![]() When parents bring two year old kids to him, he points to another kid, sings pa-pa and asks the kid to repeat. Over the years, I’ve seen Shashi sir teach students with varying capabilities. In spite of learning for six years from mama, I’d made little progress, whereas within four years of learning from Shashi sir, I became a concert musician, last year. Within a month of starting to learn from Shashi sir, people were telling me I’d suddenly become a better singer! I was (and am) so obsessed with carnatic music that there were times when I’d practise 18 hours a day. In a few days, I mustered my guts and managed to tell mama that I was quitting! While I loved going to Shashi sir’s classes, I could hardly sit through mama’s classes. The two classes were in stark contrast to each other. (The first line in mAyAmaLavagauLa, the second in hEmavati, the third in mAyAmALavagauLa and so on.)įor a few days after starting to learn from Shashi sir, I continued learning from the mama. Once that was done, I had to sing the lines alternately in mAyamALavagauLa and hEmavati. When he taught the alankarams (I did not learn the varisais from him, but I learnt the 35 alankarams) he would sing the first line, and I had to build the pattern myself. Many musicians have learnt these exercises from him.)įor every song, he’d sing the swaram for each sangathi and make me repeat both the swaram and the sangathi. (He’s designed separate exercises for every aspect of the voice – for good range, pronounciation, shruthi shuddham, etc. And they were so interesting that I’d practise the voice culture exercises alone for 5-6 hours every day. For the next six months, I learnt only simple songs and voice culture exercises. The first song Shashi sir taught me was ‘guru mUrtE bahu kIrtE’ in shankarAbharaNam. He made no effort to sing the swaras for the sangathis, with the result that I could not get the frequencies right when they were sung as swarams, sans the gamakams. When I was unable to reproduce a sangathi, the mama I’d learnt from earlier would merely repeat it until I got it approximately right. I was unable to identify the swarams of sangathis, because I’d been taught to mug sangathis all along. This was because, as I discovered in the classes that followed, my swara gnanam was nill. I had trouble getting the frequencies right! That was a huge revelation for me – I’d done all the varisais, I’d done the alankarams, geethams, about 15 varnams, 80 kritis, half a dozen alapanas (and, I wasn’t a bad singer), yet I wasn’t able to get simple swara phrases right! Instead, at the end of the song, he sang simple korvais, like ‘sa ri1 ga3 ma1 pa ma1 ga3 ri1 ni2 da2 pa ma2 pa da2 pa ga2 ma1 da1 pa ma1 ga2 ri2 pa da2 ni3 Sa Ri1 Sa ni3’ and asked me to repeat them. At the end of my very first class with him, my perception of music changed completely.įirst, he asked me to sing something – I sang ‘telisirAma’ in pUrNacandrika. The obsession phase: After I finished my Std. I learnt about 80-90 kritis from this mama.Ĥ. I didn’t tell my parents that I wanted to quit music class, because I was afraid of earning their wrath. When my mom dragged me along to concerts, it was sheer torture. The hatred phase: After a year, I switched to a mama, from whom I learnt for about six years. I never managed to remember them, so I wrote pages after pages after imposition, which read like this:Ģ9 – Dheerashankarabharanam 28 – Harikambhoji 15 – Mayamalavagaulaģ. She also made us mug the names of the melakarthas. I likened music to history and geography, so I mugged the varisais. Like all other teachers, she started with the varisais. The indifferent phase: I got my first music teacher when I was eight years old. As a kid, I thought carnatic music was just sa-ri-ga-ma-pa-da-ni – nevertheless, I was intrigued.Ģ. The mildly curious phase: When I was about two years old, I started reciting ( not singing, because I had no idea about shruthi, the frequencies of the notes, etc) sa-ri-ga-ma, because my mom loves carnatic music and she sings well. My relationship with carnatic music has been through four distinct phases:ġ. There’s a lot I have to say on this topic – I’ll begin with how I started learning. ![]() He raises many pertinent questions – “Why do we start with sarali varisais? Why not a krithi? Why not teach the basics through the krithi or krithis? Could this be a reason why a lot of kids completely abandon CM once they enter their teenage or become adults? Are there any teachers who teach this way? How have they fared in this attempt?” This post is in response to Shripathi’s post on Pedagogical Techniques in Carnatic music in his blog.
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