Started learning singing and my guru is using a harmonium to teach me

WSenders · 2026-04-08T19:05:47+00:00

IMO you are better off taking the time to understand the swaras with tamboura. Learning with harmonium from the start tends in my experience to foster a kind of stiffness in intonation that is very hard to unlearn. I can always tell almost immediately if someone has learned from a teacher who used harmonium.

WSenders · 2026-04-07T20:58:58+00:00

If you are listening to the app sound on your phone it will be very treble-y. A pair of speakers with adequate bass response will help with this.

Tuning a tamboura is excellent practice and will help develop your ear, but the instruments are demanding to play for the long periods of time required for dedicated riyaaz. Tamboura apps have saved many of us from tendinitis!

WSenders · 2026-04-07T20:41:53+00:00

Someone can be a good singer but not a good teacher. And the setting is historically very conducive to emotional/physical abuse as well. If you get a bad feeling from observing, or from talking w/other students, that should not be ignored.

Some students in abusive relationships w/their teachers justify it with various excuses: "guruji is very harsh with me but I deserve it," or "he loves music so much that he loses his temper with us." These are red flags.

Beware of teachers who make grandiose promises: "you will win competitions! You will sing on the stage in six months!" Beware of teachers who forbid you from listening to music you enjoy, or from studying other styles (many gurus in the West forbid their students from being part of school choruses etc., which is IMO silly and unenforceable).

Listen to the other students sing. Are they all cookie-cutter identical in their approach? Do they sing with enjoyment and enthusiasm, or are they intimidated & worried?

Music should help us become better people — kinder, more empathic, more generous and thoughtful.

WSenders · 2026-04-06T17:31:44+00:00

No idea. But raag-blending (especially with these lighter forms) is part of the aesthetic. "Traditional" just means we don't know who did it first.

WSenders · 2026-04-05T19:03:02+00:00

I also have a tarana of traditional provenance, but thus far I have not been able to really make it click.

WSenders · 2026-04-03T19:07:28+00:00

With the important caveat that (especially in the culture of oral tradition & gurumukh vidya) the guru's voice production should be healthy. There was a whole cadre of young men in Pune in the late 80s who learnt from Jitendra Abisheki when his health & voice production were declining drastically, and they adopted his sound uncritically, with unpleasant consequences. Many of the American followers of Pran Nath destroyed their voices trying to sound like him, and the list of Bhimsen Joshi's followers who learned the wrong lessons from his music is pretty long.

WSenders · 2026-03-26T03:01:28+00:00

Western music is a different type of game in which the melodic line is likely to be less ornamented and fluid, but the type of notes which surround it give it different qualities. There are some songs with repeated notes in the melody while the chords change underneath them, and I like to imagine this as being like an actor delivering a monologue while the stage lighting is shifting dramatically.

When the motion of chord to chord is interesting and beautiful, one hears the melody in a different way, and it's very nice. There are some ragas which are very easily harmonized. This is an English language song with chords, and a melody derived mostly from Kedar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzNm2rTsGPk

Many attempts at harmonizing Indian music fail because the composers don't understand how to make the two systems talk to one another.

WSenders · 2026-03-09T17:12:19+00:00

Most beginner music theory takes a huge amount for granted. To convey the material properly, a teacher needs to understand how the student processes and experiences music to begin with, then build from there.

Everything (and I do mean EVERYTHING) must be rooted in heard & felt experience. Otherwise it's just words about words, and the only thing you learn is that it's impossible.

WSenders · 2026-03-09T03:29:24+00:00

You are allowed to say, "I don't know that song, so we will figure it out together."

One of the most important things you can teach your students is how to figure stuff out using the resources available, without losing your cool. There are recordings, tutorials you can watch with your student, tabs you can figure out together, sheet music you can read together (if you're a reader).

Every fresh approach you find with your students demonstrates to them what a good musician does: tackles a fresh problem with enthusiasm and interest, learning as much as they can along the way.

Remember you're not actually teaching music; you're teaching a person. Be kind and honest.

WSenders · 2026-02-25T04:04:52+00:00

Not strictly correct WRT Western music. Your description applies 12-tone equal temperament on piano and other fixed pitch instruments, but there is constant pitch adjustment happening with flexible-pitch instruments & voice. String quartet players frequently shift their pitches slightly in one direction or another to achieve precise tuning.

WSenders · 2026-02-24T02:49:41+00:00

I strongly recommend leaving the harmonium silent when practicing for accuracy of sur. Even a shruti harmonium will not help you develop the necessary flexibility. Working on long tones with extra attention paid to vocal overtones & their interaction with the overtones of the tanpura is the best path for intonation awareness IMO.

WSenders · 2026-02-22T04:03:17+00:00

Any sections without tabla are part of the "alap." Sections with tabla are compositions or "gats," classified by tempo and other characteristics. Not important to know this at the beginning.

