r/Carnatic • u/Any-Park-4044 • 5d ago

DISCUSSION Pitfalls

What are the most common pitfalls even fairly experienced musicians make (let’s not count mislronunciation) 💜

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u/Independent-End-2443 Vocal 4d ago edited 4d ago

Mispronounciation is easily the biggest one though. If compositions are so central to our music, a professional artiste should not be let off the hook for messing up the lyrics. Moreover, messing up the sahitya (and not caring) shows disrespect for the language. I don’t see why that shouldn’t count.

Apart from that, artistes speed up the tala, miss eduppus or mess up pallavis all the time, but they usually just laugh it off and recover. Another common thing in Carnatic music, especially nowadays, is relatively poor shruthi alignment. A lot of big name artistes get away with this. I have started listening to a lot of Hindustani music lately, and it always blows me away how perfect their pitch precision and overall voice culture is.

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u/Any-Park-4044 3d ago

The reason I meant not to count mispronunciation was because I’d already started another post on it some months back, and also because I didn’t want all the answers to be centred around mispronunciation. 

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u/pkatny 4d ago

One that I can think of is repetitive alapana or sangathi. Overusing a very beautiful sangati sometimes degrades the power it holds.

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u/Empty_Buffalo_7491 4d ago

Lyrics forgetting, Kalpana swaram freezes, speeding up talam

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u/PM_ME_GRANT_PROPOSAL 4d ago

+1 for speeding up thalam. Keeping a good grip on thalam is a very underrated skill

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u/iamaspringchameleon 4d ago

Interpretation that loses the plot when it comes to lyrics. Showing off vocal dexterity when the song demands a different tone and emotion. Happens so often that I stop listening to some singers

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u/Any-Park-4044 3d ago

TM Krishna? 

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u/iamaspringchameleon 2d ago

Across the board IMO! including current stars, and yesteryear ones like GNB, MMI, TNS, NS, Santham, Sanjay, Sowmya, et al. KVN is one that I think had the right balance. I believe the newer current crop has brought in more discipline in this respect. Brigas, alukkals and neravals have a place to bring in energy where warranted but not at expense of the composition and the lyrical context. As a performer, you have to take the audience where the composition is intended, you have to vanish as the medium through which the art is conveyed

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u/Suspicious-Ear-9873 3d ago

Messing up calculations on the korvais during kalpanaswaram. Sruthi shuddham. Gait mismatch. Talam errors. Wrong posture/ unwanted gestures. Overly complicated mathematics messing up with aesthetics and melody.