- Year 10
- OCR
Structure in North Indian classical music
I can describe the structure of a piece of North Indian classical music and have recreated some of its key parts.
Copyrighted materials: to view and download resources from this lesson, you’ll need to be in the UK and
- Year 10
- OCR
Structure in North Indian classical music
I can describe the structure of a piece of North Indian classical music and have recreated some of its key parts.
Copyrighted materials: to view and download resources from this lesson, you’ll need to be in the UK and
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Lesson details
Key learning points
- North Indian classical music has a typical structure consisting of alap, gat and jhala.
- Alap is the introduction, with a free tempo and the sitar player improvising on the raga.
- In gat, there is a clear pulse on the tabla, and a more structured melody on the sitar.
- In jhala, it speeds up and the performers play more complex music in a virtuosic style, building to a frantic finale.
Keywords
Alap - The introduction section to a piece of North Indian classical music is called alap.
Gat - The second section, where the tabla joins in is called gat. It has a more fixed melody.
Jhala - The final section, where the tempo and energy builds, is called jhala.
Virtuosic - Playing in a virtuosic style means to play in a way that shows off your technical and musical ability.
Common misconception
The alap - gat - jhala structure is just about changes in tempo from slow, to medium to fast.
While the tempo does change, the bigger changes are around melody. The alap explores the raga freely, the gat is more structured and the jhala is heavily improvised and virtuosic.
To help you plan your year 10 music lesson on: Structure in North Indian classical music, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs...
To help you plan your year 10 music lesson on: Structure in North Indian classical music, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs.
The starter quiz will activate and check your pupils' prior knowledge, with versions available both with and without answers in PDF format.
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Explore more key stage 4 music lessons from the North Indian Classical music and West African drumming unit, dive into the full secondary music curriculum, or learn more about lesson planning.
Files needed for this lesson
- Gat and jhala template 15.25 MB (ZIP)
- Tanpura drone backing track 1.6 MB (MP3)
- Jhala tabla backing track 391.83 KB (MP3)
Download these files to use in the lesson.
Equipment
DAW and/or live instruments
Licence
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