How do we detect Ragas?

[cmlover]

How de we detect a Raga?
This is a fascinating area of psychological introspection. As a layman let me outline my approach.

When I hear a 'new song' my mind races to capture a few melodic phrases to latch on and then ignoring the sahityam I mentally try to elaborate the raga by humming (of course not while at concerts )when suddenly the 'pattern matching' process of the brain produces some phrases or words from a known song whose raga I already know well. At this point I tentatively try to check whether the further elaborations of the music fit the guessed raga. Most of the time it works. But then the 'bank' of kritis that I have in my failing memory is not large and frustration sets in. Now I let my subconscious work on it and after a few hours the answer flashes in most often! My final approach is to look-up the sahityam (if I can get the initial words) in our Lakshman's magnificent song Index.

I would love to hear about other techniques from you!

[VK RAMAN]

I relate a certain raaga to a certain song and try to match in my mind whether another song has the same flow. If the lyrics already gives the raaga, I have already used in some other rendition of mine, I can sing without listening to others singing.

[arunk]

I think we look for familiarity in the tune - familiarity not to just songs, but to "tunes' in our sub-concious memory database, which probably contain info from songs, as well as raga snippets.

In my case, very soon we get to 3 decisions:
1. Sounds familiar, and our mind throws up "raga X"
2. We know it sounds very familiar, but "mind is still working on an answer" - adding to frustration
3. This does not seem familiar at all.

In case #1, our mind focuses on all the familarities of raga X, and tries to confirm it is so. Sometimes ego kicks in immediately, and preempts this, so that we blurt it "raga X" (or "ah-ah" signaling that we have the answer) before people around us can and take satisfaction (and secretly watch if it adds to others' frustrations ;) ). Since confirmation step is skipped, this can sometimes lead us to later give sheepish smile, when we find it is not raga X.

In case #2, we start looking around to see who else is blurting out "X" or "ah-ah" or jotting down in their notebook (so that we can secretly peer into it)

In case #3, we are lost. Of late, in this scenario, I try to sense the swarasthanams used, and also try to get the aro/avaro. Sometimes it works and it is kind of thrilling.

Arun

[cmlover]

One ought to have a large bank of songs in different ragas to be able to capture the raga pattern since the songs even in the same ragas will not sound similar!

[arunk]

I think we sub-consciously register specific snippets - which are "smaller" than even entire lines of songs. Thus you will find the set that needs remembering is much smaller.

Arun

[PUNARVASU]

As Arun wrote,it is thrilling when you recognise the swarams and identify the raga. I remember, as a ten year old, when I heard Dharmavati for the first time in a Venus colony cutcheri, I was able to identiify the various swaras and find out the name. Some older people sitting next to me were saying it was some other ragam.Since I was too young, I kept quiet and wrote down the name of the song and later verified with my teacher. I was so thrilled.

[cmlover]

In case #3, we are lost. Of late, in this scenario, I try to sense the swarasthanams used, and also try to get the aro/avaro. Sometimes it works and it is kind of thrilling.

I agree; but not for the avearage dabbler

A good friend of mine (who is good at detecting ragas, especially movie songs) once recommended to focus on the accompanist rather than the vocalist. They usually give away the phrases since they play them from their stock repertoire... It works occasionally..

[arunk]

cmlover, I use that only in cases I am sure it is not a raga I know. And yes I couldnt do this until fairly recently (say last year or so).

But the most common frustration is for people not to recollect even ragas they have heard before (i.e. once answer is known, you give yourself a nethi-aDi - literally or figuratively - now how many of us have been there?). The problem is that the raga characteristics are not imprinted deep enough in us - and the only remedy is to hear more songs, more improvisations. You still may confuse it for another closely allied raga - but again that is because both ragas are not firmly implanted in the brain, and the same remedy applies.

Arun

[vijay]

Initally you do try and map the ragam to krithis which sound similar and maybe some pidis for major ragas. Gradually, the more important ragas can be detected instantly (although this can occasioanlly lead to an false "aha" moment of the sort that Arun describes - Uday will recall my ignominous leap into the Bhairavi bandwagon at SAnjay's concert).

The mind also becomes more attuned to latch on to swarasthanas than phrases...while sampoorna ragas are relatively easy to identify, rare varja ragas, especially those with unfamiliar intervals such as R2M2, G2P etc. can be challenging...it is also generally easier to identify a raga from an alaapana than a krithi...

The highest level of swara gyaanam is probably being able to instantly deconstruct random phrases from film/western music (of course assuming a certain tonic) ...CML's friend is probably at that level...

[vijay]

Identifying swarasthanas of HM ragas is a good way to fine-tune raga gnaanam

[knandago2001]

it may sound strange now but when i started out, i associated punnagavarali with "snake dance music", sivaranjani with the "6 am radio tune" and so on.. emotions too played a role - mohanam made me feel happy.. indeed the repertoire was very limited!

