Indian Raga Research Articles

Musical Features of Lullabies-Importance of Raga Perspective

Lullaby is a unique musical compositional form. It is a song of coziness and comfort. Every culture has its rich repertoire of lullabies. There have been many studies on the cultural aspects and therapeutic aspects of these songs. However, a comparative musical study of lullabies of different cultures from ‘Raga’ perspective is a less explored area. ‘Raga’, is a unique melodic concept of Indian music that encompasses multiple features. ‘Lullaby’, being one of the most aesthetic musical genres, has many more performative possibilities using the raga perspective, if we disengage it from the cultural context. The research problem is to study the musical features of ‘Lullabies’ of different cultures using ‘Raga’ as the basic comparison tool. The study aims to highlight the importance of a ‘Raga’ approach, to enrich the variety in the performance of these songs. The melodic structures of selected popular lullabies of different cultures are studied and compared to the scales of existing ragas. Although a scale refers specifically to the skeletal structure of a raga, it encapsulates the unique combination of notes that define the raga and therefore the songs are intricately related to ragas. Data collection is through sources that include research papers, books and audio recordings. The study results in identifying different ragas/ scales from the selected lullabies. The findings include, projecting the ragas/scales common across these songs, comprehending the ornamentations, rhythmic features and specific musical features like those based on octaves and modulations. The comparative study results in highlighting the immense scope of the melodic variety in the lullabies that follow the Indian raga system. Applying a ‘Raga’ perspective can open the doors for different melodic contours and emotions to pitch into the genre, to enhance its melodic scope, as a performative form.

A bi-stage approach to North Indian raga distinction

A bi-stage approach to North Indian raga distinction

Impact of Music Intervention (Listening to Indian Classical Music) on Mental Wellbeing during COVID-19 Pandemic

Background: Reports show that mental wellbeing may be negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The ragas of Indian classical music are believed to have therapeutic effects. This study was done to investigate the impact of an Indian raga on mental wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Materials and Methods: It was a one-group before-after design study. A total of 45 adult subjects of Kolkata, recruited online, using convenience sampling during the lockdown, underwent a pre-test via Google forms using Warwick-Edinburg Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS) to evaluate mental wellbeing before the administration of music intervention. After two weeks of music intervention, that consisted of passively listening to raga Hamsadhwani, a post-test using the same scale and the same medium was done. Results: The results showed that the post-test mean of the total score 51.1 (SD = 3.9) of WEMWBS was significantly (p< 0.001) higher than the pre-test mean of the total score 30.9 (SD = 4.6). The same trend was reflected by the mean difference pertaining to all of the components of WEMWBS. Conclusion: It was concluded that raga Hamsadhwani may be effective in improving mental wellbeing in a pandemic situation. There is a need to do more work by improvising the research design employed in the present study. This will help to interpret more accurately and more meaningfully the effects of Indian raga music on mental wellbeing.

The Interpersonal Entrainment in Music Performance Data Collection

The Interpersonal Entrainment in Music Performance Data Collection (IEMPDC) comprises six related corpora of music research materials: Cuban Son & Salsa (CSS), European String Quartet (ESQ), Malian Jembe (MJ), North Indian Raga (NIR), Tunisian Stambeli (TS), and Uruguayan Candombe (UC). The core data for each corpus comprises media files and computationally extracted event onset timing data. Annotation of metrical structure and code used in the preparation of the collection is also shared. The collection is unprecedented in size and level of detail and represents a significant new resource for empirical and computational research in music. In this article we introduce the main features of the data collection and the methods used in its preparation. Details of technical validation procedures and notes on data visualization are available as Appendices. We also contextualize the collection in relation to developments in Open Science and Open Data, discussing important distinctions between the two related concepts.

