Conversion of pitch values to notes
4.5. Interpretation of tone: Take 4
In this section, I take a still closer look at some of the constraints that help us dene the relative markedness of tones and their sequencing in Carnatic music. Once again, before addressing this issue, I shall go back to linguistics.
Informally speaking, it is well-known that one produces ‘voice’ by the vibra-tion of the vocal cords. But in reality, it is rather difcult to turn the vibravibra-tion of the vocal cords on and off in a matter of milliseconds. Firstly, the effort required to vibrate the vocal cords is much less when air escapes without obstruction or friction through the oral tract or the nose (for the set of sounds called ‘sonorant’, i.e. vowels, nasal sounds and /l/ and /r/ type sounds (the last two types are known as liquids)) than it is for sounds during the produc-tion of which there is either complete block or fricproduc-tion in the oral tract (as it is for consonants called ‘obstruents’ comprising stops and fricatives), e.g. b, d, g, Āۅף (as in ‘Jew’), v, ğ (as in ‘they’ (this is a fricative, i.e. a continuous sound in native styles of speech), z (as in Zen), ף (as in ‘rouge’). Therefore, gener-ally, it is easier to pronounce voiced vowels, nasals and liquids and voiceless stops and voiceless fricatives. This fact is also reected in the selection of sounds across languages. Whereas all languages select sounds freely from the easy, unmarked sets (called context-free unmarked), not many languages
Interpretation of tone: Take 4 99 select any from the marked sets (called context-free marked). Thus, there are languages which select voiced vowels, nasals, liquids but only voice-less stops and fricatives (closer home, the only fricatives the south Indian languages select are voiceless ones) but there are no languages which se-lect exclusively from the marked sets. There are no languages which sese-lect only voiceless vowels, or only voiceless nasals or voiced fricatives or voiced stops. By implication, if a language has a voiceless vowel, it must also have a voiced vowel; if it has a voiced stop it must also have a voiceless stop, etc.
Secondly, since it is difcult to control the vocal cords quickly, to turn voicing on and off on command, it depends on where the voicing occurs, whether it is preceded/followed by silence, a voiceless segment or a voiced segment. Thus one nds asymmetries like the following (referred to as context-sensitive markedness):
a) It is easier to pronounce voiceless stops at the beginning of a word as in
‘peace’ as there is enough time to adjust for voicing for the vowel later.
b) By implication, it is more difcult to pronounce a voiced stop at the be-ginning of a word as in ‘bee’ when the vocal cords are to be set in motion from a state of rest (silence)
c) The same situation obtains word nally where the vocal cords tend to pre-pare for rest in anticipation of the nal silence. So, it is easier to pronounce the word ‘rip’ than the word ‘rib’.
d) The time lag between the opening of the oral cavity and the vibration of the vocal cords that we are referring to is rooted in our physiology. But the way the time lag (technically called voice onset time (VOT for short) is exploited is language dependent. For instance, although initial voicing in obstruents is universally difcult (marked), English and French learn to cope with it in distinct ways. While English takes the easier route by suppressing the vibration of the vocal cords during and even a little after the release of the oral closure (for the stop /b/), French initiates the vibration of the vocal cords a little before the release stage (and it is quite possible many Indian languages may start the vibration well before the release stage, almost coin-ciding with the closure stage).
So, in effect what we call a ‘voiced’ consonant in the English word ‘bee’
has no voicing at all during the closure and the release stages clearly. And this causes no confusion to English speakers as what matters is the distinc-tion between ‘bee’ and ‘pea’ which is maintained because of the extended VOT in the case of the latter (known as aspiration). In other words, in the latter word, the vocal cords start vibrating much, much later than the release of the closure and the start of the vowel resulting in a part of the vowel being
100 Conversion of pitch values to notes
voiceless which is what we call aspiration. Since French does not choose to delay VOT which would result in the production of a voiceless vowel, it opts for the marked early voice onset. And in many Indian languages there could be an increase in markedness as the contrast required is a four way one (/p, ph, b and bh/) rather than a simple two way distinction as in English and French.
Both from the point of view of distinctiveness and adult perception, it is amply clear that voicing and voicelessness are categorical and no language systematically distinguishes words on the basis of voiced, semi-voiced and totally voiceless segments. But the physical reality is very different across languages.74 Thus the interaction of vocal fold vibration, context-free (gen-eral) markedness, context-sensitive markedness and the salient distinctions in a language is complex giving rise to a large set of possibilities across languages. We should bear in mind that we have considered only one feature namely [voice] till now. There are other features like the tension of the glot-tis [slack vocal cords] and [stiff vocal cords], and the state of the vocal cords whether they are [constricted] or [spread] which also affect the vocal cords’
ability to vibrate and produce voice/affect the voice quality of the sound.
Thus the eventual interaction gets more and more complex across languages.
But the entire gamut of variation in ‘voicing’ effects can be adequately cap-tured using the limited feature set mentioned above, rather than in terms of degrees of voicing.
The 22 Ҍrutis and the different types of glides executed in Carnatic music can be tackled along lines analogous to ‘voicing’ effects across languages.
