Raga of "Malare, kurinji malare" and more
Mouli
sh...@b17d.ingr.com (Shiva Shivakumar) writes:
>It is in Charukesi scale if you take the first note of the song (where 'Ma' of
>'Malare' is sung) as Sa. But when you listen to the whole song, a better
^^
>choice for Sa is the note 'Soo' of 'Sooda'. In other words, the notes for
>'Malare' are "P P DN... DNDP PPg....MgRS.R RmP(lower) SSS...." and so on.
>This results in Gowri Manohari scale. I say scale because it does not have
>the characteristic gamakams of Gowri Manohari.
^^
1. The 're' goes from Da2 (Chatushruti daivatam) to Ni (kakali nishadam)
Clearly it is not Charukesi.
2. Rightly said on Gowri manohari.
I would like to point out some more things (not related to this
song):
Some times, a given scale can be, by way of shifting the
starting point (Shadjam), made to sound like another raga. So
the key is to find where 'Sa' is.
1. Treating the 'Sa' of Sudda saveri raga as 'Pa', the scale
of the raga Mohanam can be arrived. [ Sing the song
'Raadha Raadha Nee Yenge?" in 'Meendum Gokila' and try this]
2. The raga 'Valaji' and 'Abohi' can be done in a similar way:
Treat the 'Sa' of 'Abohi' as 'Pa', you can get the scale of
Valaji. Thus the song 'Thangaratham Vandadu' (Balamurali in
KalaiKkoil) or the song 'Nananadri Yaar thoduvar, kanne'
(TRM in Malayitta Mangai) can be disputed with Shruti bedam.
I would appreciate others' expert comments on the above,
mouli (mo...@crl.labs.tek.com)
Krishna Kunchithapadam
>
>I would like to point out some more things (not related to this
>song):
> Some times, a given scale can be, by way of shifting the
> starting point (Shadjam), made to sound like another raga. So
> the key is to find where 'Sa' is.
>
> 1. Treating the 'Sa' of Sudda saveri raga as 'Pa', the scale
> of the raga Mohanam can be arrived. [ Sing the song
> 'Raadha Raadha Nee Yenge?" in 'Meendum Gokila' and try this]
> 2. The raga 'Valaji' and 'Abohi' can be done in a similar way:
> Treat the 'Sa' of 'Abohi' as 'Pa', you can get the scale of
> Valaji. Thus the song 'Thangaratham Vandadu' (Balamurali in
> KalaiKkoil) or the song 'Nananadri Yaar thoduvar, kanne'
> (TRM in Malayitta Mangai) can be disputed with Shruti bedam.
>
> I would appreciate others' expert comments on the above,
>
>mouli (mo...@crl.labs.tek.com)
The concept of Sruthi (or Graha) Bedham is an interesting
one and it would be nice if this thread were continued RMIC
rather than in RMIM.
Graha bedham is one of the many purely mathematical
aspects of Carnatic music. By simply playing around with the
technique, one can come up with some interesting results.
Basically, Graha bedham works by keeping the frequency ratio
between the swaras of a raga fixed, and by considering different
notes as the Aadhara Shadja (i.e. tonic note). By this "modal
shift of tonic", the swara intervals get redistributed over the
octave -- resulting in new scales.
(1) The ancient scales or murchanas that were discovered
(invented ??) during the Vedic period all had the property
of being self derivable via the technique of Graha bedham.
The scale of the Sama gana (the closest modern equivalent is
the scale of the Mela raga Kharaharapriya) gave rise to the
scales of the ragas - Hanuma Todi, Mecha Kalyani, Hari
Kambhoji, Nata Bhairavi and Dheera Sankarabharanam. Ancient
musical texts give a variety of exotic names for these
scales. The Graha bedha sequence of these scales is as
follows. The tonic note coloumn specifies which of the notes
of the Sama gana scale is taken as the tonic note in
deriving the ragas.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Tonic note Raga Melakarta Swaras
-----------------------------------------------------------------
s Kharaharapriya 22 s r2 g2 m1 p d2 n2
r Hanuma Todi 8 s r1 g2 m1 p d1 n2
g Mecha Kalyani 65 s r2 g3 m2 p d2 n3
m Hari Kambhoji 28 s r2 g3 m1 p d2 n2
p Nata Bhairavi 20 s r2 g2 m1 p d1 n2
d ------------- ?? s r1 g2 m1 m2 d1 n2
n Dheera Sankarabharanam 29 s r2 g3 m1 p d2 n3
-----------------------------------------------------------------
As can be seen, the Graha bedha on the Dhaivata of the Sama
gana does not lead to a valid Sampurna scale -- this scale
has both Madhyama swaras but no Panchama. In fact, Graha
bedham on most notes of most ragas will lead to such
inconsistent scales. Very few Graha bedha scales are valid
Carnatic ragas.
