Rasika takes you on a tour of carnatic music system with text, visuals and audio. It is like a text book on Carnatic Music with audio visuals in tones of Veena or Flute. The raga explanations and the audio samples in the program put adequate stress on the Gamakam (nuances or smooth movements between and around notes).
Gaayaka enables you to enter 'sa ri ga ma' notation and play it in Flute or Veena - useful for practicing carnatic music lessons (lessons up to geethams and sample krithis, varnams etc. are supplied with the software). You can enter and play even lessons not supplied with the program. The notation system has been extended to enable introduction of smooth gamakams. Gaayaka can be an aid for experimenting, understanding the nuances and setting songs to notation, making it easy to check the durations and the tune. For full details of Rasika and Gaayaka click on the links on the left or above.
Sishya gives you lessons in a user friendly format with pictures showing the thaalam gestures synchronised with the music and as in Gaayaka there is facility to change sruthi, tempo, selectively playing a part, looping etc. Novice is for the very new comer and takes him step by step through the elementary concepts and using Sishya. The 2 Student's music players give a high resolution 'time line' for choosing any part of the music, enable marking blocks for playing (if need be also looping), naming and saving the blocks etc.
In addition to the Sruthi Box there is also a Thamboora program to convert your PC into a sruthi box or thamboora (try both simultaneously and see the effect!)
The software has been developed by a musician - programmer!
It is easy to write programs to generate plain (straight) notes but Carnatic Music can never be portrayed fully without the nuances (Gamakams - smooth movements between and around notes). Here are some sample clips of music generated by the software.
Listen to samples of Pallavi of Enthanerchina in Suddha Dhanyasi 
(88 kb) and Pallavi of Mamavasadaa in Kaanada (104 kb) - (you need Real Player - Ver 6 or later. These have been put in Real Audio format only for the web. You do not need Real Player or any other music player to run the programs).
Why so much stress on Gamakam? Just listen to some notation played plain without gamakam - as it is written. This does not sound as Carnatic Music at all! Listen to the same music with gamakam - how it should really sound. That is why Rasika and Gaayaka put lot of emphasis on Gamakam.
Other links on the left give you free downloads of some notation files (including those written by users) which can be played with Gaayaka, and a
program for testing your tuning ability. There are 2 pages explaining the
Carnatic music notation system and the
Gaayaka file format. The Miscellanous group has a page on problems of creating
midi files for Carnatic music (with some sample midi files with gamakam) a page of
links to some Carnatic Music sites and of course a page about
me!.
Contact the author M.Subramanian at or manianms@yahoo.com
