MJS wrote:.....The class standard will be the E tonic banusuri ..............
Can you suggest any favorite or must-have recordings or ways to get started?
.......
Seeing as my suspecting about the tuition standard E tonic was correct I will suspect a few other things in my advice, but, hopefully, not to give so much advice as to great a barrier for your "empty tea cup approach" at the course.
POSSESSION
Obtain a reasonable B key bansuri in the pitch that HC prefers (probably A440, given he plays with a lot of Western music also).
by May Day
PRACTICE
A. While you are waiting for the flute research the "pipers' grip" as executed by bansuri players. I will call this the "HC bansuric grip" because there are a variety of pipers' grips and a variety of bansuri type pipers' grip. It is not just about the phalanges covering the holes rather than the finger tips. It is also about the best posi for your thumbs (and this may change depending on the size of the tube) your head and neck posture and your arms etc. There are many good sites around on the internet by professional bansuri players who will advise on this. Check out first that they are Hariprasad disciples before you follow their advice. Practise this on your current keyless Irish flute until the alto bamboo one arrives.
B. I suspect the first raags you will be taught will be Yaman and Bhoopaali (Bhoop/Bhupali). These are easy (scalewise) because the former is a Lydian Mode raag which means it can be played with
XXX OOO keynote without needing any half holing for any of the notes
and the latter is a pentatonic major raag which is also easily played with
XXX OOO keynote.
(However NB: just because you can obtain the notes for these pieces naturally doesn't mean the raag treatment will not not utilise sliding techniques. Slurring or glissando is a feature of north indic music)
I will not give you the particular raag exercises here because there are different trads or historical schools of indic music and their approaches to interpretation differ and I do not want to introduce you to something which may interfere with HC particular style.
Just practice the scale of these raags using the bansuric grip on your current flute which if it is a D flute will go like this:
G A B C# D E F# G+ (Lydian for Yaman)
G A B D E G+ (Pent. Major for Bhoop)
This may sound boring on paper but it is not this but the new grip that you are practising. Once you can play this easily with the new grip work down to the lowest note and up to the highest. You may like to do any western classical scale practice with these modes. Again its not the music but getting used to the grip. (More later, but first:-)
LANGUAGE
Tuition will be most likely conducted on the basis of tonic solfeg sytem, referring to notes by the indic = of doh, re, mi etc. I doubt whether he will be saying play "note E now slowly". If you go into the link in my profile you will find one (of several) way of recording this approach.
Or you may wish to read up on it at a good internet site (some have already been provided in this topic).
I will stop for now.
Good Luck!