what is the equivalent of raaga in western music?

[ganesh_mourthy]

what is the equivalent of our raaga in western music. I have heard of only Major and minor scales. what does that mean. I think with those combinations they would have only limited scales. Is it so? or do they also have something like our unlimited raagas or note combinations like vakra , varja pentatonic and all? hope rasikas can help.

[Nick H]

Once upon a time, western music was 'modal', that is it had different scales, and that is as close, I think, as it gets to raga.

The difference between major and minor is one note: "Ga" is flattened. They call it a 'minor third'.

You may think this makes very little difference to a scale, but where it makes a big difference is in chords: the sound of a major chord is very different to a minor chord. As well as major and minor, there are many, many, many adjustments a composer can make to the harmonics, producing sounds that vary from sweet to, err... challenging!

[ganesh_mourthy]

I know that Nick would come to enlighten me. But very tough for my little brain Nick. So will it be like they chose certain notes alone and play with it for hours like our raaga. Say any 5 or six notes??????

[Nick H]

Not unless that is what the composer has chosen to do!

But there are fellow members who really understand this stuff, I am not one of them. The only music lessons I ever had in my whole life were my mridangam classes.

Enjoyment of, or even interest in, music may have caused some stuff to rub off on me. But I'm afraid that my knowledge runs out pretty quickly. Like about now!

So I hope someone else comes along...

[ganesh_mourthy]

nope ..... i dont think noboby gonna come? is this out of our conventional subject?

[Suji Ram]

Blues and Jazz fall under improvisational music I guess. One can find lot of information about the notes used. Googling helps... listening- even more..

[ragam-talam]

>> what is the equivalent of our raaga in western music.

I don't believe there is an equivalent, that's what makes the two systems so different. Scale is a loose equivalent, but ragas have much more to them than just the notes.

A few related details can be found here: http://www.cmana.org/cmana/articles/karpri2.pdf

[Nick H]

A joke from Morcombe and Wise, a couple of immortally great British comedians. One is seated at the piano, the other listening critically...

"You're playing all the wrong notes!"

"I'm playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order!"

[arasi]

Nick,
You outdid yourself!
Thanks for getting a chuckle out of me by mentioning good old Morcombe and Ernie Wise

[Nick H]

In western music, the joke works against playing exactly what the composer wrote. Anything else is 'wrong notes'

In our music, perhaps it works even better, as even in improvisation, I guess one has to sing certain notes in certain order to comply with the rule of some ragas!

[arunk]

With ragas, yes order has to be mostly maintained.

This generally means that if you take a particular swara, for example, dha of any mela, then the chances of ni or pa preceding or following that dha is very high. In other words, the chances of dha occuring as one or more of: dha ni or ni dha or pa dha or dha pa is very high.

Here ni and pa are the previous and next swara of dha as determined by aro/avaro. So the "rule" more generally is for any sware, the chances of the next and prev swara either following or preceding it is very high. Thus you can apply it to janya ragas also. Let us take say ga of mohanam. The chances or ri and pa either preceding or following is very high. Again this means, the chances of ga occuring as ri ga, ga ri, ga pa or pa ga is very high.

Or take an "asymmetrical" raga like say sAvEri, and take ma. The chances of ri preceding it (i.e. as in ri ma ) or ga following it (as in ma ga), or pa preceding/following it (as in ma pa or pa ma ) is very high.

To check this yourselves, take any notations of a song, and check for the pattern/trend for the swaras in the raga. In general, I found this to be true - even in cases like say tODi where omitting pa is common, the % is still high.

In western music scales, this is not the case, and you can sort of jump around as often as you want. I dont mean this as in a haaphazard way, but just that the pattern observed with ragas is not there, and thus results in more jumps, wide and narrow. So for say major scale: C D E F G A B, you could have something like C G C G A G E G (i.e. sa pa sa pa da pa ga pa if you translate to say Sankarabharanam). Of course in western music, you have more accidental notes (i.e. anya swaras), you also have key shifts (grahabedhams although since tonic is not as strong it is somewhat different), and harmony (chords etc.). Also, I think you also do not see them placing a lot of importance to differentiate say a bilahari (even omitting the bhashanga aspect) from the Sankarabharanam - both will be considered part of major scale. Both sriranjani and kharaharapriya would be considered the same scale.

Arun

[Nick H]

I'm glad Arun came along!

So, in Western music, the composer can string whatever notes he wishes in whatever order he wants. Then he can add whatever harmonies he desires to them --- creating, as I said above, music that may sound very sweet, or music that may be challenging, or, err... impossible to listen to.

But, if it was a free-for-all, there would be no music schools (apart from merely physically playing an instrument) and there would be no scholars in Western music, and there most certainly are both, and a great bank of theoretical and practical knowledge of composition and harmony. There are chords or melodic progressions considered good, and those considered bad (I think).

Then there are rebels who throw away all the rules. It may sound good to some; I may sound like noise to others.

A famous English conductor Sir Thomas Beecham (1879 - 1961) in reply to being asked if he had played any Stochausen (a modernist classical composer, 1928-2007) replied, "No; but I trod in some once"!

[rshankar]

An interesting event:

http://www.hindu.com/fr/2008/08/22/stor ... 250600.htm