Time-of-day practices echo circadian physiological arousal: An enculturated embodied practice in Hindustani classical music

Traditionally, various Hindustani (North Indian) ragas have been performed at specific times of day, such as dawn, dusk, midday, and evening. Human physiology also exhibits common circadian patterns, with reduced arousal at night, rising during the morning, culminating in peak arousal, and then declining arousal towards the end of the day. This raises the question of how and whether the musical features of ragas for each time of day are related to these circadian patterns of arousal. We formally examined associations between traditionally designated time-of-day classifications and musical features from 65 Hindustani raga performances. Our results showed that only pitch-related features are predictive of time-of-day classifications. Surprisingly, non-pitch factors known to correlate with arousal, such as tempo, did not covary with raga time-of-day practices. In general, the results are consistent with rules for North Indian raga performances described by Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande (1860–1936) that emphasize the presence or prevalence of particular tones in the raga. The results point to a combination of enculturated and embodied influences in conveying musical arousal. Specifically, they suggest that while time-of-day-related raga listening practices may have been initially influenced by embodied processes, they have ultimately been reshaped by pitch-related cultural norms.

Vibro-acoustic modeling, numerical and experimental study of the resonator and its contribution to the timbre of Sarasvati veena, a South Indian stringed instrument.

This paper is part of a special issue on Modelling of Musical Instruments. The Sarasvati veena is a South Indian plucked string wooden lute, whose unique timbre is characterized by the presence of nearly all harmonics, in the range from 0 to 2800 Hz, the augmentation of the second and third harmonic and the revival of higher harmonics with time. This can be attributed to the shape of its extended bridge and its wooden resonator. In this work, the vibrational modes of the resonator are studied and the corresponding frequencies related to the musical tones generated while playing the veena. Numerical modal analysis is performed by the finite element method on a computer-aided design model of the resonator top plate as well as the air cavity within the dome-shaped structure. The results are compared to the experiment for validation. The resonator modes provide support to the harmonics of the string vibrations and give rise to the typical timbre of the instrument. We also find that other mode frequencies of the resonator support microtones that are used in Indian raga music. This gives scientific basis to the role of the timbre of the veena in supporting the development and sustenance of South Indian classical music.

A new cipher system using semi-natural composition in Indian raga

Cryptographic algorithms are the basic of care-free transactions over the Internet today. Confidential information of a government or private agency or department is secured through the use of Cryptography. From doing secure communication to transferring information of national importance, Cryptographic algorithms play the sole role in hiding the confidentiality. Musical attributes such as notes of which the music is composed are not constant and vary from composition to composition. Same tune played by different composers shows a variation in the sequence of notes used along with other attributes of a musical composition such as duration of each note and the frequency at which each note is played. Such a variation can be employed for the purpose of encrypting the message. In this paper, we have incorporated the use of Hindustani (North Indian) musical notes to encrypt messages. We have used a semi-natural composition process to generate note sequences of Indian music which can then be used as a tool for message hiding. This at first place ensures that the message is hidden from the intruder and second it gives a new random sequence of notes every time same message is sent. So the very purpose of a Cryptographic algorithm is served. The encrypted message in the form of musical notes is then sent to the intended recipient in the form of a musical composition which helps in defying the intruder of sensing any confidential information that is being sent over the communication channel.

Effects of long term Indian classical Raga Therapy in reduction of Blood Pressure among chronic hypertensive patients

Effects of long term Indian classical Raga Therapy in reduction of Blood Pressure among chronic hypertensive patients

The Effect of Musically Perceived Pleasantness and Unpleasantness on Cognitive Functioning of Patients with Depression: An Experimental Approach