As in language, we should be able to describe all the tonal effects evidenced in Carnatic music with the help of a small set of specic constraints which could be ranked with respect to each other in different ways to account for the variety of glide effects that are encountered in Carnatic music. As we have already seen, the execution of m.tones is strictly controlled by the un-dominated (hence inviolable) context-free markedness constraint *RED/AUG -TARGETTONE which ensures that m.tones are never specified as stable anchors or targets of execution and that they require an initiating anchor and a target semi-tone to be bounded in a glide for their ‘eeting’ realization.
As a rst approximation, I illustrate below the possible execution of some of the m.tones along with the specication of their anchor and target tones.
Of course, I draw heavily on my practice while describing the execution of m.tones. I am aware that there could be (minor) variations in their execution across performers/styles. Once the mechanism for the execution of m.tones is in place, we can go on to examine the pitch realization of a note in several raagas to further rene the mechanism in the following chapter.
Interpretation of tone: Take 4 101 (12) Execution of some Reduced/Augmented tones
a. Reduced ra
Anc.sa-Red.ra-Target.ri
Informally, reduced ‘ra’ is rendered as a glide from ‘sa’ almost or up to ‘ri’.
b. Reduced gi
Anc.ra or ri-Red.gi-Target.gi
Informally, reduced ‘gi’ is rendered as a glide from the preced-ing semitone selected by the raagam (sa or ra or ri) and the following semitone as the target (the preceding semitone is dependent on the raagam).
c. Augmented gu
Anc.gu-Aug.gu-Target.ma d. Augmented ma75
Anc.gu-Aug.ma-Target.mi or even pa e. Augmented mi
Anc.pa-Aug.mi-Target.pa f. Reduced da
Anc.pa-Red.da-Target.di g. Reduced ni
Anc.pa, da or di-Red.ni-Target.ni h. Augmented nu
Anc.Sa-Aug.nu-Target.Sa
The details in (12) above capture the normal playing style of these m.tones on the veena (basically my style). Three major observations are in order pertaining to the execution of m.tones. As I said earlier, rstly, being a veena player, I hardly nd much evidence for reduced ‘ri’ played on ‘ra’ or a reduced ‘di’ played on ‘da’. This was the reason why I am a little skeptical about the postulation of triҌruti riҌabham and triҌrutidaivatam respectively in Indian music theory. Secondly, Aug.mi and Aug.nu, though played on ‘mi’
and ‘nu’ respectively, have a higher starting pitch, perhaps ‘pa’ and ‘Sa’ re-spectively and, as I mentioned earlier, all raagas which select these notes also select the related m.tones.. Finally, Red.gi, Aug.ma and Red.ni admit greater variation specifc to styles/raagas (more of this later).
Apart from the rendering of Aug.mi and Aug.nu, the generalization that one can extract from the formalization in (12) above is that a reduced m.tone is a glide from the immediately preceding (semi-)tone (selected by the raa-gam) to a higher goal and the augmented m.tone is a downward glide from
102 Conversion of pitch values to notes
a higher, immediately following semi-tone to the RenScale note ‘mi’ or ‘nu’
as the case may be via the aug. m.tone and back to the anchor. And while targets can be more than one semi-tone higher than the specied m.tone, in general, they can be particularly higher for red.gi, red.ni and aug.ma. Finally, the anchor of aug.mi and aug.nu are ‘pa’ and ‘Sa’ respectively rather than
‘mi’ and ‘nu’ respectively – the lower tone as in the other cases. These can be formalized as the constraints in (13) below:
(13) Constraints on anchors, goals a. Markedness of Red.ri and Red.di *Red.ri,*Red.di
b. Execution of Reduced Tone (ERT) [TA TRed/Aug TG] Glide
Informally, a glide is initiated from an anchor tone, passes through the reduced tone and has a higher goal.
c. Anchor of Augmented Tone I (AAT-I) TA TAug.Ti = TTi TAug.Ti
Informally, the anchor of the glide is the note which is to be augmented.
d. Anchor Augmented Tone II (AAT-II) (specic to Aug.mi and Aug.nu)
TA TAug.Ti = TTi+1 TAug.Ti
Informally, the anchor of the glide is the semi-tone higher than the tone to be augmented.
e. Execution of Target Tone (ETT) ...TRed/Aug.Ti T = T Red/Aug.Ti T Red/Aug.T i + n
where n is at least a semi-tone or at most the next full tone.
In this section we took up the problem of the execution of reduced/aug-mented tones in Carnatic music and demonstrated how best we could rec-oncile traditional wisdom with modern, (acoustic) instrumental ndings re-garding the microtonal nature of Carnatic music.
The claim that grammar of music, in general, and that of Carnatic music in particular, requires a mechanism to interpret tones as notes of music is supported by several arguments. I showed how pitch boundaries are not uni-versally, mathematically dened and that across cultures/performers bound-aries could vary. I also explained how Carnatic music has re-interpreted the twelve tone scale as a potential sixteen tone scale giving rise to ambigu-ity in the interpretation of tones in isolation. Further, since Carnatic music
Interpretation of tone: Take 4 103 systematically exploits inter-tonal pitch ranges, the mechanism to interpret tones and tonal ranges as notes of music is all the more important. Finally, an attempt was made to formalize the relative markedness of the additional reduced and augmented tones and formalize their rules of interpretation/re-alization.