[cmlover]

If it is a totally new raga you have to try to map the svarasthanas and look into 'Ragapravaham' to see whether it is documented. If not, you should request the performer to christen it. I remember an anecdote:
A famous nagasvara vidvaan played an amazing 'tune'; everybody racked their brains to decipher it but could not. When they asked him finally he said:
u^NgaLukku piDichchinthuthaa (Did you like it ?)
The answer was unanimous Yes
The vidvaan continued
appO pErilE enna irukkuthu (then what is there in a name)

[VK RAMAN]

Associating ragaas like what knandago does also is a good way to memorize.

[arunk]

A child I know (7 years) is very early in learning (swarajathi) and "knows about" a handful of ragas, and that too learnt with just some (and not all) the gamakas. I tried testing the child's skilll the other day - the test being of course skewed against the testee by my ability to sing something in tune ).

I told that the answer would be one of the following: mohanam, bilahari, khamas, nATTai (the child knows the gItam), cencuruTTi (child knows a song), malahari, kAmbhOji, SankarAbharaNam.

Just my emphasizing the "ri" of nATTai as I sang mahAgaNapatim - sometimes repeating that part so that the child pays extra attention on it - the child got the right answer. This was also true for another song in nATTai as well. The child obviously doesnt know enough to recognize all the contours of the raga, but that characteristic ri - was enough.

Also I sang sujanajiVana, and just that "ma~~~~" - was enough for the right answer khamas (based on the opening line of swarajathi).

This tells me that we "weight" certain characteristics of raga high and use it to zero in quickly.

of course if someone sang vAgadIswari - the answer would have been "nATTai" as well. Same for say nATakurinji with the ma being stopped as ma~~~~, for a khamas answer.

But then I sang the opening line of dorakuNa, and the child answered bilahari. There the answer involved more complexities. Somehow teh child was able to detect the underlying similarity of the first line's melodic to something from the bilahari swarajathi.

Of course it wasnt success all times. e.g. I sang sRI cakra rAja - opening para, and the child did not see it as cencuruTTi then (but has in atleast one other case).

Also kAmbhOji, SankarAbharaNam etc. were much harder as actual songs are more complex than the respective gItams. The child could not correlate (as I expected).

Arun

[cmlover]

Interesting!
It will be nice to study children and see how they get a grasp on the Ragas. Of course their memory power is prodigious!
My younger days I depended on movie songs (ala P Sivan, MKT, KBS..) to get a grip on ragas. It won't work these days

[vasanthakokilam]

while sampoorna ragas are relatively easy to identify, rare varja ragas, especially those with unfamiliar intervals such as R2M2, G2P etc. can be challenging...it is also generally easier to identify a raga from an alaapana than a krithi...

My experience has been sort of the opposite in terms of acquiring familiarity with new ragas. If the raga has unique gamakams or phrases or if there are jumps, that provides enough uniqueness for me to latch on it and give it a melodic identity.

[martin]

Well, do we know, for starters, how we 'recognize' anything at all? And then put the correct name to it?
How does one know this string quartet being played on the radio is not by Mozart but by Boccherini? Or a particular painting having been made by Rubens and not Rembrandt (who also had their periods etc.) This is probably not much different from how we differentiate between raga this or that.
My not-so-informed guess would be that for those who have consciously listened to many ragas develop a sort of 'pre-conscious' instant recognition, there's not much thinking involved, more perception - unless you recognize it but can not relax as you yet fail to name it, then it's different.
I think I would agree with what was suggested earlier, that it is probably easier to tell hearing alapana.

[mohan]

It will be nice to study children and see how they get a grasp on the Ragas.

My three year old seems to do it it by association with krithis she has heard. Sometimes she will say 'ivar yaaro' instead of bhairavi! Like Arun's example, she can pick up small common phrases like S-R3 and immediately say Nattai.

[cmlover]

The attention span of small children is very short. How do you make them stay and listen to CM kritis long enough? I can undestand if they were cartoons with action goin on! Maybe you should tape the audio of CM onto a Cartoon and subliminally let the child internalize them!

[vijay]

VK I agree to the extent that once we have associated, say, G2P with Sivaranjani, spotting it in an another raga that employs the same interval - e.g Bhupalam, would be relatively easy..but when you are trying to map a new raga with unfamiliar intervals, a swara-based identification exercise becomes that much more difficult...

Arun - yeah, it is almost always the characteristic notes - Gandharam in Sankarabharanam, Madhyamam in Begada - that play the biggest part in raga identification...

[vasanthakokilam]

Vijay, I agree. Actually I misunderstood what you were saying earlier. I was thinking that it is easier for me to id ragas that have jumps. My swara identification skills are embarassingly poor, so my id skills are through a process of an overall perception of the melody. It is indeed a fuzzy algorithm. So a kuntalavarali ( as a raga characterized by the jump ) is easier to retain in my memory compared to a very infrequently performed mostly scale based sampoorna raga.

