A drone effect can be achieved through a sustained sound or through repetition of a note. It most often establishes a tonality upon which the rest of the piece is built. A drone can be instrumental and/or vocal.

Coomaraswamy describes tampura the stringed instrument that produces the drone in much raga music and that is heard before, during and after melody, as the timeless and whole which was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be.
The account continues:
The melody itself, on the other hand, is the shifting character of Nature, which comes from the source and return to It...
Harmony is an impossibility for us, for by changing the solid ground on which Nature's processes rely we would be creating another melody, another universe and destroy the peace in which nature rests.
gb

We are watching, not waiting, not expecting anything to happen but watching without end. JK

This post was last updated by ganesan balachandran Tue, 15 Mar 2011.

ganesan balachandran wrote:
Harmony is an impossibility for us, for by changing the solid ground on which Nature's processes rely we would be creating another melody, another universe and destroy the peace in which nature rests. gb

Hello gb...

as you ask me to have on look on that i did it .
i am myself found of raga music , depending on the frame of mind of course...
this what is written here tell me this :
we have left the universal harmony ,so we have left harmony .
we are playing our own melody , in which there is no universal harmony but so we believe personal harmony....so is our man's world...
The nature rest in peace , yes it does...
i had a taste of it and only the word peace fits to give some idea of the deep nature of Mother Nature...

When i play my own music i am in sorrow , sorrow shall be used then as a warning.
As a catalyst too ,so far i have not found anything else for me, apart from sorrow, which can give the right energy not to play my own music, but listen to the Mother's nature music.....by being the sorrow............sorrow=my music=it hurts=no more trust....

PS: i tell you something weird...
my girl friend had a boy friend who had this kundalini experience, as i had...
the exact same ...
but his experience still stuck me because what he was touched by a kind of "pure music"...as well , he cannot explain....
he is a musician and cannot find any word to describe what he had lived....so beyond....
i just felt to say that....have no explanation and don't seek any....but your topic was the right place to mention that..

Dan..

If kinfonet don't get rid of trolls ,willing to destroy , I will leave very soon...K mention the need to act too.

If JK is the melody, what is the drone.?
gb

We are watching, not waiting, not expecting anything to happen but watching without end. JK

ganesan balachandran wrote:
If JK is the melody, what is the drone.?

i guess it is the ground k mentioned with bohm...the no path...

If kinfonet don't get rid of trolls ,willing to destroy , I will leave very soon...K mention the need to act too.

One can sing a melody only by matching the drone.
gb

We are watching, not waiting, not expecting anything to happen but watching without end. JK

If this is an effect, thus it has a cause, right?

ganesan balachandran wrote:
If JK is the melody, what is the drone.?

I think it may be Lidlo Lady

Peng Shu Tse wrote:
think it may be Lidlo Lady

lidlolady try to develop a harmony which is not possible. that is what Iam trying to say or JK is the drone and lidlolady is the melody.
gb

We are watching, not waiting, not expecting anything to happen but watching without end. JK

au b wrote:
If this is an effect, thus it has a cause, right?

the primordial sound is there and it is preserved. the sense of preservation with understanding is what jk suggests and his work bring clarity.

let us now speak with wonder of the births of gods- so that some one may see them when the hymns are chanted in this later age.
gb

We are watching, not waiting, not expecting anything to happen but watching without end. JK

ganesan balachandran wrote:
lidlolady is the melody

. . . or the malady

Peng Shu Tse wrote:
malady

melody, but complicated.
gb

We are watching, not waiting, not expecting anything to happen but watching without end. JK

ganesan balachandran wrote:
melody, but complicated

Constant recapitulation tires the melody, Ganesan . . . becomes like a pop tune. The melody may become too simplified, becomes a drone to itself, although the reason for it so doing may be complex.

For example, you say in the beginning that a drone may be the repetition of the same note. Suppose for the sake of argument we call that note . . . . parrot. If it is constantly repeated - parrot, parrot, parrot, parrot, parrot, parrot - it becomes its own drone.

And if parrot is the drone (the possibility of which I allow for, aesthetically) then I would at least like to hear a melody come out of it. I would like to see some development, an 'air on a parrot' and not just the rhythmic thud of the dull thing flying into the same tree for the hundredth time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7RYSQvrUrc&...

This post was last updated by Peng Shu Tse (account deleted) Mon, 12 Mar 2012.

Peng Shu Tse wrote:
that a drone may be the repetition of the same note.

repetition of tonic, fifth and octave.
gb

We are watching, not waiting, not expecting anything to happen but watching without end. JK

ganesan balachandran wrote:
repetition of tonic, fifth and octave.

It is a metaphor in sound, not the sound of the universe itself, which has no form. The representation is not the real.

If there is no air, no ear and no brain, is there sound at all?

listen this avdhoota's bhajan from kabirvani to know what is drone and melody.
http://youtu.be/mKc3gy-SHmE

This post was last updated by Ravi Seth Mon, 12 Mar 2012.

Ravi Seth wrote:
to know what is drone and melody.

