Ujjal kumar Saha

                                                                      Introduction

Guitar is most commonly a six string instrument with  typically E A D G B E tuning .Now the difference between Indian and western classical music is the difference of  monophony and polyphony .Indian music is a monophonic music and western music is a polyphonic music .Indian music don’t have the harmonic platform .The melody and its note configuration in a definite ascension and descension manner defines the structure of a particular Raga associated with particular feelings or emotions.This music is more characterised by legato then of staccato.So to play a smooth legato one should get preferably all the notes in a single string but with E A D G B E tuning in guitar it does not permits us to do so unlike the western music where it is characterized by staccato sort of playing in a single position.To eradicate this problem the standard guitar tuning in Indian classical music is altered according to the notes configuration of  the ragas.Now every ragas as I told earlier has got definite sequence of notes in ascension and descension manner,has got definite badi swar (that we call the note that is predominantly used and samvadi swar (that is the note which used less then the vadi swar). Now as an example to play a Raga namely Vhairavi the western counterpart of its  is called the Phrygian minor scale which is the 3rd degree of a major scale .But A Vhairavi raga is something more then  a scale,
A simple explanation will make the thing clearer,the notes used in Vhairavi may be used to play other ragas as well but the sequence of ascension and desension of Vhairavi is unique, that is what we called the structure or pakar of ragas of Indian classical music that makes the Vhairavi unique.So to play any ragas we should bear few things in mind as follows,
1 Whenever we relates any raga with a western scale we should understand the  structure and voice of that Raga.Every raga has something to say.Once we know its meaning, playing become quite easier.As an example pentatonic scale is what we  know commonly as bhupali raga but playing this five notes of the pentatonic scale don’t give rise to bhupali, until and unless we understand the sequence and structure bhupali works on(i.e the permutation and combination of the notes to create  signature phrase for raga Bhupali)   that uniquely represent the picture of raga Bhupali.