source file: mills2.txt Date: Sun, 22 Dec 1996 08:52:35 -0800 Subject: Indian music From: Kami Rousseau I've been reading about Indian music lately. Improvisation is a big part of the style used. They have time signatures more complicated then we do, their rythmics cycles can have 4, 7, 11 or 24 beats before repeating. There are many many modes, called ragas, that set the mood of the music. Each raga contains the tonic and the fifth (sa and pa) plus a variable number of other notes, give scales of 5, 6, 7 or in some cases 8 or 9 degrees. The tonal system is roughly based on a large chromatic scale of 12 notes. 12? Not exactly. With the exception of sa and pa, all the notes can be played with 2 intonations, a 81/80 apart. So what you get is more or less a chromatic Pythagorean scale plus a 5-limit chromatic scale. Those of you interested in learning more can check http://hypatia.ucsc.edu:70/1/RELATED/Batish/Archives/Rago1 My question is : When playing a note in a given raga, which note, of the two shrutis separated by a comma, is the "right" one? There are many raga listings, but they dont seem to take this subtlety into consideration. -Kami Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sun, 22 Dec 1996 19:49 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA28785; Sun, 22 Dec 1996 19:51:55 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA28795 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id KAA16362; Sun, 22 Dec 1996 10:51:47 -0800 Date: Sun, 22 Dec 1996 10:51:47 -0800 Message-Id: <01IDB9YRY4AQ8Y51EV@EMUVAX.EMICH.EDU> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu