Indian (Hindi) Song Requests

I am going to be playing for a pre-wedding dinner party. The bride to be is Indian and she asked if I could play the following songs:

Lag Ja Gale

Pehla Nasha

Kal Ho Na Ho

I've been listening to these tunes, and I think I can pull off an instrumental rendition, but it sure would help to have lead sheet or a piano part.

I thought there might be some Indian members here who could assist me with some resources. Any other tune suggestions would be appreciated too. Thank you!

Hi Paul,

Try this link: https://mypianonotes.com/pehla-nasha/

Thank you Taike. I've actually been studying that video. It helps, for sure, but notation would be nice.

Try ripping the audio from the video and just slowing it down. To be honest, a lot of Indian music defies Western transcription, the decoration of the notes is difficult to write properly..!

I adore Indian music, but pulling it off idiomatically is fiendishly difficult for Western musicians, unused to the way they decorate the notes. Best of luck!

Check your email, Paul.

Thank you Taike. That’s very helpful!

Let me know how it went, Paul.

Your right, Diki. I probably sound like a bad imitation of Flyod Crammer playing Indian music! Luckily the couple of tunes the bride requested follow pretty standard chord structures.

Also I found out a lot of popular Indian pop tunes are based on English language pop songs. So I be doing some Cold Play, ABBA, Paul Anka, Burt Bacharach and other old standards.... I will be backing up the bride as she sings a Hindi version of 'Mama Mia"

Sure, the event is in the middle of May, so I have a bit of time to prepare.

I mean with the notation. 😛

One thing as you can hear with the original tracks is just how much bending and melisma the lead lines use. Pretty much constantly! This is going to make it very difficult to pull off without either setting up a chord sequence or using a track so you can use that left hand glued to the bender (use markers in the sequence if you want flexibility with the structure for a live show).

One thing that a lot of people miss is that the very place that real instruments tend to bend the MOST is across chord boundaries, the very place you can’t bend if playing the chords live. It’s a dead giveaway of arranger playing.

Perhaps try making a track for one of the tunes and just seeing how much less Floyd Kramer-ish you can sound if you can fully use your LH on that bender! 🎹😎

Good points Diki, and I am considering making my own backing tracks, but as far as the pitch bending goes, that won't be possible because the bride has requested that I play on the venues acoustic piano.
She sent me piano cover versions of Hindi pop/Bollywood songs, so she has a good idea of what she wants. Most likely, I'll just do solo piano for this event.

Ouch! Indian music on a piano! Can’t say I’ve ever heard that…

Best of luck!

That was my initial thought too, which I conveyed to the bride ( who is a pianist herself) . To my surprise piano covers of Bollywood music is pretty huge on YouTube at least.

Anyways , I know very little about Indian music, but I think the more modern Bollywood music is quite westernized, very different from the traditional/ classical Indian that I had in my mind.

Yeah, modern Bollywood is pretty westernized, but the singing is still very Indian!

There’s some interesting things being done by iPad musicians using an app called GeoShred. Check it out! https://youtu.be/vf727mL186o