For quite a long time, I had been equating the western scales with our native south Indian carnatic or Hindustani ragas. It was effortless to learn it that way as a beginner in Guitar back home, when I started playing the Guitar ten years back. Just a few months and then I told myself, "oh there's nothing in this instrument! It doesn't have enough depth like the Veena" - and switched over to Veena, played it for more than five years.. a beauty by itself, I felt completely satisfied and in love with it. After so much of training on it, I kind of somehow got back to playing Guitar again. And all that was taught to me, not to blame the teacher, was that I just had to know two ragas Sankarabharanam & Keeravani plus some rhythms and that is all about a Guitar. It left me unsatisfied. I was sure that there was more to that instrument. Nor was I right when I felt that this instrument doesn't have any depth. It was then very rare to find an authentic place to learn all the Scales appropriately. So what are these Scales after all?? And what makes a raga different from a western scale?? Both Ragas and Scales are simply a combination of musical notes (swaras). Scale is a set of all the notes that are expected or allowed in a particular piece of music. And it is the same in a Raga too, which has a set of swaras of course with extra flavors, slidings and a dominant sequence of notes ascending or descending or both (often called Raga chaayal in the southern part of India). So what is it that's different about a Scale other than the native feel? Is it the same as a Raga? Pls leave your comments if you have an idea. I'll continue it in my next post.
And stay tuned till I work on my next medley of some 90's and 21st century Hindi songs.
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