(2) Venkatamahi, the father of the 72 Melakarta scheme, is said
to have derived his set of 72 mela ragas by the repeated
application of Graha bedham and Sudha/Prati Madhyama
interchange. That is, starting from just one raga, say
Mayamalava gowla, he did a Graha bedham on the scale and
derived new scales. For each of these scales, he weeded out
the invalid ones and changed the Sudha Madhyama to a Prati
Madhyama (and vice versa). Now, after a single cycle of
Graha bedha/Madhyama interchange, he had a whole new set of
scales (instead of the starting one scale). For each of
these new scales, he once again, performed the Graha
bedha/Madhyama interchange to derive newer scales. The
process, apparently led to him to most of the 72 Mela ragas
(in fact he could have derived only 52 of the 72 mela ragas
in this fashion, starting from Mayamalava gowla). Once he
had these 52 ragas, he knew exactly what the vadi and vivadi
swaras were and was able to CONSTRUCT the remaining 30 Mela
ragas from these swaras. If anyone is interested in the
Graha bedha/Madhyama interchange operations on the
Melakartas, please mail me and I will send you a detailed
article on it (or post it to RMIC).
(3) A melakarta raga on Graha bedham will lead to either
incorrect scales or other melakarta scales. There is
however NO MELAKARTA whose Graha bedham (on all its notes)
always leads to a valid Melakarta raga. The above sequence
of 6 ragas is the maximum -- there is no set of 7 Melakarta
ragas which are Graha bedhas of each other.
(4) A corollary of the above statement -- there exist a number of
Melakarta ragas, 16 in fact, do not have any valid Graha
bedham derivative. This means that Venkatamahi could not
have derived these ragas by Graha bedham -- he could have
derived them by Madhyama interchange if the Madhyama
counterpart of these ragas had valid Graha bedhams. However,
there are 3 pairs of Sudha/Prati madhyama mela ragas
Thanarupi [6] Raghupriya [42]
Rupavati [12] Divyamani [48]
Yagapriya [31] Sucharithram [67]
which cannot be derived at all by the Graha bedha/Madhyama
interchange. Venkatamahi MUST have constructed these ragas
piecemeal from the various swaras of the scale.
(5) While there are no Mela ragas which lead to only valid ragas
on Graha bedham, the same is not true for Asampurna ragas.
The best known (and described) example is the group of ragas
derived from Mohanam. Mohanam is a Audava raga (Pentatonic
scale) and Graha bedham on each of its notes leads to a
valid (and popular) Carnatic raga. The Graha bedha table for
Mohanam is given below.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Tonic note of Mohanam Raga Swaras
-----------------------------------------------------------------
s Mohanam s r2 g3 p d2
r Madhyamavati s r2 m1 p n2
g Hindolam s g2 m1 d1 n2
p Sudha Saveri s r2 m1 p d2
d Sudha Danyasi s g2 m1 p n2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
(6) The Mela ragas of the Rishi chakra, #37 - #42 do not have any
valid Graha bedha on any of their notes (except of course
the Shadja). There is a very simple reason why this is so. I
urge readers to try to figure out the reason, it is an
interesting exercise.
(7) One of the most amazing implications of Graha bedham is the
existence of "fixed points" of Graha bedham i.e. do there
exist ragas which on Graha bedham on ANY of their notes,
give back THE SAME RAGA. Well, there exists one (and ONLY
one such raga among the myriads of Sampurna, Shadava and
Audava ragas) which satisfies this property. The name of
this peculiar raga is "Gopriya" and it is a janya of the
Melakarta Rishabhapriya [62]. The scale of Gopriya has been
used in some Western classical compositions simply for the
demostration of its immutability on modal tonic shifts.
