Guitar tuning and contravariance

I’ve been fiddling around with a guitar for a few years now, trying to occasionally produce a few notes that sound mildly musical. Since I don’t usually get anything done unless I put immense pressure on myself, I decided to record myself playing and singing a song ("Daaru Desi" from the Bollywood movie Cocktail) that would force me to actually learn some chords.

There was only one minor hitch: the song is in G♯m.

The opening riff involves the chords G♯m and D♯, which have to be played with barre chords on the 4th and 6th frets of the guitar. This raised two issues:

1. My barre chords are atrocious
2. Whereas in the opening riff the D♯ is clearly lower than the G♯m, playing them on the 6th and 4th frets means the D♯ sounds higher than the G♯m.

After much shedding of sweat and tears (fortunately no blood), I was on the verge of giving up, when I accidentally played the chords on the 5th and 7th frets. This of course shifted the song up by a semitone, and resulted in me playing the Am and E chords (on the 5th and 7th frets). I was now out of tune with the original song, being too sharp by a semitone, but since I didn’t really care about that, I now had the option to play the Am and E chords in open position. This then had the further consequence of making the E lower than the Am—just as the opening riff demands.

I realized I had almost cracked the puzzle of the song. All that needed to be done was … what? Retuning the guitar so that the Am open position on the regular tuning became a G♯m instead, and the E open position on regular tuning became a D♯ instead. All I had to do was to tune every string a semitone flat. (This is apparently called the E♭ tuning.)

With this new tuning in place, I was able to play the song in the same key as the original—and was able to play it using mostly open position chords.

Now, if this were all, it wouldn’t make for a great story. What got me excited, though, was the fact that I had realized a deep truth about tuning and music:

an instrument’s finger positions contravary with its tuning

In plain English, it sounds commonsensical: if you lower the tuning of a string, you’ll have to play at a  correspondingly higher position on the string to produce the same frequency earlier. Hmm, now it doesn’t sound that exciting at all. Oh well.

The beloved who is near and hidden

It’s been far too long since I translated any Persian, so here’s a poem by the master of masters, Mawlana Rumi, in the simple but beautiful rajaz muthamman meter:

ay bā man-o penhān cho del, az del salām-at mīkonam.

ای با من و پنهان چو دل از دل سلامت می کنم
تو کعبه‌ای هر جا روم قصد مقامت می کنم

Hey you, who’re with me and are yet hidden, like my heart—
my heartfelt greetings to you!
You’re the Ka‘bah: wherever I go, I head straight for your place.

هر جا که هستی حاضری از دور در ما ناظری
شب خانه روشن می شود چون یاد نامت می کنم

Wherever you are, you’re present, as the supervisor within us from afar;
The bed-chamber is flooded with light when I remember your name.

گه همچو باز آشنا بر دست تو پر می زنم
گه چون کبوتر پرزنان آهنگ بامت می کنم

Sometimes I briefly alight, like a friendly falcon, upon your arm;
Sometimes I head for your roof, like a pigeon fluttering its wings.

گر غایبی هر دم چرا آسیب بر دل می‌زنی
ور حاضری پس من چرا در سینه دامت می کنم

If you’re absent at every moment, then why do you injure my heart?
And if you’re present, then why do I try to ensnare you in my bosom?

دوری به تن لیک از دلم اندر دل تو روزنیست
زان روزن دزدیده من چون مه پیامت می کنم

You’re far from me physically, but there’s a window from my heart onto yours;
From that stolen window, I send you a message, like the moon.

ای آفتاب از دور تو بر ما فرستی نور تو
ای جان هر مهجور تو جان را غلامت می کنم

O sun, from afar do you shine your light upon me;
O you, who are life to all abandoned by you, I serve you as a slave.

من آینه دل را ز تو این جا صقالی می دهم
من گوش خود را دفتر لطف کلامت می کنم

I give to the mirror of my heart your lustre;
I make my ears a record for your delicate words!

