"Meend" is essentially a glide from one note to another note. The notes are not required to be next to each other. They can span multiple notes. "Meend"s can occur both ways i.e. Upwards or Downwards. That is one can glide from a starting note "Sa" to "Ma (Teevra)" as well as glide down from "Ma (Teevra)" to "Sa".
There are different forms of "Meend"s within this basic definition. One such type is one during which the glide from the starting note to the destination note may require (by the rule of the "Raag") to rest or touch the intervening notes in between. The duration of rest and the intervening note to rest on is dictated by the "Raag" in question. In another type there is a "wave" like movement where in there is both the upward and the downward movement combined while transiting from one note to the other.
"Meend"s are not playable on instruments like the harmonium. However stringed instruments like the Sarod, Sitar can play them nicely. So generally, fretted instruments play "Meend"s. "Meend"s are definately also a very important part of vocal singing.
There are two online resources that I found very useful. First is of course the "ITC Sangeet Research Academy". They have categorized different forms of "Meend"s along with examples. The other is the http://raag-hindustani.com website. This site is created by Ms. Sadhana. Browse to the section on Ornamentation. It contains good description of "Alankaars" and also some examples.
To help the readers get a greater understanding I will present some examples along with their frequency analysis.
The first example is from the raag-hindustani website. Ms. Sadhana first demonstrates the ordinary "m P D g" and then as it is sung in Raag Bageshree ("m P D g"), employing "Meend"s. The figure below is the time-frequency plot of both the clips.
Click on the image to enlarge the view.
One can go through the rest of the examples on the website. They are really well explained. I am grateful to Ms. Sadhana for allowing me to use her recordings on her website http://raag-hindustani.com/Embellishment.html for the examples above. It allows me to show in greater details as to how "Meend"s look like and can be "detected" by the less trained ears of casual music lovers.
To close, let us also see on example of "Meend" from the great Ustad Amir Khan. In this example, he traverses the whole octave from "mandra saptak Ni" to "natural saptak Ni" during one of his renditions of Raag Yaman Kalyan. Watch the glide, he does not stop anywhere in between during the glide.
That is all for today. I will keep posting such analysis from time to time. I find it is easy to grasp these complex concepts when one is able to see the waveform visually along with the musical movements involving the notes.
The next article shall finally introduce the concept of a Raag. You might be One might wonder why Raags were not introduced earlier, but believe me without these basic chapters on classical music, it is very difficult to understand the concept of Raag. Hopefully my explanation would make sense then!
