RE: compas in flamenco vs Indian ragas (Full Version)

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guitarbuddha -> RE: compas in flamenco vs Indian ragas (Apr. 19 2007 23:27:45)

I agree with a lot of what you say there Tony. If grammar had been set in stone centuries ago then we would still be reading novels that had the same tone as Charles Dickens. Now I like Dickens ( well a bit ) but I am glad that grammer and style have evolved.
For me it's the same with music. Because it is much easier to write 'square' rhythms then classical composers were often slow to learn from the syncopated rhythms of popular and folk music. For this reason much eauropean classical music is rhythmically over simple.

However now that Latin music has been integrated into the language of most modern writers they should have the tools to transcribe rhythm accurately. Flamenco has really no more complicated syncopations than Latin music. Where it is more challenging is in the frequent and often ambigous changes of time signature. The flamenco transcription has still to evolve into a form that adequately represents this. This is not a problem with the notation it is a problem with the contradictory confused and confusing way that flamencos talk about rhythm and the difficulty in reconciling the eay of describing music that flamencos are used to and the reality of what is being communicated with the barline and time signature in music notation. It can and is done very well, but not very often.

Now the difficulty with flamenco and indian music in terms of transcription is the variety of inflections that can be a applied to a note. In particular in indian instrumental music a single note can be decorated in many many ways which are very difficult to notate. The same is the case with vocals in flamenco. But really these exist in all musics and you have to do an awful lot of listening to get any style right even if it is an opera area or a scottish folk song.

Now what my position on notation is that it is a fantastic tool for learning music. When a score is well produced it is a joy to work with it ( for example the Duende Flamenco series of buleria transcriptions are -although often simplified- really great to work with because real care has been taken to use the correct time signatures which is a big part of understanding the pieces ). When you want to work on a SPEFICIC VERSION of a piece then it is unbeatable ( tab really doesnt come close ).

But for working on improvisation the best thing is often to work from a chord chart or SKETCH and to flesh it out in performance ( a bit like bullet points for a speech, just the outline and jam the rest. ) Here notation offers relatively little as a tool for working on the music. Since most indian music has such a high component of improvisation then notation has not needed to be developed.

However the support for the player in the indian Guru based oral tradition is really incompatible with our lifestyles here in the west. You know if you have access to a fantastic player for so many hours then your ear will be your best guide. We in the west dont. Records dont explain themselves. Any you guys spend three hours a day, day after day with a teacher all your young life ?

Imagine if you were a plumber's apprentace. Every day follolwing the plumber about learning on the job from the horses mouth. You would never need to look at a plumbing manual and might find it funny if you did.

Now if you want to be a plumber but work in an office and the only plumber that you know charges you £40 an hour for his company, you might need all the help that you can get. Maybe you'lll want that manual. It wont be as good as habving the plumber looking over you'r shoulder and correcting your mistakes and talking you through it but it is much better than nothing, and much cheaper.


If we could all have houres and hours every day with a teacher then we wouldn't need music. Learing orally is probably always best. Unless the old man's memory is fading.

For me it would be a reall trajedy if Bach's music had been lost because generations of chinese whispers and fading memories had obliterated it.

Anyway I have a lot of affection for music as I have spent many happy hours with it. But that doesn't stop me wishing that I had grown up in a music making tradition where I learned from my family or a selection of expert teachers who lived in the same village, travelled in the same circles etc.

But if I didn't read music then I still would be missing all that, and a lot more.

Thanks to everyone who has written in this thread, which I have been enjoying,

David.



guitarbuddha -> RE: compas in flamenco vs Indian ragas (Apr. 19 2007 23:33:33)

I agree with Ricardo by the way, we must have posted at the same time.



a_arnold -> RE: compas in flamenco vs Indian ragas (Apr. 20 2007 22:51:53)

Ricardo --
I think you misunderstood. I said western notation isn't "readily amenable" to writing out complex rhythmic patterns -- not that it isn't "capable". My point was more subtle.

Of course it is possible to write almost anything in western notation -- even microtonal (a western term) Indian music and the 31-note Greek "octave". Quartertone notation goes back to the time of Euripides, and modifications of the standard western notation are always being proposed to encompass musical innovations. Carillo's quartertone string quartets and Charles Ives' Chorale for Strings come to mind; they used a specialized modification of the standard notation. Partch modified notation to handle 43 unequal subdivisions of the octave, and Carillo went as far as 96 -- all superimposed on the 12 not octave system -- very much like a programmer's patch added on to expand an otherwise inadequate system. None of that ever got much traction. We still are hampered by relatively simple melodic and rhythmic conventions that are ill suited (not incapable) to express flamenco.

Sorry -- I didn't mean to go all pedantic there.

I agree, it is certainly possible to contort western notation to fit many flamenco compas (sometimes it doesn't even need to be contorted, as in farruca and zambra), but in most cases it it remains a contortion that is problematic even (especially?) for a trained classical musician to read. The reason is that flamenco (and sitar) players think in longer phrases (compas, tal) instead of short measures, and the phrases don't reliably begin on an emphasized beat.

Writing much flamenco (say, bulerias compas) requires (1) alternating groups of 6/8 and 4/8 measures or 2/4 and 3/4 and (2) starting musical phrases off the first beat of the measure. Of course it can be done. But it becomes an unfamiliar contortion of a system that wasn't developed to handle it. Like using a hammer to drive in a screw. It works, but it's the wrong tool, developed for a different purpose.

I guess I'm saying that it isn't just a matter of western notation not capturing the "feeling" of flamenco -- it doesn't capture the feeling of classical music either, for that matter. It does a pretty good job of capturing subtlety, but without interpretation music wouldn't be any fun. And there's a LOT more room for interpretation in flamenco and Indian music than in classical western music.

And I think the reason is that western classical musical notation became codified with a different kind of music in mind.

I don't know if the bulerias/alegrias/solea pattern has been successfully translated into western music. I know there are classical pieces called "Soleares" but they don't really sound like soleares, nor do they stick to the compas.

Leonard Bernstein used a latin-sounding alternation of time signatures in West Side Story ("I like to be in America ... OK by me in America ...") but the phrases all begin on the first beat of the measure.

Anybody know of a successful use of real bulerias or seguiryias compas written by a classical western musician that actually got traction among musicians?

Tony A.



guitarbuddha -> RE: compas in flamenco vs Indian ragas (Apr. 21 2007 0:10:36)

The Worms bulereia transcriptions that I mentioned in my post, clear and easy to read.

The Bernstein is a very traditional Catalan style Zapetaedo.

I do not think that notation has that much difficulty in presenting flamenco, I think that flamenco's have a great deal of difficulty with notation.

Latin music is written consistantly well, latin percussionists have a lot of respect for notation. It is easy to read latin rhythms once you have learned the extra vocabulary. The sole extra difficulty in flamenco are the frequent changes of time signature. It's really no hassle to write them in though.

Classical notation has been dealing perfectly well with anacrusis for a long time now ( just look at Bach suites ) the claim that there is a difficulty in representing phrases which are offset with the barline is simply false.

No-one disagrees that it is better to learn difficult rhythms by ear but where is the alternative tool for representing rhythm other than notation ?

Anyway what we need on this forum is more grist to the mill for people who cant read music. I love to read the **** they talk about it. And it is working so well for flamenco too because noone is ever confused about its rhythms and the initiated never disagree about them, so lets keep resisting a sensible standardised notation system and we can all be pure.



danyjr -> RE: compas in flamenco vs Indian ragas (Oct. 11 2025 11:56:58)

There seems to be a significant misunderstanding in this thread about Indian Classical Music (ICM), to the point where I question whether the OP has truly studied the sitar, or if they have, whether they've learned it in the traditional way.

There is a misconception that Indian raga is "very jazz-like," likely due to the exposure of Indian musicians to the West through jazz collaborations (e.g. Sakthi). However, Indian Classical Music, in its pure form is fundamentally different from jazz.

Yes, improvisation is a key component of both, but the frameworks governing improvisation in each tradition are very different. In ICM, the improvisation within a raga is bound by strict rules such as the specific ascending and descending notes (aroha and avroh) and the emotional intent (rasa) of the raga. This gives the musician a highly disciplined structure, leaving little room for the kind of harmonic freedom often seen in jazz.

In contrast, jazz allows for much more harmonic experimentation and the freedom to interact with a wide range of chord progressions. Jazz improvisation often involves re-harmonizing melodies, which is a concept virtually absent in ICM.

Moreover, comparing ICM to jazz misses the essential difference in cultural and philosophical context. Jazz is a Western tradition that prioritises personal expression, harmonic complexity, and improvisational interaction. ICM, on the other hand, shares more in common with other Eastern traditions such as Arabic maqam or Persian dastgah, where improvisation follows very specific rules, with the aim of creating a deep emotional experience, both for the performer and the listener.

While fusion projects like Sakthi blend jazz with Indian classical elements, these are hybrids and not representative of either tradition in its pure form. Therefore while there may be some overlap in the act of improvisation, the intent, rules, and structures behind these forms of music are distinct.



Ricardo -> RE: compas in flamenco vs Indian ragas (Oct. 12 2025 14:38:51)

quote:

While fusion projects like Sakthi blend jazz with Indian classical elements,


1.Hopefully a spell correction issue, but Shakti is the female diety counter part to Shiva.

2. The fusion was exemplified by Ravi Shankar (who worked with Zakir's dad) and Zakir, is not just to mix it up with Westerners, but the north and south are also disconnected. So a discussion of ICM needs to clarify which discipline. My understanding from interviews with the artists, that the South Indian style was driving Shakti, and when it came to fusion, L. Shanker admitted to dumbing it all down for everybody because it would be too hard to master the tradition in a short time and limited rehearsal. One aspect is the tempo distinction between the two worlds.

3.I used to espouse as you do the western music tradition has to translate at a huge loss, the eastern music systems, generalized as modal vs tonal traditions. However, my investigations into very old western music of the Renaissance, reveal what looks like to me, as a huge corruption of western thought into the supposed "ancient" eastern musics. Things like your little rule above about note choices ascending vs descending etc., start look to me like Western thought corrupting pure modality. But then if we go further back to Ancient Greek, which is technically "western" anyway, again we see much of the generalization about modal "oriental" or eastern musics not really preserving what they think they are in terms of old music tradition.

So for me it is looking more and more that these distinctions between modal and tonal musics might be going back only as far as late Baroque, where even in Western music a line in the sand is drawn. We looked at a song by a Turkish Makkam musician on here that claimed the origin of the song dates back 1200 years, but I see too many western ideas at work in it already. In the end, the "neutral" or "sruti" note choices seem to mostly be about intonation, no different than modern western music at the heart.



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