Alankars

Alankars are practice patterns sung in sargam, on the note names Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni. Most take a short phrase, the cell, climb it one step at a time up the scale and mirror it on the way down; a palta is a repeating or turning exercise of the same practical family. This series holds Bhatkhande's twenty alankars, twenty-two paltas, the twenty-four merukhand orders of four notes, and the ten thaats to sing them in. Every pattern is written out and plays on the harmonium beside the text, in any thaat.

The first page of the first book

Bhatkhande's Kramik Pustak Malika, part 1, prints twenty numbered alankars in lessons 5 and 6, on pages 12 and 13, ten to a lesson and most of them going up only. The twenty here follow those pages, not an online copy that drifts from them.

A pattern is a rule

A long written line usually follows one instruction, to start the cell again one step higher.

The climb stops at the phrase whose last note is upper Sa, not the first phrase to touch it. Number 5 steps out to a neighbour and back, so its last phrase starts on upper Sa and touches the Re above. Check that Re before choosing a starting pitch.

Down is up in a mirror

Practise the avaroha, the way down, apart from the aroha, the way up. The app's descent mirrors the cell from upper Sa and keeps its shape; it is not the written ascent read backwards.

Number 15 is printed going down only, opening on a repeated upper note, so its ascent here is the app's mirror of that descent.

Few, and well

A beginner can arrive wanting ragas and leave an hour later still on three neighbouring notes, with one return that now lands exactly instead of nearly.

Copies of Prayag Sangeet Samiti's syllabus on teaching sites ask for ten simple alankars in the first year, in sargam and in aakar, sung on an open “aa”. The second year asks for harder ones, the third for alankars within the taal, the rhythmic cycle, at dugun and chaugun, double and fourfold note density. A copy of the Gandharva syllabus places alankars in the early years without naming ten.

That is a course. A morning's riyaz, the daily practice, needs two or three patterns sung in tune, with time to notice a drifting repeat, a rushed return or a breath taken in the same awkward place twice.

Three notes in a cycle of four

Speak a three-note cell against four steady counts on your fingers. The phrases begin on counts one, four, three and two and meet the count again after twelve notes; neither voice nor hand should move the other's boundary.

A matra is one counted unit of the taal. Resona sets three-note cells in Dadra's six matras and five-note cells in Jhaptaal's ten, two phrases to a cycle.

The same alankar in another thaat

Change the scale setting and the steps stay while their pitches change. A thaat is the seven-note scale used here. Bilawal has every note shuddha, unaltered, and the others bring in komal, lowered, forms of Re, Ga, Dha or Ni, or tivra Ma, the raised Ma.

Bhatkhande's ten thaats are a teaching selection from the thirty-two scales those rules allow. The South's seventy-two melakartas give the full count under a broader allowance, six choices each for Re with Ga and for Dha with Ni, and two forms of Ma.

A thaat is not a raga's grammar. The threes moved into Bhairav are an exercise in Bhairav thaat, not a licence to call each phrase raga Bhairav.

What a harmonium cannot teach you

A harmonium key checks a pitch and holds a duration steady; what the voice does between the keys is learnt elsewhere.

Meend, the glide between notes, and andolan, a slow oscillation around one, cannot come from fixed keys, and the playback is no guide to a raga's own intonation. Take that movement from a teacher or a vocal demonstration, and leave time for singing without the keys.

How to use these pages

Press play first. Hear the cell and where it begins again, join in sargam, then sing the same lengths in aakar, slowing down if the open vowel breaks the pattern.

In a taal table one matra is one cell and a bar marks a vibhag, a division of the cycle, with the clap and wave signs beneath. Sam is the cycle's first point; khali is its marked wave, not a missing count. The app button opens the pattern where you can change its thaat, slow it down, read it larger and add it to your own list.

Three to try first

Begin with three. The double notes of number 2 ask the second sound to keep the first one's pitch without a fresh push of air; the threes of number 7 restart one step higher, at a join where familiarity can turn into guessing.

The skip of number 9 lands on a note heard in advance, with the step between left out, so take it slower than seems necessary. Together the three make a short riyaz with time to sing each once without playback.