Subject: Re: Morning versus Evening Ragas From: "Divakaran, Ajay" <adivakaran@xxxxxxxx> Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2010 16:45:11 -0400 List-Archive:<http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=AUDITORY>Dear Doug and List, Here is a webpage that discusses the concept of playing/singing time for Ragas: http://www.ragopedia.com/raga/playtime.html the trouble with the above page is that it does not explain the concept of Vaadi Swaras, so let me try to explain. The Vaadi Swara of a Raga is the "principal" note of the raga i.e. loosely speaking it is sung most often. Roughly, If the Vaadi swara of a raga is in the first half of the octave, then it is a morning raga else it is an evening raga. There are finer classifications that I will skip in the interests of clarity. One could conceivably therefore detect the vaadi swara automatically and thus deduce whether it is to be sung in the morning or evening. The rules for play time are more strictly observed in North Indian Classical Music. I believe that the concept is known among South Indian Musicians but not strictly observed. The above basically provides a look-up table approach to the problem. Whether such notions of a preponderance of a certain note evoking a certain time of day are universal is I think open to debate. People like me who have grown up in India have been exposed to the cultural context so we are perhaps culturally conditioned to hear a raga and think of it as a morning or evening raga. Whether a non-native hearing the music for the first time reacts the same way is open to debate I think. My two cents. For a deep dive into such topics, please see http://www.parrikar.org/raga-central Among others. Best Regards, ajay Ajay Divakaran, Ph.D. Technical Manager Vision and Multi-Sensor Systems Sarnoff Corporation 201 Washington Road PO Box 5300 Princeton, NJ 08543 adivakaran@xxxxxxxx www.sarnoff.com Phone: 609-734-2204 Cell: 609-578-7065 Fax: 609-734-2662 -----Original Message----- From: AUDITORY - Research in Auditory Perception [mailto:AUDITORY@xxxxxxxx On Behalf Of Justin London Sent: Thursday, September 02, 2010 4:16 PM To: AUDITORY@xxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Morning versus Evening Ragas Dear Doug & List, Enculturated listeners as well as experts certainly can do this. The association between Ragas and times of day is characteristic of North Indian musical practice, I believe. You can/should look up "Raga" and "India" in the Grove Dictionary of Music (Oxford Online). Another good/related source is: Widdess, Richard (1995) The Ragas of Early Indian Music. Clarendon Press (OUP). I suspect your interests might be along the lines of "what in the acoustical signal distinguishes one raga from another" and this is tricky to tease out. To give a western musical analogy, the difference between a Baroque minuet and a gigue rests on a few characteristic features (mostly in terms of characteristic rhythmic figures and tempo), but also depends on lots of features in common with Baroque music more generally (e.g., timbres, intonation systems, basslines, etc.). All best, Justin London On Sep 2, 2010, at 1:00 PM, Douglas Eck wrote: Maybe this isn't the perfect list for this question, but I suspect I'll get an answer or two. I'm curious about morning versus evening ragas. Can musical experts tell them apart? What are the qualities that define a morning versus evening raga? Is it something that would show up via an acoustical analysis of the audio drawn from lots of morning and evening ragas? Citations would be great. Or just some observations. Thanks in advance, Doug Eck ------------------------------------------ Dr. Douglas Eck Research Scientist, Google Areas: Music and Machine Learning http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~eckdoug ************************************************* Justin London, Professor of Music (and other stuff) Carleton College Department of Music One North College St. Northfield, MN 55057 USA 507-222-4397 fax 507-222-5561 jlondon@xxxxxxxx This message (and any attachments) contains Sarnoff proprietary information. Such information may be subject to the terms of confidentiality or other agreements. If you are not the named addressee, you should not disseminate, distribute, or copy this email. If you have received this email by mistake, please notify the sender immediately by email and delete this email from your system. If you are not the intended recipient, you are notified that disclosing, copying, distributing, or taking any action in reliance on the contents of this information is strictly prohibited.