Learning 'Sa'

I remember some interesting fact on human voice from one of my graduate course’s introductory chapters. The course was ‘human speech processing’ and the reworded fact was something like this  – a thousand psychologists, neuroscientists and physiologists sitting next to a just-born baby could not figure out how the baby acquires the art of making sounds and act of speaking. Speaking sets us apart from the rest of the living world (It is different matter that every sound producing flora/fauna thinking on similar lines). Speaking is nature’s gift onto itself listen to itself. Speaking is beautiful and signing is even more beautiful and joyous.

Oops, why I am putting all this. Off late, I started picking up some Carnatic music. Just like others, I often sing and croon few popular Telugu songs.  For an year or so I have been dwelling into some basic musical grammar to understand what goes behind in composing and rendering the songs. So, the obvious thing to join under a music teacher. Fortunately, I happened to join under an elderly lady who gracefully agreed to set aside an hour per week to teach SaReGaMa to me.

First thing any music teacher does is to gauge voice range and establish Shruthi for the learner. This is essentially to set the basic ‘sa’ for the voice. This will be done after few iterations of signing ‘sarigama padanisa’ comfortably. This comfort is very important in the beginning as if we voice is pushed beyond certain limit, the voice/vocal chords may get hurt. The goal of this exercise is to set the basic ‘sa’ and fundamental octave. (octave here is voice range from ‘sa’ to ‘sa’ in the adjacent higher octave). All of us have a fundamental ‘sa’ and our comfortable octave to sing ‘Sa Ri Ga Ma Pa Da Ni Sa’ with ease. Professional singers easily sing 2 to 3 octaves. I flipped through few Carnatic geetam varnam composisitons  - they are generally two octaves range. Next time when you listen to Telugu songs sung by legeneds like Shri Ghantasala, Shri Yesudas, SPB, Janaki, Susheela, just be aware of their voice range and Shruti.

Somehow I was aware of the following music related anecdotes but could not fully comprehend the full import from musical/signing sense.

1. Someone saying ‘I am quite comfortable with 2 or 3 octaves etc.’
2. Someone advising  - keep your ‘Sa’ in correct position and sustain it for longer times to pitch all swarastanas correctly
3. Someone lamenting ‘I used to sing in ‘G’ (or 5) when I was in prime age, but now it is dropped to C-sharp' or something like that to convey of age-progress and associated inability of signing higher notes
4. In Telugu music/singing realty shows, like Paduta Teeyaga in Telugu, SPB sir asking contestants to peg their voice at higher note than ‘usual’
5. Someone told me that one harmonium guy accompanies Shri Lata Mangeskar in music shows or recordings to provide required Shruti

Some accounting information of swara stanasa /musical notes are captured in the table below. I actually measured the frequency of each of the tones using key board and an Android app. Needless to say, keyboard emits the tones and smartphone measure the frequencies. It is a general knowledge that through there are 7 fundamental tones (Saptaswaras), the working swara stanas are 12 with few minor variations around fundamental tones.

Swara  positions	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
Carnatic notation	S	R1	R2,G1	R3,G2	G3	M1	M2	P	D1	D2,N1	D3,N2	N3
Western notation	C	C#	D	D#	E	F	F#	G	G#	A	A#	B
Tonal frequency, Hz  (3rd octave or middle C)	130.8	138.6	146.8	155.6	164.8	174.6	185	196	207.7	220	233.2	246.9
The tones were generated on one Yamaha keyboard and this has five octaves (Total 61 keys) The frequency measurement was taken through the Android mobile app, ‘DaTuner’, which is available on app store .  General readers ignore can this, but, for someone, picky and exacting, looking at this info - I set the key board in transposition mode to ‘-1’ to correct my keyboard’s tonal offset. This also aligns with tones from well-tuned instrument.