Create Carnatic Music notations online with this new sofware

To teach and learn Indian classical music
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arunk
Posts: 3424
Joined: 07 Feb 2010, 21:41

Post by arunk »

Hello,

I have created a free (and it will remain so) online web-based application for creating carnatic music notations for krithis, gitams, varnams like how they appear in books. You can generate them with gamaka symbols and also generate notations not only in English, but in Tamil, Telugu, Sanskrit and Kannada. You can run the application from your browser (Firefox, IE, Opera for now - although Firefox is most preferable). No need for any special software. Once the notations are generated, you can print them using your browser to a printer or to a PDF file (for this you need a free PDF print driver - there are several free ones available).

The application is right now called by the boring name Carnatic Music Notation Typesetter for it is just that. It is a typesetter and not an GUI "what you see is what you get" type of editor. You specify the notation input as a set of commands or directives and then you tell the application to convert it into pretty notations. In general, you can get a lot of things accomplished without learning all the nuts and bolts of the commands/directives. But I have put up a manual that explains it in detail. I have also put up some examples

I invite people who are interested in creating notations to try it out. However, please be forewarned that
1. It is what they call in software engineering "Beta Quality". This means in terms of features, it is complete (or close to it), but there may be bugs. It has not undergone heavy testing. At this point, I am looking for people who are willing brave this and more importantly send me feedback - good or bad. I need to know where the bugs are, and where the application falls short on features. Please expect some rough edges at this point. It is still an evolving application but I think it is at a state where you can create good looking notations.
2. While I have tried my best to make it easy to use, I know that there will be a bit of learning curve and so you need to be prepared to spend some time getting accustomed to it.

Please visit http://arunk.freepgs.com/cmnt/about.html for information to start using the application. A good start of finding out what the application can do is to look at the examples.

Please post feedback here on the thread or send me email arunk_15 at yahoo dot com.

Note also that how the notation looks on your computer is dependent on the fonts installed on your computer i.e the ones that your browser picks. It is certainly possible to use specific fonts, but my examples do not do that except in one case (basically I did not want to force a font that may not be available on a user's computer).

Enjoy - and please give me feedback. I hope this is something you find useful.

Note that this software is under what is known as Gnu Public License (GPL), which means it is free.

Thanks
Arun
Last edited by arunk on 17 Nov 2007, 10:25, edited 1 time in total.

Suji Ram
Posts: 1529
Joined: 09 Feb 2006, 00:04

Post by Suji Ram »

Thanks Arun- this is indeed a magnanimous gesture on your part!
We all would indeed benefit from your hard work.

I saw some of your example and they all look so great!.

But how do I start? I tried typing with title, talam etc but how do I see the page to get the format?

arunk
Posts: 3424
Joined: 07 Feb 2010, 21:41

Post by arunk »

Suji,

The format is in the manual (PDF) - see Swara and Lyric directive.

Or easier is to look at the alankaram examples. It would be best to start with that. Look at the directives there and look them up in the manual. You can also place the cursor on any line of the example and click Assist (except S: and L i.e. swara and lyric - they unfortunately cannot be Assisted the same way others can be).

PS: BTW, it is late where I am and so I may not be able to provide help until tomorrow morning. May be I should have "released" it in the morning - but I was a man on a mission ;)

Arun
Last edited by arunk on 17 Nov 2007, 10:40, edited 1 time in total.

Suji Ram
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Joined: 09 Feb 2006, 00:04

Post by Suji Ram »

Thanks Arun,
Ok I located the manual

Suji Ram
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Joined: 09 Feb 2006, 00:04

Post by Suji Ram »

I got it working!!! It is amazing!! Language and notation in one. Wow!!

http://www.sendspace.com/file/h7wt6v
here is a pdf of an example of part of my varnam in English and Telugu.

1. Somehow in the pdf the letters are not aligned. They look fine on the typesetter. What is causing this??
2. The dots for mandra and tara are also missing in pdf, I had them before.

Also there is no way to save my work-we had the same issue with transliteration scheme too.
But I can cut and paste into a word document- no problem with that.
Last edited by Suji Ram on 17 Nov 2007, 14:46, edited 1 time in total.

mohan
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Post by mohan »

Arun - looks very good.

cmlover
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Joined: 02 Feb 2010, 22:36

Post by cmlover »

Great Arun! I saw the examples they look nice and crisp. I will also try it with known kritis and let you know if there are problems. Advance congratulations for your marvellous service to the CM community!

arunk
Posts: 3424
Joined: 07 Feb 2010, 21:41

Post by arunk »

Suji Ram wrote:I got it working!!! It is amazing!! Language and notation in one. Wow!!

http://www.sendspace.com/file/h7wt6v
here is a pdf of an example of part of my varnam in English and Telugu.

1. Somehow in the pdf the letters are not aligned. They look fine on the typesetter. What is causing this??
2. The dots for mandra and tara are also missing in pdf, I had them before.

Also there is no way to save my work-we had the same issue with transliteration scheme too.
But I can cut and paste into a word document- no problem with that.
Thanks. Suji.

Regarding alignment - it is a bug that I am aware of with FullWidth - I need to look into it.

Also the dots, were you using FireFox? If so, did you remember to turn on printing of background images and colors? (I mention this in the first section of the manual). Otherwise, it may be another problem.

Saving - Certainly will implement for this one soon. I need to get a cogent solution in mind for that.

Arun

arunk
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Post by arunk »

thanks mohan and cmlover!

