October 27 2008
Episode 18: Carnatic Music Terms — Shruti
We discuss another important term: Shruti or pitch. We also explain the relative nature of this concept in Carnatic music- and how a singer identifies the pitch that is best suited to his or her voice. Finally, we showcase a couple of snippets by Dr. M. Balamurali Krishna who is well known, among numerous other things, for his exemplary capacity to easily sing across several octaves.
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krishna s said,
April 8, 2009 @ 1:34 am
Unbelievable perfection. Great effort to deliver the complicated music notations for the benefit of aspiring people. Indeed a great effort. I really enjoyed the posts. sure..its an asset for posterity.
Sunny said,
June 8, 2011 @ 2:53 pm
I discovered your site a few days back and I cannot thank you enough for the very informative podcasts for a newbie like me…
I’ll be listening to all your podcasts.
Keep up the great work…
Lakshman said,
June 12, 2011 @ 2:06 am
The work done by Raagarasika team Devesh and Vidya is commendable. Please keep it flowing to support this great art.
I have a question for Vidya on the Episodes 18 and 19.
Preamble: Guitarists use a device called as electronic tuner (a clip on device) to check if their instrument is in tune with the rest of the Orchestra. What it shows is a letter ‘A’ when the instrument is perfectly tuned. It is said that the default value of the tuner is 440HZ. However, it could be set to other frequencies as well. There are many models of tuners available on www.stewmac.com This device is supposed to help even novices in tuning the instrument right!
Question: If the Thambura, to which this electronic tuner is clipped on, has 4 strings playing Sa and Pa, how does the tuner pick the right Sa String and not the others? Is it possible to use the electronic tuner to set the Thambura to intermediate frequencies between A to F other than the standard incremental steps from C to A. If some one is setting their Aadhara Shadjam to one of the letters A to F, do we loose the flexibility of setting the ideal sruthi that is best suited to the individual’s voice since the frequencies of A to F are set numbers?
Thanks for your clarification.
Regards, Lakshman Prasad
Vidya Subramanian said,
August 11, 2011 @ 2:15 am
Thanks for your feedback everyone!
Lakshman, I am not familiar with the electric tuner that you’ve mentioned. In general, we use a manual pitch pipe to tune the tambura. A Carnatic musician should absolutely not be contrained by preset points on the tuner as far as the choice of fundamental (adhaara shadjam) goes. For eg., I generally use “A” as my fundamental; on days when my voice is not at its best, I may lower the sruti by a small margin, such that my fundamental is somewhere between G# and A. This is perfectly acceptable. Essentially, we first tune the 2 Sa strings to the chosen fundamental and then match the lower octave Sa and Pa to this fundamental. Hope this helps!
Vidya Subramanian