Quantifying musical note usage in major pentatonic ragas - Achintya Prahlad (University of Cambridge)

Indian classical music, including Hindustani music, is based on the concept of rāga. A rāga, while based on or derived from a scale, is not the same thing. It is an aesthetic and grammatical entity somewhat similar to Arabian maqām, Turkish makam and Persian maqām or māye. In Hindustānī music, two or more rāgas can have an identical scale, but can differ in the relative importance given to svara-s (“notes”). The popular rāgas Bhūpālī and Deskār both have the scale sa re ga pa dha, SRGPD (where sa is the tonic note and pa is the fifth), corresponding to the intervallic structure of a major pentatonic scale in Western music. Yet, they are separate rāgas with distinct personalities, owing partly to differences in alpatva (‘scarcity’) and bahutva (‘abundance’) of svara-s, i.e. the proportion of time occupied by a particular svara in a performance. Bhūpālī is dominated by the lower notes, with ga for its vādī (svara with the greatest bahutva), while Deskār is dominated by the higher notes, and its vādī is dha. However, the prescriptive grammar of music theory (lakṣaṇa, or śāstra) only tells us so much about the realities of actual performance (lakṣya). While some elements of rāga grammar are explicitly described in the śāstra, other equally important features are learned only from the lakṣya, by listening and imitation. Through computational analysis of recorded performances, this study describes and quantifies some of the latter features, which, to the best of my knowledge, have not been published despite their consistency across schools and styles. New quantitative measures that I have defined for this work are an important technical contribution.

Biography

Dr Achintya Prahlad is a Hindustani (northern Indian classical) vocalist and composer with knowledge of Carnatic (south Indian classical) music as well. He did a PhD in Biophysics at the University of Göttingen, Germany, after which he taught biology, music and languages to undergraduates at Ashoka University, India, while simultaneously doing research on music and publishing papers. Achintya then moved on to do an MA in Music at SOAS, University of London, and is currently a PhD student at the Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge.