Raga Marvels - Hamsanadam and Varali

Thank you to all of those thousands of people who listened to my previous raga alapana and tried to figure out what raga it was as per my request. Now, before we go into the answers to those questions, I sang again today. I sang Varali and Hamsanadam.

These two are seemingly unrelated ragas. But, you know what, these are so closely related to each other genetically. Let us see how!

Varali - it is the 39th melakartha raga with all the 7 swaras:

Sa Ri1 Ga1 Ma2 Pa Da1 Ni3 Sa

Sa Ni3 Da1 Pa Ma2 Ga1 Ri1 Sa

The first Rishabha, the first Gandhara and all the ones and twos are confusing isn't it? That is why I want to use a new methodology to denote music. Who knows - this may become the accepted methodology in the future scientific world. Since there are 12 notes in one octave, we can't use the decimal system to notate them. Hence, I went with the hexadecimal system.

Please see the piano key note charting that I have included as an image in this blog. That is self-explanatory. My hexadecimal notation is marked in "red ink". Now this new notation system removes the complexities of music, ie, whether you have to play the small Ri, or big Ri, or E sharp or E flat etc. The new hexadecimal system that I have given you below doesn't have any ambiguity. If you are a student of carnatic music and want to try ragas and don't know where to start, here you go, today after reading this blog you can play Varali and Hamsanadham!

Lakshmi's Hexadecimal Nomenclature	Western Nomenclature	Indian nomenclature	Physics
0	C	Sa	X+X0/12
1	C# or Db	Ri1	X+X1/12
2	D natural	Ri2 or Ga1	X+X2/12
3	D# or Eb	Ri3 or Ga2	X+X3/12
4	E natural	Ga3	X+X4/12
5	F natural	Ma1	X+X5/12
6	F# or Gb	Ma2	X+X6/12
7	G	Pa	X+X7/12
8	G# or Ab	Da1	X+X8/12
9	A natural	Da2 or Ni1	X+X9/12
a	A# or Bb	Da3 or Ni2	X+X10/12
b	B natural	Ni3	X+X11/12
0	C	Sa	X+X12/12

Varali in my hexadecimal notation system would be represented as: 012678b0! That is it! Isn't that darn simple to notate a ragam?

And now - Hamsanadam is a pentatonic ragam with just 5 swaras:

Sa Ri2 Ma2 Pa Ni3 Sa

Sa Ni3 Pa Ma2 Ri2 Sa

And in my hexadecimal notation system this would be notated as: 0267b0! That is it.

Now you take your keyboard and practice the above two ragas based on the notation that I gave you! You are done. You have learnt the above two ragas! But, without gamakas, there is no Indian music, both North and South Indian. We will talk about the gamakas in future.

Look how similar these two ragas are - 0267b0 is Hamsanadam and 012678b0 is Varali - there are two extra notes in Varali compared to Hamsanadam - add the note "1" between "0" and "2" and add note "8" after "7" and that is it! That makes the pentatonic Hamsanadam into the heptatonic Varali!  The psychoacoustic quality of the raga completely changes between these two ragas just because of subtle addition of such close notes as above.

And look at the genius of the Indian music system - in no other world music system that I know of, do we have a raga like Varali - it has got 4 straight adjacent notes such as b012 (which are 4 continuous note in the keyboard) and after skipping notes 345, it then recruits 3 adjacent notes again - 678! Wow! How can you make melody out of this cacophonic mess! That is the beauty of Indian music system!

Listen to wonderful Thyagaraja's Bantureeti Kolu in Hamsanadam or Papanasam Sivan's Kaa Vaa Vaa in Varali and then go to your Keyboard practice! Cheers!

We will talk about the answers to my previous questions soon!