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Senhor Matthias: Outra vez voce tem umas perguntas muitas interesantes. At the risk of straying too far from looping, I'll respond. >>>Do they [Indian musicians] use any electronics exept for straight >>>amplification of their traditional work? >> >>Currently in North Indian classical music I've not seen anyone use >>electronics in the sense of changing tone color, extending an >instrument's >>range, etc. About the only real use of sound processing is adding >>artificial reverb both to live performances and studio recordings to enhance >>the overall sound. Unfortunately this tends only to make things muddier. >>If it's used sparingly it can be a nice effect but more often than not both >>the main instrument (or vocalist) as well as the tabla accompanist are >>drenched in reverb and this winds up ruining the music (for me at least). > >I tend to "ruin" my music with long reverb, too. The "drone aspect" of the >reverb may be more important than the clarity of each note? This depends. Some "schools" of Indian classical music strive for extreme clarity of expression. This can include such details as clear and precise intonation of every note, thoughtful and economic phrasing, and in the case of vocal music, an attempt to make the lyrical portion easily understood. In this performance style overdoing the reverb would be a distraction to the listeners and an annoyance to the performers. However, there are also performers who go more in the direction of overall "mood," "sound," and "feeling" in which case the additional electronic effects certainly help to create an atmosphere. I'm really speaking only of the classical music. As another list member pointed out, in the extremely popular film music anything goes. [Re: synthesizers in ICM] >Well, the equipment certainly is a limitation, too. Maybe you would not >like the sound any more, today. I would not like to invade the fine indian >sounds with synthesizers... Equipment is definitely a big limitation. Imported high-tech gear is prohibitively expensive. Even if a musician could afford the gear there's the constant problem of never knowing when the electricity will go out, or how soon it will come back on. (To go 24 hours with no power is a common occurrence even in the large cities) Also, even if the power cooperates there's always the trouble of using converters for the different current. What I had more in mind though, was the use of synthesizers to give a wide variety of tonal colors to the music, and to recreate the slow glides between notes (meend), as well as other graces and techniques that derive from vocal music, and are incorporated into the playing techniques of almost all instruments. >Instead of using an "electronic tanpura", the drone could be looped from >the sitar for each piece of music, wouldn't that sound nicer? This is what I've been doing when I don't want to go to the trouble of hooking up a tanpura for what will amount to a 5-second sample. It's convenient, but I much prefer the textural richness of the tanpura. The overall timbre of sitar and tanpura are very close, but the tanpura's sound is so special that a sitar would only be a cheap copy. [Conversely, the sound of the tanpura is close, but no sitar! ;) ] >How about the use of pickups on those instruments? I remember the arabian >musicians using pickups on their instruments for quite a while. Some musicians are using them, especially those who have been to Europe and the States. Of course the sound all depends on what the pickups are plugged into. I've only ever seen two performers (the incredible South Indian mandolin player U. Srinivas and the brilliant South Indian violinist L. Shankar) use amplifiers. Indian music performances currently tend to be severely overamplified. Of course, being part of the third world, the available equipment is very limited. I've seen pickups used on some string instruments like sitar, sarod, and the South Indian veena, but have never seen them used on tabla or other percussion instruments. >Muito obrigado pela contribuicao interessante, Joao! O prazer e todo meu! James (Jaimezinho) Pokorny