PSEB Matric Music Vocal cheat sheet

Standard performance sequence: alap (unmetered, no tabla) → jor/nom-tom where applicable → vilambit bandish with vistaar → drut bandish with tans and tihai.

Alankars are patterned exercises (palte) that train swar placement; common forms are straight ascent/descent, vakra (zig-zag), and skip patterns such as Sa-Ga-Re-Ma.

Vistaar in khayal unfolds the raga phrase by phrase: start on vadi or samvadi, expand into aroha and avaroha regions, avoid exposing the aroha of a sampurna-avaroha raga too early.

Bandish structure: sthayi (first line, usually in lower/middle register, anchored on sam) and antara (second line, upper register, touches tar saptak).

Tihai = a phrase repeated three times so the final note lands exactly on sam; the gap between repetitions equals the phrase length.

Meend is a continuous glide between swaras; kan swar is a grace note touched in passing; murki is a fast cluster; gamak is a heavy oscillation - all are ornament (alankar) categories, not raga identity.

In vilambit laya, keep sam audible by marking it with a slight accent or a fresh bol; the tabla player's theka follows the vocalist's laya, not the reverse.

Aroha-avaroha practice should be sung with the correct vakra (crooked) order for ragas like Kafi, Bhairavi and Desh, not as a plain scale.

Swar malika = a composition whose lyric strings together the sargam (Sa Re Ga Ma...) of the raga; used to teach aroha-avaroha and pakad in rhythm.

Lakshan geet = a didactic song whose text literally describes the raga's lakshan: aroha, avaroha, vadi, samvadi, jati, time of day.

Saptak: mandra (lower), madhya (middle), tar (upper); the same swar name recurs in each saptak, distinguished by register only.

Vikrit swar: komal (Re, Ga, Dha, Ni lowered) and tivra (only Ma raised); shuddha swar are the natural seven; Sa and Pa are achala (immovable).

Thaat (Bhatkhande) is a scale of seven notes used for classification; raga is a melodic entity - a thaat is not sung, a raga is.

Laya levels: vilambit (slow, roughly 40-60 bpm), madhya (medium), drut (fast); laya is measured against the tala cycle, not against a metronome alone.

Laya exercise types: barabar (equal), dugun (double speed), tigun (triple), chaugun (quadruple) - dugun fills two matras per beat, tigun three, chaugun four.

Bol-taan and sargam-geet practice should keep sam fixed; if the composition drifts off sam, the laya is wrong even if the notes are correct.

Lakshan of a raga = aroha, avaroha, jati, vadi, samvadi, time of day, and pakad (catch phrase); lakshan geet encodes these in lyric form.

Jati = number of swaras used in aroha vs avaroha: odava (5), shadava (6), sampurna (7); a raga can be e.g. odava-sampurna.

Vadi = most important (king) swar; samvadi = second most important, usually a fourth or fifth from vadi; anuvadi = supporting; vivadi = dissonant/unused.

Pakad is the short phrase that identifies a raga instantly; two ragas with the same scale (e.g. Bhoopali and Deshkar) are separated by pakad and vadi, not by notes.

Time theory: ragas are assigned to prahar (3-hour periods of the day); e.g. Bhoopali and Deshkar are evening, Bhairav is early morning, Malkauns is late night.

Prescribed school ragas typically include Yaman, Bhairav, Bhoopali, Kafi, Khamaj, Bhairavi, Desh, Malkauns, Durga, Asavari - learn each one's vadi, jati and time.

Yaman uses tivra Ma and is sampurna-sampurna, vadi Ga, samvadi Ni, sung in the first prahar of night.

Aroha-avaroha must respect vakra and varjit (omitted) notes: e.g. in Kafi the aroha is often sung straight while the avaroha uses vakra motion.

Matra = one beat unit; avartan = one full cycle of the tala; vibhag = bar/group of matras marked by tali or khali.

Sam = matra 1, the point of resolution, marked by a clap (tali) and written with the symbol ×; it is the most important position in the cycle.

Tali = clapped vibhag (marked 2, 3, 4...); khali = empty/waved vibhag (marked 0) - khali is a lighter, unaccented section.

Teental: 16 matras, 4 vibhag of 4, tali on 1, 5, 13, khali on 9; theka bols Dha Dhin Dhin Dha / Dha Dhin Dhin Dha / Dha Tin Tin Ta / Ta Dhin Dhin Dha.

Jhaptal: 10 matras, 4 vibhag (2+3+2+3), tali on 1, 3, 8, khali on 6.

Ektaal: 12 matras, 6 vibhag of 2, tali on 1, 5, 9, 11, khali on 3 and 7.

Keherwa: 8 matras, 2 vibhag of 4, tali on 1, khali on 5; Dadra: 6 matras, 2 vibhag of 3, tali on 1, khali on 4.

Theka is the standard tabla bol pattern that identifies the tala; it is played identically each avartan so the vocalist can locate sam and khali by ear.

Bhatkhande notation writes shuddha swar as S R G M P D N and uses lowercase or underline conventions for komal swar, with a bar for tivra Ma.

Bhatkhande marks mandra saptak with a dot below the swar and tar saptak with a dot above; the octave is shown by dot position, not by letter case alone.

