been proved that it is 100 times helpful and desirable to the aspirant to rely upon machines in respect of precise rhythm and note than on humans.

More over, in which way the video is far more powerful than the audio, it has also been proved beyond any doubt that a keyboard acts as a precise audio-cum-video-aid to the kids and helps a lot better than merely listening to the teacher who sings along with a Shruti-box or Tanpura having only Sa and Pa.

In our music-institutions we are very strictly implementing this, insisting upon very regularly practicing along with the precise rhythm and note of the keyboard and getting amazing results.

But, how far our hard-core conservatives agree with this is a big question and hurdle for the benefit of our poor aspirants. amsharma

[vasanthakokilam]

But, how far our hard-core conservatives agree with this is a big question and hurdle for the benefit of our poor aspirants. amsharma

I was just thinking about this myself. In prior discussions, personalities who have a big sway with people on influencing them, say things like 'If you get used to Metronome or a keyboard, you will forever be relying on it. What happened to the age old practice of internalizing rhythm and sruthi?'.

It is fine for people to have such opinions, right or wrong, because people do have opinions. But the unfortunate things is people who heard that then start believing it for the rest of their life without bothering to check it out scientifically. In addition, they propagate those things quoting that personality as an authority. What I refer to as 'personalities with a big sway', it can be one's mother or father, uncle or aunt who may have said that when you are a child, or it can the guru or it can be a musician. Those things are hard to shake.

Here are some points in broad strokes.

When I listen to a few of the afternoon AIR slot CM programs ( those that run for 30 minutes or an hour or so ), they are decent singers who can bring out the raga bhava but the number of times the sruti slips is too many for comfort. This is from a few years back so if things have improved, that is great. What this tells me is, for these singers who have risen to the level of singing in AIR, the foundation is not strong. If it is just one or two we can blame the individual. When the phenomenon is widespread, we have to blame the system.

On the other hand, I know people who use the gadgets like what Akellaji talks about have developed incredible sensitivity to rhythm and sruti. I have quite a few cases in mind of Indian kids here in the U.S. who have participated in school orchestra. The teaching methods all rely on using such gadgets. As an example, just a couple of months back, I encountered a 9th grade student who is a flute player. We were trying to play something in C# sruti. He felt uncomfortable that my flute is not quite right. He grabbed a little hand held devices which analyzes the sound in real time and shows the sruti. My C# was ok but not OK enough for this kid, the device showed that it was off by a few cents.

To some extent, it is like cooking ( there is that analogy again ). When I taught my american colleagues how to make Yogurt at home, they started using a thermometer to know when to stop heating the milk and how far to cool it before adding the starter etc. I shamed them by stating things like 'What? Oh come on, really? You do not need all that. We just do it by feel.. we know when it is right'. They being sensitive to the fact that this kind of thing is an 'art form' and not pure science, said that they will switch to feel based decisions after a month or so which they did. They actually liked the subtle variations in the taste of the yogurt ( real or imagined ) but to get there they needed to learn the basics the right way first by using gadgets. It is back to those two things: confidence and independence, in however and whatever manner one obtains them

[KNV1955]

Though I am not expert in the field nor a trained musician I feel in gadgets like Key board or Electronic Sruti Box even the min volume setting is too high that it drowns the voice. Many a time I have seen artists increasing the volume of Electronic Sruti Box to align to Sruti. But if you stop the Sruti Box abruptly & the violinist stops bowing you can hear them singing off key. The volume generated by Tambura with its jeeva properly tuned is more sensitive than to any other gadget.Therefore when practicing with Electronic Sruti Box (since using Tambura could be difficult)the volume should be kept low to get sthana (place of the swara) perfection. More than anything else Srinath's comment "Do not expose her to any music where the shruti shuddam is not so good" is vital in early stages. Vasanthakokilam analogy of cooking is very apt. ""just do it by feel.. we know when it is right'. They being sensitive to the fact that this kind of thing is an 'art form' and not pure science, said that they will switch to feel based decisions after a ..... " This comes by listening to Sruti aligned music. Paying attention to vocalisation is also important in early stages.

[munirao2001]

