Hindustani Classical Music - My little understanding - Part 5 (Meend)

In the previous article we discussed the types of "Alankaars" or ornamentations in the Hindustani Classical Music. In this article we will discuss in details on one of the most important ornamentation known as "Meend" (मींडْ).

"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.

Notice the first set of "m P D g" is totally "flat". There  is no "glide" seen when changing from one note to the other. In the second, observe the "glides" when moving from one note to the other. The glide to "Pa" from "Shudh Ma" upwards (slightly touching "Shudh Dha") and then a glide to "Shudh Dha" from "Pa" and then a final long smooth glide downwards to "Komal Ga". Now listen to the combined piece, along with the movements on the notes in real time in the video below. Switch to full screen view and select the HD mode. This will enable you to view the notes being sung in real time that are displayed in the extreme lower right corner. The video has the notes annotated "in-place" for easy reference too.

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.

As usual, switch to full screen view and select the HD mode. This will enable you to view the notes being sung in real time that are displayed in the extreme lower right corner. The video has the notes annotated "in-place" for easy reference too.

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!

Hindustani Classical Music - My little understanding - Part 4 (Alankars)

In the previous article we discussed about the concept of Taals. We shall now discuss one of the most important aspect of Hindustani Classical Music, known as Alankar (or ornamentation). To do justice to this topic I shall have to split it into multiple posts. A single post would be too long for readers to read in  one go, and too short to justify the richness of the topic.

Therefore, this article will talk about the general concepts of Alankars. It will also list the some common alankars in use today and provide their meaning. Subsequent posts shall pick up one of the types and explain in detail with examples and frequency analysis of the examples to better understand the concept  and visually view the ornamentation in use!

The word "Alankar" means ornamentation. Of course in our context, we use alankars to decorate the musical notes or swars. How do we do that? Remember from our first article that our music is "analogue" in that that our notes are not staccato notes (in Raag music). So every note being sung is in "some way" connected to the note sung previous to this one and the note to be sung after this. This "some way" is actually decorating the note in question and there are many ways to do this in Hindustani Classical Music. Some earlier works suggest that Hindustani Classical Music had 33 different types of Alankars. Much few are in regular use today.

The importance of Alankars in Raag music cannot be overemphasised. Though we are yet to discuss about Raags as a topic, it is assumed that readers would be aware of the basic concept. There are some Raags that share the same set of swars, but it is the use of Alankars decorating some notes in a particular way that distinguish Raags sharing the same notes. Apart from this use of Alankars, they are often used by vocalists (and instrumentalists) to bring about different colours to their presentations. Thus in some situations use of Alankars are 'mandated' due to the rules of a Raag, and in some other cases it is the mastery of the performer to use them to bring about a flavour or colour to the presentation. It must be emphasised here that overuse or incorrect use of Alankars can be jarring.  It requires great skill (as a vocalist or instrumentalist) to use Alankars and a  sense of music education as to when and where to use it or not use it. This is one of the reasons why learning classical music under the guidance of a 'guru' is very essential.

Below is a table of Alankars commonly in use today. Please note that the list is not exhaustive or the meanings to be taken as the final definition of the Alankars.

Some rich information about Alankars are found at the ITC Sangeet Research Academy, here.  It has an exhaustive list with examples of each.

I will take up a few types in the subsequent articles and discuss in details about them.