Music Appraisal

For this unit of composition I chose AoS3-Texture and Melody in conjunction with AoS4- Timbre and Dynamics. The link to my chosen strand of World Music (Indian Raga and Bhangra) is through the use the appropriate use of the generic instruments for this culture such as Sitar and the tabla.

I chose these areas of study because I feel they are relevant to Bhangra songs and also ragas played by famous Indian composers such as Ravi Shankar. After listening to some ragas by Ravi Shankar, I was able to interpret that my choice of AoS was essential for this strand and thus chose these as I believe that I would be able to incorporate these as features in my composition. Due to my choice of Area of Study 3-Texture and melody, I felt it was important to base my melody on a raga, after researching on different raga I chose to use the evening raga in C (which uses the note C E F G B). Using the raga allowed my composition to incorporate the features of classical Indian music with the elements of Bhangra music creating the sound similar to composers such as M.S. Viswanathan and Punjabi M.C. In order to vary the texture of my piece I had different instruments coming in at different times, for example at the start of the piece the drone is played on its own similar to Indian classical music, then I added the sitar in bar 3 to the increase the texture of the piece, after my Alap I added the riff played in then gradually introduced the percussion and finally melody to vary the timbre of the piece.

I used Area of Study4-Timbre and Dynamics; this was predominantly because I was able to use the traditional instruments for the raga, these instruments were sitar which was used to play the melody and the drone, I also used the sitar to play the riff for my piece. I have included a variety of dynamics in my piece, I did this by using contrasting dynamics in each section, for example in my Alap I used the tempo marking of mp and I got to my verse one it was changed to forte for my melody. I also used some crescendos and diminuendos between the dynamic markings to make the transaction smoother. In addition I had used different dynamics for each layer of instruments, throughout my piece my sitar that played the melody had the loudest dynamics as it played the melody which needed to be heard clearly.

When composing I chose strophic form as it was the form used by Bhangra songs such as “mundian to bach ke”, however the first section (Alap) was an improvised section played by the sitar this was to imitate the structure of Indian raga music. After the Alap I added in my percussion instruments to increase the texture of my piece, after 27 bars I introduced the sitar again to play the main melody of the piece. The final recording of my piece was achieved by bouncing the audio file from Logic Pro, even though I was not able to record it live as I would have preferred due to the access of the instruments and also their players however I was able to use the velocity tool and the hyper edit tool to create a sound as realistic as possible

One of the difficulties I faced was the accessibility of the instruments I wanted. I wanted use a tambura for my drone as this is the common instrument the drone is played on,

however Logic Pro did not have this instrument and I overcame this situation by using an alternative for the tambura which was also a sitar but I used the lower pitch notes to still try to make it sound realistic to a drone played on a tambura. One of the other difficulties was that my improvised section at the start was seemed to be out of time, however I felt that being completely in time was constricting the free rhythm that the improvised section of the Indian raga has, in order to overcome thus difficulty I chose to keep the parts of the section in time which allowed the section to have the free and less constricted by the beat.

My composition is successful as it incorporates the elements of Indian classical and Bhangra music in the strand of Word Music. It reflects the features Indian classical music as it uses the evening raga which the melody is built upon however its features of Bhangra music is more dominant as it uses the western percussion instrument which links in clearly with the three note riff that is known is nearly all traditional Bhangra Music