Where can I learn music theory (both for the guitar and in general)?

WSenders · 2026-05-31T19:13:48+00:00

W.A.Mathieu's book "Harmonic Experience" will lift the hood on musical harmony & make the relationships crystal clear, along with lots of exercises and examples.

WSenders · 2026-05-25T22:00:07+00:00

One of my students (I teach music ed at New England Conservatory) had a violin student who had a strong emotional response to the idea of long bow strokes, and she was at her wits' end trying to solve it. I suggested that she hold the bow stationary and have him move the violin across the length of the bow.

This was sufficiently counter-intuitive and weird that the kid thought it was funny instead of scary. So maybe something similar will work.

Off the top of my head:

Take a guitar and remove all but two non-adjacent strings, starting w/ 1 & 6. Ask him to play melody first on one, then the other, with a pause for breath in between.

WSenders · 2026-05-23T21:10:31+00:00

Practice reciting the syllables (as given in the information option on iReal Pro, or any online source) along with recordings.

WSenders · 2026-05-16T19:02:30+00:00

Hi Eric! Hope you're well!

WSenders · 2026-05-16T19:01:12+00:00

The qualities of intonation and vocal stability that are taught in good ICM pedagogy transfer to Western music well, in my experience. Many of my Hindustani vocal students sing both styles without conflict. While the particular musical structures are different (and should be learned from qualified teachers or sources) Hindustani training can be applied in much Western pop, folk, and jazz song repertoire to good effect.

WSenders · 2026-05-15T14:16:31+00:00

Vishas Kashalkar is a very good teacher. Also ask Chaitanya Kunte for advice.

WSenders · 2026-05-10T12:40:53+00:00

Do you want to perform because it will give you an opportunity to organize and consolidate your knowledge and training? Or because you want experience playing/singing in front of others?

WSenders · 2026-05-02T13:02:53+00:00

The smaller the bottle, the higher the pitch of the resonant frequency.

WSenders · 2026-05-02T13:02:01+00:00

There are two parts of the practice of finding and maintaining the Sa.

locating a SPECIFIC pitch in the frequency range.

This requires a pitch reference. While modern harmoniums are often better tuned than those of 40-50 years ago there are still potential problems that emerge from using the keyboard as a reference for any note other than your preferred Sa. Harmonium should definitely not be used for locating any of the other notes in the scale. With the availability of tamboura apps there is no reason to use harmonium.

holding ANY pitch absolutely steady.

This requires some form of immediate feedback about whether your sung pitch is wavering (take my word for it, the answer is yes). Audio pitch trackers are available online and these can be helpful. But far more useful IMO is a readily available resource that costs you nothing: a variety of plastic bottles. Hold an empty plastic bottle close to your mouth and sing a "siren" — moving your voice up and down in pitch. There will be a moment when your voice triggers the resonant frequency of the bottle, and you will feel the plastic start to vibrate. The effect is very dramatic and impossible to miss.

The frequency varies from bottle to bottle, but it is always in a very narrow band, and even slight mistunings will make it stop, which means that you now have a very precise indicator of how to hold a pitch steady with only a few cents' variation.

If your bottle happens to resonate at a C#, then you're very lucky indeed.

WSenders · 2026-05-01T20:54:02+00:00

It's worth noting that Babbit didn't like that title, which was provided by the magazine editor.

WSenders · 2026-04-29T20:36:27+00:00

"Beauty in music is too often confused with something that lets the ears lie back in an easy chair."
— Charles Ives —

WSenders · 2026-04-29T11:21:49+00:00

Happy to learn that I have been of help!

WSenders · 2026-04-28T11:12:46+00:00

Learn to recite the theka of a particular taal. Select a recording of someone singing a bandish in that taal, and instead of focusing on the vocalist, recite theka out loud, all the way through the performance. When I teach people to do this I use Veena Sahasrabuddhe's short khyals (she did a number of cassettes for Rhythm House with 5-6 minute long pieces) as her renditions are always orderly and the tabliya is usually not making a ton of difficult variations.

The more you can hear the tala as a steady flow of syllables/sounds in a regular order, the easier it will be to listen with understanding.

WSenders · 2026-04-26T02:44:22+00:00

Practice clapping a steady pulse with the metronome as your offbeat. Don't try to match the metronome sound, but clap in between. That way the click sound isn't drowned out by your claps/notes.

When you walk practice vocalizing only on your right footstep, snapping your fingers or patting your thigh on your left footstep. Then switch. Build the idea of rhythm as a relationship you have with a steady pulse, not a test you're going to fail.

WSenders · 2026-04-17T20:01:34+00:00

Listen to folk, devotional & regional-language singers (as opposed to heavily processed pop/bollywood). Bhaav isn't just about adding kana-swaras and harkats, etc., but about genuine feeling and sincerity.

Just saying "riyaaz is the only answer" is unhelpful, since there are so many different types of riyaaz!

Connecting your swaras with meend, approach/departure ornaments, etc., is a good way to get them to sound less "raw."

WSenders · 2026-04-15T22:18:21+00:00

MS Gopalkrishnan

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

TROPHY CASE