Indian Classical Music - Ragas - Music Therapy - Voice Production

Merukhand Gayaki plays a vital role in the frequent practices and even in the performances. Ustad Amir Khan Saheb's Gayaki is always associated with merukhand style, because he often created the raga progressions through this technique, during his recitals, which is why his vocalization was unique and mesmerizing. In merukhand, 3 or 4 notes patterns are selected and all the possible combinations and patterns are rendered while practices. Merukhand technique works well in enhancing creativity of a singer and in improving the vocalization of jumped notes as well. To illustrate the merukhand style, let's select 4-note swar pattern initially: Sa Re Ga Ma Now we will create all the possible pattern, taking only these notes, without repeating any swaras: Sa Re Ga Ma           Re Sa Ga Ma       Ga Re Sa Ma         Ma Ga Re Sa Sa Re Ma Ga           Re Ga Sa Ma       Ga Re Ma Sa         Ma Ga Sa Re Sa Ga Re Ma           Re Sa Ma Ga       Ga Sa Re Ma         Ma

As the name signifies, pentatonic ragas are the ragas having the five-notes syllables in particular. In Hindustani music, there are primary three Jaati : Audav (Ragas having only 5 notes in ascend and descend both) , Shaadav (Ragas having 6 notes), Sampoorna (Ragas having all 7 notes); and nine sub-categories with all possible combinations of these three categories, like Audav-Audav (Having 5-5 notes in ascending and descending series both), Audav-Shadav ( 5 notes in ascending and 6 while descend), Audav-Sampoorna (5 notes while Ascend and all 7 while descend ) etc.. Pentatonic ragas are called Audav Jaati Raga (औडव जाति के राग).  There are many ragas, which are created only by selecting five notes, omitting any two, which are mesmerizing and extraordinary. Creating and vocalizing such scale is challenging, because the phrase-improvisation,  becomes limited as one has to revolve round and round skipping with those five notes. Some of the Audav-Jaati ragas are: Raga