Research with Indian classical raga on clinical depression has identified a host of emotional factors that guides the harmonious interaction between feeling tone and cognition. Such a harmony between cognition and music which leads to subjectively pleasant and unpleasant mood can extract maximum possible cognitive output in human beings. To test this hypothesis, 36 female subjects with clinically diagnosed depression were taken, of which 16 preadolescent subjects were between the age 7-12 years and the rest 20 subjects was the adolescent group age ranging between 13-15 years. There were three conditions of this research study, A) a control condition where no IV (classical music) was presented; B) experimental condition 1, where pleasantness inducing classical music was presented, C) experimental condition 2, where unpleasantness inducing classical music was presented. Subjects’ mood was estimated before and after the administration of the IV and also their cognitive faculties- attention, perception, learning-memorization and problem solving with different renowned tests and scales. Result was that all the faculties showed improvement due to the effect of independent variable except for the faculty of perception. It was also to be noted that the pre-adolescent group showed better performance in the experimental condition where a musical piece (dhun) with pleasant tone was presented and the adolescent group showed better performance in the experimental condition where less pleasant or mournful musical piece (dhun) was presented.

Coarticulation and Gesture: an Analysis of Melodic Movement in South Indian Raga Performance

ABSTRACTThis article presents an analysis of small‐scale melodic movement in South Indian rāga performance employing the concept of coarticulation, defined here as the tendency for the performance of a unit to be influenced by that which precedes or follows it. Coarticulation has been much studied in phonetics and also explored to some extent in sign language and the kinematics of instrumental performance. Here I seek to account for variation in the performance of Karnatak musical units known as svaras (the scale degrees of a rāga) and gamakas (ornaments) through the phenomenon of coarticulation, thus providing an analysis of small‐scale melodic movement that focuses on the dynamic processes which form the style rather than on the categorisation of discrete elements.The material investigated is a video recording of ālāpana (improvisation) in rāga Toḍi performed by the Karnatak violinist T. V. Ramanujacharlu in Tamil Nadu, South India. A section of the recording is transcribed into staff notation and visualised through pitch‐contour graphs created in Praat sound‐analysis software. The hand movements required to produce the musical phrases are described from observation of the video alongside figures showing motion‐tracking data. Interviews with musicians, participant observation and the author's experience as a student of Karnatak violin provide the foundation for interpretation of the material. Results show that coarticulation can be seen between svaras through the oscillatory gamakas with which they are performed. Atomistic and gestural conceptions of South Indian music are discussed, following which suggestions are made for the implications of this research in modelling the Karnatak style, as well as for potential applications in musical information retrieval (MIR).

Immediate Effect of Indian Music on Cardiac Autonomic Control And Anxiety: A Comparative Study

Background: Many studies have shown that music experience is the key to develop future therapies in order to prevent the development of cardiovascular disorders. Aims: The present study aimed to evaluate the effects of heart rate variability (HRV) on exposure to Indian raga Bhupali with that of two control groups of pop music and no music or silence in a sample of healthy subjects. Materials and Methods: Autonomic functioning, anxiety level, and subjective feeling were assessed in 28 healthy subjects, both male and female [group mean age ± standard deviation (SD), 19.68 ± 2.57] during three sessions. The three sessions were the musical session intervention with the Indian raga Bhupali, pop music with steady beats, and no music session. Assessments were made before (5 min), during (10 min), and after (5 min) in each of the three states on 3 separate days. Results: During the Indian raga, there was a significant decrease in the low frequency (LF) power (P < 0.01) and increase in the high frequency (HF) power (P < 0.01) in the frequency domain analysis of the HRV spectrum. There was also a significant decrease in the mean heart rate (HR) (P < 0.01) and a significant increase in the NN50 (P < 0.05) and RMSSD (P < 0.05) in the time domain analysis of HRV. Both frequency and time domain measures are indicative of parasympathetic activity. The anxiety level significantly (P < 0.001) decreased post the Indian raga session and significantly (P < 0.01) increased post the pop session. The subjective assessment of perceived feeling using the visual analog scale (VAS) comparing Indian raga with pop and silence sessions showed a significant difference of feeling positive (P < 0.01). Conclusions: Exposure to the Indian raga Bhupali reduced sympathetic activity and/or increased vagal modulation with reduced anxiety levels and subjective assessment of perceived feeling showed positive changes.

Immediate effect of listening to Indian raga on attention and concentration in healthy college students: A comparative study

Background: Many studies with western music have shown enhancement in the cognitive performance task. The factors influencing the performance are a selection of dependent measures, choice of the piece of music, presentation order of the conditions. Research has shown that the specific choice of musical composition may help in the improvement of the particular cognitive task. Objectives: We chose to study the impact of Indian Raga on a memory task. Methods: In twenty-six volunteers both male and female (group average age ± S.D., 18.84±3.53 years) the immediate effect of two musical conditions and No music condition was studied on memory. All participants were assessed before and after (i) Indian Raga Bhupali(R) for 10 minutes on day one; (ii) an equal duration of Pop music (P); and (iii) an equal duration of Silence or no music (S) on next two different days respectively. A Section of the Wechsler memory scale (WMS) was used to assess; (i) attention and concentration (digit span forward and backward) before and immediately after the intervention. Results: There was a significant improvement in digit forward (P<0.05, increase of 3.17%) and backward span score after (p<0.05, an increase of 5.26%) immediately after the exposure to Indian Raga Bhupali. Conclusions: The combination of notes in Indian Raga Bhupali is said to instill Shringara rasa or the aesthetic mood of Love. The improvement is significant compared to the Pop music that is much preferred by the college students and Silence or No music conditions. It was concluded that Memory scores improved immediately after listening to Indian Raga Bhupali.

Chimpanzees prefer African and Indian music over silence.

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 40(4) of Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition (see record 2014-35305-001). For the article, the below files were used to create the audio used in this study. The original West African akan and North Indian raga pieces were used in their entirety and the Japanese taiko piece was used from the 0:19 second mark through the end. The tempo of each piece was adjusted so that they maintained an identical base tempo of 90 beats per minute, then looped to create 40 minutes of continuous music. Additionally, the volume of the music was standardized at 50 dB so that the all music maintained the same average amplitude. All audio manipulations were completed using GarageBand © (Apple Inc.).] All primates have an ability to distinguish between temporal and melodic features of music, but unlike humans, in previous studies, nonhuman primates have not demonstrated a preference for music. However, previous research has not tested the wide range of acoustic parameters present in many different types of world music. The purpose of the present study is to determine the spontaneous preference of common chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) for 3 acoustically contrasting types of world music: West African akan, North Indian raga, and Japanese taiko. Sixteen chimpanzees housed in 2 groups were exposed to 40 min of music from a speaker placed 1.5 m outside the fence of their outdoor enclosure; the proximity of each subject to the acoustic stimulus was recorded every 2 min. When compared with controls, subjects spent significantly more time in areas where the acoustic stimulus was loudest in African and Indian music conditions. This preference for African and Indian music could indicate homologies in acoustic preferences between nonhuman and human primates. .

Conference report: 9th Annual NeuroMusic Conference, Modeling the Musical Experience.

