The Dialects of Tuning

I was so used to the pitches that I sang in Hindustani classical music that it never even occurred to me to listen to the actual pitches being used in other styles like Indonesian or Persian or even pop.

This may come as a shock to many music lovers, but each style of music can have its own set of notes that it uses. The notes we’re familiar with may not be the ones used in the music of another time or place. For those who are new to this — I’m not kidding. If you listen carefully, you’ll realise this to be true.

I experienced this after a year of picking up the guitar. I was reading about tuning methods (Uniting with sound: Pitch) and I came across an article on tuning systems, which talked about the many systems of tuning that are in use and how each can have its own set of distinct notes that may not be used in other styles of music. I was amazed, mainly because I hadn’t once realised this while playing music myself. All the notes on the guitar seemed familiar to me. I thought it was the same system of {Sa, Re, Ga…} that I had always used in Hindustani.

Not so.

The European system of music (what we call western music in India) now primarily uses the 12-tone equal temperament system of tuning. This is different from the pure fifths that Hindustani music uses. Don’t be frightened. It should all be clear by the end of the article.

If you take an octave, say Sa to Sa, you can practically divide it in any number of ways. You can have 500 notes in one octave if you really wanted to. The point though, is not to arbitrarily divide an octave into notes (or is it?) but to find notes that are pleasing subjectively. Once you find these pitch positions, you can then use them as syllables to form words and phrases of music.

Not every system even relies on exact pitch positions. Karnatik music, for example, relies on a note oscillation within a small range, which is considered the note itself. Such systems redefine our conception of what music can be and really show us how no one system of music is the final authority.

In systems that rely on fixed positions though, there can be many differences in the pitches used. The choice largely depends on the resonance desired by the musician.

For example, the Pythagorean system of tuning uses the interval of a pure perfect fifth to find the pitches of notes in the scale. A perfect fifth is the interval between Sa and Pa. It’s possible to have many variations in the exact pitch of Pa. The one used in Pythagorean tuning is the one where the frequency ratio between Sa and Pa is 3:2, or you could say that Pa is one-and-a-half times the frequency of Sa.

Alright. That’s a lot to take in. Back to story mode. I remember being told by friends in school how I was good at singing Hindustani music but not other styles. I tried to figure out why this was the case. I thought it must be my diction and I was pronouncing words in English with an Indian accent while singing.

That wasn’t it though. I was pretty good at imitating accents, and I had no problems imitating the accent of the singer I was listening to. What I didn’t realise at the time was that I was using notes I had internalised for years, in a setting where they didn’t gel with the music. Each note was ever so slightly different. The average listener wouldn’t ever say I was going off-pitch but I had this slight pitch deviation whenever I sang in other styles. Even though it was hard to tell what I doing wrong, it was very clear that I wasn’t resonating the way I should.

The reason I thought that all pitches were the same was because there are, in a way, 12 notes in both systems. I wasn’t listening though, and when you don’t listen, problems arise in your musicality.

The notes in Hindustani classical use the harmonic series to define their pitches. These are the so-called “pure” intervals. Once you listen to them, you feel the resonance in each note. The fundamental frequencies of the notes are in whole number ratios, which is always a good thing for resonance. This tuning system is reliant on hearing pure resonances and using the resulting notes. So it may be that the space between one set of adjacent notes is different from another set of adjacent notes. It is not an equal division of the octave.

The equal-tempered system used by European music on the other hand, divides the octave with equally spaced notes, so no matter which two adjacent notes you choose, whether it’s F and F# or B-flat and B, you will always have the exact same interval between them.

Hindustani music also uses slight variations on notes, depending on the raga and the preference of the performer. So Re might be slightly different depending on which the raga to which it belongs, and the performer may slightly vary it to create a different emotion.

Which system you use depends on what type of music you want to play. That’s the bottomline.

With the European system, there is the logical convenience of constant interval size. This creates its own problems of not having perfect resonance, but going by the popularity of this style and related styles of music, that doesn’t seem to be too much of an issue to listeners.

Instruments like the guitar and mandolin have fret distances that map to equal intervals. This becomes a convenience when checking the instrument for tuning issues.

You can play in literally any key, like C# or E, and because the interval size is constant, you can use all 12 notes in much the same way, in the context of whichever root note you play.

It’s interesting to note that European music didn’t always use the equal-tempered scale. Medieval European music used a system called just intonation, also based on the pure perfect fifth like the Pythagorean system of tuning. It relied on pure resonances and had unequal interval sizes between adjacent notes.

The problem medieval European musicians faced was that if a song was in one key, say C, and the next one was in C# then they’d have to retune all the instruments (and there are many in an orchestra) to fit the new key. They couldn’t just use the same tuning because all the notes would need to be slightly different to sound resonant.

This system was replaced with the equal-tempered scale where the resonance took a slight hit but the convenience increased manifold. Retuning was no more necessary.

The change in the tuning system used opened up new avenues for composers. The multiple key changes prevalent in this musical style are made possible by not having to retune instruments and using the equal-temperament system instead. The legend J.S. Bach even wrote two collections of music titled The Well-Tempered Clavier (in English) from the joy of being able to compose music in multiple keys.

Hindustani music is a melodic style of music. It relies on a fixed root note, Sa. Sa is kept constant in the course of a musical performance. Since there is no need to use multiple keys and change Sa accordingly, there is no need to give up the pure resonances used in the music. Change in emotion is controlled through melody and rhythm, so you don’t need keys to change to achieve the same effect.

I was clueless about all this until my second year in college. Reading that one article about tuning systems put me on the path of really listening to the pitches used in music. It opened me up to so many more styles of music I didn’t even know existed — each one beautiful and serene.

I love language analogies, so here’s one more.

Tuning is to music what pronunciation is to a language.

Use the template of sounds in the language and you can make words that have meaning.

Pitch is to music what enunciation is to a language.

Use the sounds clearly and correctly and you can speak the language with mastery.

The tuning system is a way to decide the exact pitches that will be used. The better a musician sticks to these pitches, the clearer the message. Too much deviation and the result can sound messy, like a novice speaking a foreign language — he can’t quite pronounce the words the way a native speaker would.

When we listen to a language we don’t understand one bit, it’s easy for us to gloss over what’s being said and consider what we’re hearing as a meaningless series of grunts and vocalisations.

If the language is somewhat similar to a language we know, we might try to figure out what’s being said by listening to words that sound similar and trying to undo the changes to words we know that sound slightly different in this new language.

When it’s a language we know that is being spoken with a different accent, we try to undo the accent in our mind constantly to understand what we’re already familiar with.

Phew. Long analogy. But hopefully not entire pointless.

I think we all have this auto-tune module in our head, which is activated whenever we listen to music (it’s a metaphor. I don’t mean this literally). Based on whatever we’ve already heard, we auto-tune unfamiliar pitches to the ones we already know well. We can do this for a while and not be fatigued if unfamiliar pitches are not used too frequently. When the style of music heavily uses pitches we’re not used to, we sort of switch off. It becomes too much to comprehend. Our biases come in the way and we either begin to dislike the music or ignore it.

I think we’re losing out on a lot of creativity and meaning this way. If we could just focus on the sound and listen to it in its true nature, unburdened by our expectations, we can truly discover something beyond what we already know. Ditch the auto-tuner!

It’s like trying out a new cuisine. It might take a while to get used to, but it can’t happen unless you give it a shot, or maybe try it a few times with an open mind, until you begin to notice the wonderful flavours you didn’t even know were there before.

When I began to learn Dhrupad from my guru, I was initially auto-tuning the notes or svaras to the ones I used on the guitar, the equal-temperament pitches. Only when I began to let go and listen to the exact pitch could I begin to see the beauty that lay in its resonance.

Now that I’ve discovered this new system of resonance, I have two parallel systems in my head that I use depending on the situation. No system is wrong or right to me anymore. There are so many out there, each with their unique traits, that help us explore new ways of thinking about sound. And music is an exploration after all.

_/\_

Around Sound turns my personal experiences with music, both as a musician and as a listener, into stories.

Improve your sense of rhythm (How I improved my sense of rhythm: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4) as you read about my journey through the world of rhythm. How’s that for combining a lesson and a story into one? :D

Get a better grasp on notes with my 3-part How I learned to speak with notes series: Melody, Harmony and Connection

You might even find these interesting:
The Sound of Water, The Mirror in the Music and The Voice of a Story

You can have a look at all my articles here: Anirudh Venkatesh