Customer Reviews

Elementary North Indian Vocal

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I got this because I liked the Fundamentals of Tabla by David Courtney so much. The book is very much in the same format with much of the same basic material on general Indian music theory, different instruments and glossary all of which is excellent.

The rest of the book is split in to two parts. Firstly a breakdown of different aspects of Indian vocal music, Druphad, Kyhal and the types of ornimentation used in singing and secondly a good listing of a large number of ragas in all of the different thats with examples in different Tals.

As with Tabla playing vocal music is something that should be taught teacher to student rather than from a book. This book would no doubt be very useful to someone who has a either a good grounding in Hindustani music or has had a couple of lessons and wants to push themselves a bit futher however I wouldn't go for it if you are a total novice. Generally though the book is well put together and has some great material and appendixes.

Frankly, I don't understand the 3 and 4 star reviews for this text. The book itself makes no claims about being a self-study course, that being said, for the astute individual learner; one can work through this on their own, it would just be difficult. But imagine if piano method books were being judged on whether or not they could be studied on their own.

As far as the book itself is concerned, I think it is an incredible resource for those of us who don't speak Hindi/Sanskrit but want to play/sing songs from India. It is organized by thaat with raga-s that belong to that thaat along with a very straight forward history/theory section. I play dilruba and have found it very useful.

I was hoping to learn about North Indian vocal music. This would make a wonderful classroom textbook at a college, but only if you have an experienced teacher. It's not self-help at all. There is no DVD or CD to hear what the notation indicates.

In short, not that it's a bad book, it's actually well-written. I just wish it had either been labeled as a classroom textbook or had come with a DVD or CD examples.