Symmetric, pentatonic ragas are fun to play and experiment with, since most lend themselves to a great deal of experimentation. Maybe its just me, but my initial explorations of audava ragas was rather restricted. Although guided by some knowledge of the popular ones, I was (and still am) largely oblivious to most. The ones I have tried include Abhogi, Mohanam, Hamsadhwani and Amrutavarshini.
During the past week, I have been trying to play a few more pentatonic ragas. Here are a few I tried out:
Madhyamavati:
[audio http://philramble.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/madhyamavati4.mp3]
A popular pentatonic raga that I first heard in Nagumomu Galavani, a composition of Thyagraja.
Revati:
[audio http://philramble.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/revati.mp3]
This is a raga I played in a sort of jam session without realizing I was playing it, and then discovered it was Revati. I don’t know if the usage of the swaras is correct, since I haven’t heard a song in it, but here goes.
Another Shuddha Dhanyasi:
[audio http://philramble.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/shuddhadhanyasi.mp3]
This is one of my favourite ragas. Hopefully a better one than this kriti I tried a few months back.
I hope to try some kritis in Revati. The ragam sounds positively deep. Also hope to try other pentatonic scales such as Sunadavinodini (which sounds rather like Hamsanandi). I tried Hindolam tons of times, but it seems to need a little more polish than I can give it at the moment.
3 Comments
February 4, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Khoob bhalo! I think the Revathi is the best, very soothing the playing is. Having said that, please do attempt a kriti the next time round.
Madhywamawati would have been so much better with the ‘clinch phrases’. Every ragam as them and I am told that Thyagaraja did a swell job of capturing the essence of a raga in the very first line of his pallavi-s.
Keep going dude! Its very encouraging for people like me to see music action on a blog
Cheers
February 6, 2009 at 3:09 am
hey nice playing! all 3 are good!
February 6, 2009 at 10:45 am
Thanks Carpe Diem and Sumi. And yes, I should probably attempt kritis in full sometime. I’m working on it!