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Orchestration in Indian Music
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na ,na, na, na..” Here the same note ­ Ga (3rd) is being repeated but our chords are changing. We are playing C­Major, E­Minor, C7, before arriving at F­Major. This movement is basically the western way of accompaniment in orchestration. When a note is being repeated at the same place the orchestral movement is changing, the chords are changing while the melody is not. Let us listen to the second line ­ “Punjab sindhu gujarat maratha...”­ here also you hear the same note (5th) is being repeated. Salilda also plays the chords with this line. So, you see there are 6 chords on the same note ! Salilda asks the group to play it again from the beginning. Antara now sings “Jana gana mana” and the orchestra accompanies her with modern chord arrangement. Salilda now explains that this is the technique for modern orchestration ­ how he used “Komal dhaibat” (flattened 6th or 5th ­sharp) and explains that although the song’s melody does not use that note he has used this note in a passing chord (augmented) and he asks the audience if it sounds odd. It sounds fine ! Earlier we discussed that if a note is outside a raag then the purists would be upset but it this case . But in this case we used an alternative chord progression in which one of the chords uses a flattened 6th (in an augmented chord) and it fits in perfectly. But it requires a lot of discipline and practice. I remember when I composed the song “surer ei jhar jharna” for my wife Sabita, I used 3­part harmony. That was more than 30 years ago. At that time many criticised me saying what kind of melody is this ? Three singers singing together in three different melodies ? Can’t they sing in one voice ? They can’t be very good singers ! We had to go through that criticism. But, now thanks to the radio, television etc it is quite common to hear harmony. Especially when we sing in a choir without any harmony it sounds quite dull. Here harmony has become a requirement. 

So, we have become more used to this. Using harmony in orchestration also has become quite common. I will give you a demonstration of this kind of chord progression in of my songs. The song is “aaj noi gun gun gunjon premer” and I am sure you all know this song. I will first show you the chord progression of this song. Antara sings the first part of the song with orchestra and stops.They decide to start again from the prelude and sings upto the end of first antara and then stops. I don’t think there are any conflicts between the western music and our Indian music. A while back I had composed a song based of Mozart’s G minor symphony. Salilda hums the first few bars of the G minor symphony first and then sings the beginning part of “itna na mujhse tu pyar badha” to demonstrate the similarity. So, you see, it sounds quite good and doesn’t really sound alien to our ear. This song became quite popular. I will tell you about another song ­ Manna Dey sang in the film “Do Bigha Zameen”. In this film there is a song “Mausam beetaa jaay”.
It is based on raag bhairavi (​Note: This is where the recording is cut for a short time. What Salilda wanted to demonstrate is his adaptation of Russian Red Army March in this song. He changed just one note in the chorus line of Red Army March by flattening the third (from Ga to komal­Ga) and that fitted perfectly with his song.​) So, you see that there is no conflict here. What is happening right now is that the western classical music is changing rapidly and I think it is approaching the Indian classical music style. The reason is that they are now coming out of their constraints of chord based compositions like the use of major chord or minor chord


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