Notating a Khemta Pad From a Recording
A Class XII student must submit a handwritten swaralipi of a Khemta-tala pad of six matras for the practical examination. He is transcribing from a three-minute-forty-second recording in which the singer sometimes touches Pa as a grace, sometimes holds Ma across three matras, and the mardala player varies the theka in the second half. His draft uses only the letters Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni, draws a bar every six matras, and gives no other information. It has no komal or tivra marks, no octave dots, no indication of sam, tali or khali, no sustain marks and no breath marks. His teacher's comment is: 'Nobody who has not heard the recording could sing from this.' The examination requires the notation to be singable by another student, and the syllabus asks for correct tala marking and a key to the symbols used. He has four days.
1. List the deficiencies in the draft and explain why each would stop another student from singing it.
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The draft fails as a score because it records pitch names but not the information a singer needs to reproduce the music.
- No key to the symbols. The reader cannot tell which marks mean komal, tivra, upper or lower octave.
- No komal or tivra marks. A semitone error changes the raga; in a raga-based pad this is a fatal error, not a detail.
- No octave dots. The reader cannot tell whether a phrase is in the middle or upper register, which changes the whole line.
- No tala numbering, sam, tali or khali. A bar every six matras shows the cycle length but not where the cycle begins or which matras are marked; the entry becomes ambiguous.
- No sustain mark. The held Ma across three matras would be read as three separate Ma, destroying the phrase.
- No grace-note (kan) mark. The touched Pa would either disappear or be given a full matra.
- No text underlay or breath marks. The singer cannot place the syllables or phrase the line.
- No theka line and no tempo indication. The mardala player cannot coordinate, and the speed is unknown.
A notation that needs the recording to be understood is a private memo, not a swaralipi. The exam test is whether another student can sing it without the recording.
2. Rewrite the first line in a notation you define. Include a key, a tala marking, one grace note and one sustained note, and explain your choices.
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I would define the key at the top and then write the line. The pitches below are placeholders for whatever the recording actually gives; the format is the point.
Key: S R G M P D N are shuddha svaras; a small underline = komal; a short vertical stroke above M = tivra Ma; a dot above = upper octave, below = lower octave; a dash (-) = the previous svara is sustained; a small superscript letter = kan (grace) taken before the main note; | separates matras; 1–6 are matra numbers; X marks sam; 0 marks khali.
Tala: Khemta, six matras, sam on matra 1; the theka of my gharana is written on a separate line.
Khemta (6 matras), sam = 1
Matra: X1 2 3 4 5 6
Svara: | S | R | ᴾG | M | P | - |
Text: | (syllable under each svara; mark vowel length)
Mardala: | dha | ta | dha | 0 | ta | dha |
Why: the superscript Pa before Ga shows the grace without giving it a matra; the dash at matra 6 shows that P is held rather than repeated; X and the numbers place the line in the cycle; the text line fixes the vowel. Another student can now sing the skeleton and the mardala player can find sam, which is what the teacher said was missing.
3. What should he do when the recording differs from the textbook version or when the theka varies in the second half?
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He should separate the exam version from the recorded variant.
For the examination he should submit the version taught by his guru and the textbook, because the examiner marks against the syllabus. The recorded variant can be shown in a footnote or on a second line marked 'variant in the recording', with a time stamp. Mixing the two in one line produces a version that belongs to neither and cannot be defended in the viva.
For the varying theka, he should notate the skeletal theka on a separate line and mark the second-half variation as an alternative line or as 'vistaar', with the matra numbers unchanged. The melodic notation should stay on one line; the percussion variation is accompaniment, not a change of tala.
Finally he should test the notation by singing it back with the mardala and by asking a classmate to sing it without hearing the recording. If the classmate stumbles, the fault is in the notation, not in the classmate. He should also check that each line contains a multiple of six matras; a missing or extra matra is the commonest copying error.