Sound with swaram notation

appu · Post by **appu** » 16 Jun 2009, 23:38

Many a times a rasika is interested in getting the arohana/avarohana of a specific ragam or kriti. Our very own Lakshman is always kind to oblige.

It would be nice if we can provide sound to the swarams. Just like in the websters dictionary, their is a sound button to hear the pronunciation. Is it possible to add such a feature? This way when a rasika requests say the arohana/avarohana for Amritavarshini, he/she can also listen to the progression.

This will help for all musicians and non musicians. What do you all think.

arunk · Post by **arunk** » 17 Jun 2009, 01:38

This is sort doable with MIDI (i.e. computer generated) but the quality would be bad (on many counts), and thus would not be a good representation. It is also possible with real samples - say sung/played by someone and then integrated with notation. I have something similar in some of my blog articles: e.g. http://sunson.wordpress.com/2009/03/25/ ... -conundrum (there are a couple of ones - e.g. the cittaswaram for vINAbEri employs what I think is applicable here). This would be somewhat laborious to setup but doable particularly as a group effort (say someone provides the framework, a group of people provide samples, and a group does the integration). You need not restrict to aro/avaro but also say provide swara snippets (as intonated as swaras and/or as akaaram i.e. alapana style).

Must say that this has crossed my mind before too

Arun

cmlover · Post by **cmlover** » 17 Jun 2009, 07:29

Do it Arun! With picchappa on your side and with your programming expertise you are quite capable of doing it for selected ragas and gamaka-patterns. If you can make a small demo more people will pitch in!

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 17 Jun 2009, 11:25

Arun, that will be great. In addition, singing or playing just the characteristic phrases of the raga would be immensely useful (separately for each phrase, announce the phrase and then the music for it )

arunk · Post by **arunk** » 17 Jun 2009, 19:25

I think for the samples, others (say akella-ji, prashant, Uday etc.) may be better, obviously professional musicians the best choice. BUt all this assumes they have the time - as it is a commitment. But it can be a slow process too.

It may be possible to set up e.g. a wiki site, where enough javascript is enabled (in wiki itself), so that the framework for my software can be installed. I already have implemented a feature where you can "embed" a notation sample inside a html doc - but ofcourse it would require the framework to be installed (on the server). Anyway, once this is setup, members can "post" finished samples which would be audio file along with the notation file which has the swaras as well as time-indexes to correlate audio to swaras (audio file of course can be created by members or can be obtained from the "chosen"

).

Users can then simply play the samples via the software itself. If there is some database support, you can search by raga name etc. etc.

The danger of simply playing via software reliability may depend on user's browser setup (i.e. which browser, which version) and that itself can be a moving target as new versions of browsers, as well as new browsers come around. I think even now, it may not work on all browsers.

You can get around this by converting it to a video (say flash video like I did in my blog), but that trouble is that takes more work on the part of people who post the finished work. If that can be made easy as in a fairly simple extra step, video would be the way to go.

I have not worked with wiki a whole lot, but if someone can show a way, I can at least try to get the ball rolling - but I cannot promise very quick turnaround time

Arun

cmlover · Post by **cmlover** » 17 Jun 2009, 22:23

Good! We have gotten you thinking! You may think more in line with Web 2.0 the new wave!
It can become a new CM Wiki! We maybe able to capitalize on existing soundbytes though most of them are polyphonic. We can request young energetic CM performers to provide 'sound' for selected phrases and keep growing! There are exciting possibilities. Just try to develop a prototype (even if it is crude) for us to have a vision. Rome was not built in a day!