Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Shape of You - Veena fusion!

I tried experimenting with the immensely popular 'Shape of You' from Ed Sheeran's album "Divide" on a string instrument. A major portion of the notes are clustered around particular singular notes. In fact the opening vocal line uses the same note for a record duration repeatedly tempered across various phrases. It might seemingly tend to denote a dissonance but in essence is such a catchy composition. From a classical parlance, it's based on the minor scale of 'Natabhairavi' with more specific usage of Sa Ga2 Ma1 Pa Ni2 Sa making you look it up as 'Suddha Dhanyasi' which effectively can be considered as the derivative of the former (debatable?) by dropping the Rishabam and Dhaivatam. The excitement of playing this track made me attempt a bit of gimmicks here and there. I'm very much a greenhorn in this oceanic field of music and I hope the rendition wasn't all that bad. Bouquets and brickbats both welcome :).

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