Lesson video

Hi everyone.

And welcome to your music lesson.

Lesson five, and we are still in our fusion unit.

I'm Ms Friar, and I'm really excited to look into a different culture of music today.

And we're going to be focusing on Indian classical music.

So we're in a completely different part of the world today.

There are so many different kinds of songs, lyrics, instruments, ways of performing, ways of composing, what they mean in Indian classical music.

So there's so much for us to go through today, and I'm really excited to share it with you.

We're going to do our warmup activity for today, and we're going to be focusing on rhythm again.

One of the instruments in North, one of the instruments in North Indian classical music is a two set of hand drums called tabla.

And in many other countries, they use techniques to help them learn rhythms and to memorise them.

So I'll give you an example where they take syllables or sounds to represent parts of their rhythm pattern.

And here's one.

We'll have a go at it now.

You have a go.

One, two, three, four.

Very good.

Sometimes it can feel a bit strange trying to learn a new language, or to experience a new way of learning music, but it's really important we experience those things, so well done.

We're going to do a full rhythm now, as our warm up, but we're going to do it in English, just to make it a bit easier.

So let's turn into some English phrases that it's going to make it really easy for us to learn.

I love rabbit, I love caterpillar.

I love rabbit, I love caterpillar.

Great.

Nice and easy.

The second part of the phrase I will model first.

The second part of the phrase is slightly longer.

So I'll model first, and then you're going to have a go, we'll put the whole thing together.

Spiders and gorillas, octopus, butterflies, tigers too.

Gorillas, octopus, butterflies, tigers too.

Gorillas, octopus, butterflies, tigers too.

Can you see what happened at the end of the second phrase? Hopefully you've spotted that we repeat the end of the second phrase two more times.

So three times we say gorillas, octopus, butterflies, tigers too.

So here's all of phrase two again, and you're going to copy it back.

One, two, three, four.

Spiders and gorillas, octopus, butterflies, tigers too.

Gorillas, octopus, butterflies, tigers too.

Gorillas, octopus, butterflies, tigers too.

Your go.

One, two, three, four.

Did you get it? Great.

It's a bit like a tongue twister, isn't it? But those words, and the syllables within the words help us learn the rhythm that would be played on the tabla.

Great.

Let's put the two phrases together now.

I love rabbits, I love caterpillars, spiders and gorillas, octopus, butterflies, tigers too.

Gorillas, octopus, butterflies, tigers too.

Gorillas, octopus, butterflies, tigers too.

Let's have a go altogether.

I'll count us in.

After four.

One, two, three, four.

I love rabbit, I love caterpillar, spiders and gorillas, octopus, butterflies, tigers too.

Gorillas, octopus, butterflies, tigers too.

Gorillas, octopus, butterflies, tigers too.

Great! Well done.

What a nice starter to get us thinking about Indian-style rhythms that would be played on hand drums. Let's get ready for the rest of our lesson.

Please make sure that you have everything on our list for today's lesson to go really well.

You're going to need the worksheet, a piece of paper, or a booklet for you to write on.

You will need a pencil, and a pen for corrections and marking, and then you are going to need either your voice, an instrument, if you already play one, or an app or a keyboard so that we can compose some Indian classical music today.

If you need anything on that list, pause the video now, and go and get organised.

Otherwise, let's have a look at our plan for today.

The first thing we're going to cover is what is North Indian classical music? Where's it comes from, what's its history, how was it created? And we're going to look specifically at some certain instruments and the parts they play.

'Cause that's going to help us with our composition.

We're going to do a bit of improvising today.

We're going to create a melody for an alap section, using a Rag Desh.

And I will explain what all of those words mean when we get into our lesson.

We're going to look at the structure of a raga, which is a certain type of piece of classical music.

And then we're going to have a go at improvising a different section of a raga called a jhalla.

Now, I know this is a fusion unit, but North Indian classical music isn't a fusion genre on its own.

But in our next lesson, we're going to explore how it has been developed into a fusion.

But we need to explore Indian classical music as its tradition first, so we can see then how it developed.

Let's learn a little bit about North Indian classical music.

I'm going to read through the text, follow along with me.

North Indian classical music, or Hindustani music is an ancient musical form.

