As is well-known, recitals of plucking instruments normally cover 4 stages viz. 1) alap 2) jod 3) gat / taans 4) jhala.
Usually in vocal music (khayal) alap is rendered along with theka, whilst instrumentalists by and large, follow the dhrupad structure where alap is executed without any accompaniment on pakhawaj / tabla. Thus, in case of dhrupad and a large section of instruments, alap and jod are performed without the rhythmic accompaniment.
By and large, instrumental music follows alap silsila with inspiration from different gharanas of vocal music. Our gharana follows Kirana gharana concept of alap development. The silsila or system of alap in this approach has various important features / techniques, which play a significant role in unfolding a raga in a systematic manner. These are as follows.
a. Develop Sa as a foundation (zamin) of the raga structure. It is from Sa that the entire raga structure is developed / built.
b. Subject building – once the alap unfolding covers 3 or more notes, the musician has the opportunity to introduce the technique of subject building.
c. Substantial use of murkis in the melodic structure is believed to be derived from the techniques used by sarangi players.
d. System of introducing an additional note within the raga swaroop whilst unfolding the raga is undertaken according to special rules.
e. Whilst building melodic centres during the unfoldment of the raga, the technique of volume variation according to importance of the note is undertaken. The importance of each note is described as balwan (dominant), saman (equal) or durbal (weak).