The whole point in those alankars is for you to use your ears to follow the notes. I have always maintained (and it is true) that music is an aural art form. So the learning should use minimal visual help (like tuners or notations) – unless you are learning a song and would like to keep a notation sheet for reference.

There is a fundamental approach to vocal music on any instrument – This is based on syllables. We use strokes of the tongue to depict the syllables. With respect to aakar, as it is a vowel sound, we avoid the tongue and use finger technique to move between the notes. An elaborate explanation for this has been given in the Indore Workshop. Please watch that for an in-depth understanding for Gayaki ang on Bansuri.

There is also a mention of the 23 unique vowel and consonant sounds we can produce on the bansuri using the tongue – this can be found in the technique master class course. Do watch that too! 🙂

Hope this helps!

Technically, yes. they are the same. But they vary in application of such glissando.

Whereas in Indian music, meend is where the music is actually said to reside (“What happens between the two notes is where the actual music is” – because of the expressiveness with which such meend can be applied), in western music, glissando is mostly used as an articulation to reach the next note. (Only fretless instruments and a few brass instruments use glissando. Piano, the concert flute (and a few other woodwinds), melodic percussion instruments such as glockenspiel and vibraphone don’t use glissando.

Specific articulations such as meend and alap are almost impossible to notate in the western notation (in my limited knowledge). Someone who knows more can correct me if I am wrong here, please.

On a different note (pun unintended), it is always helpful to learn the western notation system as, for the most part it is easy to communicate with other musicians with it as a general idea for any piece of Indian music.

Indian session musicians, specially from the 1960s through the early 2000s have relied on a hybrid of the Bhatkhande system and vernacular script. An evolved version of which I have developed, taking heavily also from the Ravi Shankar system of writing (in English – using SRGMPDNS) and the western system of Bars and Beats to arrive at a point where my notation system encompasses almost all that I have needed to read and play on my instrument. Especially during my non-classical pursuits. You may find this being used in most of my courses here.

This system is available to learn in both Hindi and English as a course here on https://www.ashwinflute.com/courses/nwce/

Do give this a try 🙂

ashwinflute.com

Introduction to a New and Comprehensive Indian Notation System - ENGLISH - Ashwin Srinivasan

A unique and very ‘Indian’ Method to writing Notaions for Indian Music

As I understand it, it is detail agnostic. When we use the extension on Chrome, it gives us the ability to only Globally change pitch and tempo separately. Unlike an auto-tuner plugin which pitch ‘corrects’ the audio, this extension only allows / shifts pitch and time elastically with minimum artefacts. 🙂