I would like to share the method in the teaching of my father and guru (time only sruthi box, veena, harmonium, pitch pipe were used). He believed that the student must listen intently and experience the pitch positions, sthayi and svara positions in ragas in which geetams prescribed for abhayasa gaanam, in which only pure note(s) to be explained and listening. Next, take up for listening the varisais-sarali, janta and dhatu. Experiences of near perfect sthayi and sthanms will be memorized. Train and practice the tuning of tambura. After attaining the confidence level of near perfect tuning, observe and experience the vibrations, keeping ear to the kudam. Observe the pure and anya sthanams and check the state of memorization with help of pitch pipe and voice (guru's) and instrument-veena or harmonium. Start the skill of delivery of pitch positions-thri sthayees, pure notes and sampradaya gamakams in the abhyasa ganam lessons, in trikalam with extra sensitivity to the tambura positions and naadam. Memory checking and support, skill of referencing, matching, tuning, correcting to be practiced with sensitivity, total attention and discipline, all to be done only in akara. Guru to guide, mentor and support with saha gayana until such time, the state of natural alignment of voices of Guru, Sishya and the instrument is realized and attained. The experience, practice, state of perfection results in knowledge. Through continued practice, the higher skill of optimum utilization of the knowledge in delivery is to be aimed and achieved to near perfection. Knowledge is to be constantly tested by listening and realization of perfection and imperfection, with humility. Only after attaining the self confidence and guru's acceptance, the abhayasa gaanam teaching and learning to is commenced in earnestness without the anxiety for the time taken to achieve the near perfection state. The time taken for the extraordinary talented and sincere student was a minimum of 3 to 4 months with minimum two of hours of listening and practicing, per day without any break (with exception to the time of ill health and recovery. Without health in perfect and normal state, practice should not be permitted. No distractions to be permitted. Sishyas with average natural talent, the time taken was 6-8 months. Sishyas below the average natural talent were either discouraged or advised to take up instrument of their choice for higher period of listening and practicing. Learning and practicing of chosen instrument sincerely helped to improve the talent. After attaining the above average talent and efficiency, commence the vocal practice.
It is frustrating and restless times for the average talented student in constant comparison with naturally talented co students and others advancing and on fast track. SSRao used to advice and explain on the critical need of the counselling on the virtues of patience, discouraging comparison and competition state of mind to keep focus on the desire in attainment. He used to make it clear that even for the highest levels of naturally talented prodigal and genius, the practice and perfection is very much necessary and also critical. SSRao was liberal in acknowledgement and appreciation of attainment of sishya to motivate during the initial listening, learning, experiencing and practicing stages. Very strict, sometimes even harsh at later stages for the deficiencies. SSRao enabled the feel of joy and pleasure of touching the near perfection of sishyas to permeate their minds.

[msakella]

As it is more helpful to the aspirants I shall continue to share my ideas in this respect in the relevant sub-thread ‘AMS Easy Methods 2007 CD - Teaching and Learning Methods’ under the main-thread ‘Music School’ hereafter. amsharma

[shankar vaidyanathan]

There are beginners level CD lessons offered with Veena alongside vocal Sarali Varisai. (Dr. Ramanathan?) A trick may be to just let the Thambura or Drone or Shruthi Box mildly sing in the background during car rides or at sleep time. As others said, making children listen to Shruthi Sudham music especially men for boys and women for girls might help. Kids will make the case connection. I recall that my son sang without Shruthi accompaniment initially when he started his vocal CM lessons. Verbalizing may not help.

[SrinathK]

So ok, what's the child's most comfortable pitch?

[VK RAMAN]

If the child can read all we write about sruthi and pitch, he/she will run away.

[hamsadhwani]

Thank you all, for the suggestions and the insightful discussion following!

VK, the tuning fork experiment is interesting. Looks like it can teach her more than sruthi! Definitely planning to try it.

I did try playing a harmonium sruthi and she seemed to be able to match to SA and PA separately, but not when I had the SA, PA, SA together. I think she was getting confused. I have to try that with the tambura drone, trying to play each swaram separately to see if she is able to match.

SrinathK, he comfortable Sruthi appears to be A (6 kattai). Her assessment session was in 6 kattai and she was able to repeat after the teacher in perfect sruthi. So she has been accepted to the class now and has her first session this evening.

Now the challenge is to see if she will be able to sit without fidgeting or getting distracted for the 45 minutes of the class duration. That is a condition for being able to continue in the class!

[VK RAMAN]

"5 year old" - sit in the class without fidgeting or getting distracted for the 45 minutes is not practical. Children of that age, if put on a regimented class will lose interest and revolt when they grow up in my opinion. We should teach them as if it is a play or game.

[vasanthakokilam]

hamsadhwani and others: Just to be sure, my reason for suggesting the tuning fork is that it is a single frequency sound and on the hypothesis that it may be easier for the child to sync to that rather than the rich and complex sound of the tampura or its electronic simulation. So that is the main thing. The video I enclosed above has other interesting experiments with tuning fork which are very educational in its own right and possibly motivate someone on the music side, but those are extra curricular with respect to the purposes of this thread. I see G_M misunderstood what I meant, so I thought I should clarify.

It will be interesting to see which is easier to sync to for a beginner. one key press of a key board with sustain, simple drone (which some sruthi boxes provide, the one that is really not that pleasant to listen to) or the tuning fork (using tuning fork apps, not necessarily with real tuning forks )

[mohan]

Interesting that the teacher seems to be screening for sruti alignment before the lessons complete. I would have thought it is the role of the teacher to teach this alignment. However, I understand with some busy teachers, the don't have time or patience to teach concepts of sruti and alignment.

Practicing with a keyboard or harmonium will help in the early stages.

6 or 5.5 is usually the appropriate sruti for young children.