Lesson video

Hi there everybody.

Welcome to lesson three in our compose and create unit improvising within Hindustani Classical Music.

Now today's lesson is called Singing and Playing a Melody in a Five Note raag.

So we've started to look at what raags are.

We're using one with just five notes in it, and we're going to learn a brand new melody today.

We'll be singing together and playing together.

By the end of today's lesson, you will have sung and played a melody using our raag.

Let's begin by looking at our keywords.

Firstly, a new word saragam.

Saragam is the name of the singing notes in Hindustani classical music.

The Raag, which we know is that melodic framework.

They are the musical notes used to make a composition or an improvisation.

The aaroh, which is the ascending notes in a raag.

The notes going from a low pitch to a high pitch and the avroh the descending notes in a raag going from the higher pitch to the lower pitch.

Warming up is very much a part of our music lessons.

We warm up our voice so that it's safe when we sing and we warm up our minds so that they're sharp and we're focused and ready to play well and neatly.

If we think about rhythm and pulse, that's helping us to develop a good sense of timing.

If we're playing with other people around us on our instruments, we want to play in time because we want it to sound good.

And then if we focus on pitch in our warmup, that's helping us be in tune when we sing.

And also it's gonna help us when we sing together so we're all in tune together.

You'll remember, clap stomp, high, low, Chickalo, and 1, 1, 2, 1, with each of these, play around with with what you do with them.

With clap, stomp, you could put the clap on a different beat or the stomp on a different beat.

You could decide we're going to collectively count to eight or nine or five or six.

It really doesn't matter.

What's key is that everybody in the group is on the same page and everyone's trying to remember, oh, beat one is a clap, or beat two is a stomp, or whatever it might be.

So you can stick with the 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, which we've done previously.

Or you can experiment and decide to add things in and take things away in your class, you might want to stand in a circle so that you can all see and hear each other's ideas.

Or you could stand up or sit where you are.

With Hi Lo Chickalo, choose a different partner.

See what tempo you are able to make when you are clapping and singing together, how neat can it be? Are you starting at the same note? And then with 1, 1, 2, 1, you could try that at a slower tempo and see if you could get a bit quicker.

When you do, are you all staying in time? Is the class collectively feeling that constant pulse so that each time you incrementally change your pitch for the 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 2, 3, 2, 1, people are in tune and in time, you're going to pause the video here, experiment with those.

Give yourselves up to 10 minutes.

Off you go.

And now check in with yourselves if you can feel that pulse.

If when you were playing those games and those warmups, you could feel a constant pulse and that you were singing in tune with each other.

And maybe now you feel a bit more alert, a bit more focused, ready to concentrate than you've successfully warmed up.

Well done.

In our lesson today, we have two learning cycles.

The first is where we sing a melody in a raag and the second is when we put that singing onto our instruments.

So we'll begin by singing a melody.

The word saragam is one of our keywords.

It's the name for the singing notes, and it's a word that's made up of the first four notes of the set.

So we have saragam the first four sa, re, ga, ma.

You can see most of those letters make saragam.

So saragam is the name of the notes we sing.

In Raag Bhupali we use Sa, Re, Ga, Pa, Dha, Sa and we remember that Ma and Ni are not used in this raag.

So when we play in a raag or sing in a raag we only use the notes from that raag.

What we're going to do now is sing the aaroh and the avroh of Raag Bhupali using saragam.

So here comes the music.

Have a listen and be ready to join in.

<v Speaker>Together the aaroh and avroh of Raag Bhupali is.

</v> (upbeat music) <v ->And if you need to pause the video</v> and try that a couple of times, then now's your time and then we'll move on.

Very well done.

Now what we want to do is cement that learning in.

And so we're just going complete these short sentences with the word blank.

Below we can choose from avroh, higher, aaroh, and lower.

So the blank is the ascending scale of a raag.

And this means playing from a blank pitch to a blank pitch.

And the something else is the descending scale of the raag.

That means playing from a blank pitch to a blank pitch.

Take a moment, we'll pause the video and pop those four into the gaps in those two sentences.

Off you go.

I think you'll have done very well here.

Let's check the aaroh is the ascending scale of the raag, which means playing from a lower pitch to a higher pitch.

And then the other one is the avroh, the descending scale of the raag.

So that means playing from a higher pitch down to a lower pitch.

If you've got all those right, give yourself a pat on the back and let's move on.

Now, this is quite exciting.

