Jr. tries to play the Veena

The next stop on our 2015 year end trip was to Suresh mama's house. Let posterity note that we stayed with them for days and did not make a flying visit!

As soon as we reached Suresh Mama's (uncles) house, the first thing Jr. saw was the nice Veena sitting in their family room. His mom plays the Veena and she let Jr. try it and was giving her a quick lesson. 

Jr. loved it so much that she asked to say there and play while we wanted to keep traveling. We had to pull her off the Veena.

By day 2, she got the hang of it and with more coaching from Amala paati she was able to play "Vara Veena" 

Now she wants us to buy her a Veena.

Guess nothing beats a Tanjavoor Veenai, to get a kid hooked to Carnatic music!

From simple to complex

Jr. has always skipped a few pages on the book with Carnatic music in Western notation for saxophone. 

Enthused by her new instrument, she tried to play Amrithavarshini ragam this morning after playing Christmas songs.

She was not happy with her attempt but I was really impressed. For a first attempt, she is showing a lot of promise. 

Hope that in a few months she can play by ear!

The girl with the golden sax

This year, Jr. decided to play the alto saxophone at Golus instead of singing songs. She practiced the weekend before and played three or four small pieces.

She looked majestic in her half sari and the saxophone matched her dress like another jewel!

Jr. has been teaching herself these pieces. Not that confident yet on her ability to play south Indian classical music. We are all encouraging her to practice more. This year her teacher has promised to help her with understanding the complex notation as well as making it easy to play these pieces. Next year, she might play the entire songs.. 

Here is a small clip from this years Golu at a friends place..

She made us proud just for trying!

Carnatic music on Alto Saxophone

Now that Jr. is very familiar with reading the notation and subtle nuances on the music sheets, she is back to trying Carnatic music on Alto Saxophone. 

The original plan was to have her do a few Geethams or varnams during the Golu season. There was a time in India where I developed an allergic reaction to "sri chakra raja simhasaneshwari" after listening to way too many girls sing the same song at golus. 

Here in the bay area the song selection seems to be more diverse from the group we interacted with in my childhood. Still, it would have been nice for Jr. to play saxophone at golus. For some reason, she was in the Jazz mood and skipped it.

This week having learned Nagumomu in her music class, she wanted to get the instrument home and practice! 

We were thrilled to hear that. She had attempted the first few bars of it earlier this year and said "too hard. Not there yet! How does Kadri do it so fast? he must have a special saxophone! etc. etc." So it was good to see the change.

Here is a video of her attempting Nagumomu and a thillana.

There is a lot more work to be done, but for a first attempt on the thillana, we were impressed. Now that I have mentioned it on the blog, she will promptly read it and call it quits.. have to work on that tomorrow.. 

Note to everyone else : This is pretty good

Note to Jr. : There is a lot more work to be done

Note to San and all older ladies in the family : No. Her fingers won't fall off because I posted a video on the blog

Note to self : Keep calm and coach on.. 

Trying to impress grandmas and getting carried away..

Jr. and the little one both get a "ragam quiz" every night at bedtime. They can guess ~20 ragams from either a song I hum, the aarohanam-avarohanam or phrases or swarams I hum or sing.

Sometimes just play from iPhone for the quiz(usually GNB, MS, MLV, TN Seshagopalan, Ariyakudi from the music collection or the latest Sudha Raghunathan, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Priya Sisters, Ranjani-Gayathri straight from Youtube favorites).

They guess reasonably well, considering they have been at this for two three months already.

Every now and then, they pick a favorite and listen to the whole song till they memorize it and imitate it. While San thinks this is border line blasphemy, I encourage it. After all every kid is not going to be a super singer and the whole idea is to imitate and learn and this is my way of spending some quality time with them and having some fun.

The most important thing in learning, is learning how to learn! (if that has not been copyrighted, I am doing it right now)

So, here are the little Narayanan girls, doing their version of Vinayaka. They thought this was a rehearsal and did not know that the camcorder was on.

Don't know if the paati's will be pleased, what with the little one's novel concept of "variable thAlam" where she suddenly goes into a vigorous hand slapping to give herself some more energy to sing and Jr.'s attempts to sustain notes to try and get some semblance of a steady timing.

If they do improve over the years with lots of practice and training, they might look back at this and go "god, we have come a long way".. and if their interest in music dies out after some time, they might still look at this and go "we did try, didn't we"..

Getting these two to sit next to each other and sing in unison was in itself a workout for Daddy Narayanan. If they happen to sing this in tune and tempo eventually, will post that video as well...

For now the girls are a "work in progress"!

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