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Scales Used in TFM

Topic started by SRIKANTH (@ 161.225.48.3) on Tue Jun 9 11:37:13 EDT 1998.
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.

Hi ,

This is a technical topic. The MD's of TFM tend to use same scales for most of their songs.
Raja uses EMinor. He has done many songs in the E scale.
Why ?

AR. uses DMajor - Most of his songs are in the
D scale
Why ?

My answer to this is
Raja's natural singing scale is E ,
AR's is D ....


Shall we analyse more this


Srikanth

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Responses:

• Old responses
  
• From: muthax (@ 12.62.31.62) on: Wed Feb 3 11:10:57 EST 1999
  
  Great,
  RajaG, I will get back to you with more questions.
  Btw, iam learning to play piano (around 4 months now) so many of what u say does make sense to me.
  The problem is, since iam still a araikurai i mix up things and ask lot of questions.
  Last night after reading this thread i wanted to decipher the E Scale and it is this
  E F# G# A B C# D# E.
  Now on this E Scale, srikanth had mentioned earlier, many of IR songs are based.
  I took one from the above sited example - Vellai pura ondru .
  I tried a bit hard on my key board and does this start like this
  
  
  E-G#- F#-G#-F#-G# F#-E-d# d#-E-d#-E-d#-E
  ve-llai pu-ra-on-dru yen-gu-thu kai-yil-va-ra-ma-lae
  
  the d# here is D# of the lower octave.
  
  am i anywhere near the song?
  it did sound sort of okay for me, but may be mana brandhi
  
  
• From: rajaG (@ 207.43.195.202) on: Wed Feb 3 11:31:01 EST 1999
  
  Oops. I must have dozed off when I wrote the notes for the first line of Nila Adhu Vaanaththu. It should read FF,EF,GFG,G#G, for nila, adhu, vaanaththu, mElE.
  
  Sorry.
  
  
  
  
• From: Sriram (@ 1cust77.tnt1.dfw2.da.uu.net) on: Thu Feb 4 01:24:44 EST 1999
  
  http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~subraman/faq/16.html
  
  check this site. go to carnatic music primer..
  its a superb series of article explaining the fundamantals of music..
  
  
• From: Sriram (@ 1cust77.tnt1.dfw2.da.uu.net) on: Thu Feb 4 01:28:18 EST 1999
  
  the article is titled "gentle intro to carnatic music' by Mahadevan Ramesh - series 1 thru 4.
  
  
• From: pae (@ global25.citicorp.com) on: Thu Feb 4 09:33:19 EST 1999
  
  Excellent folks! I learn a lot of fundas in Western. However I am still not clear about Major and Minor scales. IR composing in Eminor Scale and ARR composing in DMajor scale... What are Major and Minor scales ? How do they differ ? TIA.
  
  
• From: rs (@ sungold7.uk.ibm.com) on: Thu Feb 4 12:54:14 EST 1999
  
  Wonderful folks. Learning a lot of things.
  Just a small doubt.
  
  By constant practice, can we increase the scale of our voice.
  
  
• From: rajaG (@ 207.43.195.202) on: Thu Feb 4 16:05:16 EST 1999
  
  rs,
  
  Yes. By constant practice you can increase the range of your voice (go higher and lower). But your talking about a lot of practice here.
  
  pae,
  
  The carnatic swaras are denoted as follows:
  Sa, re, Re, ga, Ga, ma, Ma, Pa, dha, Dha, ni, Ni, Sa...
  The english notes C, D etc are merely different sruthis in which you can decide to postion your Sa for a particular song/tune. However, once you have decided to position your Sa all other notes being relative, have now become fixed. So if E is Sa, then F is re, F# is Re...etc.
  
