1.3 Mandra, madhya and tara: the three octaves

The same thing, four instruments

The exercise is the same whichever one you play. What changes is how you make it.

Singing

A beginner's comfortable range is often little more than an octave and a half, and it grows slowly. Set your sa so that the middle octave and the upper sa are both reachable without strain; if the upper notes hurt, the sa is too high rather than your voice being too small.

On the veena

The twenty-four frets give you two full octaves along the sarani string, so the written range is rarely the problem. The lower octave comes from the other three playing strings rather than from further frets, so a line that dips below the middle sa means changing string, not sliding further down.

On the violin

With no frets the range is limited only by how far up the string your hand will go, so the upper octave is available from the first week. The difficulty is the opposite of the voice's: the notes are all reachable and none of them is guaranteed to be in tune, so check the upper octave against the drone every time.

On the flute

The lower octave is the fingering as it stands, and the upper octave is the same fingering with a faster, narrower air stream. That makes the upper octave a breath skill rather than a finger skill, and it is why a flute beginner's range grows in sudden jumps rather than gradually.

Work through these

• Sing or play sa, then the sa an octave above it, and hear that they are the same swara.

  Two notes an octave apart share a name because they behave as the same swara in the raga. Hearing that sameness is what makes the notation's dots readable rather than arbitrary.

• Read three written swaras and say which octave each is in from its dot.

  A dot below means the lower octave, a dot above means the upper, and no dot means the middle. On Funcognito the same line is also written out in words for anyone reading by ear.

• Find the highest and lowest notes you can produce comfortably today, and write them down.

  Your working range decides which exercises will fit and which will need transposing for now. Writing it down means you can see it grow rather than guess.

• Take one exercise you know and work out which octaves it needs.

  Most beginner exercises stay in the middle octave and touch the upper sa. Knowing that in advance is how you find out whether a line is beyond you before you are halfway through it.