Gopriya: s r2 g3 m2 d1 n2 S S n2 d1 m2 g3 r2 s [62]
(8) To end, here are a few pairs of popular Carnatic ragas that
are Graha bedhas of each other. As Mouli mentioned,
Abhogi and Valaji
Madhyama of Abhogi == Shadja of Valaji
Panchama of Valaji == Shadja of Abhogi
Another interesting pair is
Hamsadhwani and Nagaswarali
Panchama of Hamsadhwani == Shadja of Nagaswarali
Madhyama of Nagaswarali == Shadja of Hamsadhwani
Lastly
Sivaranjani and Revathi
Rishabha of Sivaranjani == Shadja of Revathi
Nishada of Revathi == Shadja of Sivaranjani
It is interesting to note that Sivaranjani has the same
scale as Mohanam except for the replacement of the Anthara
Gandhara by the Sadharana Gandhara. In this sense, that
Sivaranjani is derivable from Mohanam, we can also say that
Revathi is derivable from Madhyamavati (by a Nishada change)
As I said before, the topic of Graha bedha is replete
with such beauties. I welcome all of your responses to this
article and the topic of Graha bedham in general on RMIC.
-- Krishna
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Krishna Kunchithapadam kri...@cs.wisc.edu |
| Department of Computer Sciences |
| University of Wisconsin, Madison |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
C. Harper
>
>
> The concept of Sruthi (or Graha) Bedham is an interesting
>one and it would be nice if this thread were continued RMIC
>rather than in RMIM.
>
> Graha bedham is one of the many purely mathematical
>aspects of Carnatic music. By simply playing around with the
>technique, one can come up with some interesting results.
>Basically, Graha bedham works by keeping the frequency ratio
>between the swaras of a raga fixed, and by considering different
>notes as the Aadhara Shadja (i.e. tonic note). By this "modal
>shift of tonic", the swara intervals get redistributed over the
>octave -- resulting in new scales.
I'd also like to talk about the sruti system...most of my (slight)
knowledge of Indian classical is from a Hindustani viewpoint, but
when I first discovered the Sruti Bedham I found the whole concept
intensely interesting.
What, for example, are some good historical
sources explaining the basis for the system?
--Caredhel
--
"Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells...
Crying `What I do is me;for that I came.'
--Gerard Manley Hopkins
P. J. Narayanan
The topic of graha bhedam or sruti bhedam is an intersting
topic. Thanks Krishna for introducing that topic so beautifully to
rmic. Thanks also for the awk program. I had done a low scale study of
grahabhedams of melakarta ragams sometime back, but I didn't bother to
write an awk script for `hands on' training. I will certainly try
your program. A discussion on this topic will be beneficial to most
reades of rmic as they are, almost of necessity, of an academic
background! Pardon me if I am wrong in this generalization.
Someone asked about the historic evolution of graha bhedams.
I understand they were discussed in ancient Indian music texts like
Sangeetharatnakara though I don't have any references. It is easy to
understand how the idea could have been discovered -- definitely by an
instrumentalist playing a fixed pitch instrument like the flute (or a
piano). I discovered some of its preliminaries all by myself when I
got hold of an (Indian) flute. The flute is designed to generate a
fixed scale or a fix set of notes depending on how many of its upper
holes are closed, rest being open completely. In the Carnatic style of
playing it (i.e., starting with 2 holes closed and proceeding to 1 and
0 holes closed to 7 holes closed to 5, 4, 3, and back to 2 holes
closed), the scale is Harikamboji (Khamaj thaat) and in the Hindustani
style (going through the same cycle, but starting from the 3 holes
closed position) it is Kalyani (Yaman thaat). This is equivalent to
saying that playing only the white keys of a piano produces C-major
scale. To generate other notes (komal or lower ri for instance), one
needs to close one of the holes of the flute partially (by the "right"
amount) -- something requiring a lot of practice. This is analogous
to playing the black keys of a piano -- something requiring a lot of
practice. Naturally, one tries to experiment by shifting the
"starting" hole (or shift the tonic to a different white key),
generating the grahabhinna-scales of the original scale. Therefore,
saying that Natabhairavi (Asavari thaat) is the dha-moorchhana ragam of
Sankarabharanam (Bilawal thaat) is equivalent to saying that A-minor
(tonic minor) uses only the white keys of a piano.
