Frequently Asked Questions

        So, what does Nirvana mean anyway ?
        What is Indian Classical Music ... ?
        How did the site start ?
        How do I download music from your site?
        How do I listen to music on your site ?
        What is ICM ... ?
        Do you have the address of ... ?
        You have not mentioned this great artist !!
        I'm a new artist. Can you please add my profile ?
        What is this artist influence rating ?
        How dare you give a low rating to this great artist .... !!
        What musical notation does ICM use ?
        How do you spell Indian words / What transliteration scheme do you use ?
        Where did you get all the information ?
        What is this Unknown Source ?
        This is my article !!
        I've seen this photo before !!
        How big is your site ?
        Who are you ?
        Who pays for the site ?
        Do you make any money from the site ?
        Contact

So, what does Nirvana mean anyway ?

Nirvana n. (sanskrit) :

1. enlightenment, tranquillity and peace, ultimate reality, salvation, liberation
2. transcendent state of freedom
3. a state in which all living things are free from pain and sorrow
4. real and unchanging essence

What is Indian Classical Music ?

Indian Classical Music refers to music based on ancient musical traditions which have evolved through several thousand years. It is a part of the Hindu religion as well as Indian culture. Technically, in very general broad terms, Indian classical music can be defined by two basic elements - it must follow a Raaga (classical mode) and a specific rhythm or Taala. It is a generic term that includes the north Indian classical tradition called Hindustani and the south Indian tradition called Carnatic / Karnatic. It also includes several light classical genres like ghazal, bhajan etc.

How did the site start ?

This site was born in 2000, mainly as a result of a couple of problems I faced. Whenever I wanted to buy an Indian Classical CD, I used to search for reviews and recommendations on the web. I would rarely find reviews. So I had to buy and test out myself, as to how good the music and the recordings are. Indian classical music being improvisation based, many a time the same artist can be extremely good on one cd and just average on the other. Also the recording and mastering quality varies widely. Secondly, when I search on the net for information on Indian music or artists, invariably half the sites are broken, either because of disuse on free web hosts or the student has moved out of the university which hosted the site. I already had a small home page with my list of recommended CDs for all my online audiophile friends. I decided to turn that into a bigger site which would have a large discography, review CDs and rate them. Also I started compiling general music and artist information off the web. I thought it was a good idea to combine discography and artist profiles. So, Musical Nirvana was born.

Now, it is much broader in scope than just that. You can add your reviews (and see others reviews) of CDs. I hope to build a large collection of reviews for everyone's benefit. Also, I'm trying to make it a complete information site, about theory and history of ICM, music personalities, instruments and everything else connected with ICM. The ICM Portal classifies all ICM sites which have information that this site does not.

Also I wanted to make a site that does not have ugly banners with crawling ads. So, the site will remain banner-free and not-for-profit, in spite of numerous offers I continue to receive.

What is ICM ?

ICM stands for Indian Classical Music.

Do you have the address of ... ?

No, I don't have the address of any artist. If the home page of the artist is linked from their profile page, your can get the address of the artist through that site. Or you can look at the sites linked under Teachers category of the ICM Portal. You might also try to contact any of the organizations that are listed. Since they organize concerts, they may know the address.

You have not mentioned this great artist !!

I'm sorry ... there are a couple of reasons that could have happened. Most of the artists I've made pages for have released CDs. If the artist you are looking for has not released CDs, it is possible I've missed the artist. If the artist has not released, CDs, it could be because he or she was an old master or because, the artist was somehow not popular enough to interest the recording companies. I'm trying to take care of the first case by including all the old great masters ( who lived in 20th century). In the latter case, if I don't personally know about the artist then obviously I could not have put a page about them. If you have material about the artist that you want me to include, pls send me the material. I'll put the artist page up, soon. How soon ? Well, I always have a list of artists whose pages I'm making and I tend to complete them all and put them all up together.

I'm a new artist. Can you please add my profile ?

I do plan to add profiles of new artists .. but in the future. For now, you may want to contact Sandeep Audio who have a good list of new artist profiles.

What is this artist influence rating ?

The artist rating shows how much influence the artist has had on the Indian music scene. Considering that current artists will always be more popular than past masters, current popularity is not a good judge of the influence. Ratings can also be used by beginners to determine whose albums to buy and listen. Obviously, one would start with 5 and 4.5 star artists. Many of the newer artists have been given lower ratings, simply because we don't know how influential they will be as they mature. Also, look at the years in which the artist was active ... since very old recordings could be bad, even though the artist has 5 star ratings.

How dare you give a low rating to this great artist .... !!

This could have happened because of a couple of reasons - ignorance on my part or difference of opinion. For eg. I've given a lower rating to many new artists. Also a popular artist may not get a high rating, esp. if he is popular because of popularity gained from other genres of music.

What musical notation does ICM use ?

Traditionally Indian music does not write down music. Music is passed from one generation to the next purely by word of mouth. Starting with the British Raj, because of European influence, several notational systems have been proposed. These have been adapted for pure ASCII representation for the web.

Ni	Nishad	'N	Theevra Nishad	'N3
Sa	Shadj	S	Shadja	S
Re	Komal Rishab	r	Shudha Rishabha	R1
Re	Rishab	R	Theevra Rishabha	R2,G1
Ga	Komal Gandhar	g	Shudha Gandhara	G2,R3
Ga	Gandhar	G	Theevra Gandhara	G3
Ma	Madhyam	m	Shudha Madhyama	M1
Ma'	Prathi Madhyama	M	Theevra Madhyam	M2
Pa	Pancham	P	Panchama	P
Dha	Komal Dhaivath	d	Shudha Dhaivatha	D1
Dha	Dhaivath	D	Theevra Dhaivatha	D2,N1
Ni	Komal Nishad	n	Shudha Nishad	N2,D3
Ni	Nishad	N	Theevra Nishad	N3
Sa	Shadja	S'	Thaara Shadja	S'
portamento	Meend	^	Gamaka	^

How do you spell Indian words / What transliteration scheme do you use ?

