Carnatic music
Carnatic music is a traditional music form in South India. With roots back to Hindu scriptures, the mode of learning Carnatic music is rooted in oral traditions with rote learning, imitation, and repetition.
The beginnings
Carnatic music stems from the Vedas, ancient Hindu scriptures on the way of life. The pedagogical practice took roots in the gurukul system, where students of temple priests would live with their teacher to orally and aurally learn the prayers and way of life. Musicians adopted this into Carnatic lessons, and it is still the way the majority of Carnatic lessons are taught.
The basis of lessons is listen, imitate, repeat. Students listen to what their teacher sings, and repeat until the teacher deems that the pitches and lyrics are accurate before moving on. Regardless of whether the student is an instrumentalist or not, singing and vocalizing the pitches will always come first, to internalize the shruti (pitch) before putting it on an instrument.
The music
All performances and lessons take place with a tanpura, or drone, playing in the background. Originally a stringed instrument, there are now electronic versions of tanpuras as audios on apps or a shruti box, a plug in device that will play the tanpura.
The raagas, or melodic frameworks that songs are based off of, form the melodic structure of Carnatic music. There are 72 full scale raagas, called melakartha raagams. Each raaga has specific microtonal embellishments, called gamakkam, that musicians have to place exactly within the drone of the tanpura. The singing + microtonal embellishments + different intervallic raagas sung over a drone creates high pitch precision and acuity in Carnatic musicians.
why is this important
Intonation is a constant work-in-progress. As flutists, we need aural acuity when tuning and a quick reaction time to adjust the tuning. Incorporating exercises rooted in Carnatic music can aid in that process, forcing listeners to hear and match what they’re playing first through singing, before writing anything down.