4 Important elements of Carnatic Music that make what it is!

Carnatic Music also known as Karnataka Sangitam is the music system associated mainly with the southern part of the India including states of Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala and even in parts of Sri Lanka. Being one of two main genres of Indian music (classical), here are four important elements to know:

Śruti: Sruti is referred as the main musical pitch. It is what might as well be called a tonic (or less decisively a key) in Western music. Sruti is the note from which all the others are determined. It is additionally utilized as a part of the feeling of reviewed contributes an octave. While there are a boundless number of sounds falling inside a scale (or raga) in Carnatic music, the number that can be recognized by sound-related observation is twenty-two (albeit throughout the years, a few of them have focalized). In this sense, while Sruti is dictated by sound-related discernment, it is likewise an expression of the audience’s psyche.

Swara: Swara is the type of sound which is mostly a single note, which characterizes a relative (higher or lower) position of a note, as opposed to a characterized recurrence. Swaras additionally allude to the solfege of Carnatic music, which comprises of seven notes, “sa-ri-ga-mama dad da-ni” (contrast and the Hindustani sargam: sa-re-ga-mama dad dha-ni or Western do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti). These names are shortened forms of the more drawn out names rishabha, gandhara, shadja, panchama, madhyama, dhaivata, and nishada. Not at all like other music frameworks, each from the solfege (called a swara) has three variations.

The special cases are the automaton notes, shadja and panchama (otherwise called the tonic and the overwhelming), which have one and only shape; and madhyama (the subdominant), which has two structures. A seventh-century stone engraving in Kudumiyan Malai in Tamil Nadu demonstrates vowel changes to solfege images with ra, ri, ru and so on to mean the higher quarter-tones. In one scale or raga, there is stand out a variation of every note exhibit. The special cases exist in “light” ragas, in which, for aesthetic impact, there might be two, one rising (in the arohanam) and another slipping (in the avarohanam).

The two main systems that are followed in the Carnatic music are the Raga System and the Tala System.

Raga System: It prescribes a specific set of rules that are to be followed for building a western like melody and involves rules for aarohanam and also the avarohanam, along with the scale of the notes. There are some notes which should be sung only with gamaka and some without. Some phrases should be avoided and some are to be used based on the frequency. The Sampoorna Ragas are generally classified into Melakarta in which grouping is done according to the notes. There are 72 Melakartas in total out of which 36 of them have Shuddha Madhyamas and remaining 36 have Prati Madhyamas. Ragas can be divided into two different ragas, Janaka and Janya.

Tala System: It is referred to fixed time meter or cycle with a definite composition where grouping is done based on the beats. A particular cycle will have a particular number of beats which rarely change during the song, and these combinations can vary till 108 base don the rhythms.