It is a rich tradition that originates from 13th century Hindu chants.

Here is where a system of melodic notes and rhythmic cycles were developed.

Indian classical music is passed down by students copying and memorising the parts from their teachers.

Could be called a guru.

This is called oral tradition, and is still believed to be the best way to learn Indian music.

So lots of information there.

If you want to pause and reread, or pause and write it out, please do so.

But what I find fascinating that North Indian classical music has taken its influences from as early as 13th century.

It's believed that maybe a system of melodic notes, and thinking about rhythmic cycles, date as far back as sort of Greek theories.

So although it's not a fusion on its own, it's definitely developed over thousands of years.

Okay, now let's do some multiple choice recap questions around information for North Indian classical music.

Question one.

What is the other name for North Indian classical music? Was it one, Carnatic, two, Hindustani, three, Vedic, or four, Raga? Writing your answers down, and ready to say it to the screen, in five, four, three, two, and one.

We were looking for Hindustani.

'Cause remember, it dates back to Hindu chants.

Well done if you got that right, big tick.

Question two, which century does Indian classical date back to? Option one, 13th century, two, 16th century, three, the 21st century, or four, 19th century? Writing your answers down, or ready to tell me, in five, four, three, two, one.

We were looking for 13th century.

And our final question.

What is oral tradition? Option one, when you learn music from videos.

Option two, when you learn music from a score.

Option three, when you learn by ear from your teacher.

Or option four, when you attend a music college.

Writing your answers down, or ready to tell me, five, four, three, two, one.

And the answer is option three, when you learn by ear.

So they just copy their teacher or guru, and memorise it over a period of time.

Great recap.

Let's carry on.

The second part of our lesson, we're going to look at some specific Indian instruments and traditions.

Although there are many instruments in Indian classical music, we're focusing on the ones below in this lesson.

In green, we've got an instrument called the tanpura.

It is quite a large, the tanpura.

It is quite a large instrument, which you hold upright while sitting down.

And it has four strings.

The tanpura plays quite a simple part in Indian music.

The tanpura plays quite a simple part in Indian music.

And we're going to focus on a part called a drone.

The middle instrument in blue is called a sitar.

It looks a bit like a guitar, but it's really different.

Again, it's quite large, but you do hold it in a similar way that you would hold a guitar in Western music.

It does have a lot more strings though.

Sitars can have from 18 to 21 strings.

And a sitar will play the melody line.

So this will be the main tune in some songs.

And it will do lots of improvising.

Really impressive, playing on a sitar.

The instrument in purple is called a bansuri.

It is a wooden flute.

And you can see there are flutes there of different sizes, so they will create different sounds around different scales.

A bansuri also plays the melody line, and would also play really decorative parts.

So lots of quick, flowing passages, around the tune, to make the melody really interesting.

If you want to pause and rewind, and write down any of that information, to help yourself recap, please do so now.

Let's look a bit more at the actual layers and parts that you hear in Indian classical music.

So we know, we've just learnt, that the tanpura plays a drone.

A drone can be one or two pitches, and sometimes now, it's played in an electronic way, in more modern Indian music, which we'll explore next week.

These notes will be held continuously throughout the piece.

Melody.

This is based on something called a rag.

A rag is a bit like, our word, Western musical word, for a scale.

Often played on the sitar, or other pitched instruments, or sometimes it's sung.

The melody is often improvised in different sections of the piece.

And that's what we're going to do with our composition today.

So we've got drone, melody, and rhythm.

This is called a tabla.

That's what we spoke about in our introduction when we were having a go at some Indian rhythms. Do you remember the Well, just like other traditions, and other music from other countries, these kind of patterns will often repeat.

And in Indian classical music, they do it in cycles, it is a cyclic rhythm pattern called a tala.

Well done.

Okay, now we've had a look at how music is created, the different parts, the instruments, a bit of history behind North Indian classical music.

Let's get creative.

You're going to have a go improvising your own melody for an alap section, using Rag Desh.

Rag Desh is a particular type of scale.

Each raga, a raga is the word for plural, more than one scale, is meant for a specific time of day, during a specific season.

Rag Desh is meant to be played at late evening during the monsoon rainy season.

It's meant to give a feeling of romance and devotion.

