Ragas for times
of day
Click on the following links to listen to ragas for different times of day. Take notes on the differences you here in each of the music clips. Can you hear a difference? Do you understand why each clip is appropriate for the time of day or do you think they all sound the same?
Indian music is made up of many different microtones, which are sounds in between the notes we use in Western music. In Western music there are major scales and minor scales, and the notes are the same when going both up and down the scale. However, in Indian music there can be one set of notes going up and a different set coming down. The musician chooses which tonal scales, or ragas, are to be used. A raga is a choice of any twelve and a half tones played in a particular scale sequence. Each tone has its own special character. There must be at least five different tones, and no more than seven. There are an immense number of possibilities of scales and melodies that can be made. In addition to the raga, there are many complex rhythms that are used. Because they are so complex, many musicians have a stock of only about 18 or 20 ragas that they play regularly. Indian music is not written down. The musicians improvise and are free to create within the rules of the raga they are playing.
There are different ragas for each time of day and different ragas for each season. While Western music usually portrays a range of emotions, a raga focuses just on one, elaborating on it in great detail. Music is considered to be sacred in India, and is thought to be a kind of spiritual discipline that can create inner peacefulness. Some music is not religious, but is quite romantic, although there are some musicians who only sing for God.