And here where the drone is silence and the melody sings as the swan, alone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ag3khj_MYWw

Peng Shu Tse wrote:
It is a metaphor in sound, not the sound of the universe itself,

true, as for as drone(music) is concerned. I meant the drone of insights is veda which in itself an insight. Not all the people need to play the drone, if the drone is not there, melody may not be possible.
gb

We are watching, not waiting, not expecting anything to happen but watching without end. JK

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPcasmn0cRU&...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIhmj0Jl8hc&...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OOkmyFUTis&...

We are watching, not waiting, not expecting anything to happen but watching without end. JK

This post was last updated by ganesan balachandran Tue, 13 Mar 2012.

Peng Shu Tse wrote:
If there is no air, no ear and no brain, is there sound at all?

no system, no philosophy, no method,
gb

We are watching, not waiting, not expecting anything to happen but watching without end. JK

ganesan balachandran wrote:
no system, no philosophy, no method,
gb

I do " see" that so deeply since long time !

Dan.

Peng Shu Tse wrote:
If there is no air, no ear and no brain,

then only the sacred vibrations are perceivable and for human being it is not possible.
gb

We are watching, not waiting, not expecting anything to happen but watching without end. JK

ganesan balachandran wrote:
I meant the drone of insights is veda which in itself an insight. Not all the people need to play the drone, if the drone is not there, melody may not be possible.

Dear Ganesan, if veda is the drone then thought is the melody. Insight does not come from veda or from K or from any source. It is the act of the mind opening, when it has been closed. It is the relaxation of the organ, mind, that has tightened around itself. K or veda may point to the tightness and question it. That is all.

You say, if the drone is not there, melody may not be possible. But is this what you mean? After all, if the drone is there, melody may not be possible. This word 'possible' is awkward in the sentence. I stumble on it. I want to know what it means, in your context.

You may be saying that melody is dependent on presence of drone. In which case, why not also say that drone is dependent on melody. Do they not arise together? Without melody, is there drone? Without the ear and the brain, is there sound? Without the mind that is insightful, is there insight?

The drone is only all and everything, in motion, without time. The musical drone may impart a feeling of that, or it may send one to sleep.

This post was last updated by Peng Shu Tse (account deleted) Tue, 13 Mar 2012.

Let us say that there are octaves, Ganesan. That the tonic, fifth and octave, mark each one as unique. And within each octave there are many possibilities. The Indian octave is unlike the Western in that the flattened ninth and tonic seventh are so compacted around the root note and the gaps between the other notes is very wide. And this gives the Indian octave that sense of harmonic discontinuity where one is always yearning, trying to cross the almost impossible chasms, which is so symbolic of the human predicament. The heart feels it is so. The Western octave with its 'pentatonic' scale speaks to the ordinary trials and tribulations of life and is not expressive of the essential, despite the brilliance of the Western composers to invest the octave with real emotion. It describes the suit of clothes we wear, not the body beneath. Yet the drone (tonic, fifth and eighth) is common to both octaval possibilities, the East and the West.

This post was last updated by Peng Shu Tse (account deleted) Tue, 13 Mar 2012.

Let us say there are many octaves, Ganesan, in the sense that an octave can start from any of the twelve tones and semi-tones. But also, within each semi-tone is contained a new octave, and within each semi-tone of that octave is contained another new octave, all the way down.

Thus the drone is carried through from one level of manifest reality to another, from one dimension through another. It is both in time and beyond time. One cannot say vedas is drone. The whole universe, together as a whole, is drone and each part is drone, including veda, if you have ear to listen.

And the capacity to listen, beyond sound, is called understanding, which is not a mental process but a dropping of mental process. In so far as vedas is drone, it is there in each grain of sand.

This post was last updated by Peng Shu Tse (account deleted) Tue, 13 Mar 2012.

thank you.
gb

We are watching, not waiting, not expecting anything to happen but watching without end. JK

Peng Shu Tse wrote:
The whole universe is drone and each part is drone, including veda, if you have ear to listen.

in the above veda and drone can be interchanged. and that is what i meant.

We are watching, not waiting, not expecting anything to happen but watching without end. JK

Peng Shu Tse wrote:
It is in time and beyond time.

it is chandas in veda.(metrical)
gb

We are watching, not waiting, not expecting anything to happen but watching without end. JK

"It must be plain that as works of mechanical art the metres of the Rigveda stand high above those of modern Europe in variety of motive and in flexibility of form. They seem indeed to bear the same relation to them as the rich harmonies of classical music bear to the simple melodies of the peasant. And in proportion as modern students come to appreciate the skill displayed by the Vedic poets, they will be glad to abandon the easy but untenable theory that the variety of form employed by them is due to chance, or the purely personal bias of individuals; and to recognize instead that we find all the signs of a genuine historical development."

E.V. Arnold, Vedic metre in its historical development, Cambridge, UP, 1905.

Peng Shu Tse wrote:
Vedic metre in its historical development,

it is not evolutionary, it exists.
gb

We are watching, not waiting, not expecting anything to happen but watching without end. JK

nice time with you mr.peng. thank you.
gb

We are watching, not waiting, not expecting anything to happen but watching without end. JK