|
Software for Carnatic Music (Classical Music of South India)
Here is something for everyone involved with Carnatic Music - Rasika, Student or Musician.
Rasika software for Windows was first released in Dec 1998. It took many users by surprise as it produced synthetic carnatic music with all the required nuances (Gamakams). This first version was followed by 5 upgrades and the current version RasikaV2 is a major upgrade released two years ago, adding more tools for the Student and the Musician.
The present version has 6 programs in addition to a Sruthi box and Thamboora. There is no licence fee and the software can now be downloaded free.
Rasika takes you on a tour of Carnatic Music System (or Carnatic Music Theory) with text, visuals and audio. It is like a text book on Carnatic Music with visuals and audio in tones of Veena or Flute. The raga explanations and the audio samples in the program put adequate stress on the Gamakam (nuances or smooth movements between and around notes). An ideal program for a Carnatic Music Rasika who would like to know more about the system.
Gaayaka enables you to enter 'sa ri ga ma' notation and play it in Flute or Veena - useful for experimenting or practicing carnatic music lessons in ones own sruthi - (lessons up to geethams and sample krithis, varnams etc. are supplied with the software). You can enter and play even lessons not supplied with the program. The notation system has been extended to enable introduction of smooth Gamakams. Gaayaka can be an aid for experimenting, understanding the nuances and setting songs to notation, making it easy to check the durations and the tune. For full details of Rasika and Gaayaka click on the links on the left or above.
Sishya gives you lessons (in the tones of Veena or Flute) in a user friendly format with pictures showing the thaalam gestures (thaalam kriya) synchronised with the music and as in Gaayaka there is facility to change sruthi, tempo, selectively playing a part, looping etc. Novice is for the very new comer and takes him step by step through the elementary concepts and using Sishya. The 2 Student's music players give a high resolution 'time line' for choosing any part of the music, enable marking blocks for playing (if need be also looping), naming and saving the blocks etc.
The Sruthi Box and the Thamboora programs convert your PC into a Sruthi box or Thamboora with a wide range of Sruthis (try both simultaneously and see the effect!)
The software has been developed by a musician - programmer!
Carnatic Music can never be portrayed fully without the Gamakams . Here are some sample clips of music generated by the software. Listen to Pallavi of Mamavasadaa in Kaanada(.mp3)
To appreciate the importance of Gamakam, just listen to some notation played plain without gamakam (.mp3)
Other links on the left give you free downloads of some notation files (including those written by users) which can be played with Gaayaka.
There are 2 pages explaining the
Carnatic music notation system and the
Gaayaka file format. The Miscellanous group has a page on problems of creating
midi files for Carnatic music (with some sample midi files with gamakam) a page of
links to some Carnatic Music sites and of course a page about
the author!.
The Articles link takes you to the page where you can go to some articles including a few by myself. The link Automatic Gamakam talks of my attempts to generate gamakam automatically from bare notation and gives a further link to the web site where audio and notation examples of this effort are available
You can contact the author M.Subramanian by email
Attention Users : If you are a user of Gaayaka and composed some new music or written notation for some song in Gaayaka format send them as attachment by email to the above email address.
They will be published in the "Users' contributions" link with your name and email address.
Click Here for instructions as to how to get the software
IBM PC Pentium III or higher or Celeron with a Windows compatible sound card (most motherboards now come with Windows compatible sound cards built in) and Windows 98/2000/Me/XP/Vista/Windows7/Windows8. (For Windows Vista, Windows7 and Windows8, administrator rights are required for running of the programs). The software does not work properly with Windows NT. There is no Linux or Mac version. It may also not work in virtual environments in other Operating Systems.
(Trade Marks acknowledged)
|