Jasdeep has written the melody, especially for us in Raag Bhupali just especially for this unit of work.

And so we're going to have a listen to it.

He'll sing it all the way through, pay close attention because then we're going to learn it.

Here it comes.

(upbeat music) So there we go.

It's quite a short melody.

And now wonderfully Jasdeep will take us through little bit by little bit in this next video that's coming up.

So he will sing a small amount and you'll sing it back and we'll repeat that a few times.

So be ready to sing and before you know it, after five minutes, you'll have learned a full melody in Raag Bhupali.

Here comes Jasdeep to teach us the song.

<v ->Now we're going to learn the composition in Raag Bhupali.

</v> So don't worry about the tal or the rhythm at the moment.

We're gonna break it up into smaller chunks, but I want you to repeat after me when I sing it.

I'll play along and you sing along with the as well when I'm not singing.

(soft music) ♪ 'Sa Dha Pa ♪ Let's do that again.

♪ 'Sa Dha Pa ♪ And again.

♪ 'Sa Dha Pa ♪ Next bit.

♪ Ga Re Sa Re ♪ ♪ Ga Re Sa Re ♪ Okay, let's try the top again.

We start from the beginning again ♪ 'Sa Dha Pa ♪ And again.

♪ 'Sa Dha Pa ♪ The next bit.

♪ Ga Re Sa Re ♪ ♪ Ga Re Sa Re ♪ Okay, now we're gonna try put these two together.

So it'll sound like this.

♪ 'Sa Dha Pa Ga Re Sa Re ♪ ♪ 'Sa Dha Pa Ga Re Sa Re ♪ And don't worry if you can't say the syllables or the, you can just say LA if you want to.

♪ La La La La La La ♪ (upbeat music) Or.

♪ 'Sa Dha Pa Ga Re Sa Re ♪ Great.

So that's the first half of the the melody line.

Let's go to the second half now.

♪ Ga Ga Re ♪ And again.

♪ Ga Ga Re ♪ (upbeat music) And again.

♪ Ga Ga Re ♪ (upbeat music) Now we're gonna add that to the first bit.

♪ 'Sa Dha Pa Ga Re Sa Re Ga Ga Re ♪ (upbeat music) And again.

♪ 'Sa Dha Pa Ga Re Sa Re Ga Ga Re ♪ (upbeat music) And one more time.

♪ 'Sa Dha Pa Ga Re Sa Re Ga Ga Re ♪ (upbeat music) Well done.

Now there's one extra bit and then we're almost done.

So the next bit goes.

♪ Pa Re Ga ♪ So there's a bit of a jump.

♪ Pa Re Ga ♪ (soft music) ♪ Pa Re Ga ♪ ♪ Pa Re Ga ♪ So the whole thing.

♪ 'Sa Dha Pa Ga Re Sa Re Ga Ga Re Pa Re Ga ♪ ♪ 'Sa Dha Pa Ga Re Sa Re Ga Ga Re Pa Re Ga ♪ ♪ 'Sa Dha Pa Ga Re Sa Re Ga Ga Re Pa Re Ga ♪ So now would be a good time to maybe pause the recording and to do this with your teacher until you all get it right.

<v ->Very well done for that concentrating.

</v> That's a lot of listening and singing back and you did really well.

Now, as Jasdeep has explained previously, Indian classical music is an oral tradition.

And what this means is its taught and passed down from person to person via singing and speaking and experiencing rather than written notation and that being shared that way.

So Jasdeep is teaching us the song using the oral tradition.

He knows the tune, he will sing it and we'll sing it back.

So what's gonna happen now is check within your setting in your classroom, what level you are at, and you can use the video again to go through that song and you can start to sing it where you are as a class.

So pause the video, check how successful you are so far, and it might be useful to break it down.

The melody has two phrases.

So the first one says.

♪ 'Sa Dha Pa Ga Re Sa Re ♪ We call, let's call that the first half and then the second one.

♪ Ga Ga Re Pa Re Ga ♪ So you might have a think, oh, am I more confident with the first one or the second one? Do I need to focus on one of them first? Shall I sing them both together? You decide.

We're going to pause the video, so you can use the clip by clicking on the the little video button to help you if you need to.

And then we'll come back together and move on to the next part.

Good luck.

Well done so far.

Brilliant.

Really good rehearsing.

Well done.

So in Raag Bhupali, we want to be really accurate with our rhythm.

So we hold the first note of the first phrase longer.

So we get.

