Aside from the get-a-job guy twirling his finger at his temple, and two men in a sedan who yell "VOTE TRUMP!", the other responses are very friendly. Lots of waves and smiles; the plea for temporal literacy I'm offering somehow seems to strike a chord with the morning commute today. Maybe I'm imagining it? I slept better last night and although I'm still fatigued I feel much better.

2/

In keeping with the week's theme of "scattered technical exercises with no clear goal," I decide to build the morning's practice around an augmented triad. Starting by singing the arpeggio itself: C, E, Ab, C, flexing over two octaves and a sixth (the high C isn't cooperating today). The symmetrical structure established, I begin adding ornamental tones.

3/

First, a whole step above each chord tone, creating a pattern (in sargam): SRS, GM#G, dnd, etc. Then a whole step below: SnS, GRG, dM#d, etc. I continue building variations on these structures over the course of the hour, some of the time singing semitones above & below, sometimes mixing both whole- and half-steps to create more intricate chromatic forms.

4/

These exercises are interesting beyond their rather abstract musical content. The Hindustani melismatic approach is meant to serve the needs of scalar music in which most activity involves adjacent tones — but steady streams of chromatic sequences are very uncommon. It requires very carefully focused attention to keep the intervallic positions in mind while singing these lines on an open vowel.

5/

The sargam syllables offer a different sort of challenge, because it is also quite rare for natural and altered intervals to be sung in direct sequence (this can be heard in Kedar- and Lalit-ang ragas on the fourth scale degree, in Malhar- and Bahar-ang raags on the seventh, and on the third in some treatments of Jog...so it's definitely a thing, but still uncommon).

6/