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Carnatic Fusion Fingerstyle Guitar - Adi Tala Korvai #5



Let's try another exciting fusion of carnatic, flamenco, and jazz music on fingerstyle guitar and voice. Watch for the use of konnakol (oral percussion to perform rhythms alongside the guitar!)


This korvai is composed by my guru Mr V. Raghuraman, who taught me all I know in carnatic music, and I have adapted it into fusion fingerstyle guitar.


 

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What Ingredients make up this Piece?


Just like cooking, fusion music makes use of diverse flavours and tastes of musical cultures around the world. Let's break things down to see what this fusion fingerstyle piece is made up of!


Flamenco:


Finger Rasgueado:

Powerful and rapid strums using the index, middle, and ring fingers. The concept is simple, but takes years of practice to get right!



Jazz:


Mixolydian Mode:

The mixolydian mode is similar to the major scale, but with a flattened 7th degree. This characteristic b7 adds much tension to an otherwise stable tonality.


Quartal Chords:

Chords stacked in intervals of fourths (as opposed to thirds) creates a sense of ambiguity, where chords seem to float above the texture.




Carnatic:


Adi Tala:

An 8-beat cycle provides the a rhythmic framework from which the piece is constructed upon.


Gati:

Gati refers to the number of subdivisions in each beat. The speed increases as each beat is increasingly subdivided into a larger number of beats (3 to 4 to 6).


Korvai:

A korvai is a type of rhythmic composition which uses the sol (word) 'thathikithathom', and is performed 3 times in different variations.


Konnakol:

Konnakol is the art of performing rhythmic syllables vocally, and is the fundamental building block of rhythm in South Indian classical music.



Music Score:






Thank you for listening in! Follow along my musical journey on my YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and website neilchanmusic.com as I share new music videos and lessons each and every week.



By Neil Chan

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