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Sruti
Śruti
commonly refers to musical pitch. It is the approximate equivalent of a tonic
(or less precisely a key) in Western music; it is the note from which all the
others are derived. It is also used in the sense of graded pitches in anoctave. While there are an infinite number of sounds falling within a scale (or
raga) in Carnatic music, the number that can be distinguished by auditory
perception is twenty-two (although over the years, several of them have
converged). In this sense, while sruti is determined by auditory perception, it
is also an expression in the listener's mind.
Swara
Swara
refers to a type of musical sound that is a single note, which defines a
relative (higher or lower) position of a note, rather than a defined frequency.
Swaras also refer to the solfege of Carnatic music, which consist of seven
notes, "sa-ri-ga-ma-pa-da-ni" (compare with the Hindustani sargam:
sa-re-ga-ma-pa-dha-ni or Western do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti). These names are
abbreviations of the longer names shadja, rishabha, gandhara, madhyama,
panchama, dhaivata and nishada. Unlike other music systems, every member of the
solfege (called a swara) has three variants. The exceptions are the drone
notes, shadja and panchama (also known as the tonic and the dominant), which
have only one form; and madhyama (the subdominant), which has two forms. A 7th
century stone inscription in Kudumiyan Malai in Tamil Nadu shows vowel changes
to solfege symbols with ra, ri, ru etc. to denote the higher quarter-tones. In
one scale, or raga, there is usually only one variant of each note present. The
exceptions exist in "light" ragas, in which, for artistic effect,
there may be two, one ascending (in the arohanam) and another descending (in
the avarohanam).
Raga system
A
raga in Carnatic music prescribes a set of rules for building a melody – very
similar to the Western concept of mode. It specifies rules for movements up
(aarohanam) and down (avarohanam), thescale of which notes should figure more
and which notes should be used more sparingly, which notes may be sung with
gamaka (ornamentation), which phrases should be used or avoided, and so on. In
effect, it is a series of obligatory musical events which must be observed,
either absolutely or with a particular frequency.
In
Carnatic music, the sampoorna ragas (those with all seven notes in their
scales) are classified into a system called the melakarta, which groups them
according to the kinds of notes that they have. There are seventy-two melakarta
ragas, thirty six of whose madhyama (subdominant) is shuddha (perfect fourth
from the tonic), the remaining thirty-six of whose madhyama (subdominant) is
prati (anaugmented fourth from the tonic). The ragas are grouped into sets of
six, called chakras ("wheels", though actually segments in the
conventional representation) grouped according to the supertonic andmediant
scale degrees. There is a system known as the katapayadi sankhya to determine
the names of melakarta ragas.
Ragas
may be divided into two classes: janaka ragas (i.e. melakarta or parent ragas)
and janya ragas (descendant ragas of a particular janaka raga). Janya ragas are
themselves subclassified into various categories.
Tala system
Tala
refers to a fixed time cycle or metre, set for a particular composition, which
is built from groupings of beats. Talas have cycles of a defined number of
beats and rarely change within a song. They have specific components, which in
combinations can give rise to the variety to exist (over 108), allowing
different compositions to have different rhythms.
Carnatic
music singers usually keep the beat by moving their hands up and down in
specified patterns, and using their fingers simultaneously to keep time. Tala
is formed with three basic parts (calledangas) which are laghu, dhrtam, and
anudhrtam, though complex talas may have other parts like plutam, guru, and
kaakapaadam. There are seven basic tala groups which can be formed from
thelaghu, dhrtam, and anudhrtam:
• Ata tala
• Dhruva tala
• Eka tala
• Jhampa tala
• Matya tala
• Rupaka tala
• Triputa tala
A
laghu has five variants (called jaathis) based on the counting pattern. Five
jaathis times seven tala groups gives thirty-five basic talas, although use of
other angas results in a total of 108 talas.
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@ wikipedia