  Major Chord refers to the relationship of Sa, Ga, Pa (or any permutation thereof ie. Ga, Pa, Sa or Pa, Sa, Ga) where the Sa in reference is the note referred. For example E Major is E, G#, B (or G#,E,B or B,E, G#). Keep in mind that you are playing the 5th semitone (skipping re, Re, ga) and the 8th semitone (skipping ma, Ma), counting Sa as the 1st semitone. Using the same formula, D major is D - Sa, F# - Ga, and A - Pa.
  Quiz: What are the notes for F Major and G# Major?
  
  Minor uses the Sa, ga, Pa relationship ie. 1st, 4th and 8th semitone (as opposed to the Sa, Ga, Pa, ie. 1st, 5th, and 8th semitone relationship of the Major Chord). So E minor is E- Sa(1), G - ga(4), B - Pa(8), and D Minor is D- Sa, F - ga, and A - Pa.
  
  Quiz: What are the notes for B minor?
  
  PS.I am just asking these quizzes for fun. Please don't think I am being a pompous jerk. I am learning these myself too.
  
  
  
• From: pae (@ global22.citicorp.com) on: Thu Feb 4 16:46:02 EST 1999
  
  rajaG, excellent !! Thank you very much.
  
  Quiz: What are the notes for F Major and G# Major?
  Ans: F Major, F(Sa),A(Ga),C(Pa) and for G#Major, G#(Sa), C(Ga), D#(Pa).
  
  Quiz: What are the notes for B minor?
  Ans: B(Sa), D(ga) and F#(Pa)
  
  Correct ?
  
  
• From: muthax (@ 12.62.31.62) on: Thu Feb 4 16:46:30 EST 1999
  
  Quiz with a good intention :))
  
  well
  answers are
  F Major is F A C.
  and G# Major is G# C D#
  
  i will leave someone else to answer B Minor.
  meanwhile one quickie question.
  
  My music teacher once said that with Major chords u can play only happy tunes and Minor chords you can play only sad tunes. is that so?
  
  
• From: muthax (@ 12.62.31.62) on: Thu Feb 4 16:47:50 EST 1999
  
  pae,
  che! ithilayuma photofinish?
  28 seconds la beat paniteengalae!!!
  
  
• From: pae (@ globalb25.citicorp.com) on: Thu Feb 4 17:13:13 EST 1999
  
  muthax:)))
  
  rajaG: Are there songs that do not use Sa,ga,Ga,Pa? If so, then where is the use of Major or Minor ?
  If not all, but one or two of the three (Sa,Ga,Pa - Major) or (Sa,ga,Pa - Minor) notes are used in a song, then how do you say that song is composed with ?
  
  
• From: rajaG (@ 207.43.195.201) on: Thu Feb 4 18:20:35 EST 1999
  
  pae,muthax,
  
  Correct answers!
  
  There are tons of songs (especially some of the classical based songs which do not have ga, Ga or Pa). You cannot have a song without a Sa because that is the basic sruthi on which any song has to be structured. However, in Hindusthani classical in segments of the alaap(anai), a musician may tease the audience by intentionally not touching the Sa for sometime, but has to eventually touch the Sa.
  Before going into songs without ga, Ga, or Pa, one small digression. Keep in mind that merely because a song is set in say C Major, that doesn't mean that it is the only chord played in the song. Depending on the notes played in the song, the possibilities of other Chords played are virtually endless. However, most indian light music songs have 3 to 7 chord combinations within the particular scale. There are of course, exceptions.
  I will discuss this separately if necessary.
  