[cmlover]

In the case of children identifying ragas, it is just a question of pattern recognition. If a three year-old can do it then so can an adult Chimpanzee. It can easily store 300 ragas in the memory banks and produce them in a flash for a piece of banana. But raga identification in adult humans is far too complex for even an expert computer program to emulate. We still cannot capture the elusive 'human intuition' through an algorithm. When some of you say that the raga suddenly 'flashes in the mind'; I just would like to know the process by which it flashes, not just by memorizing a number of krithis or phrases or even patterns! Of course memory is an important component in pattern matching and human mind by far is the fastest pattern-matcher in comparison with any computers; but then we also have an 'analytic engine' which is what I am trying to understand. Is there a 'hidden variable' in raga recognition which is what we call 'intutition'?

[VK RAMAN]

It may not be necessary as the digital age takes over human memories and some one comes out with a software for raaga recognition similar to voice recognition. I am sure some one is working on it. All one will at that time do is to turn on the raaga identifier kit and look at it.

[vasanthakokilam]

I just would like to know the process by which it flashes, not just by memorizing a number of krithis or phrases or even patterns!

Speaking for myself.. I can not breakdown the melody to swaras, I usually do not match it to known krithis, I usually do not compare it to a bank of patterns.
So, it does flash. But as Martin wrote, I do not think it is that much different from 'recollection' due to familiarity. It is probably pattern matching but
it does not necessarily happen at the conscious level. Associative memory at work, I suppose.

Intuition is a very overused word. I am not even sure if people can agree on what it means. If a guess, educated or uneducated, comes true, people sometimes interpret it as intuition.

[cmlover]

VK
When we say 'intutition' it means I don't know! If an algorithm can be designed then it will be easy for our computer experts to design an automatic way of identifying the ragas as VKRaman suggests. If it is simply pattern matching then the computer can do it very efficiently!

[cmlover]

For a trial visit
http://rasikas.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=96428/#p96428
and try to guess the raga and explain your mental process..
I am sure listening to too many kritis will help there

[coolkarni]

..

[VK RAMAN]

I liked the song and I made the rendition but I do not know the raagam. Can some one help me?
http://www.acidplanet.com/artist.asp?PID=1176544&T=8510

[cmlover]

Darbaari kaanada....

[vasanthakokilam]

CML, sorry I have been a busy a bit and so could not listen in time to your excellent composition. Good job. VKRaman, I will listen to your version later on.

Cool, I very much relate to what you say, in many cases. That little ending violinists play to complement the vocalist in an alpana gives off richer raga content in some cases. I know this is just me that I find that especially so with Jesudas and to some extent BMK as well ( I do not mean to start a controvery about KJY or BMK, it is not them, it is me! ).

[Mdrnkvn]

My views:

The more we listen, the more we identify the pattern. It is not raga identification, it is the pattern identification. The problem is compounded in carnatic music because, differnet singers sing the pattern in different octave. Assume theoretically that a listener has been hearing all the ragams in 1 kattai only and assume that he/she has mastered the art of identifying the frequency of notes.
Now if he/she were to listen the same ragam by another one singing in 2 kattai's, he/will perceive it a new raga.
Therefore, carnatic music ragams cannot be programmed. Or it should be programmed for each octave starting point. And it may be noted here that the sruthi intervals are not uniformly distributed.
The problem is further aggrevated by the phrases method that CM follows. Though of same notes, Nilambari is hardly sankarabharanam. Can any one write down the grammar or definition for Yadukula Kambodhi?
That is why Gurus insist that one should hear good music only in the initial stages. Unlearning will be pretty difficult.

Initially I was able to identify the ragas so well. But as the days go by, and as I listen to the mestros, I am more drawn into the mental mosaic each raga create and the sanchara in a very generalized form. The way one looks at the carpet of tulip flowers of a particular hue and can easily pick up aberrations by a glance.

And as new ragas keep coming, with no firm definition kept in place by the new comers, the mosaic hardly forms for the new genre ragas.
One raga to take shape, it will take years years of good listening, rendered by singers who have clarity and also aided by good compositions.

[arasi]

You make some interesting observations, mdrnkvn--the tulip fields, for instance.
As for listening to music, it is nice to tune into good music not only at the beginning stage of one's training but all through the learning process

[vasanthakokilam]

mdrnkvn: Can you elaborate on your tulip metaphor? And also what you mean by 'the mental mosaic each raga create and the sanchara in a very generalized form.' I know you are saying something interesting, so I want to relate to it better.

[Mdrnkvn]

sorry arasai and vasanthakokilam
I tried for a week along to explain my thots. But despite scraping 23 drafts, I did not get to explain what I had described. I realised that I have used a visual imagery to explain an auditory experience! And, I realised how woefully my verbal ability falls short of explaining these concepts.
I would put the experience equal to what a listener goes through when he/she is onto identifying a musical phrase whether it is Shree or Manirangu