Indian Music

[keyofc]

Hello,
Is anyone here familiar with Indian music?
I have a new student starting in a couple of weeks in his 30's and wants to learn Indian music.  Do we have any Indian piano teachers on the forum? or teachers famiiar with the music?
I am interested in anything you can tell me.   I think he's interested in popular Indian music, so if you can recommend an artist to listen to also, that would be great.

Thanks!

[debussy symbolism]

Greetings.

What kind of Indian Music? The traditional music employs scales that are very exotic to the Western scale, as they aren't a part of the Well-Tempered tradition. The traditional Indian music is based largely on melodic invention, rhythmic complexity, and involving no harmony whatsoever. They have different tuning systemes and their scales are very different than our scales, and are called "ragas". I could go on more about this, but should you be curious about more information, I suggest you check elsewhere, for more exact text.

Concerning Western "Indian" music, there are many composers such as Bartok that imitate the style and compose using the laws of Indian traditional music, thus merging the styles of Indian music to that of the Western. I cannot pinpoint you to any specific examples unfortunately, but again, you might want to check out for information elsewhere.

Hope this helps.

[ingagroznaya]

KeyofC,
I found your post to be interesting, but did not respond because I do not know if I can help...
I know few indian tunes by ear, but also wondered if I could find an actual sheet music. From what I understand indian music from indian movies will work. Bollywood is very big in India. If he is in his 30s ( like me ), he would probably remember the movie Trishul - it was a huge hit in the late 70th. Here is the song from the film

Or you might try something like "Shree420" with Raj Kappor

&mode=related&search= It's indian classic. You can't go wrong. As minimum you'll surprise him.

[keyofc]

Thanks to both of you,
Debussy - I'm looking for contemporary music from India
Ingagrognaya - thanks, I'm  checking this out.
I listened to a CD that he brought over - and was very hard to play with.  Very rythmic and strong melody, but the harmony is sketchy.  It seems like there's an extra note in their scale.  ??
Are you Indian by any chance? Do you know which tunes are the easiest to start out with?

I have heared that Kabi Alvida Naa Kehna's music might be easier
Are you familiar with his/her music?

Does anyone know the structure of the typical Indian scale?
I have been able to find websites with music on them, but so far none with sheet musi

[srivatsp]

Hi,

I scanned through my sheet music bookmarks and found these -

https://www.newsindia.net/music/songnotationlist.htm
https://webhome.idirect.com/~toot/sangeet.html

I think you will in general find it difficult to find Sheet music for Indian Music. You may however find midi files for indian music on the net - you could try putting it through a notation program and see what it gives you.

What you could also try is to ask your student to get you a CD of Brian Silas. He is a pianist who's made his fortune playing Indian music on the piano - he plays what in India is called "film music". If you are familiar with Indian movies - almost all of them are musicals and songs from movies are the most popular music in india and I suspect this is what your student wants to learn. He also has a website - https://www.briansilas.com - although last time I looked there wasn't really much in it.

"Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna" is a recent blockbuster movie - you can listen to the music from the film here - https://www.apnaymp3.com/Apnaymp3.com/andromeda.php?q=f&f=%2Findianmovies%2FKabhi+Alvida+Na+Kehna

One recent and one not so recent song that I can recall top of my mind which have piano riffs are "Kal Ho Na Ho" and "Pehla Nasha" - both of them very popular. If you google for them you should be able to find the music which you can listen to. See if your student is interested in those.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Srivats

[debussy symbolism]

Thanks to both of you,
Debussy - I'm looking for contemporary music from India

Contemporary music of India is, according to my understanding, not too different than our Western music, with extra emphasis on the harmonic minor scales if I am not mistaken. The true Indian music doesn't belong to our Well-Tempered tuning and so, certain notes would not be on the piano.

Their scales have many more notes than our scales, and such ragas, as they are called, function by themselves and bear special meanings and moods. Quite exquisite actually, the ragas belong only to their tunings and therefore not apposite to the Well-Tempered tuning. Quite sad actually. The ragas cannot be transposed like our scales can, so the instruments are restricted to an initially proposed raga, chosen by the player.

Hope this helps.

[keyofc]

Debussy,
Thanks - I was playing one of them by ear (or trying to) from a CD. and it seemed like there was a note that my piano did not have in the melody.
What you say makes sense about ragas having different structure altogether.

[keyofc]

Srivat,
Many thanks to you !
Since I orignally posted my email - I did find the newsindia.net; which I was really excited to find.
However, I never heard of the other one.
The piece you recommended, Never say goodbye, or something like that in Indian,
I just heard from one of my other student's ipods.
Very nice - and a little easier to play than the very fast songs.
Thanks so much,
key of c

[debussy symbolism]

Whilst still on topic, I had the pleasure of watching a documentation of some of Indian culture on television. It was brief and I greatly wish to learn more about it, but it did feature about India's classical music, and I was amazed at the musician's skill of transposing different rhythms onto the drums. The singer sang out the rhythms, and the player quite effortlessly imitated them. Does anyone bear any knowledge about specific videos or DVDs about Indian culture specifically. Not just the music, but the culture in general.


Thanks, Best.

[srivatsp]

Debussy,

Being an Indian myself, I never needed videos/DVDs of Indian culture :-) However, I do beleive you should find some from Discovery/National Geographic/BBC - you would have to search. If you have any questions, I'll try and answer.

As for the percussion player imitating the singer - this is a standard part of an Indian Classical Music concert (irrespective of whether it is a vocal or instrumental concert) towards the end before closing. Since the percussion player is usually the accompanist, this affords the player to showcase his skills.

Regards,
Srivats

[debussy symbolism]

Thank you Srivatsp. I never knew that the percussionist imitating the singer is a standart part of Indian performance. Thank you for your input, again, and if I should have any more questions I will certainly seek your guidance, and of course, indulge myself in reading the material you suggested.

Best.