Sarang

This is an excerpt from a guitar improvisation played on the Godin freltess guitar. This thing plays like butter! I tracked one take and then had a musical conversation on another take with the first one. The great thing about this guitar is I can manage the subtle glissando & ornaments of Indian music as well as bring in a jazz sensibility to my phrases creating a composite phraseology.

photo by Jay Matsueda

The 6 string guitar on the right is what you're hearing (also played on Kafi Bund recording on the previous post below). The other guitar I playing in this shot is the Godin Glissintar (11 string fretless). I post some jams with this soon too.

This contemporary improvisation is based loosely on an simple North Indian afternoon raga which is basically a 5 note raga with an alternating 7th note. I am calling this Sarang but there is some debate between gharanas (schools of Indian music) for the name of this particular raga. Sarang is actually a family of afternoon ragas comprising a number of related ragas from which this is one of them. My guruji (Pt. Ravi Shankar) refers to this as Madhumat Sarang.

The arohi (ascent) & avarohi (descent) of this raga is.

Sa Re Ma Pa Ni Sa ~ Sa Ni Pa Ma Re Sa
1 2 4 5 7 1 1 b7 5 4 2 1