♪ 'Sa Dha Pa Ga Re Sa Re ♪ And then the same happens in the second phrase.

We hold that ga longer.

♪ Ga Ga Re Pa Re Ga ♪ Okay, so you're going to now listen to the audio track.

It's going to come on.

Just listen the first time.

It plays three times.

So listen the first time and then sing the second two times.

So you are going to sing 'Sa Dha Pa Ga Re Sa Re Ga Ga Re Pa Re Ga twice through, here comes the track, be ready.

Off we go.

♪ 'Sa Dha Pa Ga Re Sa Re Ga Ga Re Pa Re Ga ♪ ♪ 'Sa Dha Pa Ga Re Sa Re Ga Ga Re Pa Re Ga ♪ ♪ 'Sa Dha Pa Ga Re Sa Re Ga Ga Re Pa Re Ga ♪ <v ->Nice, I can imagine this is sounding</v> brilliant where you are.

Let's have a quick check-in with ourselves.

Did you remember the melody? Did that tune stay in your head and could you confidently sing it? And did you all sing it at the correct pitch? So Izzy says, well, I sang at the right pitch and I remembered the melody sometimes muddled the saragam and sang slightly different words.

That's fine.

She's learning the melody, she's keeping in time and she's building on her learning.

And the second question is, did you get the rhythm right? And so Aisha says, well, I did remember to hold that first 'Sa longer, which helped me to get the rhythm right.

So if you held 'Sa and so on, then you are doing brilliantly.

Really well done.

Now the second half of our lesson is where we take that melody, that musical phrase, and we play it on our instruments.

So in Hindustani classical music raags we've heard already can be sung, can be played on the satar.

They can also be played on the bansuri, on the sarod and the harmonium amongst other instruments.

These are quite popular.

The Bansuri is a single shaft of bamboo that's been expertly crafted into a flute.

The sarod that you can see there probably looks a little bit similar to the satar.

And then the harmonium, which is powered by air at the back there are bellows and you pump the air and play the the keyboard as you would.

And then you might see the the stops there that you can pull in and out to change the sound.

So all of these instruments can play a raag.

Now that we've explored a raag by singing, we are gonna play them on the instruments that we have in our classroom.

What we're going to do is firstly play the aaroh and the avroh of Raag Bhupali.

That's gonna remind us what those notes are going up and down the scale.

And then we're going to sing them and see if we can do that at the same time.

Okay, here's a video to demonstrate what I mean.

♪ Sa Re Ga Ga Re Pa Re Ga ♪ ♪ 'Sa Dha Pa Ga Re Sa ♪ <v ->Okay, now pause the video</v> and practise that where you are practise playing and singing together.

Off you go.

We notice that there is the low Sa and the High Sa.

So even though this is a Pentatonic raag, a raag with five notes, Sa Re Ga Re Pa we also have the Sa at the top.

So the low Sa and the high Sa, the high Sa when we see it written down often has an apostrophe to show that it's different to show that it's the higher one.

So keep an eye out for that.

What you're going to do now is simply just play the avroh, the descending notes from Raag Bhupali, and you'll realise that they're the first six notes of the melody that we've just sang.

Pause the video and just play the avroh of Raag Bhupali.

Great, great.

Really well done.

Now in Jasdeep's melody, the Sa is two beats long.

So we have 'Sa Dha Pa Ga Re Sa and I on the screen, you can see there's the boxes and the Sa and then an empty box to show that that's going to be two beats long.

So now when you play the avroh of Raag Bhupali, I'd like you to play 'Sa Dha Pa Ga Re Sa.

It might help you to sing along at the same time.

So pause the video and try that.

Off you go.

Brill, this is sounding very good.

So which Sa below is the higher pitch.

Just have a quick check in to remember.

'cause when we're looking at these sorts of grids, we want to know where we're starting our playing from.

So which Sa below is the higher pitch? And it's that one, it's the Sa with the apostrophe, that's the one with the higher pitch.

And you can find it that higher one on your instrument.

So we've put Sa at C, so we've got our lower C and then an octave up.

We've got the higher C.

So find that on your instrument and then you can play it.

There it is if you need some help.

Okay, so we know the first six notes of our melody are the avroh, the descending notes of Raag Bhupali.

And it's, you can see it there on the screen, the first part of that phrase, 'Sa Dha Pa Ga Re Sa, the avroh.

And then after that low Sa there is a Re.

So it starts to go back up 'Sa Dha Pa Ga Re Sa Re and that completes the first phrase.

