Bilawal Thaat with Sa as E & Resolution

The aforementioned intense writing project that I've been working on is still going full steam, whether I like it or not. As a result, I haven't been practicing the harmonium as often. Perhaps 2 or 3 times a week, at best. When I do sit to play, I find that I only want to do the scales and not the songs, mostly because I am tired. Even though I haven't been practicing as often, my Bilawal scales with Sa as C and D have gotten much more fluid. I decided to forge ahead to Sa as E. As you may have guessed, I also haven't had time to fix the harmonium's rattling low E, so I am practicing Sa as E in the middle register. Being familiar with the major scale in all keys, and having practiced Sa as D with its many black keys, this scale came very easily.

Now I have three keys to apply to two sets of practice. This is quite time consuming. Over the summer when I was "training" to swim a mile in the pool at my gym (I use quotes because I was simply pushing myself to see how many laps I could do; it's not like I had someone telling me how to do this wisely, unless you count the internet), I found that my mind would get bored counting the breaths and laps. I started to watch for milestones in the counting to mark off how much I knew was left. I find I'm doing the same thing now with the 3-key practice. I know where the middle of the practice is so I know how much longer I have to pay attention. In the span of 20 minutes or so that it takes me to get through all 3 keys, I pass through the same mental/emotional states I experienced when swimming. They go something like this:

Excitement at starting
Warming up and working out the kinks
Mind wandering
Auto-pilot
Strict task master
Mind wandering
Boredom
Awareness of mistakes
Focus
Boredom
Awareness of how much has passed and how much is ahead
Joy
Confidence that I could do this forever and maybe I'll play longer than I usually do
Mind wandering
Awareness of the impending end
Sadness
Regret for having not being paying closer attention while time passed
Shock at how quickly it ends
Relief to be able to move on
Excitement to start something new

My singing teacher today taught me about resolution in music. To impart tonal Western music with a sense of closure or resolution, the final chord needs to be the core note/chord, lest the piece feel open-ended and suspenseful. A song in the key of C minor will end with the C minor chord. The resolution brings the piece full circle. Right back to where it started. What is the core note of my life? Where does life resolve to?

The emotional circle I feel when I'm practicing my scales is only going to get wider and wider as I learn more and more. As with so many things in life, I'm watching the same patterns return again and again -- whether its music, yoga, swimming, drawing, eating, sleeping, working.    

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.