The Tanpura – The Backbone of Carnatic Music:
We often hear the terms like Shruti, pitch etc right? Carnatic music is completely built up on shruti. Shruti is a base for singing or playing any instrument. Each individual will have his/her natural pitch setting. For Male singers the pitch usually falls in C to C# and for female singers it varies from F to A usually. In order to help and identify the pitch and to stay aligned with the natural pitch, we would need a support right? The support is given by an instrument called Tanpura.
The Tanpura is the string based musical instrument which is used to set the pitch or the scale range. The Carnatic music singers align their pitch /shruti based on the tanpura.
Imagine that the sound from a tanpura as a Language (If you ask me, I will call it as a divine Language 😊). To understand and to start a communication with the tanpura, we should explore our natural pitch. A guru/teacher will help to identify the pitch.
To begin with there are few basics exercises are being
taught in Carnatic Music to get know the Language of Tanpura. For each student,
it will take ample amount of time to understand how to listen and to align with tanpura
while singing.
Imagine Tanpura and singing as two parallel tracks (Twin Tracks) which goes
hand in hand. At one point of time, a singer can be able to merge with
the tanpura sound and sing comfortably within the range.
A good music is always aligned with the pitch. Even if the
person is unaware of this pitch concept, he can always enjoy and appreciate a good song. That’s the specialty of human ears 😊
The tanpura is even available as a Electronic Shruti box and also as a Tanpura App. As soon as we switch on the shruti box it will start making sounds "P-S-S-S" and play continuously as a loop.
S – Middle Octave
S – Again Middle Octave
S – Lower Octave
With the reference from Tanpura sound, we can start singing Sa (Base Shruti) and add other swaras to set our pitch. It is completely mind and tanpura connection which happens internally and our vocal cords are able to produce the same sound as that of Sa from the Tanpura box. If you ask anyone to explain it, it will be pretty tricky to brief. That is the beauty of our internal brain mechanism which happens without our intervention or support. Our brain is able to match the frequency which travels through the ears from the Tanpura and able to reproduce the same via vocal cords. Human body will itself change as a musical instrument and resonate with the tanpura. How beautiful is it!
Next our job to train our vocal cards to align with the pitch
always. For that purpose, all those basic exercises come in handy.
When we are able to get the Tanpura, Mind and body
connection, The combo will take song to the next level. Resonate with tanpura
is what matters for any good singer 😊
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