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Music lessons edited by great music composer Nisar Bazmi |
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Now free harmonium and keyboard lessons in Indian and Desi Style available online. Harmonium lessons in desi music. Eessentials of
harmonium in western style. indian keyboard lesson. |
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Harmonium
is a keyboard, and so these lessons apply equally to the harmonium as well as to the electronic synthesizer keyboard. The important difference
is that you can - and do play the electronic keyboard with your LEFT hand also; but for harmonium, your left hand is used in pumping the bellows to force air under pressure into the
inside of the harmonium. In keyboard
our left hand is used for chords. An ordinary keyboard is sufficient
to master all the lessons that will follow. If you already have a
keyboard, you do not need to buy anything else as of now. For solo
performances, you can use a synthesizer keyboard or a harmonium,
depending upon your taste, convenience and availability. Harmonium
traditionally suits better for accompaniment during performance of
Ghazals, Thumri, Indo Pakistani classical music, and some other
types of Indian music. For accompaniment to movie songs, and all varieties of songs, the synthesizer keyboard is the preferred choice. Keyboard offer a wide variety of instrument sounds.
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The instrument sound you choose is called a
voice. Before you play a song, choose a voice that you like.Practice selecting different voices, and remember the setting for the ones you prefer. Look your keyboard owner's manual to help you. When
you play the songs you can use any sound you wish. The rhythm controls provide drum beats to play along with. These rhythm beats are also called styles.. The drum rhythms can be changed to suit
the kind of song you are playing. You will also find tabla styles like kehrva,
dadra, jhaptaal with my book. If you have a keyboard equipped with
floppy drive then you may copy these styles in your keyboard user
memory. Melody keys are
used to play the tune of the song. Use your right hand. The
chord keys are used to play along with the melody with your left hand.
This make the song sound full and beautiful. If you do not know
how to play chords then you may use auto chord along with the melody.
Learning Keyboard in Desi
Style
The article here is to teach
you keyboard in Desi Style and in the end you will be able to play
Indian and Pakistani film songs. Harmonium, keyboard and synthesizer
keyboard are taken to mean the same thing, and are called simply the
"keyboard". The notations are used to describe the
keys on the keyboard: For convenience, the reference note, called the
tonic or the key or the Sa, is assumed to be the first white key,
indicated in the diagram by the letter "S". If you want to
sing you may assign any key as "Sa", according to your voice
scale. The technique how to assign any key as "Sa" in a
sargam (seven sur) will be explained in detail in Sargam section
this book.
In this article the
fingering of keyboard are also used in harmonium learning. We will
assign same fingers in keyboard as
well as harmonium so, that we will not face any difficulty if we play
both instruments. Most people who play harmonium are not able to play
keyboard perfectly. But now you will be able to play both instruments
with ease
Keyboard And Computer Music
Music
can be defined as collection of small pieces of regular sound played
at predefined time interval. It is the small water droplets that make the ocean, like wise
music is also an ocean that is made up of small parts, it is called
“note”. An ingenious collection of these notes played over a
period of time results in a melody which could be a Mehdi Hassan
or A . Rahman song. Hence both western and Indian or
for that matter any form of regular music has a set of basic notes from which they grow,
something like alphabets. There
is new concept evolving called “computer
music” where a musician explores beyond the basic
notes that are defined in music. In cakewalk
it is
possible to explore beyond basics. Today almost all the keyboards are
computerized and produce MIDI music. MIDI means musical
instruments
digital interface. Midi music is editable in computer or MIDI
keyboards.
Let
us see more on Notes. “Notes” what
are they? Note can be
technically explained as a sound frequency. Actually the sound that is
produced when you press a key on musical keyboard is called as
“NOTE”. It does
not
matter if you press the white key or the black key. Each key plays a
predefined frequency. A frequency is number of cycles per second. The note gets its shape by the amount of time
you hold down the key and release it.
This is called the note length or duration.
Hence to make a “tune” or a “melody” or “song” you should play a bunch of these notes at proper duration and
length. Before going more into it, let us explore the keyboard.
This is called the note length or duration.
Western
Music Notes Verses Indian
Before we can learn how to play
scales chords and various progressions it is vital that we
learn the notes on keyboard and how they relate
to each other. The best way to describe the notes on the keyboard
is by comparing them to the notes of the alphabets. The first seven notes of the
keyboard are ( A - B - C - D -E - F - G ). Each note differ with
each other in sound. Notice
that the seven notes of keyboard repeat themselves over and over
again. The notes sounds the same but the pitch differs. For
example if you play C and move to the right until you
find the
next C, you will notice that if you
play them simultaneously, both
notes sounds the same but one is higher than the other
Please read
carefully:
Middle C marks the center of
the keyboard. As you will notice the C Major is the easiest and
simplest scale of the twelve. In C Major Scale you may play the
song "Ik pyar kaa nagma hai". It consists all the
white
keys from any starting C to the next octave
C in western
system. If we start thaat bilawal
from white middle key 'C' then the bilawal thaat will become
C major
Scale of western music. Bilawal is same as
Cmaj. This is the
secret of Desi Style learning. You can play all the
songs of Raga
and Thaat Bilawal in Western Scale too.
A standard semi professional
music keyboard has 48 keys. You
will see 4 sets of 12 keys. This
12 set of notes is technically called an octave. Why 12,
why not 13?, Good question. The aim of this article is to keep it
simple; Western is based on logarithmic division. Read the
information below, and try to remember it.
You can start playing Indian or Pakistani song from any
note. And starting
note will always become our reference note or Sa. Remaining notes
will be arranged according to Thaat or scale of the song. It is
easy to start our hindi
scale or thaat from black key.
