Bilawal Thaat with Sa as D

I'm about four days or so into practicing Bilawal thaat with Sa as D. This is the major scale in D. Unlike Sa as C, the Sa as D scale uses two black keys. When you play the scale straight, without holding Sa as the drone, the black keys aren't all that daunting. I didn't think much of having to use the black keys as I started my sargam exercises. It was only once I got into doing finger transfers on the black keys that they got tricky.

Slippery Sam Sees a Sa

My mom refers to my cat as "Slippery Sam" because he's so svelt that sometimes when you get a hold of him he slips right through your hands. The cat has taken to sitting in my lap when I work on the computer. Sometimes he'll curl up and use all lap space, but other times he precariously perches on one of my thighs. He teeters there -- as if a strong gust of wind could push him off. This is how I feel with the black keys: they're hard to get a hold of and once I get my finger on it, I could slip off easily. When there's a finger transfer on a black key, I find I just don't have enough room for two fingers on that little sliver of space. As one of the black keys in this scale is Ni, my pinky has to do a lot of extra work. Practice increases the dexterity in my smallest digit.

The first day I started Sa as D I tried playing the Sargam chords version of "Govinda Jaya Jaya" that Daniel Tucker, my harmonium teacher, gave us students in our recent workshop. This song has four "chords" (which in this case are made of only two keys). I started the song fine with Sa as D, but hit a dissonant note on the 3rd chord. I checked my math -- these were the right keys. What was wrong? It took me a minute to recognize that this song is played in Khamaj thaat, AKA the dominant scale in Western music, where the Ni or 7th note is flatted. So flat went the Ni, and the song came through clearly.