Our innovative, new online resource brought to you by the ISM Trust and Indian music expert Yogesh Dattani enables you to take away our lesson plans and successfully play or teach a piece of Indian classical music on any instrument.
This lesson explores the basics of the melodic (rāg) and rhythmic (tāl) structures of North Indian classical music: sargam, as you gradually learn to play a short composition, Sargam Gīt.
About the resource creator
Yogesh Dattani, Head of Ealing Music Service, has taught tablá as part of the Government’s flagship Wider Opportunities Key Stage 2 Music programme. By combining authentic Indian music repertoire with the best of contemporary teaching methods, he has developed teaching strategies and resources that successfully meet the learning needs of pupils, and enables you to successfully learn or teach the basics of Indian music.
How the resource works
We filmed Yogesh delivering his workshop to teachers of Ealing Music Service. The teachers were all professional musicians, but did not have prior experience in Indian music. Yogesh took the teachers through from a place where they had little or no knowledge of Indian classical music to performing the composition together.
Here, we provide you with Yogesh’s lesson in full, broken down into 12 easy lesson plans. Each lesson plan contains a video clip and, where relevant, useful guidance and the composition so you can follow Yogesh’s teaching yourself.
Arrange a workshop
If you would like Yogesh to present this workshop to your students or teachers, please contact our Head of Charities, Ruth McPherson ([email protected]) for more information and booking details.
View lesson plans
You have completed of 12 lesson plans
Congratulations, you have completed all lesson plans, download your certificate of completion.
Warm up and learning outcomes
We begin with an easy introduction to Indian classical music by starting with a warm up and going through our learning outcomes.
Learn to speak compositions
Here we introduce the tablā and how to speak compositions.
Practise speaking compositions
Now take some time to practice what you have learned in lesson plan two.
Learn to clap the time cycle
Yogesh explains how to clap time cycles by showing you how to clap tīn tāl.
Practice clapping the time cycle
Practice clapping the time cycle by learning Chakkardār tukra in teen tāl.
The Indian scale
Yogesh takes you through the Indian scale.
Here we introduce the composition that you will learn: Sargam Gīt.
Yogesh explores improvisation within Indian music further by looking at melodic improvisation.
Three types of embellishments
Yogesh takes you through three different types of embellishments tān, tihāi and, tān and tihāi.
Yogesh takes you through improvisation within Indian music.
Bringing it all together
It’s now time to rehearse what you have learned, so you can perform the composition yourself.
Watch the final performance of the lesson at Ealing Music Service and have a go at running through the composition yourself.