Arun

Suji Ram
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Post by Suji Ram »

Also the dots, were you using FireFox? If so, did you remember to turn on printing of background images and colors? (I mention this in the first section of the manual). Otherwise, it may be another problem.
I used IE. I will have to get to the manual for details...
With those examples you made it quite easy. One can cut and paste from them and change as we type a new varnam or kriti.

I'll work on it much later and see what else I can suggest.

Thanks again!!

No luck with dots with IE in the pdf so far

Another point is-
when you go to "New" to start a notation the enteries end up in having tala as #1 line and it asks for layout first. One could work around it by cut and paste.
Last edited by Suji Ram on 18 Nov 2007, 00:54, edited 1 time in total.

arunk
Posts: 3424
Joined: 07 Feb 2010, 21:41

Post by arunk »

Ok - i will see whats wrong with IE - i seem to vaguely remember running into a while ago but I dont remember whether I got around it or decided to revisit later and promptly forgot about it.

My guess is again somehow it is ignoring background colors or something like that. Both the stayi-dots and the higher speed lines are drawn using that.

Also - I think I know what the problem is with New - not generating Layout and Tala in right order (i added the restriction only late in the game).

I have a fix for the "FullWidth" - but will try to validate before releaseing it. I may do it today if I have time (too busy running around) - else I will post tomorrow.

Thanks for the feedback!

Arun

Suji Ram
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Joined: 09 Feb 2006, 00:04

Post by Suji Ram »

Thanks Arun,
No hurry at all...
I tried page setup with IE-there isn't much option to select there nor with the printer. tried everything.

cmlover
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Joined: 02 Feb 2010, 22:36

Post by cmlover »

I have made this sticky so that users can continue to provide feedback over a time period.

vasanthakokilam
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Post by vasanthakokilam »

Arun: Congratulations. This is going to be quite useful to a lot of people. Thanks very much. You have put in quite a few useful features. I never learnt to play using the standard carnatic notation and I tend to wing it using some sparse notation syntax of my own. The basic reason being, a long time back when I tried playing from the notation from carnatic music books, it just did not come out right. There was also the problem of the print being pretty bad in addition to the fundamental complexity of the notations, lack of gamaka symbols etc.. And the books I looked at do not explain the notations clearly and unambigously. I basically gave up reading those notations much to my own disadvantage. I knew that learning the notation syntax is important for my own learning scalability but never had the enthusiasm to spend the time and effort because it looked so unfriendly.

At a fundamental level, your program makes me want to learn the notation and your manual does a great job in explaining things with examples. So before I even used your software, I already got a lot by reading your manual. It looks like you spent quite a bit of time writing the manual which is the right thing to do and it has come out great. Thanks a whole lot for that.

Just a suggestion to others. Please read the manual from cover to cover, it is very well written and it just flows. It also makes you think about fundamental concepts which is a learning opportunity about music itself. This is especially about rhythm since the notation scheme has a lot to do with time signatures, pauses, continuations etc. which brings concepts like akshara, mathra, gati, tala anga etc. to sharper focus. There is no room for vague ideas about these things ;)

I can not enumerate all the positive reactions I had while reading the manual. It is just way too many to enumerate. So, if I do not write anything below about something, please assume that I liked everything about it very much.

These comments are based on reading the manual. I have not used the program yet ( I have looked at the examples you have provided )

1) Since there is confusing usage of the terms mathra and akshara as we have seen in this forum discussions, it will be good to define them the way you are using them. Like Adi, has 8 aksharams, and in chathusra gati there are 4 mathrais per aksharam. or something like that. And how this correlates with your usage of speeds 0, 1 and 2.

2) page 4: "....Swara Labels: s, r, g, m etc. indicate swaras, and sa, ri, ga, ma etc. indicate dhIrgha or elongated swaras. You can also specify a dhIrgha swara as n, instead of ni."

It is not clear if the comma in 'n,' is part of the swara syntax or part of the english description. This is a general issue. Comma is a significant swara syntax and English comma interferes with the description. Since single quotes are also part of the swara syntax, I realize it is hard to write about the syntax in english. Elsewhere you have disambiguated using ( ), e.g. comma (,). I do not know how to solve it cleanly in all cases. I thought I will mention it here. I also see you have used colors to refer to the syntax. May be that will do it.

3) Is it possible to just change the layout from say krithi to varnam layout and everything should come out OK? I like the dilineation of the akshara boundary of varnam layout easy to understand to start with. So if someone gives me the notation file, I can import it to your program and look at it in a different layout. This may already work OK that way but I just wanted to get it confirmed.

4) General question: At speed 0, there is no sub division of an akshara and so there are no gathi variations. ( You can meniton this explicitly where you describe the default speeds in page 12 ).Does this imply that in practise gathis do not normally apply to Geethams? You have already provided for it in your software if someone wants it for Geetham. They can just switch to Varnam layout for notating Geetham but I am just curious about the practise. I never thought about the differences between Geethams and varnams in that sense. Your three different layout idea taught me such things. The books I remember looking at do not make those things clear about their own notations.

5) Ignoring paranthesis spec for local speed variation for now, is it fair to deduce that you take the default speed spec, the gati spec, count the number of mathras (swaras) entered and then format and align it to the tala angas?. I am mainly asking this so I get better at reading the notations.