Bhatkhande notation places a vertical line at each vibhag and a double bar at the end of the avartan; sam is marked with the symbol × and khali with 0.

Bhatkhande uses the numbers 1, 2, 3... above the line to mark tali positions, letting the reader see vibhag and tali together.

Paluskar notation uses Devanagari sargam letters (सा रे ग म प ध नि) and shows komal/tivra by separate symbols rather than the Bhatkhande underline system.

Paluskar notation marks the octave with a dot or dash above/below the Devanagari letter and separates matras with vertical strokes in a similar way to Bhatkhande.

Both systems are relative (movable Sa): the written swar names are degrees of the scale, not fixed pitches; the performer chooses Sa.

In both systems, a dash (-) or blank holds the previous swar across a beat; a slur or curved line indicates meend between two swaras.

When writing a bandish, notate sthayi first, then antara, and place sam of the sthayi on the first matra of the avartan.

Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande (1860-1936): systematised Hindustani ragas into ten thaats, wrote Hindustani Sangeet Paddhati, and organised the first All India Music Conferences.

Vishnu Digambar Paluskar (1872-1931): founded Gandharva Mahavidyalaya (Lahore 1901, later Bombay) and developed the Devanagari notation system used in many schools.

Bhatkhande's ten thaats: Bilawal, Khamaj, Kafi, Asavari, Bhairavi, Kalyan, Marwa, Poorvi, Todi, Bhairav.

Pandit V. D. Paluskar's students include Pandit Vinayakrao Patwardhan and Pandit Omkarnath Thakur, who carried the Paluskar notation and pedagogy forward.

Amir Khusrau (13th century) is traditionally credited with innovations in the sitar/tabla tradition and with early forms of qawwali and tarana; treat such claims as tradition, not documented fact.

Pandit Ravi Shankar and Ustad Allauddin Khan represent the 20th-century spread of Hindustani music internationally; Allauddin Khan founded the Maihar gharana and taught both Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan.

Ustad Amir Khan (Indore gharana) is associated with the slow, expansive vilambit khayal and with the use of the nom-tom alap in khayal.

Pandit Omkarnath Thakur was known for raga Bhairav and for a highly ornamented, emotionally expressive vocal style, and wrote on music theory in Marathi and Hindi.

The Natyashastra (attributed to Bharata, roughly 200 BCE-200 CE) is the earliest surviving Indian treatise covering music, dance and drama; it describes the grama-murchhana system.

Sangeet Ratnakar by Sarangadeva (13th century) codified the prabandha forms and the desi (regional) music that preceded modern raga and khayal.

Dhrupad is the older elite vocal form (four parts: sthayi, antara, sanchari, abhog); khayal emerged in the Mughal court and became dominant in the 18th-19th centuries.

Gharana = a school of performance tracing lineage (parampara) through a guru-shishya chain, with a recognisable style of voice production, ornament and repertoire.

Major khyal gharanas: Gwalior (open, bol-taan rich), Kirana (slow, meend-heavy), Agra (nom-tom, deep vilambit), Jaipur-Atrauli (complex ragas), Patiala, Indore.

Gwalior gharana is regarded as the oldest khayal gharana and is credited with popularising khayal over dhrupad in the 19th century.

Punjabi folk forms: Tappa (fast, swinging, associated with camel drivers' songs of Punjab), Mahiya, Boliyan, Jhummar, Giddha and Bhangra are dance-song traditions of Punjab.

Punjabi folk instruments include the tumbi, algoza, dhol, dholak and chimta; the dhol drives Bhangra rhythm, the tumbi carries the single-string melodic hook.

The 20th century saw institutionalisation of music teaching (universities, Gandharva Mahavidyalaya, Bhatkhande's schools) which shifted transmission from oral parampara to notation-based syllabi.

Traditional classification (Natyashastra): tata (stringed), sushira (wind), avanaddha (membrane/skin), ghana (solid/percussion metal).

Tanpura: four strings, plucked continuously, gives the drone (Sa-Pa or Sa-Ma tuning); it has no rhythm and no frets, and its jawari (bridge) shapes the overtones.

Tabla (right, tuned to Sa) and dagga/bayan (left, tuned by syahi and pressed for pitch bends) provide theka and are the main rhythmic accompaniment for khayal.

Harmonium: free-reed aerophone with a keyboard, now the standard pitch reference and melodic accompaniment; it cannot produce meend as smoothly as a sarangi.

Sarangi: bowed, fretless stringed instrument with sympathetic strings, historically the main accompaniment to vocal music because it can imitate meend and vocal ornament.

Sitar and sarod are solo instruments of the Hindustani tradition; sitar has movable frets and sympathetic strings, sarod is fretless with a metal fingerboard and chikari strings.

Shehnai (double-reed, auspicious/mangal instrument) and bansuri (bamboo transverse flute) are sushira instruments used for both solo and accompaniment.

Santoor (Punjab/Sufi tradition) is a hammered dulcimer with a trapezoid body; Shivkumar Sharma brought it into Hindustani classical music.

Pakhawaj accompanies dhrupad and is the older barrel-shaped drum; tabla is the khayal-era drum, and the two have different bol vocabularies.