In western music also, Fifth
note from C is as 5th . In Indian music “Sa” note
is based on your reference note or the key you selected for
starting point as Sa. You can start playing Indian or Pakistani
song from any note. And
starting note will always become our reference note or
Sa. Remaining notes will be arranged according
to Thaat or scale of
the song. We can further go in deep by playing song in raga of
that particular thaat.
In the western music system the “C note” itself does
not change and “scales”
denotes the pitch changes. Western music system has an
“absolute” naming for the keys whereas in Indian the
notation is “relative. Desi music have combined both. In the seven tone-scale the second, third,
fourth, sixth, and seventh notes can
be sharp or flat, making up
the twelve notes in the Western scale. However, ragas can specify
microtonal changes to this scale: a flatter second, a sharper
seventh, and so forth. Furthermore, such variations can occur
between styles, performers or simply follow the mood of the
performer. There is no absolute pitch; instead, each performance
simply picks a ground note, and the other scale degrees follow
relative to the ground note.
Note:
“Sa” does not “map” always onto “C”.
It could start
at F and still form a S R G M PD N scale in which case the
corresponding western notes also change.
In the western music system the “C note” itself does
not change and “scales”
denotes the pitch changes. Thus Western music system has an
“absolute” naming for the keys whereas in Indian the
notation is “relative. Presently you may relate the “Sa” of
Indian to “C” of Western which is fortunately identical
to each other . A
Scale is a set of 7 notes in a proper order and interval. Just
remember this, a scale is set of 7 notes with predefined
intervals. The distance between each note is called as interval.
It is true that scales
and ragas are not same. You have
learned about raga in raga section of the book. Apart from
having seven different notes, there are not many similarities.
There is a huge difference between a scale and raga in tonal
quality or the sound density.
Raga
has many dimensions to it. First,
it has an emotional overtone.
Just mere traversing SA to SA can be called as a major
scale or Cmaj. Though the notes and intervals are just the same. A
raga can have 4 or more notes with intervals. This kind of
reduction of notes in a scale is called as modes in Western
classical music. Experts believe proper training is required to
play Ragas fluently. This comes by good practice and understanding
of note usage. A western trained top-notch musician will be able
play a phrase of 1/64 note at a good speed but will find it
difficult to play raga without proper training. It is the reason
that western music is fast. Indian music is melodic in nature
while western music is harmonic in nature. Chords produce harmony.
I hope now you will be ready to believe that it is not possible to
play Indian songs with western training. Desi Style is the mixture
of Western & Indian.
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First White Key as our
Sa

Diagram 1On the keyboard, the area S
through N is called a saptk (an octave). There are three octaves: the Madh
(middle), the Mandr (lower), and the Taar (higher/upper). The
lower octave is situated to the left of the middle; the upper octave
is situated to the right of the middle octave. Again, this is clearly
shown in the diagram.
A note belonging to the
middle octave has no sign when represented on the paper; for example,
the P of the middle octave is represented simply as: P. The note
belonging to the lower octave has an apostrophe to its LEFT. Thus, for
example, the P in the lower octave is represented as: 'P. The note
belonging to the higher octave has an apostrophe to its RIGHT. Thus,
for example, the P in the higher octave is represented as: P'.
The 36 keys represent the notes in all three octaves:
*In
the following diagram 'S means lower octave or saptk note (
left side of middle octave) and S' means higher octave or saptk
note of harmonium or keyboard ( right side of middle octave). The
rule of achal tewar komal will apply to all three diagrams in this
page.
(Lower octave or Mandr)
'S,
'r, 'R,
'g, 'G,
'm, 'M, 'P,
'd, 'D,
'n, 'N
(Middle octave or
Madh)
S,
r, R, g, G,
m, M,
P, d, D,
n, N
(Higher octave
or Taar)
S', r', R',
g', G', m', M', P',
d', D', n',
N'.
First Black Key Selected As Our Sa

Diagram
2
There
may be five saptk in a keyboard. The saptk to the left of the
keyboard is for playing chords and to the extreme right is one more Taar
saptk but with very sharp voice. We can also play melody
in chords saptk but the sound of melody will show base sound. The
chords saptk and extra Taar saptk to the right side is not
perfect for playing song melody. In a complete saptk there are 12 notes which
are seven white keys and five black keys. So, in a harmonium mostly
there are three saptk and 36 keys but in a professional keyboard
there are mostly five or four saptk and 60-48 notes. It
should be noted that while playing songs you will only deal with three
saptk and for chords you will use chords saptk which is located to
the extreme right of keyboard. Most of the songs starts in Madh or
middle saptk.
To summarize:
Achal
or Qyme Swar: (the swar without saathi swar) notes are notated as S and P Tiver
(sharp):
These notes
are noted as R,G,M,D,N and shown in capital. Komal (flat):
These
notes are notated as
r, g,m, d, n & are shown in small letters. Achal swar Sa and
Pa are also shown in capital letters. All notes belong to Madh-saptak by default;
they have no sign of apostrophe. Notes of Mandar saptak are preceded by ' sign of apostrophe, and
notes of Taar-saptak are succeeded by ' sign
apostrophe. Lastly, a comma ( , ) represents a pause between
notes. It is important that you learn
saptak notes e.g achal, komal and tiver system for playing
perfect music with thaat or ragas.
Free harmonium lessons
with raga based songs, sargam and notations available. Harmonium and Sargam e.books are available. Free harmonium lessons, desi music lessons, harmonium online, Pakistani music tutors |
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