Music Theory Chapter 3

Frequencies of all the Swars Many artists across the world are still debating over the frequencies of the Swars. Here is the table of those frequencies, which are used, in western music. Indian frequencies are also somewhat similar to them. Swar Frequency Notation Sa 240 Sa Komal Re

256

Re_

Re

270

Re

Komal Ga

288

Ga_

Ga

300

Ga

Ma

320

Ma

Tiwra Ma

337

Maa

Pa

360

Pa

Komal Dha

384

Dha_

Dha

400

Dha

Komal Ni

432

Ni_

Ni

450

Ni

Sa ( from next octave )

480

Sa.

Raag Raag is a Sanskrut word. The meaning is "the melodious group of notes which entertains". When we hear a typical tune of some notes, we immediately recognize it as Raag MiyaMalhar or Raag Bhup. 1) 2) 3) 4)

Rules of Raag: Any Raag always contains Swar "Sa" in it. "Sa" is not omitted. Swars "Ma" and "Pa" are not omitted in the same Raag. A Raag always consists of minimum of 5 Swars. Each Raag is defined by "Aroha" and "Avaroha".

Aroha: The group of swars in ascending order is called as Aroha" Example: The Aroha of Raag Bhup is: Sa Re Ga Pa Dha Sa. This means, Raag Bhup, typically contains these 5 swars only. ( Note that the last "Sa." is from the next octave. ) Avaroha: The group of swars in ascending order is called as Avaroha Example: The Avaroha of Raag Bhup is: Sa. Dha Pa Ga Re Sa Vaadi Swar: This is the primary Swar in the Raag. It is played more times than the other Swars from that Raag. Example: The Vaadi Swar of Raag Bhup is "Ga". Sanvaadi Swar: This is the secondary Swar in the Raag. It is also played more times than the other Swaes but not more than Vaadi Swar. Example: The Sanvaadi Swar of Raag Bhup is "Dha". Western Music English men ruled India, for more than 150 years. Their culture, their manners, their way of thinking affected Indian living. But, the Indian music remained unaffected. Though, now-a-days, Hindi ( Bollywood ) music is accepting many things from western music. Nevrtheless, being one of the great music, we are going to get introduced with western music, now. Typically, Indian music is based on solo or duet performance of the artists. Where-as the western music believes in the Harmony. Harmony means mixture of different melodious notes. Melody: Melody means the notes are played one after the other

Scale: In Indian music, we can decied any one note as "Sa", like Black 5 or White 4. But in western music the White 1 note "C" is treated as fixed "Sa". It never changes. The octave starting from it, is called as C-scale. The next scale is D, E, F, and so on. The different types of scales are major scale, minor scale, relative scale, major-relative scale, minor-relative scale, chromatic scale. Chord: Playing 2 or more notes at a time is termed as a chord. As Indian music has hundreds of Raags, the western music has hundreds of chords. Western notes Natural tune: It is the original note. Flat tune: It is of less frequency than the original note's. Sharp tune: It is of more frequency than the original note's. Indian notes have names like Sa, Re, Ga. But western notes are typically denoted by symbols inside 5 parallel lines as show in following figure: