Hi Pd Users,

Thanks in advance.

My aim is to compose Indian Raga using Pd which sounds like Sitar.

May I request you to assist me for the following please.

• To do that what are the materials I need to follow
• I am looking for documentation (including technical) and any other literature
• Any other advice please

Once again, thank you very much for the time you have given.

Regards,

Deb

Hey Deb,

If you are not familiar with Pd, trying to create a synth (FM, physical modeling, etc) that realistically sounds like sitar is going to be a major endeavor. Not exactly a piece of cake, for a first Pd project.

Your best bet might be to find sitar samples used in some a sampler program, and find a way to use them in Pd.

Cheers
Samuel

Even sampling a sitar is pretty hard. Sitars have strings underneath that vibrate sympathetically to the ones you play. These will ring over new notes and are different depending on the frequencies present in the plucked strings. So imagine to do it accurately with sampling, you'd need different samples for the plucked strings and the resonating strings, and then you'd have to find a way to get the right resonating samples to play depending on what notes are plucked.

Physically modeling a sitar is something I've always wanted to try, but I've never gotten around to it. Presumably you can do it with waveguide synthesis, but you would also need to add something (some kind of disturbance in the feedback loop?) to get the jivari or buzzing sound. There's a little bit of information here about physically modeling sitars.

There might be simpler ways to get an approximation without physical modeling. I'm sure you could still convey the impression of Indian classical music in a warped electronic form using pretty simple synthesizers, like Charanjit Singh did with Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat from 1982.

Composing Indian Raga using Pd:

Named after Lord Shiva, the hoary Raga Kedar occupies a pride of place in the Hindustani pantheon and is much loved in the ranks of both the laity and the connoisseur. Its structure reveals a kaleidoscope of complex melodic gestures, conduct and richness of character. Seldom are the core values of Indian ragadari music united under one roof as they are in Kedar. To know this raga is to experience firsthand the genius and workings of a superior musical intelligence. In the hands of a master it dispenses food for the soul; in lesser climes it can be intolerable.

Raga Kedar is of ancient vintage and finds representation in every conceivable genre: dhrupad, dhamar, khayal, thumri and so on. Its abstract nature makes it notoriously resistant to capture on paper. By “abstract” we mean that it is not a scalar raga, amenable to reconstruction with linear aroha-avarohi phrases. There is much more to it than merely piecing together and summing up a group of tonal clusters.

such a perfect spam, i dare not delete it.

Yes, lovely )

Composing Indian Raga using Pd:

A raga is a melodic recipe for a mood. In Hindustani (North Indian) classical music, each raga has certain moods associated with it, and usually has a specific time of day and/or season in which it is meant to be played. Raga could be described as a "super scale" using a set of notes in ascending (arohi) and descending (avarohi) order, sometimes including prescribed alternate or zig zag routes (vakra chal), a hierarchy of note importance including king notes (vadi) and prime minister notes (samvadi) a fourth or fifth apart, and a key phrase that shows the heart of the movement of the raga (pakar).

This ancient system is both an art and a science of how musical notes create certain moods. Western music also recognizes that note order and hierarchy create a mood, with some theory texts noting that songs in major keys tend to communicate happiness while songs in minor keys show a feeling of sadness. But the rags show precisely how to create a specific mood. The recipe for each raga holds the key to an unlimited number of potential melodies, each perpetuating the mood or rasa contained in the raga, but each a unique work of art.

Study of this system can be of great benefit to any composer or improvising musician.

Ravikiran has composed and presented several concerts with top caliber artistes from many parts of the world featuring melharmony. He has arranged several melharmonic pieces for performances by full sized, medium sized or chamber orchestras. Some of these are in collaboration with composers such as Prof Robert Morris and Charles Demuynck, Toronto, Canada.

Ravikiran's melharmonic compositions endeavours to enrich both melodic and harmonic systems. Flavoured with exciting and often highly original rhythmic patterns, his compositions have started blazing a new trail in world music. One of his creations, Ujjwal, a full-fledged, first of its kind 45-minute long Melharmonic Concerto was presented in the Swar Utsav Festival at India Gate, New Delhi to an audience close to 20,000 people.

Melharmonic concerts in cities such as Boston, London, New Delhi, Toronto, Mumbai, San Jose, Austin (TX), Chennai, Bangalore, Tulsa (OK) at times in collaboration with top calibre artistes and groups from diverse parts of the world have also won plaudits.

yep, that one's staying as well.

from what I know there are PD patches for this, but you need to have the stk library installed:
https://ccrma.stanford.edu/software/stk/classstk_1_1Sitar.html
http://ydegoyon.free.fr/software.html
Stksitar~/Stkdrone~ : indian music synthesis requiring STK library
( http://www-ccrma.stanford.edu/software/stk/ ).
Based on raggamatic/STK written by Perry R. Cook.

previously discussed here: http://puredata.hurleur.com/sujet-3696-stk-library