Feature requests if I may:

1) There are atleast three different ways to specifi Dhirga: ';', ',' and 'sa'. You probably wanted this to be backward compatible with the carnatic music books which is perfectly fine. I am more comfortable reading a notation with less syntactic complexity. It will be useful to have a switch that says 'obey the input Dhirga specification', or 'normalize all the Dhirga specification in the input to a ',' based formatting '. Possible?

2) Assist feature is great. One possible future addition would be to highlight some text, right click and have the features applied to the selected text ( where applicable ).

3) Pushing my luck a bit: Integrate the notation scheme with your other program that generates swara sounds. I am sure you have thought about it. This way people can interactively write the notation, check it out, modify it, play it back etc.

Arun, thanks for all the programming and documentation work on this. Just the ease of use and clear explanations alone will make people use this for both creating the notations and reading the notations.

vasanthakokilam
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Post by vasanthakokilam »

Arun, I played with the software a bit and here is a report. As I see more, I will report back.

1) I tried this sequence 's r g m p d n s s n d p m g r s' with varnam layout in two ways. Default speed 0 and ( s r g m p d n s s n d p m g r s ), and Default speed 1 and s r g m p d n s s n d p m g r s . It did it right. Great. (It will be interesting to see if someone can read and interpret the two to be the same.)

2) The Assist for Adi Tisra enters it as Adi_tisra which is not valid. It should be TisraAdi I guess

3) If I convert an already entered swara sequence to TisraAdi, I get 'infinite loop, nSwaras == 0

4) Using Assist, if I enter a thala, it concatenates the next line Heading to the tala line

5) I am not sure if it displayed OK when I changed the thala from Adi to Adi2kalai. I have to look at it again later on.

6) I do not know how I got into this. Before manually entering the layout, Layout line was somehow below the tala line which it complained about. I just moved it above and it was OK.

vgvindan
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Joined: 13 Aug 2006, 10:51

Post by vgvindan »

Arun,
Notwithstanding my ignorance of music, I may state a few words regarding automated notation writing. Pardon me if I am wrong.

There is a difference between notation writing by the Vaggeyakkara himself and by others. Raga only conveys the general mood. But singing in the Raga, per-se, chosen by Vaggeyakkara does not mean that the bhAva and message of Keerthana is automatically conveyed.

For example, let us take Thyagaraja Kriti 'endukO nI manasu karagadu' - (why would Your mind not melt - உனது மனம் உருகாததேனோ) - This is partly a question and partly a pleading. It can neither be rendered as a question only or as a pleading only - something in between. When singing in Telugu - the word 'endukO' - is emphasised as 'e...n.......duko'; the same message in Tamil would have emphasis at 'urugAdadE.....nO'.

Taking another example of 'nannu pAlimpa naDaci vaccitivO'. 'Did you come walking to protect me?'

'Did You come walking to protect ME?'; 'Did you come WALKING to protect me?' 'Did You come walking to PROTECT me?' The same set of words emphasised differently convey different meanings.

Therefore, the notation writer has to understand not only bhAva of kRti but also the message etc. and therefore, the places of intonation - emphasis. I do not think even the most sophisticated robots can do that.

I am reminded of the words of the human robot 'Arnold' in 'Judgement Day' addressed to the boy - 'I don't understood why you cry? Human emotions are beyond computers.
Last edited by vgvindan on 18 Nov 2007, 09:00, edited 1 time in total.

mohan
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Post by mohan »

vg - it is widely recognised that there is still no perfect system for notation of Carnatic music. Whatever symbols we use it is very difficult to notate gamaka. Sri Subbarama Dikshitar and others have attempted it but the notation system needs to convey the exact gamakam required on every single note of a composition. I think this impracticle. The bhava which you refer to comes largely from the gamaka in the ragas.

In lieu of a perfect notation system, the standard notation used just conveys the basic notes used and it is up to the musician to interpret the notation based on their knowledge of the raga, the language, the meaning, the bhava, the composer's intention, etc.

Using the standard word processing software, it is difficult to even the basic notation due to the need to put dots above notes, etc. In this regard, Arun's software is a useful contribution to the field.

Vasantakokilam - you make some great points - the comment about notating dirgha is very valid. I tend to use the same notation as in AS Panchapakesha Iyer's books and to date have been using just the simple swara font available at: http://www.carnaticcorner.com/lyrics.html#other

arunk
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Joined: 07 Feb 2010, 21:41

Post by arunk »

Thanks vk for the detailed writeup. I am grateful that you have taken the time to do this. Let me try to address your points.
vasanthakokilam wrote:Since there is confusing usage of the terms mathra and akshara as we have seen in this forum discussions, it will be good to define them the way you are using them. Like Adi, has 8 aksharams, and in chathusra gati there are 4 mathrais per aksharam. or something like that. And how this correlates with your usage of speeds 0, 1 and 2.
Note. Indeed there are some basic principles behind the software here and I may not have explained it clearl enough
2) page 4: "....Swara Labels: s, r, g, m etc. indicate swaras, and sa, ri, ga, ma etc. indicate dhIrgha or elongated swaras. You can also specify a dhIrgha swara as n, instead of ni."

It is not clear if the comma in 'n,' is part of the swara syntax or part of the english description. This is a general issue. Comma is a significant swara syntax and English comma interferes with the description.
Agreed. I will see how to demarcate clearly.
3) Is it possible to just change the layout from say krithi to varnam layout and everything should come out OK?
Not unless DefaultSpeed is explicitly specified (i think). This is because, if not specified, the DefaultSpeed has different default speeds for krithi and Varnam. It is "1" (i.e. second speed for krithi) and "2" (third speed for varnam). I made that decision early in the game with the intention being that people can specify krithi and varnam easily without having to explicitly specify the speeds. But at the end, I was not sure it was that great a choice because different notation formats for krithi use different speeds.