The notes used for the Rag Desh is called Sargam.

What I find fascinating about Indian classical music is that each of their pieces of music, their scales, the note pattern, the ragas, they are supposed to evoke a certain emotion.

They're played at certain times of the day, or at certain events, and they mean lots of different things.

Some ragas mean courage.

Some ragas are meant to inspire you to work harder.

Rag Desh is supposed to evoke a feeling of romance and devotion, which I think is just lovely.

Here's that scale I was talking about, for the Rag Desh.

Now, we have scales in our own music.

This is the one that we're going to learn, to improvise and experiment around today.

I want to draw our attention to some particularly important notes, which you will need to know for our compositions.

Sa.

Re.

And Pa.

Sa.

Re.

Pa.

♪ Sa Re Pa ♪ They are three important notes within this scale.

And often used to improvise around, or group together when creating melodies.

The drone for a Rag Desh uses two pitches.

Sa and Pa.

C, Sa.

G, Pa.

I'm just going to sing, I'm just going to play through the Rag Desh scale, with the drone underneath, so you can hear how it sounds.

So here's our drone on C.

♪ Sa Pa ♪ And here is our scale, played nice and slowly, so you can hear.

Here it is again.

We go up the scale, ascending.

Re, Ma, Pa, Ni, Sa.

Descending back down the scale.

Ni, Dha, Pa, Ma, Ga, Re, Sa.

This scale, Rag Desh, is very similar to our C major scale.

But it sounds a bit different.

Here's our C major scale.

Here's the Indian Rag Desh scale.

So you can hear that this part of the scale is very similar to our Western C major scale.

But the ascending side is missing quite a few of the notes that we would expect to hear in Western music.

And that's what gives it that Indian feel.

That's how you recognise that these are notes written for Indian music.

I have a great video for you here, of a Indian classical performing group in America.

And they are doing this brilliant activity that shows them singing through the Rag Desh scale.

Let's watch.

Great, I hope you enjoyed listening to the ensemble sing through the rag scale all together, so you can hear how it sounds.

Did you also spot which instrument we've already spoken about? It was playing with a microphone.

It was the bansuri, the wooden flute.

On the stage, on the right hand side.

Well done if you spotted that.

Now it's your turn to pause and have a go.

You are going to take the notes of the Rag Desh scale, you could do that with a keyboard or a piano, if you have that at home.

You could do it on your instrument.

Or you could do it with a keyboard app, like I've shown you in previous lessons.

I suggest you start step one just by playing the scale really slowly, ascending and descending over the drone, like I demonstrated.

Here's the drone.

So I suggest you do that a few times, so you can get used to the notes.

Once you're ready, you can move onto step two, where you're going to improvise really freely over the drone.

What that means is, it doesn't have to have a set pulse.

You're going to play the notes, whenever feels right.

And this is why Indian music is seen as evoking real emotion.

The sitar, or instrumentalist, or vocalist will improvise in this section, called an alap, freely, however they want the music to feel.

My advice is that you group your notes in threes.

That's what's often done in an alap for Indian classical music.

I'll give you a little demonstration.

Here's our drone.

Groups of three.

Remember, Sa, Re, Pa are really important notes.

Have a go at improvising in a really free tempo, and just feeling how you want this melody to sound, over the drone.

Well done, everyone.

I'm sure your improvised melodies in an alap section of a Indian classical piece are sounding lovely.

Looking at sections of Indian classical music, that's what we're going to move onto now.

Looking at the structure of raga.

So we're going to focus on three main parts of a raga piece.

We have the alap, which is the opening section.

The jhor, which is the middle section, where we start to develop melodies into more of a set tempo.

And the jhalla, which is the one we're going to look at for our final activity today, is towards the end of the piece.

And by this point, it's really livened up, and we've got lots of rhythmic ideas.

If you want to pause the video now, and read through this table slowly, and make sure you understand everything, please do so.

But you can see how it develops.

The alap sets the mood, it's a slow tempo.

The lead instrument or vocalist plays a really free tempo, improvised over a drone.

The middle section, we start to get a sense of regular pulse, it's a medium tempo.

And then it builds up to the section that we're going to focus on now, which is really fast and lively, and we've got some exciting rhythms in there.