So now using your instrument, you are going to play the first phrase of the melody, if you need to, there's a little video clip there that you can watch.

So pause the video, use that clip if you need to, but you are playing the avroh followed by one Re note afterwards.

Okay, pause the video.

Off you go.

Very good.

That's the first half of the melody that you can now play on your instruments.

So the second phrase only uses three notes.

It just uses Re, Ga, an Pa.

So as Aisha says, she's found those on her keyboard, on her Glockenspiel.

And she's put little stars.

If you look there, you can see Re, Ga, and Pa are the only three notes that we use in the second half of this melody.

And the same as before.

In that second phrase of the melody, we also hold the Ga for two beats.

So that space there that you can see helps us to remember.

So you are going to use your instrument to play the second phrase of the melody this time.

Again, there's a video clip to help you if you need it.

So you'll press pause and watch that if you need to.

But you are playing Ga Ga Re Pa Re Ga using those three notes.

So it's quite short and simple.

But take your time, take your time to get it right, pause the video and have a check of that now.

That is ace.

Well done.

So you've played the first part and you've played the second part.

So now of course we're gonna put them both together.

So in a moment we'll pause the video and give you time to play the whole thing.

So you are finding your Sa, and you can see it's the Sa with the apostrophe, it's the higher Sa.

That's where you're starting.

We start to play that the avroh down, and then we carry on.

And then in that second phrase, it just uses Ga Re and Pa.

So take your time, play slowly.

There's much more chance of getting it right if we play slowly.

Give yourself a good few minutes to practise, make sure everyone has a turn, and then we'll come back.

So maybe take four or five minutes for this bit.

Okay, pause the video.

Off you go.

Now that you can play it, we're going to sing the full melody.

Now, you could do this in a number of ways.

It could be that some people in the class play whilst others sing.

And then if you're not playing your singing and then swap, it could be that you all want to sing together, but decide.

So we're gonna pause the video and however you decide to do it, whether half of you are playing, half of you are singing, that's fine.

Give yourself about three minutes for this bit and then we'll come back together.

And now of course, the biggest challenge is to play the full melody and sing it at the same time.

So you are going to play and sing.

Here's a short video demonstrating how I tried to do it.

Here it comes.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

♪ 'Sa Dha Pa Ga Re Sa Re Ga Ga Re Pa Re Ga ♪ Absolutely.

Super.

Really well done.

I don't expect all of you will have got that absolutely perfectly.

Remembering all the words, playing the right notes at the right time, keeping a steady pulse if you managed to do some of that, that's absolutely super, super.

It took me quite a bit of practise.

And you can see from these two videos in the first one, well, I won't tell you, I want you to tell me what you think shows our melody being played better.

Is it my first one that you see A, or is it B? Let's have a watch of them both and see.

♪ 'Sa Dha Pa Ga Re Sa Re Ga Ga Re Pa Re Ga ♪ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

♪ 'Sa Dha Pa Ga Re Sa Re Ga Ga Re Pa Re Ga ♪ Well, here's some feedback from me in A, they didn't rest on the second beat.

Yeah, correct.

And they didn't count in to set the tempo.

That is a very useful tip, Alex.

Yes, you are absolutely right.

And Aisha says, well, it was hard for them to sing at the correct pitch 'cause it was quite fast.

Yeah, didn't stop, didn't count in.

Rushed.

Andeep says, ah, B is much clearer because they take their time, count a steady pulse of eight, and the singing was in tune with the play.

This is really good feedback.

I recommend you decide which bits need working on for you.

We're gonna pause the video, give it another go.

Taking on board what you should do first.

And I think that counting in for eight is really useful.

Pause the video, have another try, see how well you improve.

And I'll see you back in a moment.

Absolutely brilliant.

Really well done for today.

That's some great work.

Your brain's worked hard and you've done very well.

Before we go, let's recap our learning that we've picked up today.

So in a raag, the aaroh is the name of the ascending notes going from the lower pitch to the higher pitch and the avroh from the higher pitch down to the lower pitch.

We know that a raag can be played or sung or both, and we've seen quite a few different instruments that can play the raag.

When we sing the notes in a raag using the saragam we use Sa, Re, Ga, ma, Pa, Dha, Ni.

♪ Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni Sa ♪ And those notes can be played on our instruments using C, D, E, F, G, A, B.

And then the tops are C.

Really well done for today.

Very much looking forward to seeing you next time.