CARNATIC BASICS - 7

Well SAID:

Few more doubt
In piano, one can play using both hands...
In western notation, there are notes for Treble and Bass components which can be played at same time, usually right hand for treble (upper octaves / swaras I think) and left for bass (lower octaves)

I hope you get what I mean...

But most of the carnatic notes (harmonium petti is used for playing, so can play using only one hand) I've seen are like "ssrg ssrg..." etc, like for one hand only.
Can one compose a song where both hands are used on piano, using carnatic notations?

In my school competitions, almost all of these carnatic singers always sing a song using Aadi taalam, why is that?

Another limiting factor:
how does one give a time value to each note. Like say in a 4/4 metre, in western i write "c_1/4 c_1/4 c_1/4 c_1/4 d_1 e_2" meaning 1/4 * 4 + 1 + 2 = 4 and 4 beats have passed.
How to translate that into carnatic music?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensural_notation
Check the above link about the notation system if I'm not clear

Also, another doubt about the raaga system:
Say I compose a song where I want only one or two "Pa" to be in the sharp and all others to be neutral. How does one do that? Because of the raaga system all my "Pa" has to be sharp!!!


Narayanan SAID:

@well
good question. as u said, left hand for bass clef and right hand for treble clef. the left hand is used for chords in the western classical system. almost all western compositions have chord change. and compositions are always on a scale say c#, e major etcetera.


in carnatic music, we dont have a chord system. no kriti is composed in a given sruti. anyone can sing in his own sruti. an entire kutcheri is sung in the same sruti, that of the singer. so there is no need to use the left hand at all in the keyboard. maybe for pitchbender but not on the bass clef. but i have seen child prodigy satyanarayana use two keyboards with two hands and play two octaves simultaneously.

cine music mostly follows western music system only. that's why most of the compositions sound fine only if it is played or sung in the original pitch in which it was composed on.

why adi talam?

bcos, adi talam is the simplest of the talams having eight beats. that's why


next question is why there is only one pa. actually what u refer is the note 'g' in the keyboard. that's the answer.. what u refer as (pa# ) g# is dha1 in carnatic raga. only the name differs. sa and pa are constants. they dont have any variations. so we dont attach sharp, major, minor or flat to them in the carnatic system.

our own raja
i have once heard spb in an interview, remembering how raja uses the harmonium as a keyboard.

u may know that the harmonium has bellows. one hand is used for bellows usually left and played by right hand. but raja pushes the bellows hard and plays the harmonium as key board with chords.