UPMSP Intermediate Instrumental Music common mistakes
UPMSP Intermediate Instrumental Music · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
While writing the notation of a prescribed raga, the candidate writes only the ascending (aroha) and descending (avaroha) scale and stops, omitting the pakad, the vadi-samvadi, and the characteristic phrases (chalan) that distinguish the raga.
Candidates memorize ragas as scales because scales are short and easy to test themselves on, and they assume the examiner will accept aroha-avaroha as a complete raga description. In practice the prescribed ragas are distinguished by their movement, and a scale-only answer cannot show that the candidate knows which phrases are permitted.
What to do instead
For each prescribed raga, build a one-page profile with fixed headings: thaat, aroha, avaroha, jati, vadi, samvadi, pakad, time of day, and two or three identifying chalan phrases. Practise writing the pakad in notation from memory, then check it against the textbook. In the exam, answer the raga question in that fixed order so no heading is skipped.
The candidate notates compositions and alankars without marking the sam, tali, khali, and vibhag lines, so the notation reads as an unbroken string of swaras with no tala framework.
Beginners focus on getting the swaras right and treat tala markings as decoration. They also notate line by line by eye rather than counting matras, so the bar lines drift and the composition no longer lines up with the tala.
What to do instead
Before writing any composition, draw the tala grid first: the correct number of matras per vibhag, with sam marked by a cross, khali by a zero, and tali by the appropriate number. Then place one swara per matra cell, using a dash for a held note and brackets for a group of quick notes. Verify by counting each vibhag aloud while pointing at the cells.
The candidate mixes up the four traditional classes of instruments, for example calling a flute a tat vadya because it has a body, or listing the harmonium under sushir vadya without being able to say why, and cannot give the defining criterion for each class.
The classification is learned as a list of instrument names rather than as a rule about how sound is produced. Candidates memorize examples but never learn the test question: is the sound produced by stretched strings, by a stretched membrane, by a solid body, or by a column of air?
What to do instead
Learn the four definitions first and apply them as a sorting test to every instrument named in the syllabus. For each instrument write one line: class, the sounding material, and how it is excited (plucked, bowed, struck, blown). Pay special attention to borderline cases such as the jaltarang and the harmonium, and be ready to justify the class in one sentence.
The candidate answers a question on a prescribed tala by giving only the total number of matras and the name, without the vibhag division, the position of khali, the theka in bols, or the distinction between ekgun and dugun laya.
Tala is revised by clapping the cycle, which gives a feel for the total count but hides the internal structure. Candidates therefore know that jhaptal has ten matras but cannot say it divides 2+3+2+3 or where khali falls.
What to do instead
For every prescribed tala, write a table with columns for matras, vibhag pattern, tali positions, khali position, and the theka in bols. Then write out the theka in ekgun and dugun notation. Clap the cycle while reciting the bols, marking khali with a wave of the hand, until the vibhag pattern is automatic.
In the life-sketch questions, the candidate writes a vague tribute ('he was a great musician who served Indian music') without dates, gharana or lineage, instrument, and named compositions or innovations.
Biographies are read once as background reading and never converted into recall points. Under time pressure the candidate falls back on adjectives because no concrete facts were stored.
What to do instead
Make a fact card for each prescribed musician with five fixed fields: birth and death years, gharana or lineage and principal guru, instrument and style, two or three specific contributions, and one or two named recordings or compositions. Revise only the cards, and in the exam write the answer in those five blocks so every answer carries checkable facts.
The candidate uses technical terms loosely, for example writing that the vadi is the note most often used, confusing vadi with samvadi, or calling the thaat a raga and the raga a thaat.
Terms are memorized as one-word glosses without the distinctions that make them meaningful. The pairs that matter most, such as vadi and samvadi, aroha and avaroha, thaat and raga, and alankar and palta, are learned together and then blurred together.
What to do instead
Build a glossary of paired terms, writing each definition in one precise sentence plus one example from a prescribed raga. Test yourself by covering the definitions and producing them from the term alone. In answers, use the technical term and immediately anchor it to an example, for instance naming the vadi of the raga being discussed.
The candidate describes the historical development of instruments in a jumbled way, placing the veena, sitar, and sarod in the wrong periods, or crediting a particular musician with an invention without naming the tradition or century.
History is read as a story rather than as a timeline. Without dates attached to developments, the candidate cannot order events and so writes plausible-sounding but chronologically impossible claims.
What to do instead
Draw a single timeline on one sheet covering the periods named in the syllabus, and place each instrument's documented development and each musician's floruit on it. For every claim about who developed what, write the source tradition or century beside it. Revise the timeline, not the prose, and use it to structure the exam answer chronologically.
The candidate writes notation using invented symbols, or uses the same symbol for komal and shuddha notes, or writes the octave marks inconsistently, so the notation cannot be read back by anyone else.
The candidate has practised playing from memory and never learned the conventional notation signs as a writing system. Symbols are improvised at the exam desk because the candidate never had to make their own notation legible to a second reader.
What to do instead
Learn the standard notation conventions as a fixed set: how komal, tivra, and shuddha are marked, how the lower and upper octaves are indicated, how meend, kan, and gamak are shown, and how the tala symbols are placed. Then exchange notation with a fellow student and read each other's work aloud; if the reader cannot reproduce the phrase, the symbols are wrong.
In the practical component, the candidate plays the prescribed raga accurately in the lower and middle octaves but avoids the upper octave, and cannot render the raga's identifying phrase when asked to play it in isolation.
Practice happens mostly in the comfortable register, and the pakad is absorbed as part of a long fixed composition rather than as a separate extractable phrase. When the examiner asks for the pakad alone, the candidate has no entry point.
What to do instead
Practise every prescribed raga in all three octaves, including the upper-octave phrases that define the raga's range. Separately drill the pakad as a standalone unit: start from silence and play only the pakad, then the aroha, then the pakad again. Record yourself and check that the phrase is recognisable without the composition around it.
The candidate answers a question on a prescribed raga by describing a different raga with a similar scale, for example treating two ragas that share the same notes as interchangeable and giving one raga's vadi and time of performance for the other.
Similar-scale ragas are learned side by side and the differences are never made explicit, so the two profiles merge in memory. The candidate recognizes the scale but not the movement, which is the only thing that separates them.
What to do instead
For each pair of similar prescribed ragas, write a comparison table with columns for scale, vadi, pakad, and time of day, and add one sentence stating exactly what distinguishes them. Learn the pair together and test yourself by naming the distinguishing phrase from the raga name alone, so the difference is stored as a contrast rather than as two separate lists.