Indian Classical Music Research
My main research has been part of the NESTA fellowship and brings into play my many years of experience as a musician and teacher. My training intially was based on the tradition mode of Guru Shishya (student disciple) in which I stayed with my Guru Ustad Vilayat Khan. The research has been important in finding a secure foundation of my knowledge and putting it in a more scientific footing. The main aim of the reasrch has been to clarify many areas of raga music making including melodic and rhythmic aspects and developing technology solutions to help students who cannot devote their life to the demanding Guru Shishya system.
Through this reasearch I would like to share many facets of Indian music making through written material, practical demostrations through audio and video. The material will also be useful as a reference and offer aspirng musicians new tools and choices to add to their already existing devices.
In the course of years I have visited India regularly and taken guidance from maestros like Pandit Ajoy Chakraborty, Pandit Arvind Parikh, Pandit Shankar Ghosh, Professor Yashpaul, Yogesh Shamsi, Pandit Suresh Talwalkar and many others. I conducted workshops, lectures and demnostrations in many cities all over India to test and get feedback on the innovative and technology based music learning.
The musicians and the studenst will be able to downlaod software inluding Tanpuras, Layakari Metronome, Svara Player, Chanda Player, Lesson Planner, Svara Lattice and Harmonic Visualiser and Pitch Detector.
The most significant part of the reserach is about remapping the Ragas, in making an attempt to find links with their roots in the age old Grama Murchanna system and the Rasa theory. A model has been explored with a possible template to revisit Ragas in a fresh way. The advantage of this approach compared to the modern Thaat or Mela system is that this creates a conversation about the asthetics and moods of the ragas. the ancient science of shruti intervals and their effect on the personal Bhava (mood) of the note and the overall rasa (mood, feel, gestalt) when the same notes act as the tonic or root (graha svara). The softwares help in hearing these intervals and also offering new approaches to murchanna based raga choreography.