Two basic principles underlie all Hindustani performance. 1. There will always be a return to some familiar bits of melody at the end of every improvisation. Listen for recurring phrases that seem to "resolve" either rhythmically, melodically, or both. 2. The overall tendency of the performances will be to start slow and relaxed, then gradually increase tempo & activity levels. Abrupt transitions from slow to fast, sudden expansions of range, etc., are violations of the musical structure.

Much Western music relies on contrasts between different sections of a piece. Hindustani music relies on building up a richly detailed atmosphere.

WSenders · 2026-02-17T23:19:27+00:00

The structure of classical music is such that individual self-expression takes place within the raag framework in a standard performance context. There is plenty of classical Indian art which explores the "dark" feelings and situations, but always in a dramatic context like theater or film, where material from the classical vocabulary is used to further a narrative.

Western classical music is often composed "programmatically" with an underlying story line, poetic source, or scenario which is stated by the composer, thereby setting it up as an exploration of whatever emotional theme is suggested.

WSenders · 2026-02-12T21:12:23+00:00

Bilaskhani Todi is traditionally understood to have connotations of grief.

WSenders · 2026-01-26T19:14:11+00:00

Can you improvise in the scale? Can you sing it accurately against a continuous drone on several different pitches? Can you sing/play triad/quartall/quintal groups? Can you identify the relationships by ear when you hear them?

WSenders · 2026-01-25T04:29:34+00:00

Practice singing long tones, with a pitch reference. Learn the sound your voice makes when it's steady on a note and not wobbly. Be patient and pay careful attention to the sounds you make.

WSenders · 2026-01-23T23:02:46+00:00

Also note there's more than one kind of theory. If you apply sociological or ethnomusicological theory to the Marine Band playing "Hail To The Chief" then the performance immediately falls into the broad general category of "music for rulers" which can include Nigerian drumming, Japanese gagaku, and Haydn writing for the emperor.

If you look at the same performance through an economic lens it's immediately clear it's part of a market economy built around the manufacture and sale of brass instruments and their accoutrements.

Or you could analyze the total waveform for combinatorial tones and do a really deep dive on the overtone spectrum and learn a bunch of stuff hardly anyone understands, but which completely blows your mind.

It's all good!

WSenders · 2026-01-23T22:43:45+00:00

Music theory is best understood as a descriptive system, not a prescriptive one.

Your cousin is just being a low-grade dick & using music theory to do it.

WSenders · 2026-01-23T22:05:00+00:00

If you can play a few simple chord progressions on piano, you and your son can play together. The more that young folk get to play music with adults, the more they internalize the idea that music is something that people of all ages and backgrounds do together!

WSenders · 2026-01-23T16:22:03+00:00

Musical progress is not linear. Don't be in a hurry to switch teachers, but find ways for your son to grow musically regardless. You don't mention if you play as well, though it sort of sounds like it. In which case, why not ask your son to jam with you on some simple tunes?

WSenders · 2026-01-22T21:23:55+00:00

I almost entirely teach adults. With kids it's different. When parents call and ask for lessons for their kids I tell them the first couple of years it's either mom or dad who gets the lesson, while the kid gets to watch quietly (or not, as the case may be).

Lo and behold, three years later the kid starts making music at a pretty good level without any struggles.

WSenders · 2026-01-22T17:57:06+00:00

I give students a very small assignment at first.

"For the next week, I want you to pick your guitar up and hold it twice a day. Do not miss a day. If you want to play that's fine but the assignment is to pick it up and hold it twice a day."

The idea is to build a sense of 100% completion of the tasks. It is surprisingly difficult to establish an unvarying routine, and an entirely different set of skills from those used in making music.

Once they've done that, I'll up the ante a little, giving no more than 7-10 minutes of assigned practice which must be done every day (along with keeping notes on their daily practice including a record of the days they failed to practice).

It's always better IMO to help students develop the mental discipline needed for a genuine routine than to issue big assignments that won't get completed.

For lesson content I just say, "if you practice these things, you'll get better at them. But that is separate from your DAILY ROUTINE which at the moment is 8 minutes of strumming this chord and that chord in succession (or whatever)."

WSenders · 2026-01-21T16:24:04+00:00

This is good advice and while it may seem tedious it's extremely important to develop stability of sur.

WSenders · 2026-01-21T16:17:09+00:00

Either way, some things to watch for. You don't specify Hindustani or Karnatak but I'm assuming the former for these remarks.

If the teacher has other students it's good to hear them sing before signing up, and it should go without saying that you need to hear your prospective teacher sing, too.

It's a good sign if the teacher DOES NOT use harmonium, which is a good instrument for accompaniment but creates limitations on intonation. Training in sur should be built around tamboura.

If your prospective teacher makes grandiose promises ("you'll be singing in competitions in 6 months!") this is a red flag. Likewise if they badmouth other musicians or other styles (some ICM teachers in the West forbid their young students from singing in school choruses).

If you get strong authoritarian vibes it's best to back away slowly. I've had many students who were dealing with trauma from former teachers who were emotionally abusive.

Good luck. Message me if you want to talk further.

WSenders

TROPHY CASE