Students enrolled for this course will learn an important aspect of raga which pertains to the sequence of notes when rendered, the way they are rendered and the speed at which they are rendered, known as challan in Hindustani classical music. Students through this course will be taught the nuances that will help them get a firm grip or pakad on the challan or the aspects of ragas mentioned earlier. Through the initial part of this course students will be taught a composition adhering to 16 beats or teen tala, playing it on the sitar with fixed taan and jhala. Further on in the course students will be introduced and taught about alap which relates to the first portion of the music rendered in an instrumental performance, also meant to introduce the raga, it is slow in tempo. Students also learn about jor, besides learning 5 different types of taans in meer and gamak. Jor is considered to be the musical play that comes after alap at beginning of a performance and before the conclusion using, jhala. Gamak is the ornamentation or alankara that emphasises on the ragas individual characteristic. Gamak is an important aspect of hindustani classical music. Gamakas are defined as per ragas, as such the gamakas for each raga differs in its characteristics or the style it is presented. The concluding lessons in this course will teach students the system to adhere to while rendering a raga on the sitar, to make the students performance ready.

If the student wants to get more insights on the basics of how to play sitar, the fundamentals of Hindustani classical music starting with the basic notes of sa, re, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni, here is another course tailored by Supratik Sengupta: Sitar Basics | Hindustani Classical

About Supratik Sengupta: Supratik Sengupta born in a family of musicians, was fortunate to find his first teacher in his father Shri. Kuber Sengupta, who helped him step into the world of music at an early age. Ever since, Supratik has taken confident strides towards becoming an exponent of sitar. Soon after, Supratik started his formal training in the guidance of Biswanath Das and Debaprasad Chakraborty. Then on, Supratik took tutelage from Sangeet Acharya Ajoy Sinha Roy and Dr. Pradip Chakraborty for long, before deciding to enroll at the ITC Sangeet Academy to train under Pt. Buddhadeb Dasgupta and Pt. Partho Pratim Chatterjee. His time at the academy was spent as a musician scholar under his respected gurus mentioned earlier. Surpratik was destined to shine as a musician and the training he underwent ensured that his destiny was not impacted. Supratik’s talent was recognised by the ministry of Travel, Tourism & Culture that bestowed on him a national scholarship. He is recognised an A grade artist by All India Radio and has performed at multiple locations both in India and Abroad.