Wednesday 23 February 2011

basics of Carnatic Music

The carnatic music; possibly one of the oldest music gender that is in complete. we wont be going into its history but how does it percepts the music.

As for as carnatic music is concerned there are some keywords  you are expected to be familiar with
they are
pitch
sruti
swara
raga
tala
kirti


PITCH
Pitch is a characteristics of a sound and  as far as science is concerned it is the frequency of the sound. But more commonly we can say that its the shrillness or the bass-full roughness of a sound. Commonly women have shrill voice (high pitched) and men have rough voice (low pitched).
SRUTI
               Sruti is nothing but the scale of pitch in which you tend to start the music whether in high or low.In singing it may differ according to the nature of singers vocal.
                But in the view of a musician one can make any scale as sruti as it is the work of the instrument.
                But it is advisable to maintain a middle range sruti for making it pleasant.
                Of course there are some exception and it should be made opt according to the situation
SWARA
               Now that we are moving to the swaras one should know the basic swaras in the carnatic music
and they may seems to be confusing but don't worry about it right now just use the simpler form given as short name for now.they are(courtesy wikipedia)

 You may be thinking "Guys i heard it was only seven swaras what the hell these twelve doing here!!!!"

Relax these twelve are the classified in that seven swara pattern.
they are
Shadja(Sa)
Rishaba(Ri)
Gandhara(Ga)
Madhyama(Ma)
Panchama(Pa)
Dhaivatha(Da)
Nishadha(Ni)
Now thats seven isn't it?
The combination of these seven notes with their variations (as either sudha or Satharna or chathusruthi or etc...) is what forms a raga.

Now that we know pitch, scale, swara and raga. The next thing is the Tala.

Tala is the thing that makes the music as it happens or to say in a simpler way raga is the travel we are making on the paths of the tala.
A good work of music should always go on the stream of the beat or the magic will be lost.
as for as the tala concerned there are several variations in it which we will see in the next post.

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