0a.3 Akaara sadhakam, and what a daily sitting looks like

Work through these

• Sing sa, then the note above it, then back, on aa rather than on the swara names.

  Saying the syllable gives the mouth something to do and hides an unsteady tone behind it. On one open vowel there is nowhere for a wobble to hide.

• Move between two notes slowly enough that the joining slide is audible.

  How you get from one note to the next is most of what makes this music sound like itself. Practising it slowly on aa is how that movement becomes something you control rather than something that happens.

• Build a sitting of about twenty minutes: drone, sa, akaara, then whatever you are learning.

  The order matters more than the length, because it puts the listening and the tone work before the material. Twenty minutes every day beats two hours on a Sunday, and every teacher in this tradition will tell you the same thing.

  karnATik — How to practise singing · Tutorial

• Keep a short note of what you practised, so a week is visible rather than remembered.

  Progress in this music is slow enough that memory reports it as no progress at all. A dated line a day is what turns three months of work into something you can actually see.