  Let's take a song based on the raga hindolam. The notes are Sa, ga, ma, dha, ni, Sa. If you are singing/playing this in the C scale, you would use the notes, C, D#, F, G#, A#, C. If you are conversing with a Carnatic musician, you would say that you are singing this in 'oru katta', and the tamboora player will stroke only the sa strings. Clearly, the Pa (G) is not in the song and it will sound out of place. However, in the western notation you obviously cannot say that you are singing this in C minor because the G note is absent. While singing in the C sruthi, the possible standard chords are F minor and G# Major. You will discover that you can comfortably sing hindolam in F minor, eventhough C is the Sa. This is because the Sa, Ma, Dha is a dominant sound in hindolam. Thus you will instuct a keyboard player to give you the F minor chord, and start singing hindolam, but actually you are singing with C as Sa. Note: you are not singing this in the madhyama scale (see earlier discusion).
  Q: What happens if the song does not have ga, or Ga. For example if you wart to sing Sankara, Naadha Sareeraa.. in Madhyamaavathi, the swaras are Sa, Re, ma, Pa, ni, Sa. For the carnatic scale there is no problem. Once again using C as the sruthi, you can sing with the Sa,Pa,Sa sruthi. In the western scale, I normally ask for a Chord called "suspended" which is a sa, ma, pa, sa combination (C,F,G,C). I sing it with this basic scale chord, eventhough most of the time the chords played during the song are B flat Major, or G minor.
  
  I hope my rather long answer explains what you wanted.
  
  
  
• From: pae (@ global25.citicorp.com) on: Fri Feb 5 09:50:36 EST 1999
  
  rajaG, purigirathu. May I say that 'Ga' or 'ga' decides Major or Minor. Now my question: Is chord playing refers to playing only these three notes Sa,Ga (or ga),Pa ?
  
  
• From: muthax (@ 12.62.31.62) on: Fri Feb 5 11:10:39 EST 1999
  
  Rajag, let me try and answer this question with the little knowledge i have. please do correct me wherever i go wrong.
  
  pae, chords are playing 3 different notes at a same time. I have also heard that some complicated(?) compositions have even four chords(can raja clarify this).
  
  When u play C E G at the same time it is C Chord or Cmajor chord. This chord is used extensively used in many compositions/songs.
  When u play B F G it is called G7 chord.
  Again FMajor is nothing but F A C.
  Karnatic music does not have chord system. Chords are found largely in Western Classical. Is that true?
  
  Someone clarify this .....
  My music teacher once said that with Major chords u can play only happy tunes and Minor chords you can play only sad tunes. is that so?
  
  
• From: rajaG (@ 207.43.195.201) on: Fri Feb 5 12:55:38 EST 1999
  
  muthax,
  
  In your first line, did you mean to say that complicated compositions have four (different) chords or did you want to say that there are chords with four differnt notes ? A seventh chord is an example of chord with four different notes. It is essentially any of the following four combinations :
  Sa, Ga, Pa, Ni - Major 7th of Sa
  Sa, Ga, Pa, ni - 7th of Sa
  Sa, ga, Pa, Ni - I do not recall the exact name
  Sa, ga, Pa, ni - Minor 7th of Sa
  
  For example if G is Sa, then G7 chord would be, G, B, D, F and G major 7th would be G, B, D, F#.
  
  For generalization purposes, your music teachers observation is quite true. Ragas also have moods associated with them. Kalyani, Sankarabharanam,etc. are Major scale ragas,and Keeravaani, Sindhu Bhairavi, Sivaranjani, Darnaari Kaanada are Minor scale raagaas and MOST of the songs in these respective raagas fit the happy/sad generalisation. There are ofcourse exceptions, for example NilaavEy vaa, En KaadhalEy are set in Major Scales, and Oorvasi Oorvasi, Raakkammaa Kaiya thattu are in minor scales.
  
  PS. After I wrote that paragraph, I noticed that I could come up with an exception for each category from ARR as well as IR. Phew! Before HCIRF or HCARRF pounce upon me.
  
  
  
• From: Murali Sankar (@ 129.252.23.157) on: Sat Feb 6 16:59:15 EST 1999
  
  Dear Muthax,
  
  Regading your query:
  
  Need not necessarily be so. eg Sangeetha megam. It has a majority of minor chords. But , I feel, that the westerners are not adept in using minor chords for happy songs (exempting Am chord in the scale of C occassionally). I can list a variety of IR's songs which are set in Minors but sound really "happy" and vice - versa (eg - Nilavu thoongum neram).
  
  

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