This came as an eye opener to me today when my teacher mentioned that MMG is used for beginning lessons in Carnatic because it does not have any parallel swaras. Though I have known about the melakartha schema and the 12/16 swarasthanas etc, it never occured to me that MMG is unique because of this property.
Let me explain for the uninitiated.
There are 7 swaras in Carnatic Music(CM). These are S, R, G, M, P, D, N. S and P are always fixed. However R, G, M, D, N have variations. R, G, D, N have 3 variations each and M has 2 variations for a total of 1(S)+1(P)+3*4(R,G,D,N)+2(M) = 16. Now this is not completely true since there are only 12 swarasthanas in an octave. If you look at piano keys for example (start at C and count till you reach the end of the octave B. Include both black and white keys), you can 12 keys. This is because the R and G have three variations on an overlapping scale. Or in other words you have R1, (R2=G1), (R3=G2), G3. Similarly we have D1, (D2=N1), (D3, N2), N3. In other words 4 swarasthanas give rise to the 6 variations with the middle two swarasthanas standing in for 2 variations each.
Going by this and picking only the swarasthanas that do not have overlapping variations we end up with S, R1, G3, M1, P, D1, N3, S which is..... Mayamalava gowlai. Simple yet astounding, why because MMG is what you start training with and having swarasthanas that are not confusing or that which can be misconstrued for something else is very important. Having the placement of your swaras at the appropriate place within the sruthi is very important for having a good command over the scale as you learn different ragas. This becomes easier by using swarasthanas that are unique and hence MMG.
This begs a question - what about the other variation with prati madhyama,
S R1 G3 M2 P D1 N3 S (which is called Kamavarthini). Even in this raga the swaras are unique. I can only attribute this to our perpetual propensity for suddha madhyama ragas. I will continue to search and find the correct answer and explain in a later post.
2 comments:
I think its because pantuvarali (kamavardhini) is very hard for a beginner to perfect, because the ma pa dha are very close to each other.
MMG is one of the easiest ragams for a beginner to sing because of the shruti placements of the notes.
Thanks rfc9000 for stopping by and posting comment. I did clarify this with some others as well and they too agree that it's because the pratimadhyama placement is difficult for the beginner to sing. The choice of MMG as beginning is really mindblowing :)
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