The 9th Annual NeuroMusic Conference brought over 130 researchers and students to Hamilton, Ontario to discuss the theme the Musical Experience. The conference, which took place on November 30, 2013 at McMaster University, included three speakers, Dr. Edward Large (University of Connecticut), Dr. Stephen McAdams (McGill University), and Dr. Peter Keller (University of Western Sydney). The day also included a poster session, a tour ofthe new Large Interactive Virtual Environment (LIVE) Lab, and an integrative keynote lecture and concert. Dr. Peter Pfordresher (University at Buffalo) gave the keynote lecture accompanied by performers Leslie Fagan, Dr. Andrea Halpern, and the McMaster University Chamber Choir. Among the topics discussed were the neurodynamics of tonality perception, theory oforchestration, interpersonal synchrony, and poor-pitch singing. This report provides a brief summary of each talk and the LIVE Lab tour, as well as the evening's performances.Keywords: MIMM, conference, music, mind, brainThe 9th Annual NeuroMusic Conference, Modeling the Musical Experience, was held at McMaster University (Hamilton, Ontario) on 23 November 2013. The workshop was sponsored by the McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind (MIMM), a multidisciplinary group comprising scientists, musicians, composers, educators, and community members. The event was organized by Dr. Laurel Trainor and Dr. Steven Brown and coordinated by Dr. Rayna Friendly and Elaine Whiskin. David Gerry organized the music for the evening's keynote concert.More than 130 attendees registered for this year's conference. The day included three lectures covering a broad range of topics in music cognition and perception. A panel discussion gave audience members the opportunity to pose their questions to the speakers as well as to the evening's keynote lecturer. The poster session offered a snapshot of 20 undergraduate and graduate students' ongoing work. Interested attendees took a tour of the new Large Interactive Virtual Environment (LIVE) Lab at McMaster University. The day concluded with an integrative keynote lecture and concert.Dr. Edward Large, University of ConnecticutNeurodynamics of Music PerceptionDr. Edward Large started the day by proposing a neurological origin for systems of musical tonality based in nonlinear oscillatory neurodynamics. Large pointed out that though tonal systems differ somewhat across cultures, many (such as conventional Western tonality and North Indian Raga tonality) overlap considerably in their pitch structures. Large suggested that universal aspects of the qualia associated with musical intervals can be captured in a dynamical systems analysis of mode locking, and that such a model is biologically plausible. Large noted that perceived musical stability is often thought to emerge as a result of experiential statistical learning, but suggested that the opposite may be true-that the inherent stability of certain intervals leads to their statistical frequency in the musical literature. His goal is to develop a theory of universal grammatical structure in music.Dr. Stephen McAdams, McGill UniversityToward a Psychological Foundation for a Theory of OrchestrationWhile there are many treatises on orchestration, Dr. Stephen McAdams noted that, as of yet, there exists no true theory of orchestration and that timbre remains largely unstudied, despite its crucial role in orchestration. Traditional music theorists often reject the possibility of rigorous academic study of timbre, but McAdams' lecture defied this perspective. He presented data from a number of experiments on timbre perception, often utilizing a multidimensional approach. He argued that an understanding of orchestration will rest on basic principles of auditory scene analysis, including event perception, sound identification, stream formation, and large unit perception. Through data presentations and audience demonstrations, McAdams showed that timbre plays a number of roles in the musical experience. …

Artificial Composition: An Experiment on Indian Music

It has been attempted to develop a neurocomputing paradigm for artificial music composition in Indian style. A musical organization, comprising a melodic pattern, a rhythmic pattern and a melody violation part, has been considered for this purpose. A simple feed forward hybrid neural network with a functional link hidden layer has been so designed as to integrate such a musical organization with Indian raga rules. The proposed artificial neural network can output a variety of compositions on any raga by generating random link weights that shape the musical organization in various ways within the freedom available in the raga framework. The neural network can be customized with specifications of any raga for outputting a large variety of musical sequences that abide by the particular raga rules. In an interactive mode, a musician user may compose non-classical and light classical songs in Indian style based on desired ragas. An evaluation of such outputs from the system on Hindustani music, as done by a group of musicians, is encouraging. The present system, when run in an “Auto Mode”, may also serve as a generator of “semi-finished” music for composing music of non-traditional structure.

Observing entrainment in music performance: Video-based observational analysis of Indian musicians' tanpura playing and beat marking

Entrainment has been suggested as an important phenomenon underlying aspects of musical behaviour, and is attracting increasing attention in music psychology (see e.g. Large and Jones, 1999; Large, 2000), and in ethnomusicology (Clayton, Sager and Will, 2005). Approaches to its study in ethnomusicology must address a significant methodological problem: how to study entrainment phenomena in an ecologically valid manner, and to integrate this process into a programme of ethnographic research. Video recordings contain important data regarding the physical movements of participants in musical events (as well as their audible results), and through the application of observational analysis software these recordings can form the basis of studies of entrainment between different quasi- periodic musical processes as manifested in movement patterns. For the present study a short video clip of an Indian raga performance was selected (taken from a performance of Shree Rag by the singer Veena Sahasrabuddhe). Observational analysis was carried out using The Observer Video-Pro software, configured to record the plucking of tanpura strings and performers’ beat markers (hand or finger taps). Time series data thus generated were analysed using calculations of phase relationships, revealing several instances of both self- and interpersonal entrainment (the stated intention of the performers is, on the contrary, that the tanpura rhythms should each proceed independently). Entrainment between these behaviours points to a complex, but unintended form of emergent order. This unexpected result demonstrates the usefulness of this method in revealing otherwise unnoticed phenomena in musical performance, and raises important questions for future research.