India mainly has two language families, the North Indian "Sanskrit" family and the South Indian Dravidian languages. The language of Indian music, though, is mainly Sanskrit. North Indian or Hindustani music also uses Hindi terms but mostly Hindi form of Sanskrit terms. The south Indian or Carnatic uses mostly Sanskrit terms but some use Tamil form of those sanskrit terms. Rarely there are purely dravidian terms used too. Ghazals use Hindi and Urdu terms.

All Indian writing schemes have evolved from Brahmi script which is quite phonetic. Indian languages have more consonants than English, but fewer vowel sounds. Thus, while it is easy to write Indian languages in English as far as vowels are concerned but a little difficult with respect to some consonants. There are several transliteration schemes available (see an article on various transliteration schemes) which tell how Indian letters can be represented using English (Roman) alphabets. The older conventions use non ASCII characters making them unsuitable for web sites and PC based computing. The most often used ASCII based Harvard-Kyoto convention, which mostly replaces non-ASCII letters with capital letters, is given below. Many of the articles written by others that I have on the site use HK or ITRANS schemes.

a A i I u U R RR lR lRR e ai o au M H
k kh g gh G
c ch j jh J
T Th D Dh N
t th d dh n
p ph b bh m
y r l v z S s h

I have a few problems with HK convention. First, it makes reading slow and difficult because of capital letters or periods in the middle of words. Second, the text written in HK scheme is almost unreadable for everyone who does not know HK convention intimately. So, I try to use a natural transliteration scheme, which is less accurate but is easier to read, even for the non-elites. Unfortunately, even this transliteration scheme has not been used uniformly for the sake of readability or the plain old force of habit.

a

aa

i

ee

u

oo

r

rr

e

ai

o

ou

am

aha

that

fall

hit

feet

put

fool

truth

vroom

met

fait

loan

shout

mum

aha

k

kk

g

gg

gn

kite

-

get

rugged

-

ch

chh

j

jh

jn

rich

-

jet

-

-

t

tt

d

dd

n

tell

attack

door

ladder

-

th

thh

dh

dhh

n

thin

-

mother

-

noon

p

ph

b

bh

m

pun

appear

about

rabbit

mother

y

r

l

v

sh

shh

s

h

(lh)

(ksh)

yum

rule

late

van

share

kashmir

sit

hug

-

action

How do I download music from your site ?

I do not host music files to be downloaded. You can try the sites mentioned in the download section of the ICM Portal.

How do I listen to music on your site ?

Since there are other sites streaming good music, Musical Nirvana will not attempt to host a huge number of streaming music files. But, I plan to give a 5 minute sample of all Artists, Raagas, Instruments and albums that are reviewed.

Where did you get all the information ?

I have taken most of the material on this web site from various web sites and liner notes on the CDs I have. In that sense my site is a literature survey of the web. Where ever possible I have noted the source of information. I'm thankful to the creators of all those web sites. The catalog of discography is from two major online retailers of CDs - Khazana and Shrimathi's.

What is this Unknown Source ?

I used to collect articles I found on the web about artists. Mostly because, many times they would just disappear as they were hosted on free sites. When I made the site I put up those articles so that it would be of use to others as well. Since I didn't know the source, I tagged an Unknown Source at the top of the article.

This is my article !!

Excellent and thanks. Pls send me a note and I'll mention your name and link to your site. If for some reason, you don't want me to put the article on my site, let me know - I'll remove the article.

I've seen this photo before !!

Quite possibly. I've taken all the photos from the net or scanned them from CD / Cassette liner notes or newspapers and magazines. You will see the same photos, esp. of old masters, everywhere on the net. That is because there are only a couple of photos of the old masters. As far as I know, all the photos on my site are in the public domain. If you think you own the copyright pls let me know, I can either remove the photo or credit the photo to you, as you wish.

How big is your site ?

The site is fairly large, I'd think the largest Indian music site. Some interesting statistics would be ...

• Total number of Pages : 650 (excluding discography, Raaga, Compositions)
• Introduction pages : 35
• Number of artist profile : 200, total number of artists : 600
• Number of Composer profiles : 35, Ghazal poets : 20
• Important information about instruments : 30
• Hindustani Gharanas profiled : 20
• Terms in the Classical glossary : 300, Urdu dictionary : 1700
• Discography : 3500
• Labels : 200
• Online cd stores : 15
• Links in the ICM Portal : 200
• Music Samples : 130
• Total size : 160 MB
• Total effort : 1,500 Hours

Who are you ?

I'm a software professional based in the US. I have no formal training in ICM. Just trying to do my bit to help others get the same kind of great pleasure classical music has given me.

Who pays for the site ?

I do. To maintain complete independence, I pay for hosting the site. Of course, it is a small amount compared to the time and effort I put into designing, researching and maintaining the site.

Do you make any money from the site ?

No, not a cent / paisa. To keep it clean and friendly, I don't show any ads or banners. Even when I link to commercial sites (online retailers etc), I do not take referral money. When I get free CDs for review, after the review I try to return the CDs.

Contact

Your comments and suggestions are most welcome. Please e-mail me at [email protected]. Or send a quick message using the box below.

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