Literals - Swaras, Spaces and Sahithya

Swaras and Sahithya (basic literals) form the basis of all Notations you will compose. Unlike other notation systems where letters like "Sa", "ri", "ga", "ma" have specific meaning thats is no the case here. The following is a very valid notation (with its rendered form below):

S ri g Ma p d n s a b c d e f g h Do re mi fa so lah ti do

This shows a very important concept. The literal "value" and spaces do not matter. Each of the above literals above ("S", Do", "fa" etc) takes 1 duration in length and is laid out accordingly. In our Notations - we do not assign meaning to the notes because we are only interested in durations and layouts (for now).

A few things to note:

By default the thalam used was Adi talam. We will configure this.

Each note is a single beat by default. We will see how to change this soon.

In this example it "seemed" like we had to align at line boundaries (the first two lines). But this is not the case as seen by the third line - even though the breaks appeared arbitrarily after the "mi" and the "fa", the line was laid out without much fuss.

Next let us look at how give notes longer durations.

Spaces

In our last example we showed that each note takes 1 "unit" of time. In our notations, time durations (or Spaces) are denoted by "," and ";" (for two units or double spaces). You can put in as many you'd like (note the lack of space between some of the space commas and semi-colons): Sa , ri ,, ga , , ma ;, pa ; , ; ma ; , , ga ; , ri ; sa ,

Octaves

Our notes above were all in the Mandara Sthayi (middle octave). What if we want to play an octave lower or higher? How about 4 octaves lower or higher? Easy just add "dots" before or after a note (without spaces). See the example below: ...sa ...ri ...ga ..ma ..pa .da .ni sa sa... ni.. da.. pa. ma. ga ri sa

Sahithya

In our notations (varnams, keerthanas etc) Sahithyam (lyrics) play a very crucial role. Let us add them. Here's the first line of the beatiful Mohana Varnam: Sw: G , G , R , , , S S R R G G R R S R G R S R S .D S R G P G R S R Sh: Nin , nu , ko , , , ri , , , , , , , yu , , , nna , , , nu , , , ra , , ,

Here we have add the concept of a Role. The "Sw" role denotes Swaras. And "Sh" role denotes Sahithyam. When you write notations in roles - each role is "interweaved" in its layout as seen above.

In our earlier examples we did not have to explicitly specify the "Sw" role because they were the role for the run of literals by default. However since we had to now have Swarams and Sahithyams interweaving with each other line-by-line prefixing a "run" of literals is necessary. Again spaces dont really matter! In general, a role is denoted by:

"RoleName:"

Note the Colon (:) after the name of the Role. Here is one of the few places where there CANNOT be a space between the rolename and the colon.

By default the roles Sw and Sh are created for you. You can create others if needed.

Order of layout

In our previous example Swara role was laid out "above" the Sahithya role. This was only because in our notations the swara role had appeared. Swap the order around and see what happens: Sh: Nin , nu , ko , , , ri , , , , , , , yu , , , nna , , , nu , , , ra , , , Sw: G , G , R , , , S S R R G G R R S R G R S R S .D S R G P G R S R

Higher Speeds

Another concept we will quickly demonstrate here for a sense of what can be done is beat durations. Until now our notations were showing up with 1 note per beat. Carnatic notations have a lot more variety. Typically we would like to vary the notes per beats. We can change it with the "\beatDuration" command (you will learn more about commands soon). Having Ninnukori in 2 notes or 4 notes per beat (or even 3 for thisram) is very simple: We could have our Varnam with 2 notes per beat: \beatDuration(2) Sh: Nin , nu , ko , , , ri , , , , , , , yu , , , nna , , , nu , , , ra , , , Sw: G , G , R , , , S S R R G G R R S R G R S R S .D S R G P G R S R Or 4 notes per beat (second speed): \beatDuration(4) Sh: Nin , nu , ko , , , ri , , , , , , , yu , , , nna , , , nu , , , ra , , , Sw: G , G , R , , , S S R R G G R R S R G R S R S .D S R G P G R S R Shall we dare 3 notes per beat - Thisram?? \beatDuration(3) Sh: Nin , nu , ko , , , ri , , , , , , , yu , , , nna , , , nu , , , ra , , , Sw: G , G , R , , , S S R R G G R R S R G R S R S .D S R G P G R S R Isnt it cool that you could do all this by changing one number and not having to fiddle about with spaces and layouts? There is so much more you could do with beat durations and layouts. We will get there. But for now let us take a deeper look into Roles.