Anoushka Shankar

Question 1

Who is Shankar?

Answer 1

Born 1981 in London.
Daughter of famous sitar player Ravi Shankar.
Sitar player.

Question 2

Give the name and info the album.

Answer 2

‘Breathing Under Water’
2nd album of fusion music.

Question 3

Similarities between all 3 tracks (Instrumentation)

Answer 3

Indian instruments + vocal styles:
Sitar, Tabla, Sarangi, Manjira, Bansuri, Veena, Sarod.
Western instruments:
Synths (Pad, Lead, Bass, Drums), Strings, Piano, Guitar, Bass, and Pop/R&B Vocals.

Use of samples + Programmed rhythmic sounds.
Indian instruments carry most of the solo material.

Question 4

Similarities between all 3 tracks (Music Technology).

Answer 4

Programming/manipulation of samples.
Use of synthesisers.
Reverb on vocals (Particularly in title track).

Question 5

Similarities between all 3 tracks (Texture)

Answer 5

Mel-Dom-Hom most common.
Use of layering which becomes more complex.
Dialogue (Call and Response between instruments).

Use of Indian Classical Texture:
Melodic instrument/voice
Rhythmic accompaniment
Drone

Question 6

Similarities between all 3 tracks (Structure)

Answer 6

Use of Western song structures (Verses, Choruses, Bridges, Instrumentals, Intros, Outros).

Question 7

Similarities between all 3 tracks (Melody)

Answer 7

Indian instruments employ Indian techniques. (ornaments, embellishment, improvisation) + notes akin to raga.
Western instruments + voices use narrower ranges and are more repetitive.
Soul, R&B, Bollywood, and pop influences.

Question 8

Similarities between all 3 tracks (Harmony and tonality)

Answer 8

Static, rarely functional.
Dependence on tonal centres.
Few modulations but much flexibility in tonality.
Repeated Chord Progressions (Western) but few cadences.
Many added or extended chords used.
Lots of gentle dissonance.
Pandiatonicism - Harmony built freely from any note of the scale.

Question 9

Similarities between all 3 tracks (Rhythm)

Answer 9

Entirely Western influenced with strong sense of common time.
Highly intricate, many polyrhythms.
Strong sense of pulse, apart from free time solo sections.

Question 10

Instrumentation in ‘Burn’.

Answer 10

Sitar - Improvised Solo intro (Alap), features in dialogue with Lembersky’s vocals.
Sarangi - heard particularly after 1st chorus.
Female vocal - narrow range, syllabic, harmonies in chorus + 2nd verse.
Strings - chords, melodic lines, dialogue with sitar, cello solo at end.
Bass synth - drone or pedal + analogue lead synth in chorus + bridge.
Programmed percussion - fairly straight at times, other times very intricate.
Manjira - Indian finger cymbals

Question 11

Texture in ‘Burn’.

Answer 11

Mainly homophonic with drone on synth bass.
Melodic lines with accompaniment.
Some polyphony when sarangi plays.
Common countermelodies.
Breakdown where texture reduced to sitar and strings, in dialogue.
Final chorus is multilayered.
Solo cello in outro.

Question 12

Structure in ‘Burn’.

Answer 12

Long intro (Like an alap from Indian rag).
Verse - Chorus structure, with bridge passages before and after verse 2 (Solos for sitar + sarangi).
Breakdown
Final exciting chorus.
Cello solo outro.

Question 13

Melody in ‘Burn’.

Answer 13

Highly ornamented/improvisatory.
More repetitive Western vocal melodies.
Lembersky vocals are descending, syllabic, and features 3 note sequences, particularly in chorus.
Strings ‘borrow’ vocal sequential idea and develop it.

Question 14

Harmony/Tonality in ‘Burn’.

Answer 14

Western style chords used, most extended with 4ths, 7ths, or 9ths.
Lots of unresolved dissonances.
Parts where harmony is static and or functional (Use of dominant, 2nd inversion tonic)
Sudden key changes in coda.
Lack of a pull of tonality, though there is a sense of key (C#m).

Question 15

Rhythm in ‘Burn’.

Answer 15

straight 4/4.
Sitar uses triplets.
Sitar, strings and sarangi use syncopation.
Strong sense of pulse (Provided by snare drum).
Manjira adds rhythmic and tonal colour.
Medium tempo.

Question 16

Instrumentation in ‘Breathing Under Water’.

