In Indian music, Alankar or Alamkara means ornaments or adornments. In the context of Indian classical music, the application of an alankar is essentially to embellish or enhance the inherent beauty of the genre. Note transitions play other important roles in the domain of Indian Classical Music. Style, emotions, gharana characteristics, raga characteristics and even the personal characteristics might be embedded in these transitions. Therefore it is very important to objectively categorise these transitions to understand their cognitive implications. With the advent of modern measuring methodologies and statistical tools these tasks are relevant now-a-days.
The Shastras or ancient texts have categorized alankars into two broad groups - Varnalankar and Shabdalankar. The former comprised the varna based alankars of earlier times. The four Varnas, sthayi, arohi, avarohi, and sanchari were arrangements of notes in a particular sequence or four kinds of movements among notes. Sthayi refers to halting at a single note, arohi to an upward movement, avarohi to a downward movement and sanchari is a mixed (upward and downward) movement. This classification of alankars is related to the structural aspect of a raga. In other words, all the extempore variations that a performer created during a performance within the raga and tala limits could be termed as alankar, because these variations embellished and enhanced the beauty of the raga, the tala and the composition. Meends are obviously a subset of all kinds of pitch movements, which appear in Indian music. This is a musical term that refers to a continuous sliding pitch from one melodic note to another. Different kinds of meends, like Ghaseet and Soonth, form an important component in Indian music. These meends may range from a simple span of 2 notes to a whole octave. The basic ones are straightforward, smooth and uni-directional i.e. either ascending or descending. However a complex one may be a combination of both. A second type of meend employs a slight pause on one or more intermediate notes. The undulating meend has an up down or wave-like movement. All these information on meends relate to the cognitive domain.
A note to note transition includes the ending part of the decay [or release] of one note, the beginning and possibly all of the attack of the next note, and whatever connects the two notes. Transitions include a change in pitch, amplitude, and spectrum. The pitch movements in music are seen generally as ornamental embellishments (alankar) only. However, the connoisseurs of the Hindustani music hold that the role of continuous pitch movements including those leading to the establishment of a particular note in a particular environment cannot be neglected for the full development of the aesthetics of a raga. This implies a role of the dynamics of pitch transition in the proper development of the raga in addition to its role as alankar.
Analysis and synthesis of transitions between musical notes are open-ended problems today. While much research has been done on the proper analysis and synthesis of musical timbres, sequence of notes, etc., less attention has been paid to what occurs between successively played notes.
A pitch contour describes a series of relative pitch transitions and an abstraction of a sequence of notes. It has been found to be more significant to listeners in determining melodic similarity, and it also includes rhythm information. In the rendition of Ragas in Indian Classical Music, the used notes, not only their sequences but also the nature of transitions between notes are said to be relevant to characterize the Raga. Understanding the relationship between cognition (which creates appreciation) and the physical events triggering them is one of the important problems in music research.
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Ki bolbo Ranjan da…Every time I read your post… & and gain so much knowledge… Again a great analytical post .. thanks a lot
Nice analysis.
Cognition,conation n affect are the three imp aspects of our psychological make up.Another nice post.Pls read my post To be born again n dnt forget to leave ur comment.