در گوش تو در هوش تو و اندر دل پرجوش تو
این‌ها چه باشد تو منی وین وصف عامت می کنم

In your ear, in your mind, in your exuberant heart
Whatever may be, you’re mine—
thus do I generally describe you.

“Is wealth alone happiness?”

nidhi cāla sukhamā

rāmuni sannidhi-sevā sukhamā

nijamuga palku manasā

dadhi-navanīta-kṣīramulu rucō

dāśarathi-dhyāna-bhajana-sudhā-rasamu rucō

dama-śamamanu-gaṅgā-snānamu sukhamā

kardama-durviṣaya-kūpa-snānamu sukhamā

mamatā-bandhana-yuta-nara-stuti sukhamā

sumati-tyāgarāja nutuni kīrtana sukhamā

I should begin by admitting I don’t actually know Telugu! However, the lyrics of Tyāgarāja use enough Sanskrit that I can usually figure out what’s going on. If I get something wrong, please tell me and I’ll change it.


This beautiful song, said to have been composed by Tyāgarāja in response to royal pressure, contrasts the pleasures of the material world with the pleasures of immersing oneself in the Divine (for Tyāgarāja, the form being Rāma in this case).

What’s the greater joy: wealth alone,

Or proximity and service to Rāma?

Tell me honestly, o Mind!

"Grieve not!"

This is a truly wonderful ghazal by that master of the Persian language, the Lisān al-Ghayb, the Tongue of the Unseen, Hafez of Shiraz. I recently read two different translations of it into English, one of them a beautiful (albeit secularized) version by Haleh Pourafzal and Roger Montgomery (p. 54 of their book Haféz: Teachings of the Philosopher of Love), and another, much more literal, much more archaic, version by Wilberforce Clarke (pp. 499–500 of The Divan-i Hafiz). The two translations are hugely different in style, and there are a few points where they vary in semantics as well. I thought I'd give it a shot and produce my own version. It's heavily inspired by Pourafzal and Montgomery, but sticks a little closer to the literal sense of the poem (at least as far as I can understand Hafez!).

Before that though, some of the verses of this ghazal in the inimitable voice of Mohammad-Reza Shajarian:

"Three Butterflies"

What can I say about ‘Aṭṭār? Would that the well of my words were deep enough!

A truly marvelous poem, so simple as to be recited by a child, so weighty in meaning as to drown an intelligent adult, and yet so beautifully winged as to carry the listener aloft into a world of infinite meaning and experience that is at the same time not separate from our own mundane. Beautifully sung by Salar Aghili.

The words in Persian are (if you didn't want to read the beautiful nastaliq font in the video):

"If I ever get to see you"

Táhirih Qurrat ul-`Ayn (طاهره قرة العین) is one of the most famous poets of early modern Iran. A practitioner of the Bahá'í faith, she was criticized and persecuted on accounts of her bravery and audacity, and was eventually secretly executed. Celebrated as a martyr for the Bábí movement and for women's rights, she is remembered to this day for her actions and for her poetry. One of her most famous poems, گر به تو افتدم نظر, sometimes referred to as "Chehreh beh Chehreh" in English transliteration, has been set to music and sung by a number of great musicians, including the incomparable Shajarian.

Here is a pre-revolution recording of Shajarian with Mohammad-Reza Lotfi performing the song at the Hafeziyeh, at the Jashn-e Honar-e Shiraz.

New Swadharma post

A new post, after I attended T.M. Krishna's wonderful lecture-demonstration on the "Evolution of Ragas" in Carnatic music. TMK's emphasis of the historicity of the structures we use to understand Carnatic music today is, I think, a wonderful remedy for the broader problems that are caused by South Asians' currently ahistorical approach towards our culture(s) and heritage(s).

I will write more about TMK's lecture later today or tomorrow.

(How) does history matter?

Much to think about.