Simmendra Madhyamam

ārohaṇa: S R2 G2 M2 P D1 N3 S
avarohaṇa: S N3 D1 P M2 G2 R2 S

This is the 57th Melakartha. It has very few janyas so it's not as popular as a parent (or janaka) raga. By its own merit, it is often sung as a main piece in concerts and also quite often used on Ragam Thanam Pallavi. More on Ragam Thanam Pallavi in a later post.

It is very closely related to Shanmukapriya (56th mela) and differs from it only in the N. This causes it to be confused with Shanmukapriya more often than not if the musician is not careful about bringing out the N3 in the rendition.

Rendition of SM on Sax
http://www.musicindiaonline.com/p/x/pJX00I5jZS.As1NMvHdW/

Songs in SM from Films


Listen to the violins and the flute at the beginning

Karaharapriya

This is the 22nd Melakartha.

It's scale is
Aarohana: S R2 G2 M1 P D2 N2 S
Avarohana: S N2 D2 P M1 G2 R2 S

This is a very important and melodious melakartha and also important because it gives rise to a lot of janya ragas. Kharaharapriya has been decorated with compositions by many composers. All except the Dikshitars, including Muthuswami Dikshitar,[1] have composed songs in this rāgam. Thyagaraja has composed many in this rāgam. Muthuswami Dikshitar, one of the three most important composers in Carnatic music, has not composed kritis in Kharaharapriya, but has composed kritis in a closely related ragam Harapriya, which bears stark similarities to Kharaharapriya.[3] A few of the popular compositions are listed here.
Chakkani rajamargamu, Pakkala nilapadi, Mitri Bhagyame, Rama ni samana, Nadachi Nadachi and Rama neeyata by Thyagaraja
Moovasai konda thiruman by Muthiah Bhagavatar
Senthil andavan, Srinivasa Thava Charanam by Papanasam Sivan

This is often sung as a main piece in concerts and is very conducive for elaborate alapana and kalpanaswarams. Karaharapriya in Hindustani system is called the Kafi thaat.

Here's a carnatic piece sung by great MS. Play close attention to the rag alapana at the beginning. Such a wonderful KHPriya


Nice demo of KHPriya on Keyboard. Not as faithful due to the inherent limitation of playing carnatic on keyboard but nevertheless, a good rendition.


Some movie songs in this raga

Kalyani

It is the 65th Melakartha and arguably the queen of ragas. It is the most important Pratimadhyama raga. It is also known as Mecha Kalyani to conform to the Katapayadhi system (More on Katapayadhi later). It's scale is

Arohana: S R2 G3 M2 P D2 N3 S'
Avarohana: S' N3 D2 P M2 G3 R2 S

Looking at the scale it looks like it differs from Shankarabharanam only in M. However, the swaraprayogas of Kalyani are very different from that of Shankarabharanam and they are poles apart in their distintive ways. Kalyani is also considered a very auspicious raga and a evening raga in general. This corresponds to Rag Yaman in Hindustani and to the C Lydian scale in Western Classical Music (Thanks Rajesh for pointing this out).


Here's a link to a mandolin rendition of Kalyani Varnam Vanajakshi
http://www.musicindiaonline.com/p/x/jUI0qkU-Wd.As1NMvHdW/

Here's a link to a very beautiful Krithi in Kalyani
http://www.musicindiaonline.com/p/x/b4p23skYgd.As1NMvHdW/

Shankarabharanam

This is the 29th Melakartha and one of the main ragas in Carnatic Music. It is also a very important janaka raga (that is a lot of ragas are derived from it). It is usually sung either as a varnam or a main krithi with elaborate raga alapana. The placement of swaras in Shankarabharanam make it very conducive for alapana and numerous swaraprastharas (using swaras during a krithi to bring out the raga). Shankarabharanam literally means "jewel of Lord Shiva" and is considered to be favorite raga of the deity. It's scale is
Arohana: S R2 G3 M1 P D2 N3 S'
Avarohana: S' N3 D2 P M1 G3 R2 S

The placement of it swaras makes it resemble the C major scale very closely.

Some Carnatic compositions in this raga are Swara raga sudha, Saroja dhala nethri. Here's a link to a thillana in Shankarabharanam
http://www.musicindiaonline.com/p/x/rUp2f7tONS.As1NMvHdW/
Here's a pseudo western piece but played Carnatic style in Shankarabharanam.
http://www.musicindiaonline.com/p/x/bUI09vl5wd.As1NMvHdW/

Movie Songs in Shankarabharanam

Classification of ragas - the Melakartha system

The fundamental classification of ragas are as Melakartha ragas and Janya ragas. Melakartha are the fundamental ragas. For a raga to be termed as Melakartha raga, it has to be a sampoorna raga (i.e., has all the 7 swaras appearing once and only once and in the same order both in aarohana and avarohana). This begs a question, if there are only 7 notes (from our earlier lecture, we saw that there were 7 notes S R G M P D N) then how many melakartha can be there?
Well, the 7 notes are not just limited to 7 frequencies but to variations between them.



Consider one octave from the above image, that is from one C to another C. You will notice that there are 12 keys (7 white and 5 black). These 12 keys form the 12 swarasthanas. Each of the swarasthana is a variation of the 7 fundamental notes. M or madhyama has 2 variations, R, G, D, N have 3 variations each, S and P are fixed notes. We will denote the variations using subscripts 1,2 or 3. They are arranged on the 12 swarasthanas on a overlapping scale as follows.
1. S
2. R1
3. R2 = G1
4. R3 = G2
5. G3
6. M1
7. M2
8. P
9. D1
10. D2 = N1
11. D3 = N2
12. N3

Now this becomes a simple process of choosing 1 each of R G M D N to form a melakartha along with the S and P. We see that there are only 6 combinations of R and G that are possible - R1G1, R1G2, R1G3, R2G2, R2G3, R3G3 (The others are either meaningless because R2 is same as G1 etc or are one of the above six R2G2 == R3G1). Similarly D and N also have 6 combinations. Along with 2 variations of M, they give rise to a total of 6 X 6 X 2 = 72 Melakartha ragas. They start with Kanakangi as the 1st Melakartha with a scale of S R1 G1 M1 P D1 N1 S and end with Rasikapriya as the 72nd Melakartha with a scale of S R3 G3 M2 P D3 N3 S.
The Melakartha ragas are arranged in 12 groups of 6 ragas each. The first 6 groups have M1 and the last 6 groups have M2. The first group starts with R1G1 and the next group has R1G2 and so on. Within each group the order goes as D1N1, D1N2, D1N3, D2N2, D2N3, D3N3. That is the sort order is basically M, RG group, DN group.
Given the Melakartha number it is possible to find out it's scale and vice versa. For ex 56th Melakartha means, this is in M2 group (since 56 > 36), it is in the 10th group (that is the 4th of the M2 ragas) and it is the 2nd within the group. That is it's scale will be S (R2 G2) M2 P (D1 N2) (This is the famous Shanmukapriya).

Another example:
What is the Melakartha number of S R2 G3 M1 P D1 N2 S
R2 G3 is the 5th group and D1 N2 is the 2nd raga in that group which means the number will be 4*6+2 = 26 (This is the raga Charukesi).
Here's a link to the Melakartha classification and the scales of all the 72 ragas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melakarta#Table_of_Melakarta_ragas

The ragas represented as piano keys can be seen at
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Melakarta_ragams_(svg)

A page with links to sample of ragas on the keyboard
http://www.carnaticindia.com/melakartha_ragas.html

Demos of various melakarthas
http://www.musicindiaonline.com/music/carnatic_vocal/s/artist.105/ Look for Melakartha in the title.