When I came across the topic of graha bhedams (sometimes also
called swara moorchhana or ragamoorchhana) a few years back, I was
fascinated by the mathematics of it and did some thinking on it
myself. Let me share some of my thoughts with the net to add to what
Krishna posted or to explain it, in some cases, slightly differently.
It should be born in mind that graha-bhedams is a mere manipulation of
the structure of the notes assuming an equi-ratio chromatic scale. It
has very little to do with musicality.
I explain grahabhedams in terms of differences in number of
semitones semitone between successive notes in a ragam. Any ragam
(usually vakra-ragams are exempted from the discussion of
grahabhedams, though they provide great challenges to it!) can be
represented by a string of semitone (the difference between two
adjacent notes of the 12 note chromatic scale) differences between the
notes in it. Thus, Hindolam or Malkauns is represented as:
Ar/Av: s komal-g m komal-d komal-ni s' s' k-n k-d m k-g s
Representation: 3 2 3 2 2.
S and komal-ga (g2) are 3 semitones apart, k-g and m are 2
semitones apart, etc. Since s and s' are octaves of each other, and
because an octave is divided into 12 semitone intervals, the numbers
in the representation should add upto 12.
Let's look at Mohanam or Bhoopali.
Ar/Av: s r g p d s' s' d p g r s
Representation: 2 2 3 2 3
We can see that the representation of Mohanam can be obtained
from that of Hindolam by cyclically shifting it right by 2, or by
starting from the 4th note -- dha -- of Hindolam. Thus Mohanam can be
obtained by playing the notes (frequencies) of Hindolam after shifting
the tonic-Sa to what used to be dha! Let's look at some other
audava-audava ragams:
Sudha Saveri (Durga)
Ar/Av: s r m p d s' s' d p m r s == 2 3 2 2 3 -- Ri moorchhana of Hindolam
Madhyamavati (Megh Malhar ?)
Ar/Av: s r m p k-n s' s' k-n p m r s == 2 3 2 3 2 -- Ni moorchhana of H
Sudha dhanyasi (??)
Ar/Av: s k-g m p k-n s' s' k-n p m k-g s == 3 2 2 3 2 -- M moorchhana of H
Thus the above 5 ragams are graha-bhedams of each other. This means
one can play them with no half-closed notes on a flute or no black keys on
a piano by using the appropriate note as the tonic Sa!
Let's see the representations of the famous 5 melakarta
(sampurna) ragams Krishna mentioned.
Sankarabharanam (Bilawal thaat): 2 2 1 2 2 2 1 -- Sa
Kharaharapriya (Kafi thaat): 2 1 2 2 2 1 2 -- Ri
HanumaThodi (Bhairavi thaat): 1 2 2 2 1 2 2 -- Ga
MechaKalyani (Yaman thaat): 2 2 2 1 2 2 1 -- Ma
Harikamboji (Khamaj thaat): 2 2 1 2 2 1 2 -- Pa
Natabhairavi (Asavari thaat): 2 1 2 2 1 2 2 -- Dha
We can easily see that they are graha-bhedams of one another.
The last column gives the position of Sa with respect to
Sankarabharanam. The reason for their popularity must have something
to do with the fact that they could be generated by shifting the scale
on a flute like instrument (i.e., without complicated half-closed
notes).
Gopriya mentioned by Krishna is a janyam of Rishabhapriya and
has the following lakshanam:
Ar/Av: s r g prati-m k-d k-n s' s' k-n k-d p-m g r s
Representation: 2 2 2 2 2 2
Clearly, Gopriya is invariant of graha-bhedams! The only other
possible ragam with this property will have a representation 3 3 3 3.
However, ragams with less that 5 notes are not considered "proper"
according to Indian music theory.
I encourage the interested readers to explore the structure
further using Krishna's script and the representation I presented here
to understand the structure of melakarta ragams and non-melarkarta
ragams. If interested, you can also try to listen to Balamuralikrishna
putting grahabhedams into practice.
Sorry for sounding like a technical paper.....
P J Narayanan