> 4) General question: At speed 0, there is no sub division of an akshara and so there are no gathi variations.
Yes. A swara in default speed 0 takes up the whole akshara irrespective of the gati of the anga in which it falls.

> Does this imply that in practise gathis do not normally apply to Geethams?
Not sure if people sing it in different speeds - but the way it is notated and normally sung, no each swara simply takes up an akshara.

Note that the main intended difference between Gitam/Varnam vs. Krithi layout is the akshara delineation (the presumed DefaultSpeed difference was just for convenience).
5) Ignoring paranthesis spec for local speed variation for now, is it fair to deduce that you take the default speed spec, the gati spec, count the number of mathras (swaras) entered and then format and align it to the tala angas?. I am mainly asking this so I get better at reading the notations.
Yes - but for gitam/varnam alignment would be further enforced at the akshara level.
1) There are atleast three different ways to specifi Dhirga: ';', ',' and 'sa'. You probably wanted this to be backward compatible with the carnatic music books which is perfectly fine. I am more comfortable reading a notation with less syntactic complexity. It will be useful to have a switch that says 'obey the input Dhirga specification', or 'normalize all the Dhirga specification in the input to a ',' based formatting '. Possible?
It is a good request. It should be possible (although it does have some repurcussions).
2) Assist feature is great. One possible future addition would be to highlight some text, right click and have the features applied to the selected text ( where applicable ).
Can you think of a specific example as to what features?
3) Pushing my luck a bit: Integrate the notation scheme with your other program that generates swara sounds. I am sure you have thought about it. This way people can interactively write the notation, check it out, modify it, play it back etc.
I have thought about it but this is quite difficult and results would be dismal (and it would get vgv all upset ;) )

Arun

arunk
Posts: 3424
Joined: 07 Feb 2010, 21:41

Post by arunk »

vgv,

Perhaps you misunderstand. There is no "automation" here at all - nor is that easy! This is simply a way of getting one's pattu pustakam into a "clearer" (music book) like format. It is like you have a scribbled handwritten letter, and now you want it typewritten.

As Mohan indicated there is *so much* that is NOT conveyed by notation and will come ONLY with musically (and lyrically etc.) interpreting the notation.

Arun
Last edited by arunk on 18 Nov 2007, 19:36, edited 1 time in total.

arunk
Posts: 3424
Joined: 07 Feb 2010, 21:41

Post by arunk »

mohan wrote:I tend to use the same notation as in AS Panchapakesha Iyer's books and to date have been using just the simple swara font available at: http://www.carnaticcorner.com/lyrics.html#other
Yep this format does make it a bit more formalized - most importantly in general I think you can get away with only one underline. Also easier to align things across angas. Huge advantages.

But I also like the terseness of "pa", "ma" (the flipside is readability is harder) and when you want to attach lyrics and gamakas, it becomes a bit easier. I believe it also is way more commonly used than ASP - most books seems to use the pa, ma etc.

The ASP notation will result in aI find the overabundance of commas in ASP notation (say a swara that occupies 1 akshara in catusra gati - would be p , , , ). Depending on your taste, you find that it is fine or find it aesthetically not the best.

I dont use the pa, ma myself. But I dont use ASP notation where each swara is "third speed" (i.e. p , , , ), but instead generally default to second speed. No reason except that is how my teacher generally showed it to me. With this, you will need double-lines (for 1/16 i.e. brigha/dhurita speed swaras).

After all just like any "writing" people will develop preference for notations too:
1. Familiarity with the system and readability (this being varied if there are different systems)
2. How it looks - which is of course very subjective.

Arun

arunk
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Joined: 07 Feb 2010, 21:41

Post by arunk »

vk,

> 2) The Assist for Adi Tisra enters it as Adi_tisra which is not valid. It should be TisraAdi I guess
Noted. I will fix it.

> 3) If I convert an already entered swara sequence to TisraAdi, I get 'infinite loop, nSwaras == 0
Noted - maybe harder to fix. In the meantine, I will generally advise people not nilly-willy change talas :) - for musical reasons as well as stabilty

> 4) Using Assist, if I enter a thala, it concatenates the next line Heading to the tala line
Can you provide me a bit more info? Like what was the content of the two lines before Assist, and on which line you were trying it. Will help me reproduce it quicker (and fix it)

> 5) I am not sure if it displayed OK when I changed the thala from Adi to Adi2kalai. I have to look at it again later on.
Again - change in tala. Please send me the input if you can.


> 6) I do not know how I got into this. Before manually entering the layout, Layout line was somehow below the tala line which it complained about. I just moved it above and it was OK.
I think this may be what suji ran into it (New song I think generates it in the wrong order).

Arun

vasanthakokilam
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Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 00:01

Post by vasanthakokilam »

> 4) Using Assist, if I enter a thala, it concatenates the next line Heading to the tala line
Can you provide me a bit more info? Like what was the content of the two lines before Assist, and on which line you were trying it. Will help me reproduce it quicker (and fix it)
Arun, given what you mentioned about not changing the thala, this may not be a major issue since it happens only with changing the thala. But it is easy to reproduce. Before the change, there is the Tala line and a Heading line. Click on the tala line, invoke Assist and change to a different tala and click OK. The Heading line is concatanated to the tala line. I can repro this on your examples as well.
> 5) I am not sure if it displayed OK when I changed the thala from Adi to Adi2kalai. I have to look at it again later on.
Again - change in tala. Please send me the input if you can.
Right, it has to do with change in thala again. ( I guess I was quite taken in by the ability to change thala ;) ). My input was basically 'sa ri ga ma pa da ni sa sa ni da pa ma ga ri sa'. First in Adi, I forgot the speed and layout now, Then changed the thala to Adi2Kalai. It took it without any errors but not sure if it changed the formatted output. I will play with it later on if it is not easy to reproduce for you and if you really want to focus on thala changing issues given your busy schedule now. These things can wait.
2) Assist feature is great. One possible future addition would be to highlight some text, right click and have the features applied to the selected text ( where applicable ).

Can you think of a specific example as to what features?
In general terms, anything you do with Assist today should work with a 'Select and Right Click' model. In addition, if I want to increase the speed of a group of swaras, I can select the group, right click and relevant actions can appear there including Speed spec. Same with Gamaka specification for a swara or a group of swaras. I am just throwing this out there for your consideration. Such right click applied formatting works for WYSIWYG ( like word processors ) but in your model, you will be dumping the raw formatting attributes to the bottom window. But then when someone selects the text again, they may not select the text plus attribute symbols like '(' and ')' and so it can easily get messed up. So I will leave it to you to see how this may work. Having said, I think the Assist feature itself is great and goes a long way towards making it easy to use. The right click is just a little extra which may not be work the effort.

arunk
Posts: 3424
Joined: 07 Feb 2010, 21:41

Post by arunk »

thanks vk.

I still think those problems are fixable (and must be fixed) - tala changes should not cause problems to the software - i.e. in theory (and if the bugs are ironed out). Some of the ones should be easy to sort out. That infinite loop is something I have run into although in all cases, there were bugs in representing the tala itself - but I always knew it does lurk and does show its head.

I will start working on all the reported problems later today when I (finally) get time over this weekend.


Arun
Last edited by arunk on 19 Nov 2007, 02:33, edited 1 time in total.

arunk
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Post by arunk »

BTW, is anybody besides the "usual suspects" :) playing with this software? I think it should be useful for anyone learning - since the version of krithis you learn will mostly not tee up with what is in the books. So my hope is people can get the krithis from their pattu pusthakam typeset.

Arun

vasanthakokilam
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Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 00:01

Post by vasanthakokilam »

Whatever symbols we use it is very difficult to notate gamaka. Sri Subbarama Dikshitar and others have attempted it but the notation system needs to convey the exact gamakam required on every single note of a composition. I think this impracticle. The bhava which you refer to comes largely from the gamaka in the ragas.
There is definitely hope then to address what vg talks about. msakellaji's upcoming exhaustive gamaka notation may take the notational scheme to the new heights and in the process the bhava can come out as a by-product. If Arun so wishes, he can incorporate msakellaji's notaional scheme for gamaka into his software.

vasanthakokilam
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Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 00:01

Post by vasanthakokilam »

I think it should be useful for anyone learning - since the version of krithis you learn will mostly not tee up with what is in the books. So my hope is people can get the krithis from their pattu pusthakam typeset
I know a couple of 9 and 11 year olds who are learning music. I am thinking of referring your software to them and their parents. Not sure if they will be inclined to spend time on this. Let us see. From what I have seen them using, they look like photocopies from the ASP book. May be their teachers can get introduced to this and use it for lessons for which good notations do not exist or the notations are confusing/wrong.

mohan
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Post by mohan »

vasanthakokilam wrote:msakellaji's upcoming exhaustive gamaka notation may take the notational scheme to the new heights and in the process the bhava can come out as a by-product. If Arun so wishes, he can incorporate msakellaji's notaional scheme for gamaka into his software.
I am not familiar with Sri MSA's notational scheme but consider the following example:

1. I want to notate the gamakam for the very first Ni in the anupallavi of the Sri raga varnam( Sami Ninne)
2. The Ni commences somewhere near the P and moves up to N2
3. The notation will have to give the exact sruthi value (perhaps in cents) of the beginning note and the ending note
4. There will have to be some symbol to notate how fast the transition is (relative to the speed of rendtion) - maybe in beats per second

This is a simple example. A number of gamakas start at one point and swing to more than one other point - example the Ma in Sankarabharanam. The notation will need to provide the exact value of every absolute sruthi that the swara touches and the transition speed between every two sruthis.

vasanthakokilam
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Post by vasanthakokilam »

Mohan, I understand and I see the complexities and near impossibilities involved. Akellaji is one of the, if not the, foremost expert at the CM gamakam exploratin, going beyond what the traditional texts specify. He had studied this subject quite extensively. I myself do not know the scope of his notational scheme yet.

I am not sure if any scheme needs to solve all the innumerable possibilities but a good 75% goes a long way. Still one has to learn from a teacher or atleast listen to recordings to get the full musical ideas but this should at least make it possible to notate the technicalities involved.

I do not mean to hurry Shri. Akellaji on what he had told us to expect in the coming months. Sir, please take your time.

arunk
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Post by arunk »

mohan wrote:1. I want to notate the gamakam for the very first Ni in the anupallavi of the Sri raga varnam( Sami Ninne)
2. The Ni commences somewhere near the P and moves up to N2
3. The notation will have to give the exact sruthi value (perhaps in cents) of the beginning note and the ending note
4. There will have to be some symbol to notate how fast the transition is (relative to the speed of rendtion) - maybe in beats per second
1. Hitting exact sruthi value to the cent is a impossibility unless programmed in computer. You can get pretty close within threshold, but once you get into "ideal cent values", you may trouble with that - even for some of the swarasthanams.
2. Even for this specific ni, there need not be one EXACT ideal pitch contour (i.e. exact start value to the cent, exact end value to the cent, exact rate of travel between). You can achieve the same ni with different sets of <start,end,rate> (albeit within some threshold).

I believe these are some of things Arvindh from Stanford found in his research. Atleast from my own forays (pitch detection software). I can confirm #1 to be certainly true. In general with gamakas, assigning ideal pitch level or pitch contour is just not matched in practice - it gets subjective and different musicians show different localized variations

I think in general you can indicate "basic shape" (i.e. starts from pa and oscillates between n2 and p or n2 and s etc.).

I think there is a lot of interpretative element in our music, which just cannot be "nullified" by providing a single, ideal interpretation - because that interpretative element allows people to have differing interpretations, giving it diversity of expression.

Arun
Last edited by arunk on 19 Nov 2007, 06:34, edited 1 time in total.

arunk
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Post by arunk »

Suji,

For me with IE, the stayi dots and speed lines to show up in Print Preview as well as generated PDF. Which IE version are you using? (I am using 6.0). I did notice a few problems
1. The dots are big too big.
2. The tala markers are shifted down - to the lyric line. Now it still looks fine but that was not intended.

I am now thinking maybe there is some option in IE that perhaps I had turned on in mine - cant remember what it is. But maybe it is specific to the PDF print driver.

Here is the devi_nIyE_tuNai I generated on IE to PDF http://www.mediafire.com/?0ncnxgttyyj BTW, I used primopdf.

Arun

arunk
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Post by arunk »

I have uploaded some fixes

1. New song now generates Layout and Tala in right order.
2. Also selecting tisra adi in Assist form generates the correct tala name.
3. FullWidth should now work much better (it used to misalign things). I think this works welll for gitam and varnam. It should also work much better for krithi now although I think in general it may be performing better on FireFox. In IE, I find that it makes the output too wide for say Portrait that you may be forced to go LandScape. Not sure yet why - but this may be fixable.
4. Vk - had mention that using AssistForm to change Tala concatenates the directive with the next line. This was happening on IE (not on Firefox) and is now fixed.

VK - can you tell the example where changing from Adi to Tisra Adi gave the infinite loop? I tried for a couple of others and it didnt happen. I know this bug is there - but a specific situation where it always happens would help in fixing it - thx

Arun

Suji Ram
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Post by Suji Ram »

Which IE version are you using? (I am using 6.0). I did notice a few problems
IE 7 version
May be something in advanced setting -that is disabled I have to check
Last edited by Suji Ram on 19 Nov 2007, 09:25, edited 1 time in total.

vasanthakokilam
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Post by vasanthakokilam »

Thanks Arun. I verified that your fixes to the issues I found work fine. Thanks.
VK - can you tell the example where changing from Adi to Tisra Adi gave the infinite loop? I tried for a couple of others and it didnt happen. I know this bug is there - but a specific situation where it always happens would help in fixing it - thx
I deserve a brownie point for not giving up to repro this ;). I could not reproduce this first, then did some thing and it happened. Tried to retrace my steps but did not happen. After some playing around, finally hit upon these steps to reproduce this.

1) First create a song with krithi format, Adi Basically take all the default values and just enter a song name
2) S: s r g m p d n s s n d p m g r s s r g m p d n s and update
3) Change thalam to Tisra_Adi and update
4) Change the layout type from krithi to Varnam ( before: Layout: krithi,Compact, after: Layout: Varnam,Compact ) by manually changing it ( not using Assist )
5) click on Update and this should repro the problem

There may be other ways to get to this but this is what I just did.

vasanthakokilam
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Post by vasanthakokilam »

If anyone has the notation for Elavathara ( mukhari ), can you please typeset this using this program and share the results. This will be a good test case for me on the usefulness of notations. I have never learnt this song myself but have heard this song many times from multiple artists. This is also one of the first songs that got me interested in CM a long while back. I wil see how much melodic information is carried in the notation. As a side benefit, I want to see what the official or commonly notated/accepted eduppu for this song is ( and also the place where the various lines in the anupallavi and charanam begin) , I get conflicting results when I listen to the different versions. It fit an atheetha eduppu model for the beginning and a 1/2 eduppu for some lines in the anupallavi but I lisented to a Chembai version today which seems to be on samam. So, even if typesetting the notation is a long shot task, please let me know what the eduppu is to satisfy my current curiosity.

arunk
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Post by arunk »

suji - i see the problem on IE 7.0. I dont think it is a problem with background images - because it would affect the speed-lines (for higher speed swaras). I am seeing them being drawn - just the stayi markers are lost. I will try to see where the problem is

Arun
Last edited by arunk on 19 Nov 2007, 20:58, edited 1 time in total.

arunk
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Post by arunk »

thanks vk.

arunk
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Post by arunk »

Suji - It IS the background images and colors setting.

1. Tools => Internet Options
2. Go to Advanced Tag/Page.
3. Under the list, look under Printing category. Make sure the Print background colors and images setting is checked.

It works better but not perfect and the Print Preview page on IE is dog dog slow. It is laughable. The browser can draw the page in 1 second but print preview takes many seconds.. I am not an MS basher but sometimes these nimwits just cant do anything right! IE 6 works better. IE 7 is a pig and regresses in areas. I hear the same complaints about Vista vs. XP. They are truly turning out to be a necessary, unavoidable evil :(

Arun

Suji Ram
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Post by Suji Ram »

I am not an MS basher but sometimes these nimwits just cant do anything right! .
:D
I'll send this to folks at MS. They are all over my place....


BTW thanks. I was there looking at the advanced option but somehow my eyes missed seeing the printing...option
Last edited by Suji Ram on 19 Nov 2007, 23:36, edited 1 time in total.

Suji Ram
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Post by Suji Ram »

If anyone has the notation for Elavathara ( mukhari ),
Does anyone have a link where I can hear this song?

arunk
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Post by arunk »

http://www.sangeethapriya.org/~hariharan/55-Mukhari/

It has ARI's (#13) and vk herself ;-) (#48)

ARI's version from what I could make out: starts at samam for pallavi. Both anupallavi and charanam - I think it may be 0.75 - between 2nd and 3rd beat if putting (fast) 2-kalai. May be it is 0.5 and I just put it wrong.

(nv)vk : seems to similar - samam for pallavi. Anupallavi seems to start at 0.5

Arun

Suji Ram
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Post by Suji Ram »

thanks Arun,
Both the versions are very good.
These did not come up in the search I did at that site.

vasanthakokilam
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Post by vasanthakokilam »

That NCV rendition was the one that got me interested in listening to CM. The melisma at the end of each section (P, AP, C ) used to tug at something deep and meaningful in me - specifically, that downward sweep and then up through the characteristic mukhari phrases. Compared to other ragas, most singers seem to do that for Mukhari a lot more frequently and definitely for Elavathara, much to my delight. If I can get to play that right, that will be a big personal wow!!

The same melismatic singing which is so attractive melodically wreaks havoc with my tala keeping ;)

I keep getting different results when I listen to the NCV version. ARI version is confusing as well since the mridangamist does not end on the 1 st beat.

Check me on these things wrt to the NCV version.

1) The second line of AP starts a beat later than the first line of AP.

2) The line that starts with 'Tyagarajudu..' is prototypical of a 1/2 eduppu. If you go with that, when NCV wraps around to the Pallavi line it falls before the Samam.

If these are not right, then I will have to spend more quality time keeping thala for this song.

vasanthakokilam
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Post by vasanthakokilam »

I listened to it another N number of times and this is what seems to be happening. Please check if I got these right.

1) The second line of AP starts a beat later than the first line of AP.

2) The charanam begins in 1/2 eduppu but when the same charanam line is repeated, it is at 1 1/2.

3) The second line of charanam ( which wraps back to the melody of the AP ) is either samam or before samam.

4) The line that starts with 'Tyagarajudu..' is actually at 1 1/2 (though the pattern seems to fit the prototypical 1/2 eduppu ). This also fits with the anupallavi structure where the second line starts at 1 1/2 whereas the first line starts at 1/2.

5) When NCV wraps around to the Pallavi line it falls on the Samam as it did at the beginning of the song. Everything fits together well.

Having said all this, is the thala Adi 2Kalai with the whole pallavi just 2 avarthanams. It seems to make sense here. Then I have to redo this whole thing. If it is, this may shed some light on a question I had about what really makes a 2Kalai Adi as opposed to 2 cylces of Adi...

arunk
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Post by arunk »

vk -To me the second line (rAgaratna) starts at 1/2 (2-kalai) too. The first time it is sada rAga (sada starts at samam).

The first line also there only - she just takes it a fraction later i.e. post beat but one can say she does take it 0.75 (or 1.5). It is not like 1/2 one time and 1 1/2 next time. It is 1/2 and 3/4 (2kalai) or 1 and 1.5 (1kalai)

But if it helps, i do have the notation (i can scan and email to you and you can try your hand on the software :)), and it shows 2 cycles for the pallavi (typical for Adi) - per that I can comfortably put Adi 2 kalai. But I can simply choose to beat "every alternate" one and make it look like Adi 1 kalai. But the notation does seem to indicate 2-kalai (8 swaras per akshara). But if you think about it, once you know the start and end of the tala cycle, you can view it as either 1-kalai or 2-kalai. It simply would affect the relative duration of each swara w.r.t the akshara. So almost like same melody - simply different frame of reference.

Also from the notation I have, pallavi is at samam, and both anupallavi and charanam are 1/2 after the beat (i.e. after a ; - and when 8 swaras are shown to fit in 1 akshara)

Arun
Last edited by arunk on 20 Nov 2007, 10:24, edited 1 time in total.

vasanthakokilam
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Post by vasanthakokilam »

once you know the start and end of the tala cycle, you can view it as either 1-kalai or 2-kalai
That is true. In my case, I did not know that and initially I was keeping the thala as if the pallavi is 4 avartha. Somehow things did not seem right but with 2 Kalai ( meaning 2 avarthas for pallavi ), everything fit together nicely. So there is something there that is feelable, something that makes it natural that helped me assign the 2 avarthas to the pallavi rather than 4 avarthas. I guess this is a case of a reasonably fast paced song in 2 kalai whereas the norm for 2 kalai is a slow nannu palima like rhythmic structure. Having said all this, I still can not find what is rhythmically common between nannu palimpa and elavathara that makes both 2 kalai. Our Balaji mentioned something about 'Asu'. If I remember right these are rhythmic prototypes used by the great composers. I wonder if the thing that makes it a 2 Kalai is a specific kind of Asu. ( I may be totally off base here since I am wildly specualting ).

Arun, I will focus on the Charanam lines later, but do you agree that in the Anupallavi, the second line of the anupallavi ( both repetitions ) start 1/2 a beat ( in 2 kalai ) later than the first line? I am not sure whether you were referring to the charanam or anu pallavi in your response. In either case she is on the beat since the song stress falls on the beat, so no issues there. I wonder how the notation you have calls out the second line of the anu pallavi.

I will take you up on your offer to scan and email the notation to me. I will give it a shot to typeset it with your software. May be it can be a collaborative effort. I will do the base work and some of you can fix it and may be add the gamama symbols.

arunk
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Post by arunk »

vasanthakokilam wrote:. So there is something there that is feelable, something that makes it natural that helped me assign the 2 avarthas to the pallavi rather than 4 avarthas.
It could be how the mridangist is playing AND also how the song syllable emphasis falls on. If playing sarvalaghu, I am guessing that for this krithi in 2-kalai the emphasis would be typicallu spaced further apart i.e ta-ka-di-mi in 2-kalai (1 akshara) would translate to ta-ka-di-mi ta-ka-di-mi (2 aksharas). Of course this need not be always the case, as one can play ta-ka-di-mi-ta-ka-ju-Nu for that 1 akshara in 2-kalai, and also play it realy slow as in ta-ka di-mi for those 2 aksharas in 1-kalai, but I think the norm wouldnt be so and so on an average, the emphasis for the 2-kalai would be spaced further apart. Same reasoning for song.

The key is in general for Adi, 1 cycle per HALF of pallavi (and anupallavi, and also half of each line of charanam. You can identify the halves musically - but you can also use the prAsa of the start of the halves. Here you ElavatAra vs. Emi - the elongated form the same vowel (consonant may be precede on one, or different consonants for both - still prAsa. The same vowel in the same length is key. I learned this from our Drs). Of course on top you may also have the same 2nd consonant - i.e. dviakshara prAsa. So in anupallavi: Alamu vs. pAlana. In caranam, you have yOgulu vs. rOgula, and rAga vs. (tyAga)rAju. Note for the last line, the word is tyAgarAju but the prAsa is on rAju - so word beginnings dont necessary start the line musically.

Anyway one you get the halves, for Adi it is generally 1 cycle per half. for rUpaka 2, or 4 in cApu style. For khaNDa/mIsra cApu - 2

I will email you the scanned notation this evening if possible.

> but do you agree that in the Anupallavi, the second line of the anupallavi ( both repetitions ) start 1/2 a beat ( in 2 kalai ) later than the
> first line.
Yes.

> I wonder how the notation you have calls out the second line of the anu pallavi.
Assuming this is intentional (i mean as opposed to on the fly improvisation). It would be something like that

Code: Select all

Layout: Varnam,FullWidth
Tala: Adi2Kalai
DefaultSpeed: 1
S: ;  ( , n )  , d  p     =  | =  = | = =
L: ;    , pA   _ la nE    _    _  _   _ _
(Note: the n-d-p I am not even sure - just blind and not well thought out guesses. Consider these as just fillers. Only the initial pause is in question here)

So the first pause is 1.25 aksharas - ; for first and the , in higher speed is 1/4th the next akshara which is (, n ) d. This is of course if you count only 8 aksharas for 2-kalai even though we beat twice for each akshara (i think we beat twice because the time of each akshara is lengthier and beating it twice allows us to keep track of time better). If you instead take it as 16, then that first pause would be 2.5 aksharas.

Note: I think in the typesetter, the Varnam vs Krithi may have more repurcusions than I intended particular w.r.t 2-kalai. For example with above I see what I have notated spans 1 avarthana in typesetter. If I switch to Krithi, it should still remain so. But it does not. So something is getting changed underneath and may be this is what you found in your initial testing. To be honest, I also added 2-kalai towards the very end and so it was not that rigorously tested

Arun
Last edited by arunk on 20 Nov 2007, 22:50, edited 1 time in total.

Suji Ram
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Post by Suji Ram »

good discussion on tala keeping eddupu etc. So much more than just notations.

Will be interesting for me to see the notations as well while listening to "ElAvatAra"

But this kriti itself is complicated compared to other muKhAri's I have heard.

Suji Ram
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Post by Suji Ram »

I have the text of the kriti slightly different from what VK and ARI sing

P: ElAvatAra mettukontivi EmikAraNamu rAmudai

A: Alamu sEyuTakA ayOdhyA pAlana jEyuTakA O rAghava

C: yOgulanu jUcuTaka bhava rOgulanu brOchuTaka shata
rAgaratnamAlikalu racincina tyAgarAjunaku varamosangutakA

Would like like to know the correct text. May be vgv can help here.

Never mind found it here
http://rasikas.org/wiki/elavatara
Last edited by Suji Ram on 21 Nov 2007, 01:06, edited 1 time in total.

vasanthakokilam
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Post by vasanthakokilam »

Thanks Arun for the explanations. That helps. I will look at the scanned image and work on it over the next few days.

Suji, since I/we are going to work on Elavathara notations using the typesetter, all the discussions around the song/thala itself can now be considered as a prelude to that ;)

Suji Ram
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Post by Suji Ram »

Now talking about tala, it would be nice to have indications for laghuvu and dhrutamu too.

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