What's in a name ?

This blog is about my passion - Playing Carnatic Music on a Guitar.

The name of this blog is a play on the sanskrit words karna kathoram ( कर्ण कठोरं ) which means something like "cruel to the ears".

Most aspiring musicans might have subjected their near and dear, to copious servings of this form of cruelty. I'm no exception either. 

Let us thank all those kind souls who patiently bear with us, while muttering "karna kathoram".




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Fretboard map of 22 sruti layout

I tried a few major and minor triads on this instrument and was quite pleased with the results. (maybe I'm biased after investing significant resources on this) I wanted to see what triads could be reached when this instrument is tuned in perfect fourths with six strings. I've used Indian note names 's R G m P D N' to represent the notes of the major scale. s and p are case insensitive, whereas the rest are case-sensitive. Lower case stands for the flatter note. In the key of C, here is roughly how the notes map. s - C, r - Db, R - D, g - Eb, G - E, m - F, M - F#, p - G, d - Ab, D - A, n - Bb, N - B In earlier posts I've named 4 srutis of a note using number suffixes like R1, R2, R3, R4 etc. In a fretboard map since numbers may be useful for fingers, I've named the 22 srutis as s, r, r+, R, R+, g, g+, G, G+, m, m+, M, M+, p, d, d+, D, D+, n, n+, N, N+ Numbering the strings from top to bottom the 4th string starts as 'S'. There are 11...
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Derivation of 22 srutis of indian music as a fret spacing problem

In Indian music the tonic (1/1) is called Sa (S) and the perfect fifth (3/2) is called Pa (P). Indian music being monophonic, S and P are the only notes that are allowed to be heard along with any other note. So strings are tuned in S - P relationship only. That way even if the strings are accidentally struck not much harm is done. In my view, 22 srutis appear as the solution to a problem of identifying the optimal number of fret positions in a fixed fret ( straight frets perpendicular to strings ) - stringed instrument, tuned to S (1/1 ) - P (3/2) , while satisfying the following constraints. - The notes should be consonant with both strings S - P - It should be possible to play the scale assuming either string as the tonic, in which case the string relationship is S (1/1) - M ( 4/3 ) - Exploit octave complements, since we have to live with them - example S - P, P - 2 S This places the following mathematical constraints on the solution set which is a set of d...
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Very interesting interpretation of 22 srutis

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The computed values below are surprisingly close to the ones computed using cycle of fifths. I've used a string length of 9*13*4 = 468 to have integer units for the vibrating string lengths. Sruti - Sruti Number VSL - Vibrating sring length. Ratio = String Length / VSL SA Grama - Ratios and corresponding Swara positions in Bharata's SA Grama MA Grama - Ratios and corresponding Swara positions in Bharata's MA Grama Sruti VSL Ratio SA Grama MA Grama 0 468 1.0000 1.7778 N 1.1852 G 1 455 1.0286 1.8286 1.2190 2 442 1.0588 1.8824 1.2549 3 429 1.0909 1.9394 1.2929 4 416 1.1250 1.0000 S 1.3333 M 5 403 1.1613 1.0323 1.3763 6 390 1.2000 1.0667 1.4222 7 377 1.2414 1.1034 R 1.4713 P 8 364 1.2857 1.1429 1.5238 9 351 1.3333 1.1852 G 1.5802 10 342 1.3684 1.2164 1.62...
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