From theory — Eastern theory · Alankār. What a palta is and why every tradition drills them.

Paltas

Fixed patterns run up and down the scale. They are the scales and arpeggios of this music, and on a fretless instrument they are also how you teach your hand where the notes are.

How to practise them

  1. Drone on. Every note gets checked against Sa as you play it. A palta practised without a drone trains your hand to be confidently wrong.
  2. Slower than you can play it. The point is accuracy of pitch, not speed. Speed is a by-product that arrives later on its own.
  3. Stop the moment it goes vague. Four clean repetitions beat twenty sloppy ones, because what you are building is a physical memory and it records the sloppy ones too.
  4. Sing it, then play it. Especially when you are learning a new pattern.
  5. One long bow or one bow per note? Decide before you start, and do the same thing every repetition. Both are worth practising.
The chip rows below show one chip per beat, so you can count them. A chip with a green edge is reached by a slide on the same bow; a faded dash is the previous note still sounding. Click any chip to hear its note.

The first four

1 · Sapat — straight up, straight down

The plainest possible pattern, and the one worth the most time. Every note in tune, even volume, no rush.

2 · Two forward, one back

The classic second palta. Each pair steps up and the pattern keeps returning, so your hand has to find the same note from two directions.

3 · Three-note groups

Groups of three climbing the scale. Play it in six beats and it already sounds like jhyaure — see Jhyaure & the madal.

4 · Skipping thirds

Harder than it looks: the hand has to jump rather than walk, so it cannot feel its way to the next note. Slow.

Patterns that are specifically for this instrument

The four above are common to all Eastern melodic training. These use what a bowed fretless instrument can do and a flute or a fretted instrument cannot.

5 · The whole scale on one bow

No note is bowed separately: the hand slides from each note to the next while the bow keeps going. Every chip after the first has a green edge. This is the sound of the instrument doing what it is for.

6 · Wide slides

Sa up to Pa and back, on one bow. A long meend is harder to land than a short one because your hand has further to travel and nothing to stop it at the right place. Listen to the arrival, not the journey.

7 · One note, four bows

Not a pitch exercise at all — a bow exercise disguised as one. The same note four times, each held two beats, with the bow changing direction between them. The aim is that a listener cannot hear where the changes are.

8 · Down into the low string

Descends out of the middle octave and onto the thick string, so somewhere in the middle the bow has to cross. Find where, and make the crossing inaudible.

Making your own

A palta is a small shape moved up the scale one step at a time. Pick any shape — three notes, four, with a turn in it — and move it. That is the whole method, and it is why a tradition with no written notation can pass down an enormous number of exercises.

Write your patterns in sargam and keep them. A pattern you invented for a problem you actually had is worth more than a pattern from a list.

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