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Indian music is melodic. In melody we sing one note at a time. In case of
Indian movie (film) songs, the melody still has a role to play. But
singing only one note at a time does not satisfy the needs of the film
industry, which requires the film songs to sound "modern". This
translates into adding 'hot', loud beat and heavy orchestration to
accompany the melodic line. This has made our film music a kind of hybrid.
Much of the current Indian film music tends to sound like dance music.
Melody, the queen of the past days, is now relegated to a much less
important position.
To achieve this added punch to the 'dry' melodic line, harmonizing Western
music style is extensively employed. Chords and chord progressions
accompany the melodic lines, so that the music sounds fuller. This makes
it necessary that we learn the rudiments of chords as employed in Indian
film music. What, you may ask, is a chord?
A chord is a combination of three (or more) notes played at the same time.
All chords are formed by playing simultaneously three or more notes,
according to definite rules.
Chords are played, mostly by your lrft hand, and mostly in the left-most
keyboard (harmonium) area. Since you are learning harmonium, and NOT the
electronic keyboard, your left hand is already occupied with the task of
pumping the bellows to force air onto the reeds of the harmonium. So, how
do you play the chords? Well, you simply CANNOT -- unless you do something
about this problem. I will not take up this issue here. I would only say
that, in spite of this problem, you should have a rudimentary information
about chords. And, you should be able to play the chords we will use to
accompany our songs, in a simple way. In the next article, we will deal
with the chords that we need to use more commonly.
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