Music Theory
I was sitting in music class waiting for my turn. It is usual to listen to other students till my turn arrives. A small 10-year old boy was being taught a varna in ‘sriraaga’. The boy has learnt half the song and was presenting it before moving ahead. His singing of ‘ni’ was always the N2, instead was N3. When the guru corrected it, he was able to repeat the correct one. For next few times, he was singing the wrong ‘ni’ and corrections continued.
Just then, I started to think – “How can a kid recognize or distinguish different notes?” On the other side, I have seen students in the age range 25-35 who cannot differentiate microtonic notes. Couple of days ago, one of my friends was asking me the biggest question of Indian Classical Music – “What is raga and how do you identify them?” My short answer to that was, “I need minimum 30 minutes to answer that question.” After giving him scientific explanation, I am sure he was satisfied. I would like to tell what I told him. This basic description holds good for anyone who wants to understand the word ‘raaga’.
The word ‘raaga’ signifies the mood or emotion of any song. For a novice listener, he can surely tell the mood of any given song. Examples of mood I am talking are happy, sad, content, suspicion, anger, fear, etc. These can be clearly matched to expressions of dance or any visual art.
Moving to scientific/mathematical explanation of ‘raaga’, it is a combination of certain musical notes in a given pattern. There are seven basic notes and minor and major notes. Just a permutation and combination of these notes make a ‘raaga’. There is one basic rule to this statement – The combination and pattern must sound like music and not noise. Again, there is a very thin line between music and noise. If music crosses that line, it will become noise to a human ear.
Let us take the first note to be at frequency 122 Hz. Going up the ladder will lead a musical note which will increase in frequency. Let me arbitrarily take the next 6 frequencies 140, 167, 188, 210, 222 and 235. The 8th note will be double the first note. That is, in this case, 244 Hz. We have 8 frequencies here. Let me give corresponding musical notes – ‘sa, ri, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni, sa’. Seeing this, it is clear that there are 2 ‘sa’. The first is considered as the base in the octave. The last ‘sa’ is called the higher octave ‘sa’.
Hopefully, that explains raga!
Just then, I started to think – “How can a kid recognize or distinguish different notes?” On the other side, I have seen students in the age range 25-35 who cannot differentiate microtonic notes. Couple of days ago, one of my friends was asking me the biggest question of Indian Classical Music – “What is raga and how do you identify them?” My short answer to that was, “I need minimum 30 minutes to answer that question.” After giving him scientific explanation, I am sure he was satisfied. I would like to tell what I told him. This basic description holds good for anyone who wants to understand the word ‘raaga’.
The word ‘raaga’ signifies the mood or emotion of any song. For a novice listener, he can surely tell the mood of any given song. Examples of mood I am talking are happy, sad, content, suspicion, anger, fear, etc. These can be clearly matched to expressions of dance or any visual art.
Moving to scientific/mathematical explanation of ‘raaga’, it is a combination of certain musical notes in a given pattern. There are seven basic notes and minor and major notes. Just a permutation and combination of these notes make a ‘raaga’. There is one basic rule to this statement – The combination and pattern must sound like music and not noise. Again, there is a very thin line between music and noise. If music crosses that line, it will become noise to a human ear.
Let us take the first note to be at frequency 122 Hz. Going up the ladder will lead a musical note which will increase in frequency. Let me arbitrarily take the next 6 frequencies 140, 167, 188, 210, 222 and 235. The 8th note will be double the first note. That is, in this case, 244 Hz. We have 8 frequencies here. Let me give corresponding musical notes – ‘sa, ri, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni, sa’. Seeing this, it is clear that there are 2 ‘sa’. The first is considered as the base in the octave. The last ‘sa’ is called the higher octave ‘sa’.
Hopefully, that explains raga!
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