Involving the Performers in Transcription and Analysis: A Collaborative Approach to Dhrupad

whether claiming the prefix "ethno-" or not, is likely to remain that of writing about music; for it is through writing that his or her work becomes permanently and widely available to others.1 Written musical notation, in a form that can be widely applied and widely understood, will therefore presumably continue to be an essential tool by which to communicate ideas about music that cannot be effectively or economically expressed in words alone. At the same time, the act of reducing one's aural experience of music to written form is itself a means of generating ideas and insights, of illuminating structures and features that might otherwise have passed unnoticed or remained incomprehensible. Transcription is thus a tool of analysis as well as of communication. The advantages and limitations of transcription as used in the analysis