Nursery Rhymes Ragam

vinyasa · Post by **vinyasa** » 16 Jul 2008, 18:56

What ragam are nursery rhymes composed in. I am talking about the standard old tunes like Twinkle Twinkle, Row row row your boat, Are you sleeping, old McDonald.

Are they all in Shankarabharanam?

saranya · Post by **saranya** » 18 Jul 2008, 15:21

As far as I knew, all rhymes are tuned with western notes. Western notes will use maximum white keys of a keyboard, which is the raga sankarabaranam.

mohan · Post by **mohan** » 18 Jul 2008, 15:25

the music system is quite different so classifying western songs or nursery rhymes in a raga is not a useful exercise

arasi · Post by **arasi** » 18 Jul 2008, 19:34

Mohan,
Agreed! But I couldn't help humming a pallavi line of 'twinkle twinkle little stA...r, how I wonder what yo....u Are. Sounded better than the famous RTP line of the 'kattirik kAi' vendor!

Nick H · Post by **Nick H** » 18 Jul 2008, 21:11

saranya wrote:As far as I knew, all rhymes are tuned with western notes. Western notes will use maximum white keys of a keyboard, which is the raga sankarabaranam.

From dim brain cells...

That will only be true if 'C' is taken as the tonic. It must be possible to play a minor scale on the white notes only too by beginning from a different key.

I do not have an instrument, memory or skill to put this to the test, but I strongly suspect that a few nursery rhymes will turn out to be in a pentatonic scale, and could be played on the black notes alone. I think pentatonic scales are popular in some folk music.

That C-Major corresponds to sankarabaranam is as far as my knowledge goes. Maybe one day one of you guys can sit me down and demonstrate how gamuka, which is of course absent from the western scale, makes it different.

Is there a raga that corresponds to the pentatonic black-note-scale? I guess there must be...

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 18 Jul 2008, 21:26

Is there a raga that corresponds to the pentatonic black-note-scale? I guess there must be...

If you start with C# as Sa and end with the higher C# and play only the black keys in between, that will be Suddha Saveri.(ARO â€“ S R2 M1 P D2 S, AVA â€“ S D2 P M1 R2 S ).

ragam-talam · Post by **ragam-talam** » 18 Jul 2008, 21:32

arasi wrote:Mohan,
Agreed! But I couldn't help humming a pallavi line of 'twinkle twinkle little stA...r, how I wonder what yo....u Are. Sounded better than the famous RTP line of the 'kattirik kAi' vendor!

Has anyone sung an RTP using English lyrics?
I can imagine MDR singing 'twinkle twinkle' pallavi in his favorite Kedaram

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 18 Jul 2008, 21:41

Those who know to read staff notation can transcribe the swaras for Row row row your boat from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Row%2C_Row ... _Your_Boat and we can take it from there. In most of these songs, there is an in-built tonic and so mapping to a raga should be fairly deterministic ( even if raga does not show itself fully ). If we can do it for MDs nottu swaras, why not for these nursery rhymes? In fact, MD's nottu swara compositions are based on simple western folk tunes.

arunk · Post by **arunk** » 18 Jul 2008, 21:45

nick H wrote:That C-Major corresponds to sankarabaranam is as far as my knowledge goes. Maybe one day one of you guys can sit me down and demonstrate how gamuka, which is of course absent from the western scale, makes it different..

Nick perhaps you already saw this - but I cover this difference in one of my blog posts
http://sunson.wordpress.com/2007/08/19/ ... nd-scales/

(caveat: all this based on and thus perhaps limited by my understanding of course) -
Although gamakas do play a very major role, the difference does not stops ther.

Another crucial factor is that in CM (and probably in HM), for any note/swara the % of time the "preceding/succeeding" note is adjacent (as in appears before of folows) is high.

In other words, in say any mela, if you see a ga, the probabity of ri or ma preceding it or succeeding it is very high compared to western music.

Now this does not mean you cannot have jumps, as in you do have jumps like say sa-ma, ri-pa, ga-da etc. but invariably say that ma will be followed by a ga. This allows the melodic flavor of that raga (that we mentally associate with) to be present through out. Once you starting jumping around say sa-ma-ri-pa-ga-da etc. in general we will have trouble associating with the mela raga as we are familiar to. And we see such jumps in western music songs thus making it hard for us to see why a major scale based western music song does not give a strong enough flavor of even a "light sankarabharanam". Of course there is also harmony, scale shifts etc. etc. but even if we concentrate on just a single western melody without harmony and scale shifts, this difference remains.

Arun

Nick H · Post by **Nick H** » 18 Jul 2008, 23:57

Thank you.

I'll check out your blog (it looks to be just what I need!) another day, Arun, but your post was very interesting.

As for twinkle-twinkle, it is certainly often used for, errr... improvisation in my mother culture. Quite how "like a tea tray in the sky" came about, or what we used to think was so hilarious about it when I was just a few years old, I cannot imagine!

I have commented before that taking some very well-known English composition and handling it in Carnatic style would be enormously educational for the likes of me. I'd rather see a meatier melody than Twinkle taken as the example, though

Suji Ram · Post by **Suji Ram** » 19 Jul 2008, 01:01

twinkle twinkle tune is an adaptation of Mozart's piece.
I can't recollect now.

gn.sn42 · Post by **gn.sn42** » 19 Jul 2008, 07:45

nick H wrote:Quite how "like a tea tray in the sky" came about, or what we used to think was so hilarious about it when I was just a few years old, I cannot imagine!

Alice in Wonderland, I suppose ("Twinkle, twinkle, little bat")?

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 19 Jul 2008, 08:39

Here is some info on the Mozart connection that Suji refers to : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variations ... C_Maman%22

Nick H · Post by **Nick H** » 19 Jul 2008, 10:10

Goodness... I'm really showing my ignorance here.

Alice in Wonderland is one of those books that we all think we know, whether we read it or not --- and I don't think I ever actually did!

I have a theory that a very, very large number of 'familiar melodies', and perhaps the majority of those from Western Classical, were written by either Mozart or Beathoven.

Western popular music has, of course, regularly borrowed its melodies from the classics too.

knandago2001 · Post by **knandago2001** » 19 Jul 2008, 15:52

This fascinating discussion on nursery rhymes got me thinkingâ€¦
would love to learn more about melodic origins of this celtic lullaby, if possible
http://www.badongo.com/audio/10465162

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 19 Jul 2008, 21:37

nandagopal: That song sounds great. Thanks for the link. I could not map it any raga but the tune somehow is familiar. My second thought was, a thillana in this melody would sound good.

Suji Ram · Post by **Suji Ram** » 19 Jul 2008, 22:09

the background music sounds like the titanic song "my heart will go on...."

knandago2001 · Post by **knandago2001** » 19 Jul 2008, 22:48

In case someone wants to sing along here are the lyrics to the Nightingale's Lullaby by Julie Last

The sun's going down in the deep blue sea
So close your eyes, go to sleep
I will wrap all the milk stars around you
So dream and your dreams will come true

You can ride past the wind as a champion mare
Over the woods, lighter than air
You can fly to the moon as a great white swan
And back you will be before dawn

A nightingale's lullaby bends in the wind
Messing your hair, drinks the tears from your pillow
So sleep now, sweet dreams, my love

I may be older but I am not wise
I'm still a child's grown up disguise
I never can tell you what you want to know
You will find out as you go

Now the sun's disappeared in the deep blue sea
Eyes are closed, in sleep so deep
The milk stars are wrapped all around you
So dream, and your dreams will come true