Kachha Dhaaga Options

[unni]

I thought I should share with you, for a change, some instrumental pieces. I am starting off with 3 pieces of Fusion Music. Hope it appeals to you. Would welcome some feedback.

Here's track 1.

Cheers!

[unni]

FUNDAMENTALS OF RAGA:

The rag is the most important concept that any student of Indian music should understand. The Hindi/Urdu word "rag" is derived from the Sanskrit "raga" which means "colour, or passion" (Apte 1987). It is linked to the Sanskrit word "ranj" which means "to colour" (Apte 1987). Therefore rag may be thought of as an acoustic method of colouring the mind of the listener with an emotion. This is fine as a general concept but what is it musically? It is not a tune, melody, scale, mode, or any concept for which an English word exists. It is instead a combination of different characteristics. It is these characteristics which define the rag. Here are the characteristics.

There must be the notes of the rag. They are called the swar.

There must also be a modal structure. This is called 'that' in North Indian music and 'mela' in Carnatic music.

There is also the Jati. Jati is the number of notes used in the rag.

There must also be the ascending and descending structure. This is called arohana /avarohana.

Another characteristic is that the various notes do not have the same level of significance. Some are important and others less so. The important notes are called vadi and samavadi

There are often characteristic movements to the rag. This is called either pakad or swarup.

In addition to the main characteristics of rag, there are some other less important ones. For instance rags have traditionally been attributed to particular times of the day. They have also been anthropomorphize into families of male and female rags (raga, ragini, putra raga, etc.). There is a tendency to downgrade the importance of these aspects due to their irrational and unscientific nature.

A raga is basically a set of Vedic-rooted rules for how to build a melody. It specifies rules for movements up (aarohanam [आरोहणम्]) and down (avarohanam [अवरोहणम्]) the scale, which notes should figure more and which notes should be used more sparingly, which notes may be sung with gamaka, phrases to be used, phrases to be avoided, and so on. The result is a framework that can be used to compose or improvise melodies, allowing for endless variation within the set of notes. The underlying scale is a five, six or seven tone-scale, made up of swaras

The notes, or swaras, of Indian music are Shadjamam, Rishabham, Gandharam, Madhyamam, Panchamam, Dhaivatam and Nishadam. Collectively these notes are known as the sargam, the Indian solfege. In singing, these become Sa, Ri(Carnatic) or Re(Hindustani), Ga, Ma, Pa, Da(Carnatic) or Dha(Hindustani), and Ni. ("Sargam" stands for "Sa-R(i,e)-Ga-M(a)"). Only these syllables are sung, and further designations are never vocalized. When writing these become, S, R, G, M, P, D, N. A dot above a letter indicates that the note is sung one octave higher, a dot below indicates a note one octave lower. This provides one method of classifying ragas. Ragas that have five swaras are called audava (औडव) ragas; those with six, shaadava (षाडव); and with seven, sampoorna (संपूर्ण) (Sanskrit

In the seven tone-scale the second, third, fourth, sixth, and seventh notes can be sharp or flat, making up the twelve notes in the Western scale. However, ragas can specify microtonal changes to this scale: a flatter second, a sharper seventh, and so forth. Furthermore, such variations can occur between styles, performers or simply follow the mood of the performer. There is no absolute pitch; instead, each performance simply picks a ground note, and the other scale degrees follow relative to the ground note.

Every time of the day, morning, afternoon, evening and night, has its specific ragas. This distinction is strictly followed in Hindustani music Hindustani (हिन्‍दुस्‍थानी) classical music is a classical music tradition originating from regions in South Asia, extending east from Bangladesh through northern India into Pakistan and as far as Afghanistan in the west. In contrast to Carnatic music, another classical music tradition originating from South India, Hindustani music was influenced by, in addition to the Vedic philosophy and understanding of sound, by Afghan, Mughal and Persian performance practice.

Indian classical music is always set in raga, but all raga music is not necessarily classical. Many popular Indian film songs are themselves based on ragas.