Tune in to the iRagas

When musician Shubha Mudgal,and husband and percussionist Aneesh Pradhan,decided to record Gandhi’s music after listening to him at Bajaa Gajaa 2011– a festival organised by the couple in Pune,they didn’t want to drag Gandhi and his accompanists to a recording studio. “An artiste is an artiste and will perform to the best of his/her ability on most occasions. But sometimes,adjusting to a recording studio is not easy for everyone,and can affect one’s performance,” says Mudgal,who roped in sound engineer Nitin Joshi and converted Gandhi’s temple into a recording studio,bringing equipment such as microphones,sound cards and mixers among other paraphernalia there,and recording relatively unknown bhajans. Gandhi sang “paramparik rachnaye”,touching each note with tenderness,while sitting on a platform in the temple porch. Six months later,as a part of a Ford Foundation project,Mudgal and Pradhan brought out an album titled The Varkaris- Ecstasy Through Music,which had Gandhi’s performances,and made it available on their music label’s website underscorerecords.com and gave it to Gandhi for further use. “The idea of converting a temple into a recording studio gave us the sound we were looking for. Technology has allowed us this kind of result,” says Mudgal,a self-confessed gadget geek.

Indian classical music may have seen changes such as shorter raga structures and preference to showmanship over “playing it perfectly” over the years,but it has been traditionally averse to technology. So much so,that many musicians refused to record their music,which is why there is no record of many brilliant voices and musical notes of the early 19th century,such as that of Alladiya Khan,founder of the Jaipur gharana. He harboured a treasure trove of bandishes,refusing to sing by putting his face in a recording horn used then for a recording,worried it would alter his voice. But now it seems exacting purists have relented to the power and reach of technology.

A variety of classical musicians are now experimenting with technology,especially in regard to instruments. Like Delhi-based sarod players Amaan Ali Khan and Ayaan Ali Khan,who unveiled this February a modified version of their sarod,called “erod”,as it’s fixed with electronic processors. Designed by lute-maker Sanjay Rikhi Ram,the erod is more compact than the sarod. Unlike the traditional instrument,it has no neck. And its round base is made of different kinds of imported wood,instead of the goat skin used in the traditional sarod. “The instrument is shorter and lighter,with a volume that can entertain a packed stadium,” says Ram. According to Ayaan,the erod is also “capable of creating multiple sound textures”. The brothers,however,are not dumping the old acoustic sarod. They are planning the first concert with the erod soon will see if the new instrument lives up to its promises.

For Mumbai-based sitar player Niladri Kumar,who invented a “zitar”,an electric version of the acoustic sitar,the experiment has worked. “In the presence of other loud instrument like the drums or the guitar,the sound of my sitar would get drowned. It worked so beautifully that one day Zakir bhai (Hussain),asked me to patent it,” says Kumar about zitar,which looks like a smaller sitar,has less frets,no sympathetic strings and is a regular at Kumar’s concerts.

In fact,collaborative concerts seem to have been the fillip for the technological up-gradation of instruments. London-based sarod player Soumik Datta,who learnt playing the sarod from Buddhadev Das Gupta in Kolkata,says,“I found contemporary collaborations tougher while playing the traditional sarod,and was not happy with the way the sound got lost in ensembles. I was in the search of a new sound that would give me an edge in the collaborative projects. Volume aside,I was searching for a way to create a tone that was both punchy and sweet.” Datta took Prattyush Banerjee’s design of a smaller,electric sarod,and added a combination of mics and pic up mics to it. The result was the first-ever electro-acoustic sarod that saw its first concert in 2009. Dutta can now bring out the traditional sarod sound as well as the ‘processed’ sound ― all from one instrument ― something that helped him in his collaboration with pop singer Beyonce last year. “Beyonce and I did a bluesy improvised piece with a string quartet among others,which went down like a storm,” says Dutta about a sold-out gig at Royal Albert Hall in London.

Instruments haven’t just become compact,or more collaboration-savvy,they’ve turned into convenient phone applications too. Mudgal,who uses an acoustic tanpura on most occasions,also uses an iTanpura,an iPhone application in her riyaaz sessions. There was a time when she had to lug around a tanpura in trains when she would travel for concerts and that was cumbersome. She says that she has always preferred an acoustic tanpura but iTanpura is a very good option if she is travelling and for those who don’t know how to tune a tanpura. Manufactured by Prasad Upasani,a software engineer based in the US,using digitally recorded,high-fidelity samples of actual tanpura sound,the iTanpura was launched in 2009,and is being downloaded and used across the globe by the users of iPhone and iTouch. “One does not really have to lug around a tanpura or hunt for an electrical socket for the electric tanpura every time. The iTanpura is a portable solution that can run for up to 10 hours on a single charge,” says Upasani. Dutta,a regular user of the application for his riyaz,says the sound samples on the iTanpura are “beautiful” and it is the “easiest thing to hook them up into the PA system at concerts”. It also saves him the “pain” of sitting in the background strumming on the five strings.

Another musical app that’s caught the fancy of Hindustani classical musicians is the Amazing Slow Downer,a software that can slow down the speed of a musical piece from 20 per cent to 200 per cent without changing the pitch. An iTtunes application,available for $14.99,the rather expensive software id being used by many students of Indian classical music to slow down a particular piece and understand every shruti that goes into it. It is an iTunes application made by one of their software developers. Pune-based vocalist Vishal Kashalkar’s Illinois-based students– Mansi Joshi and Sameer Bildikar are regular users of this software.

The Internet is also changing the way classical music is learnt. Instead of day-long sessions with the pandits and the ustads in their homes,music lessons are now transmitted through the Web. Like Kumar,who teaches students in the US the nuances of Indian classical music over Skype. “I am not sure how a more senior generation of classical musicians would look at this. If you pick up a wrong style or a particular besur due to a bad connection,it is difficult to get rid of it,” he says about virtual classrooms over video conferencing. As intricate alaaps and taans stream through the Web,the Internet seems to be the new gurukul for overseas students. But it comes with its own set of problems. “The bandwidth is really low sometimes,while on other occasions static or echoes can be a problem. There are times when audio does not work and one watches a soundless video,” says Bildikar,who takes Skype lessons from Kashalkar.

Legendary sarod player,Ustad Ali Akbar Khan had once said,“If you practice for 10 years,you may begin to please yourself,after 20 years,you may become a performer and please the audience,after 30 years,you may please even your guru,but you must practice for many more years before you finally become a true artist ― then you may please even God.” Khan,as a young boy,was beaten black and blue by his father,guru and founder of Maihar gharana,Ustad Alauddin Khan,when the komal rishabh (mild-pitched re) in raga Bhairavi turned into teevra (sharper and high-pitched version) rishabh for some seconds. But the new generation of musicians is looking at a balance between traditional and technology. “The ability to balance between the traditional and the contemporary styles of playing is probably going to be the most challenging aspect,” says Datta.