Okay, you're going to need your pen and your piece of paper, or your worksheet.

We're going to do quite a challenging listening task here, but I think it's important to do.

We are going to listen to two parts of a piece of Indian classical music.

We're going to listen to alap, which we now know is the opening section, just a small clip of it.

And then we're going to listen to a small clip of a jhalla section which is towards the end.

And I want you to do a comparison.

So complete the box.

What can you hear in the alap, and what can you hear in the jhalla? On the left hand side, there are some bullet points of things I want you to focus on.

Compare the instruments, sonorities you can hear between the alap and the jhalla.

Think about the parts, can you hear melody, can you hear drones, can you hear accompanying parts? What tempo are those two different parts? And some key words here, legato and staccato.

Legato means that the notes are long, and smooth, and joined together.

Staccato means the notes are short and detached.

So try to build that into your answer.

If you need more time to draw the grid out, then please pause and do so.

Otherwise, ears at the ready.

Let's go.

Going to give you some short time in between to start writing ideas.

There's our alap for the first time.

Here's the jhalla, section B.

Right, here's the A section again.

Final time you'll hear this.

Make sure you're listening.

And here's the B section.

Final time we'll hear this.

Ready? Okay, if you've got ideas, but you need more time to write them down, pause the video, and complete the two boxes.

One for the A clip you heard, and one for the B clip.

When you're ready, press play, and we'll go through the answers.

Let's do that now.

The intro, the opening section.

Answers we're looking for are, Mainly string sonority, so mainly string instruments.

We've got that long sustained drone you can hear underneath.

And they're putting sort of a wobbling effect on the notes, if you spotted that, well done.

We know in the alap, that there's no sense of pulse, it's very free, it's very improvisatory.

And the notes are legato and joined together.

And either a very slow tempo, or you can't really feel the pulse in this section.

For the second clip, the B clip.

Here we can hear the bansuri.

The flute instrument is playing the main melody.

There are repeated pitches.

There's a wider range.

So it's not just going up and down that scale we learnt, they've got more leaps.

You can hear parts that the flute are playing are repeated.

And it's a much faster tempo than clip A we listened to.

The notes are also really short and detached, which means the flute is playing in a staccato style.

Great listening skills, if you got any of those key features for the two clips we've listened to.

Well done.

Okay, we are on the final section of our lesson, exploring North Indian classical music, and how the music can make us feel.

Now we're going to have a go at improvising a melody for a jhalla.

We know that at the jhalla section of a raga, a piece of Indian classical music, that we have now got a steady pulse, we've got the main instrument is repeating sections, and it's a faster tempo.

First thing you need to do is remind yourself of the notes of the rag.

There they are on the screen.

And then the second step is you want to select your notes, okay? So we're not just playing them freely.

You want to select them, because you're going to play them in a repeated rhythmic pattern.

So we can clearly hear that we're in a different section of Indian music.

And I want to give you a little demonstration of that now.

Remember, there's lots of different ways that you can record this, depending on what you want to do, and what you have at home or at school.

If you want to stick with keyboard or piano, great.

If you want to use a keyboard app, perhaps, on a phone, or on a tablet, then go for it.

If you have got an instrument, and you'd like to have a go at doing it, please do so.

I've got my flute.

I thought it would be good to use, because we heard an Indian flute, a bansuri playing.

Now you can see, my flute's really different.

It's made of metal, or silver plated.

The Indian one was made of wood.

And because of that, it will probably have a slightly different sound.

So what you want to do, when you're ready, and you've picked your notes, and you've decided if you're going to do it on a keyboard, or your instrument, or a piano, or an app, is you want to find the drone we recorded earlier on in the lesson, 'cause you're going to use that to find your melody to go in this jhalla section.

So I've got my drone here.

Really good, so let's pulse, one, two, three, four.

It could even be something as short as that, which you then decide to repeat.

Have a go at creating a melody for a jhalla section of Indian classical music.

Pause the video now, and go and create your piece.

Welcome back, I hope you enjoyed creating a melody for the last part of an Indian classical piece.

I wish I could hear it, but please do go and play it to anyone in your household, and pass it onto your teacher.

They're definitely going to want to hear it.

Great work today, and we'll see you for the next fusion lesson.

Bye!.