Blurred affinities: tracing the influence of North Indian classical music in Keith Jarrett's solo piano improvisations

In the first forty years of his career, American pianist Keith Jarrett has established a reputation in multiple stylistic directions. Jarrett has typically incorporated influences as varied as bebop, country, rock, gospel, minimalism, baroque and classical styles into his often lengthy improvisations. Vital to his musical persona, but less obvious, is the influence North Indian classical music has had in shaping Jarrett's improvisatory strategies. Although he never formally studied Indian music, and although his instrument – the piano – is far removed from the conceptual backdrop of North Indian raga performance, Indian music was a central component in the artistic climate out of which his improvised solo recitals grew.A cultural climate of global influences was the backdrop to the development of Jarrett's solo concerts. Therein, perhaps, lies one key to understanding the spell that this music has cast on large and international audiences. With this format, Jarrett tapped into the ambiance of a particular historic moment, which combined a desire for change with the discovery of spiritual and musical traditions outside the Western world.In this paper I will demonstrate how explicit and implicit references to classical Indian principles of music making helped shape Jarrett's unique free solo concerts.

White Noise: Race and Erasure in the Cultural Avant-Garde

Countless artists of this century, looking for renewal, have turned to the art of another culture. Picasso was transfixed by African masks, Ezra Pound by Chinese ideograms; the musical cultures of Asia have inspired composers as disparate as Debussy, Harry Partch, and Benjamin Britten, while the energies of early jazz were reworked and rechanneled in the music of Ives, Ravel, and Stravinsky, among many others. More recently in America, a generation of minimalists has included an encounter with different musics of the world as a major stage in their creative apprenticeship. La Monte Young (b. 1935) has acknowledged Japanese gagaku as an important early influence, and both he and Terry Riley (b. 1935) undertook intensive study with Indian raga master Pran Nath. Riley was also fascinated by the music he encountered during travel to North Africa. Steve Reich (b. 1936) studied Balinese gamelan, and made a trip to Ghana to study drumming. Philip Glass (b. 1937) has studied Indian rhythms with tabla master Alla Rakha, and has traveled in India, North Africa, and central Asia.1

Abstract Structure and the Indian Raga System

Abstract Structure and the Indian Raga System

A Code for Representing the Occidental Musical Notation in Pictorial Art

Pictorial art, sculpture and architecture have served to interpret and record aspects of human activities over thousands of years. Over a much shorter period, musicians have prepared scores in notation according to which their music can be performed and depictions of scores can be found in some pictorial art, for example, in Indian Ragmala paintings (1600-1900). There has been considerable interest among Occidental artists during past decades to find relationships between painting and music [1-5] and composers have used visual art as a source of inspiration, for example, there is the piano suite 'Pictures from an Exhibition' by Mussorgsky. Possible correlations and relationships between music and visual artistic presentations have been of particular concern to those working with kinetic art [6]. As an architect and artist I have been attracted to textures of materials used decoratively in non-figurative murals for buildings. While such murals may visually please viewers, I find that many of them convey little, if any, meaning to them. It, therefore, occurred to me that such murals might be used to present musical scores in a special code based on the standard Occidental notation that viewers might learn to interpret more easily and to enjoy. I came to this idea because I sing, play the sitar and can reproduce a tune on a piano. I am interested in the classical Indian raga and in other types of Oriental music. My experience of Occidental music is rather limited.