Can anyone who play carnatic music onthe violin help me on one thing. Basically I have just picked up some basic techniques from few people..I can comfortably play the swaras in madhya stayi. I could even spot the positions of the swaras in tara stayi in "p" string. I just wanted to know the exact fingers that are used for each of the swaras on Tara stayi.(R , G, M , P) I would be very grateful if I get this information...Any linkon carnatic violin lesons(Which would teach fingering) would also be very useful.

Thanks, Seshan.K

-- Seshan K (seskrish@cisco.com), December 11, 2002

Answers

Your index finger is generally used to play tara sadhjam. But when you play swaras above taraka madhyama, you should use index finger as the base and keep it on r. Your Guru might differ from this view. My Guru has taught in the way that if you are playing taraka madhyama, keep the index finger in the tara shadja, middle finger in rishabha, ring finger in gandhara and little finger in madhyama. One should not lift the lower finder (index, middle and ring) when playing madhyama. If you want to play Gandhara just lift the little finger. You can mail me if you want to have some more discussion on this. HTH

-- Varchas Ramila Subrahmanya (rsvarcha@cedt.iisc.ernet.in), December 27, 2002.

I've been taught to play with the index finger on the sadhjam. Then one ascends with the others. Tara R - middle, tara G - either middle (if suddha-madhyama raga) or ring (if prati-madhyama raga), tara M - ring.

Now what of P? Tara P and above - ring and little. One should avoid using just one finger to play all the notes, as this creates a blurring of the semi-tones that doesn't sound too good.

-- Diwakar (akoult@yahoo.com), April 11, 2003.