Answer 16

Sitar uses a variety of techniques, slides (meend), trills (gamak), acciaccaturas, (kan) and vibrato (andolan), uses full tessitura.

Wordless vocals act as harmony line most of the time, add colour and texture, used to link sections and provide countermelody to sitar.

Strings and keyboards provide slow-moving chords, known as pads, have some more melodic lines later in the track.

Question 17

Texture in ‘Breathing Under water’.

Answer 17

Three clear textural sections.
Sitar plays a melody accompanied by homophonic chords in strings and keyboards, then sitar and vocal have a brief dialogue.
Finally, sitar plays the melody with vocal countermelody, strings have a slightly more melodic part.

Question 18

Structure in ‘Breathing Under Water’.

Answer 18

‘Breathing Under Water’ works as a kind of extended instrumental introduction for the next track, ‘Sea Dreamer’.
Has verse - chorus structure, with extended bridge section between chorus 1 and verse 2, and outro after chorus 3.

Question 19

Melody in ‘Breathing Under Water’.

Answer 19

Sitar melodies are embellished paraphrases of the melodies of ‘Sea Dreamer’.
Common embellishments from sitar.
Sitar melodies often conjunct with anacrusic starts, just as in ‘Sea Dreamer’.
Vocal melodies also conjunct, but not as highly ornamented.

Question 20

Harmony/Tonality in ‘Breathing Under Water’.

Answer 20

Like ‘Burn’, has tonal centre of C#, though it’s better thought of as being in Db maj.
The bridge section centred around the note A with a strong sense of Lydian mode (Sharp 4th – D sharp).
Most chords have added notes, such as maj/min 7ths and sus 4ths.
Diminished chords and inversions.
Not a lot of cadences, but in outro a repeated plagal cadence using the minor subdominant is noticeable.

Question 21

Rhythm in ‘Breathing Under Water’.

Answer 21

Clear, regular metre, reasonably fast tempo (120 bpm).
Melody characterised by anacrusic rhythms.
While the strings play very slow-moving, regular notes, sitar has lots of rhythmic complexity including tuplets and syncopations.
Feels very ‘loose’, rhythmically.

Question 22

Instrumentation in ‘Easy’.

Answer 22

Shankar’s sitar and Jones’s piano and vocal are standout features.
Jones’s singing effortless and beautiful, mostly syllabic but with melismas on certain words and at relatively low tessitura.
Piano playing subtle, adds colour and decoration, with chords (Often in the treble register), occasional arpeggios.
Sitar plays at the start, engages in dialogue with the voice and plays a solo in the middle, provides some drone-like harmony.
Other instruments are Western: guitar plays finger-style riffs, supported at times by synth bass, programmed drums from Kale, some live percussion such as shaker and manjira.

Question 23

Texture in ‘Easy’.

Answer 23

Melody-dominated homophony, with emphasis on Jones’s vocal line.
Guitar, piano and synth bass parts often riff-like, piano and synth drop in and out to fill out the texture.
Guitar relatively constant.
Dialogue between vocal and guitar in bridge section is more texturally interesting.
Some vocal harmonies on the words ‘I know’.
Percussion drops out at the end.

Question 24

Structure in ‘Easy’.

Answer 24

Verse structure, but lacks a returning chorus.
Three verses with sitar instrumental and bridge section between verses 2 and 3.
Verse 3 is different melodically to the other verses and has dialogue between voice and sitar.
Intro and outro features sitar.

Question 25

Melody in ‘Easy’.

Answer 25

Sitar melodies more ornamented than vocal ones.
Strong sense of Mixolydian mode in the melodies – featuring the flattened 7th but sounding ‘major’.
Repetition in both sitar and vocal melodies, sitar melody at start is regularly phrased and repeats with slight changes.
The vocal melody is quite narrow in range (it spans a 10th) ,stepwise, and has pentatonic features.

Question 26

Harmony/Tonality in ‘Easy’.

Answer 26

This is in D flat major, but the flattened 7th (C flat) gives it Mixolydian features.
No modulations.
Based around a G flat/B flat – C flat – D flat (I, IV, V) chord progression, with inverted and added chords common.
Dissonances provided in form of sus chords – mainly sus2 and sus4.
Use of spread chords.

Question 27

Rhythm in ‘Easy’.

Answer 27

Strong, regular metrical framework at medium pace.
Syncopations in accompaniment and vocal part.
Sitar part is more rhythmically complex and flexible.
Repeated drum part.