Naad….The undiscovered Secret

Hey Guys, thank you for a wonderful response on my last article based on the history of music. I hope now, after reading around 15-16 article all of you have a fair idea about our Hindustani music. Up till now I have given only the general information about music, but I hope that now you all will be able to grasp and understand some technicalities and specific content about our music. In this article I’ll get into technicalities and explain the concept of Naad which is known as an undiscovered secret. In one of my previous articles I had defined Naad as- Any sound note which is used for the purpose of music and has a fixed place or moves about in a fixed periphery is known as a naad. Now; a sound note which is fixed at its place gives only one kind of sound so is a single note, but a sound note which moves around a periphery (even if the periphery is fixed) gives rise to some other sounds and notes. Thus, a naad can produced some other notes too apart from producing a single note. This concept in western music is known by the name of Harmonics and Overtones.

Each note in our music has a fixed oscillation value as given by Pt. Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande Ji. These values are as follows-

1. Sa- 240
2. Re- 270
3. Ga- 301  17/43
4. Ma- 320
5. Pa- 360
6. Dha- 405
7. Ni- 452  4/43

A string of a tanpura is tuned to a single note only, but when it is struck, it oscillates at a particular value and produces sound. When it comes to rest, the oscillation value gradually decreases, thus producing some notes other than the tuned note. I’ll explain this concept with the help of some simple arithmetic maths.

As written above, the oscillation value of Sa is 240, Re- 270 and so on. The oscillation value of the Sa of the higher octave will be 240×2=480 as it is exactly double of the Sa of the middle octave. So, now each note can be multiplied with numbers from 2 to 9, so that we can check the notes which are produced other than the tuned note on the tanpura. The 1^st string of the tanpura is tuned at the lower octave’s Pa, the middle two strings at the middle octave’s Sa and the 4^th string at the lower octave’s Sa. Thus I’ll take these 2 notes one by one.

Notes from Pa (Value= 360/2=180)

1. 180×2= 360, Value of Pa at the Mandra Saptak.
2. 180×3= 540, (540/2=270) Value of Re at the Taar Saptak, thus we can consider it to be Re at the Madhya Saptak.
3. 180×4= 720, (720/2=360) Value of Pa at the Taar Saptak, thus we can consider it to be Pa at the Madhya Saptak.
4. 180×5= 900, (900/2=450) Value of 450 is nearly equal to Ni of the Madhya Saptak.
5. 180×6= 1080, (1080/2=540, 540/2=270) Value of Re at the next octave after the Taar Saptak.
6. 180×7= 1260, (1260/2=630, 630/2=315) Value of 315 is nearly equal to Ma of the Madhya Saptak.
7. 180×8= 1440, (1440/2=720, 720/2=360) Value of Pa at the next octave after the Taar Saptak.
8. 180×9= 1620, (1620/2=810, 810/2=405) Value of Dha at the next octave after Taar Saptak.

Note from Sa (Value= 240, 240/2=120)

1. 120×2= 240, Value of Sa at the Madhya Saptak.
2. 120×3= 360 Value of Pa at the Madhya Saptak.
3. 120×4= 480, Value of Sa at the Taar Saptak.
4. 120×5= 600, (600/2=300) Value of 300 is nearly equal to Ga of the Madhya Saptak.
5. 120×6= 720, (720/2=360) Value of Pa at the Taar Saptak.
6. 120×7= 840, (840/2=420) Value of 420 is nearly equal to the value of Komal Ni of the Madhya Saptak.
7. 120×8= 960 (960/2=480) Value of Sa at the Taar Saptak.
8. 120×9= 1080 (1080/2=540, 540/2=270) Value of Re at the Madhya Saptak.

Sometimes the 1st string of the tanpura is tuned at Ma. So we’ll have a look at the notes produced from the Ma string also.

Notes from Ma (Value=240/2=120)

1. 160×2= 320, Value of Ma at the Madhya Saptak.
2. 160×3= 480, Value of Sa at the Taar Saptak.
3. 160×4= 640, (640/2=320) Value of Ma at the Taar Saptak.
4. 160×5= 800, (800/2=400) Value of 400 is nearly equal to the value of Dha at the Madhya Saptak.
5. 160×6= 960, (960/2=480) Value of Sa at the Taar Saptak
6. 160×7= 1120, (1120/2=560, 560/2=280) Value of 280 is nearly equal to the value of Re of the Madhya Saptak.
7. 160×8= 1280, (1280/2=640, 640/2=320) Value of Ma at the Madhya Saptak.
8. 160×9= 1440, (1440/2=720, 720/2=360) Value of Pa at the Madhya Saptak.

Thus to conclude all this, we can say-

1. Notes produced from Pa- Pa, Dha, Ni and Re
2. Notes produced from Sa- Sa, Pa, Ga and Re
3. Notes produced from Ma- Ma, Sa, Dha and Re

In other words we can say that no sound single sound is produced when a tanpura is being played, we always get to listen some other notes also from the same instrument inspite of the fact that the string of the tanpura is tuned to some other note. One more interesting fact which we can observe from above is that, if we have two Tanpuras, one tuned with Pa and the other with Ma, we can get to listen to all the 7 swaras where in reality only 3 swaras are tuned to the strings.

Now I’ll tell you about Raaga Bhairav in brief-

Raag Bhairav-

Aaroh– Sa re Ga Ma Pa dha Ni SA

Avroh– Sa Ni dha Pa Ma Ga re Sa

Pakad– Sa re Ga Ma Ga Ma dha Pa, Ma Pa Ga Ma re Sa

Thaat– Bhairav

Vadi Swara- dha

Samvadi Swara– re

Jaati- Sampoorn-Sampoorn

Time of Singing- Early morning before sunrise

This raag derives its name from Bhairava which is an incarnation of Lord Shiva. This Raaga is one of the first raaga to be taught to a student of Hindustani Music. It is an early morning Raaga and is sung before sunrise. Re and Dha are komal in this raaga and the rest of the swaras are shudhh. Many Raagas are joined with this Raaga to form a “Jod Raag”. When two or more Raagas are merged together to form a new raaga; that new raaga is known as a Jod Raag. Some popular Jod Raagas from Bhairav are- Bhairav Bahar, Nat Bhairav, Ahir Bhairav, Hijaz Bhairav, Anand Bhairav etc.

This raaga of a very serious mood and Vilambit Bada Khyals are sung in this raag. This raaga is not to be confused with Raaga Kalingda, the swaras of these two raagas are same but due to the difference in moods of these raagas, these two are quite different.

You can listen to this Raaga by following the link given below-

1. Raaga Bhairav by Pt. Jasraj Ji- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nr1lVR9qo5E
2. Raaga Bhairav by Pt. Bhimsen Joshi Ji- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRtOkDShbX8
3. Raaga Bhairav by Ustad Amjad Ali Khan- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipvQsm80NCY

Thank you guys for giving my wonderful responses for my articles, I would love to write on any other topic suggested by you, so please comment if you want me to write on anything specific. Once again thank you for reading this article, do read, share and comment on this article. I’ll explain one more new Raaga in my next article.

Thank You

Shubham Mittal :-)