Most classical musicians, whether in orchestral or ensemble situations, will have to face a piece by composers such as Ligeti, Messiaen, Varèse or Xenakis, while improvisers face music influenced by Dave Holland, Steve Coleman, Aka Moon, Weather Report, Irakere or elements from the Balkans, India, Africa or Cuba. Rafael Reina argues that today’s music demands a new approach to rhythmical training, a training that will provide musicians with the necessary tools to face, with accuracy, more varied and complex rhythmical concepts, while keeping the emotional content. Reina uses the architecture of the South Indian Karnatic rhythmical system to enhance and radically change the teaching of rhythmical solfege at a higher education level and demonstrates how this learning can influence the creation and interpretation of complex contemporary classical and jazz music. The book is designed for classical and jazz performers as well as creators, be they composers or improvisers, and is a clear and complete guide that will enable future solfege teachers and students to use these techniques and their methodology to greatly improve their rhythmical skills. An accompanying website of audio examples helps to explain each technique. For examples of composed and improvised pieces by students who have studied this book, as well as concerts by highly acclaimed karnatic musicians, please copy this link to your browser: http://www.contemporary-music-through-non-western-techniques.com/pages/1587-video-recordings

“I too have a dream”, says V.S. Narasimhan, author of this book. Someday the sound of St. Thyagaraja’s compositions should be heard in places like Carnegie Hall! It is my desire and vision that cello should become a prominent instrument of Carnatic music both as solo and accompanying instrument just as the violin is. The grandeur of the tone of a cello in Carnatic music is something I hear in my head. Similarly bass players could incorporate Carnatic music ornamentation techniques. Viola should also become a featured component of Carnatic music as a solo and as accompaniment. If these instruments which cover a wide range of frequencies get into the hands of skillful artists, the result would be a novel symphonic style of arrangement that would gain a broader international audience and would be a transformative event bringing new dimensions to Carnatic music. What I hear in these tracks is the voice on the other side of the world, seemingly divergent yet at the same time oddly familiar, using the same classic instrumentation to provide yet another compelling new musical paradigm in the continuing evolution of the string quartet form. One can only wonder what Papa Haydn would have thought if somehow by a miracle of time travel he were to hear this music!…Grammy award winner, David Balakrishnan, Founder/ Member of Turtle Island String Quartet: Together, the musicians of the Madras String Quartet played authentic, grace oriented Carnatic music, setting off its beauty against the harmonic richness of the Western classical idiom. It was beautiful. Bangalore Mirror, March 1, 2010 A Capella twist to Thyagaraja kriti “Brova Bharamma” gets a new sound, thanks to ace violinist V. S. Narasimhan The Hindu, Chennai, Friday, July 22, 2016

This Is An Indispensable And Enriching Reference Work For The Connoisseur, Practising Musician, Interested Amateur, Impresario Teacher And Student.

Solkattu, the spoken rhythms and patterns of hand-clapping used by all musicians and dancers in the classical traditions of South India, is a subject of worldwide interest—but until now there has not been a textbook for students new to the practice. Designed especially for classroom use in a Western setting, the manual begins with rudimentary lessons in the simplest South Indian tala, or metric cycle, and proceeds step-by-step into more challenging material. The book then provides lessons in the eight-beat adi tala, arranged so that by the end, students will have learned a full percussion piece they can perform as an ensemble. Solkattu Manual includes web links to video featuring performances of all 150 lessons, and full performances of all three of the outlined small-ensemble pieces. Ideal for courses in world music and general musicianship, as well as independent study. Book lies flat for easy use.

This book deals with the production of knowledge about music and the related institution-building process in south India. It also examines the role of identity, imagination, nationalism, and patronage in the development of musical tradition in south India.

Offering a broad perspective of the philosophy, theory, and aesthetics of early Indian music and musical ideology, this study makes a unique contribution to our knowledge of the ancient foundations of India's musical culture. Lewis Rowell reconstructs the tunings, scales, modes, rhythms, gestures, formal patterns, and genres of Indian music from Vedic times to the thirteenth century, presenting not so much a history as a thematic analysis and interpretation of India's magnificent musical heritage. In Indian culture, music forms an integral part of a broad framework of ideas that includes philosophy, cosmology, religion, literature, and science. Rowell works with the known theoretical treatises and the oral tradition in an effort to place the technical details of musical practice in their full cultural context. Many quotations from the original Sanskrit appear here in English translation for the first time, and the necessary technical information is presented in terms accessible to the nonspecialist. These features, combined with Rowell's glossary of Sanskrit terms and extensive bibliography, make Music and Musical Thought in Early India an excellent introduction for the general reader and an indispensable reference for ethnomusicologists, historical musicologists, music theorists, and Indologists.

The Raga Guide is an introduction to Hindustani ragas, the melodic basis for the classical music of Northern India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh.