Learn CM through MIDI experiments!

cmlover · Post by **cmlover** » 23 Apr 2006, 02:05

The idea of these experiments is to show you how the MIDI can can help you to attain tonal control or shruti alignment. Let me explain using an example.

I have chosen sahana's mohanam (my favourite ragam) from the DRS thread for this demonstration. Here is the excerpt;
http://rapidshare.de/files/18680691/Mohanam.mp3.html

You will notice that she is singing at a high female pitch and it is a pure melody. FYI sahana has 5.5 kaTTai shruti (I have ascetained it from her earlier singings!) Since this is monophonic, the conversion using DigitalEar with pitchbend is easy. Here it is
http://rapidshare.de/files/18680768/Mohanam.mid.html

I have used Trumpet as the instrument which sounded reasonable. If you have a MIDI player or keyboard you can experiment using other instruments. Flute will sound good and so would shanai. The conversion is not perfect with lot of hiccoughs but you should ignore them at present. If you now play the piece on the noteworthy player you will find at each instant what note sahana is elaborating (unfortunately the pitch bending is not shown but use your ears to get the gamaka pattern). Keep in mind her 5.5 kaTTai to locate the note of mohanam if you want to transcribe it into your instrument.

You can use the MIDI as a Karaoke to sing along in synchrony to train your voice (WARNING Males

You will burst your vocal chords if you try to match pitch with Sahana!

). If you want you can transpose by 4 or 5 kaTTai to get the masculine frequency (many softwares will do the pitch shift!).

Try out and give your comments. We can have your efforts commented by our experts most of whom are constructive! If anybody posts a negative comment simply ignore him for a jealous NUT. We are all here to sincereely help you enjoy and practise CM.

shubhAH tE gAyanaM|

drshrikaanth · Post by **drshrikaanth** » 23 Apr 2006, 04:23

CML
Kudos to your enthusiasm and experimental mind. I tried listenting to the modified version. Very little sound. I couldnt increase it with goldwave as format was not recognised. Could you please increase volume and post it.

cmlover · Post by **cmlover** » 23 Apr 2006, 04:43

DRS
since the MID file cannot be manipulated in the usual players I have made it into an MP3 file
http://rapidshare.de/files/18694227/MohanamMid.mp3.html

You should be able to play this file but keep the volume low for a melodious effect. Also this is exactly the same frequency as Sahana (not one octave higher which will be the usual accompaniments!)

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 23 Apr 2006, 14:36

CML, that has turned out reasonably well.

I taught myself a little bit to read the staff notation so I can follow the notation with Noteworthy Player. See if I got this correctly. Second line from the bottom is G. Since you said Mrs. Sahana's pitch is 5.5. So G# is Sa.

If this is all correct... the first few notes in the notation are C. So that translates to Ga. So far so good. Then there is a whole bunch of notes on G... I do not think that is correct since that would be Ni. May be Noteworthy got confused with the pitchbend numbers as it was traversing through G. I may be wrong in reading it this way, so I am still learning to read the notations.

cmlover · Post by **cmlover** » 23 Apr 2006, 21:22

vk

The notation is only notional. The pitchbend spans an octave and hence any note can be 'bent' all the way to its octave,and Noteworthy will not display the actual value! You have to use your ears with the visual cue provided.

In this case Sahana starts off with the pancamam. With a tentative stabilization there, she traverses to the Shadjam and then returns briefly to pancamam again to go back to Shadjam and then to mantra dhaivatam (notation does not show this but your ears would..) to come back to pancamam to explore the poorvaanga of mohanam. It is the smoothness of the transitions that is captured by the pitchbend (but not the notations!). The practioner should pay attention to how she is gliding between the svaras which is the most important lesson in learning gamaka. You cannot learn it with a Piano or harmonium for that matter. But the veeNa can demonstrate the glides. The slide from pancamam to Shadjam is characteristic for mohanam and if not properly done you could goof it with many other raagas. Sahana does it quite elegantly and though brief she has given a capsule summary of mohananam in under two minutes.

If you have a keyboard you could actually play the notes indicated by Noteworthy and practise the glide vocally so that you will get good shruti alignment!

YOU HAVE TO EXPERIMENT!

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 23 Apr 2006, 23:55

CML, thanks, I understand what you wrote from a CM perspective. But I am stuck at a more fundamental level with the 'noteworthy' produced notation. Can you check if the notation is correct from a Mohanam perspective for Ms. Sahana's base Sa? I read the starting note as 'Ga' from the notation but you are saying it is 'Pa' by listening. I would like to reconcile that before I can start trusting what noteworthy produces.

cmlover · Post by **cmlover** » 24 Apr 2006, 01:03

I see your point vk
The start is at C6 and then she descends to G5
If G5 is sa then pa must be D6 and not C6. Agreed! But this is where pitchbend swings in. The actual notation becomes irrelevant. In other words the notes listed by MIDI (don't blame Noteworthy here!) does not represent the true frequency. That is the characteristic of CM! You have to play CM by the ear rather than using your eyes! In other words:
In WM what you see is what you hear
In CM what you hear is what you hear!
(incidentally kaTTai is not always constant and I think she is around 5 kaTTai in this instance).

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 24 Apr 2006, 03:03

CML, we need to decide on the kaTTai before figuring which notes are mis-labeled by digital ear ( I agree Noteworthy is not to blame since it is just notating what Digital Ear produced minus the pitch bend values ). I am stuck on the first couple of bars, I would like to read it further and see if there is any hope in using the auto-produced notation for anything ( before applying the raga specific gamakams).

DRS, can you help? Is that 5 or 5 1/2 ? I first went with 5 1/2 and thus fixed the start on the 'Ga'. Thanks.

drshrikaanth · Post by **drshrikaanth** » 24 Apr 2006, 03:32

Sahana usually sings in 5 1/2 Sruti only- G Sharp. But as she was singing with me, she sang in 1 Sruti which is C. And she does not slip up.

meena · Post by **meena** » 24 Apr 2006, 06:06

DRS/VK

i am addressing this to u both since u have music background

i would like to know, when u listen a CM 'singer' or a clip can u tell the singers pitch/sruti?

drshrikaanth · Post by **drshrikaanth** » 24 Apr 2006, 06:13

Not offhand Meena. But I guess some can make estimate it with reasonable accuracy., especially if it is near ones own pitch range. I havent tried it myself.

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 24 Apr 2006, 06:16

DRS/VK

i am addressing this to u both since u have music background
i would like to know, when u listen a CM 'singer' or a clip can u tell the singers pitch/sruti?

Meena, that is being very chartiable towards me

I can not with any degree of certainty though I should say I have never tried hard enough.

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 24 Apr 2006, 06:36

Just a tangentially related point about Western notation. They fix the tonic and so for starters things look relatively easy to look at, well notated and easy to read. Even with a 10 minute tutorial on the notation, I could read the staff notation in C Major.

But beyond that the fun stops. Move the tonic to D Major, already things start to get complicated. And, they have key signatures where you do not have to notate sharps and flats for every note, but indicate that in one common place in the beginning on each horizontal staff line. All of a sudden it becomes context sensitive, similar to our notation where, for example the type of Ga, is raga dependent.

Not just that, since all note positions are absolute, for the same scale, if you shift the tonic ( C Major to D Major ), the key signature changes.( there seems to be 30 of them). The analogy will be having a context sensitive meaning for a note of the same raga but for different kaTTai. Sounds complicated already after a relatively smooth and easy start.

mohan · Post by **mohan** » 24 Apr 2006, 08:07

I learnt Western music in school (before I learnt Carnatic notation) and I find our notation much easier to read since we just transpose depending on whatever sruthi we want. The problem I guess is that we need to know what notes belong to the raga in which the music is set in (or which melakartha raga at least). Bhashanga notes also pose a slight problem for our notation. I guess it is possible for us to be more specific if we wrote G2 M1 P D1 etc.

cmlover · Post by **cmlover** » 24 Apr 2006, 10:29

DRS/vk/meena

The shruti at which a person sings does vary from time to time. It does depend on physical conditions too! very good musicians can guess the shruti pat through experience but a 10% variation is still possible. I use frequency analysis and Fourier graphing to get the shruti objectively. I got the shruti of DRS and sahana from their intonation of the notes elsewhere. In the case of the mohanam piece I have no guide to go by. But by experience I guessed it around 5 to 5.5. The C6-G5 of the noteworthy notation suggests a shruti of five which I stated. But this is confused by pitch bend and hence cannot be objectively asertained. Generally CM artistes are not aticklers for adherence to shruti exactly like the HM counterparts. They say KVN is one of the best in shruti adherence. I have not verified him. The mapping from CM to WM is full of fallacies and pitfalls. When in doubt stick to CM than seek a WM oriented explanations in view of our gamakam complications.

Mohan
I fully endorse your recommendation

mohan · Post by **mohan** » 24 Apr 2006, 10:52

I accompanied (on synthesizer) several vocalists at the Swati Tirunal aradhana held in Sydney yesterday. Most of them would state their sruthi (4.5, 5, etc) and would plug in their own electronic tamburas. Due to the nature of these devices (and their manual tuning knobs), some people who stated they were singing in 4.5 we actually singing in 4.75 and so on.

It is necessary to use a pitch pipe or tuning instrument to check the sruthi of the electronic devices. The commercially available tambura CDs are good in that there is no need to manually tune them! I have found that the digital electronic tamburas (such as the new Raagini one) are pretty reliable also.

drshrikaanth · Post by **drshrikaanth** » 24 Apr 2006, 15:20

--- The problem I guess is that we need to know what notes belong to the raga in which the music is set in (or which melakartha raga at least). Bhashanga notes also pose a slight problem for our notation. I guess it is possible for us to be more specific if we wrote G2 M1 P D1 etc.

The best thing to do is to indicate the scale with swarasthANas/mELa number on top and then specify specify the swarasthAna only for the bhAShAnga notes. This is how I do it. There is no need to specify G1 M2 etc for each note as they are automatically fxed if the scale/mELa number is specified.

drshrikaanth · Post by **drshrikaanth** » 24 Apr 2006, 15:24

I accompanied (on synthesizer) several vocalists at the Swati Tirunal aradhana held in Sydney yesterday. Most of them would state their sruthi (4.5, 5, etc) and would plug in their own electronic tamburas. Due to the nature of these devices (and their manual tuning knobs), some people who stated they were singing in 4.5 we actually singing in 4.75 and so on.

It is necessary to use a pitch pipe or tuning instrument to check the sruthi of the electronic devices. The commercially available tambura CDs are good in that there is no need to manually tune them! I have found that the digital electronic tamburas (such as the new Raagini one) are pretty reliable also.

The new Radel electronic tamburis(and even some old ones) are not manually adjusted. They have fixed points with the facility for fine adjustment(0.75s etc). The manual one is specifically made for prficient musicians/concert givers to allow for adaptability.

Vocalist · Post by **Vocalist** » 24 Apr 2006, 19:06

That's right. Some of the Radel electronic tamburas (which were in existence well before 2001) don't need so much adjustment like a manual one.

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 26 Apr 2006, 09:54

In the 'What is a raga thread' in the Raga forum
we talked about 'ra~njatE iti rAga' ('raga is that which pleases or delights')

That discussion was in the context of describing what a raga is to someone who is not familiar with Indian music.

Here is something in the opposite direction but hopefully still relevant.

I wanted to learn the western notation so I can read what the noteworthy player produces. I spent an hour crashcoursing WM music composing theory since the notations for chords naturally led me there. I realized something during this exercise.

I always ask my WM knowledgeable friends if they look for anything common between songs in the same scale in their music in an attempt to tweak out any higher level concepts. I have never gotten a good answer. But this reading exercise pointed me to one thing. WM Composing is mainly an exercise of laying out chord progressions. While there are hundreds of chord progressions possible for the same scale, there is a set of patterns that have been accepted as 'those that pleases or delights'. And the composer can take such a familiar pattern of chord progressions, put in plain notes ( non chord notes ) in between chords accoridng to rules like 'steps' and 'skips' and a brand new song emerges.

If you take two such songs that both use the same pattern and in the same scale, they can still sound different and feel like a completely different song but the commonality exists. Here I see a parallel to our Raga. They are not the same thing but both are higher level musical entities built on top of the scale. Ours has higher level melodic entities and WM has higher level chordal ( harmonic ) entities.

So, theoretically, a person familiar with these chord progression patterns should be able to listen and recognize the 'sameness' in the march of the chords and put them in the same 'basket' like we do with songs into raga baskets. But somehow culturally that is not prevalent among non-professional WM listeners ( someone correct me if I am mistaken in that impression ).

So in conclusion: 'ra~njatE iti raga, 'ra~njatE iti chord progressions'

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 26 Apr 2006, 13:20

And bringing this to a point relevant to Raga, in mainstream WM there are predominantly 4 scales, 1 major and 3 minor. Over the centuries they have arrived at a set of Chord progressions that work for these 4 scales based on the 'ra~njatE' filter.

Now for the various scales of our raga, similar chord progressions can be worked out ( a very mechanical procedure to start with but after that one needs to pick the ones that sound good ). As I wrote above, there are non-chordal ( non-harmonic ) plain notes that are inserted in between chords or after a few chords. There is no reason why gamakams can not be applied to them as the music leaves the previous chord, passes through the non-hormonic notes and lands on the next chord.

The way to tastefully and classically preserve the raga lakshnam is to make sure that the key prayogas of the ragam is captured in the sequence that consists of the dominant note of the chords + gamaka ornamented non-harmonic notes.

It is quite possible that I am reinventing the wheel and that music directors like IR do a similar thing to provide chord based raga sounding music. In any case, it will be an interesting thing to listen if someone tries this technique on a keyboard using both the left hand and the right hand playing these raga soaked chord progressions.

cmlover · Post by **cmlover** » 27 Apr 2006, 03:55

vk

Chord progression is the 'life' of WM. It is grounded in the teory of Harmony. That concept is foreign to CM. Though Ilayaraja has used chords in CM whichonly the avant-garde appreciate. I wish to know how this discussion will be relevant here!

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 27 Apr 2006, 11:36

vk

Chord progression is the 'life' of WM. It is grounded in the teory of Harmony. That concept is foreign to CM. Though Ilayaraja has used chords in CM whichonly the avant-garde appreciate. I wish to know how this discussion will be relevant here!

If you mean 'how is it relevant to this thread', I do not really know. I guess it can be moved to another thread in the Technical Section. Please feel free to do so.

But with respect to relevance to CM, this is my theoretical and possibly naive attempt to see how chords can be used with a ragam and still maintain the raga lakshana as I wrote above ( namely, a sequence of the dominat note of a chord plus a gamaka ornamented non-harmonic note resulting in a typical raga prayogam ).

CML, at one point, you were wondering about chords with respect to CM as an explarotory idea. See if the above idea makes any sense from that perspective.

I do not have the necessary practical background to actually try to see how that will sound. If someone wants to actually try it and if my explanation above is not clear, I can come up with a specific sequence for a raga on paper.

Vishnampettai Jayendran · Post by **Vishnampettai Jayendran** » 28 Apr 2006, 11:31

I learnt Western music in school (before I learnt Carnatic notation) and I find our notation much easier to read since we just transpose depending on whatever sruthi we want. The problem I guess is that we need to know what notes belong to the raga in which the music is set in (or which melakartha raga at least). Bhashanga notes also pose a slight problem for our notation. I guess it is possible for us to be more specific if we wrote G2 M1 P D1 etc.

Hi Mohan,
I am curious why do you find the C scale comfortable for all raagas. (or do u)
playing shankarabaranam is B major should be easier right? because B major is easier on the fingers due to the perfect alignment of the black keys

VS Jayendran Iyer

mohan · Post by **mohan** » 28 Apr 2006, 11:44

Welcome VSJI!

Sankarabharanam from C is all white keys (which i find easy to play). [Of course there are a lot of gamakam in Sankarabharanam which is another problem.]

Playing the keyboard with C as Sa is what I started with and what I got used to. It means that once I transpose to match the sruthi i am playing in, I don't have to keep changing the transpose settings.

It is easy for me to recognise which notes are Ri1, R2, R3 etc. Some ragas like Subhapantuvarali which have a lot of black notes, I used to find difficult to play (because of the fingering from C) but with practice I got used to it.

I teach my students to play from C only.

Vishnampettai Jayendran · Post by **Vishnampettai Jayendran** » 28 Apr 2006, 12:00

vk

Chord progression is the 'life' of WM. It is grounded in the teory of Harmony. That concept is foreign to CM. Though Ilayaraja has used chords in CM whichonly the avant-garde appreciate. I wish to know how this discussion will be relevant here!
If you mean 'how is it relevant to this thread', I do not really know. I guess it can be moved to another thread in the Technical Section. Please feel free to do so.

But with respect to relevance to CM, this is my theoretical and possibly naive attempt to see how chords can be used with a ragam and still maintain the raga lakshana as I wrote above ( namely, a sequence of the dominat note of a chord plus a gamaka ornamented non-harmonic note resulting in a typical raga prayogam ).

CML, at one point, you were wondering about chords with respect to CM as an explarotory idea. See if the above idea makes any sense from that perspective.

I do not have the necessary practical background to actually try to see how that will sound. If someone wants to actually try it and if my explanation above is not clear, I can come up with a specific sequence for a raga on paper.

Some times u can break all rules , and still stick to them.
one such example is ilayaraja's treatment of Mohanam in the song Ninnukori from Agni Nakshatram.
here is an excellent midi of the same song by kishmu:
http://geocities.com/kishmu/MIDI/Ninnukkori.mid

In it you will find all kinds of note not part of mohanam.
For example in the intro,
when the synth plays gsr gsrd pdpd , the bass acually plays dndn beneath the pdpd

but the songs stays true to the spirit of mohanam in my layman opinion.

I have myself used progressions like
Db Ebm7 Fm7 and variations like F7 or evn F7#9 meaning additon of chinna da and ni in the harmony.. for Bhoop, which the hindustani raaga close to mohanam.
here is a experimental random jam session using the above progression in bhoop:
http://vorlon.cwru.edu/~jayen/J/lage%20re.mp3 (15 seconds of silence in the begining)

A lot of indian instruments like Veena have rich harmonic overtones, so one could argue that chords and harmony have always been an implicit part of indian music and CM.

VS Jayendran Iyer

cmlover · Post by **cmlover** » 28 Apr 2006, 21:27

Welcome VJ

that is a very refreshing comment. Yes I was thinking of IR's ninukori which I think was his first experiment. I guess he used a major triad and has since added exotic varieties. It definitely transforms CM into the orchestral stage and it is a pity there has not been a followup since CM and WM are treated as two watertight compartments.

It was such a delight to hear your orchestral bhoop which flows so elegantly. I wish you had done more saregam which is just lilting. Please post more of your 'experiments' so that we all can enjoy and learn from your experiences and experiments.

I am starting a separate thread to highlight your talent and open the door for more discussions.

Pl continue at

http://freepgs.com/carnatic/viewtopic.php?p=10046#10046

and do post more of those delightful 'random' excursions!