Indian solfege notations

[Maha-Rajan]

What this app has provided to me is so much that i felt bad asking this feature request.

But i think it might help a lot of indian people out...

It would be nice to change the solfege notations with different ones..

Like change each word to something else

Do.... சா Re.... ரீ Mi... கா Fa.... மா

These are not literal translation but notations in my language based upon Indian classical music practice..

We use

Do... Sa Re... Ri Mi... Ga Fa... Ma

So is there a possibility of working this into the app while not messing up with too many settings.

And thanks a lot of this beautifully designed application... Hope one for metronome in future

[thetwom]

Thanks for the interest in your app. Feel free to have any feature request, I just can't promise to fulfill them :-).

Your request seems a difficult one, but lets elaborate a bit to understand:

• Is this first translations list language specific with the direct translations of Do, Re, Mi, ...? In this case you could "just" provide a new translations file for the given language, but this would mean translate not only Do, Re, Mi, but the whole app.
• Or are your suggestions more something like a personal taste, which can vary from person to person, family to family, school to school? In this case one would need kind of an editor which allows to use personal translations directly within the app. This would be quite a lot of work.
• Or is this a more or less "official" Indian notation way, an Indian "Do-Re-Mi", which is widely used. In this case, we could think of giving one more notation option. The latest RC v5.4.0-rc1 is already a step in this direction by providing three different "notation styles". But I hope you understand, that extending this list only makes sense if it widely used since otherwise the list of notation styles would become too long at some time and be of no help anymore.
• As a last option there is of course always the option to fork your personal version, were you can simply replace the "do-re-mi"-translations to something of your personal taste and compile for your own use ... but I understand that this is not really good way forward.

[Maha-Rajan]

Thank you for your response. I realized it would be so much confusing for someone who is not familiar with this to understand. To explain it short India has two classical music systems.

Hindustani and Carnatic.

Both these systems have official solfege that is different from the western system. I have tried my best to represent the notation styles here.

C - Sa D♭ - Ri₁ (Carnactic) or Re₁ (Hindustani) D - Ri₂ (Carnactic) or Re₂ (Hindustani) E𝄫 - Ga₁ D♯ Ri₃ (Carnactic) or Re₃ (Hindustani) E♭ -Ga₂ E - Ga₃ F - Ma₁ F♯ - Ma₂ G - Pa A♭ - Dha₁ A - Dha₂ B𝄫 - Ni₁ A♯ - Dha₃ B♭ - Ni₂ B - Ni₃

I'll provide Wiki Article for more understanding.

And you are right I can always try to fork the project. let me try my hands at it. thank you for this app.

[thetwom]

Thanks a lot for these explanations. So, first of all, it does not really seem confusing, but "just" two other notation systems. Naively, when I started the app, I guessed that musical notation systems are mostly similar around the world, and to honest, I wasn't even aware of Do-Re-Mi-... :-).

Learning of these notation systems, I guess, forking wouldn't help much at the moment, since you would need modify some logic in the app. Maybe I can try during the next weeks and see if I can generalize it a bit better. And then we still can talk about if this can find its way into the official app, or if forking would be more appropriate. Two more notation systems don't sound that bad, especially if they are well known.

[Maha-Rajan]

Wow thats too kind of you... I'm not a developer so forking and changing the logic to make something work would be impossible as me trying to sing in high register so probably if you could work something into this it would be nice. But then again I don't want you to carry out this task just for me.. maybe have a poll or suggestions in your social media or with your friends if this would provide value.

This would provide extended support by being inclusive to different styles.

[thetwom]

I am not in the position to tell how important such a feature is. Also, reaching out for polls would be interesting but at the same time is annoying :-).

So I would better rely on your judgement, since you obviously know much better about Indian culture. Talking to my friends would be not representative at all :-).

You don't really carry the task to me. I have no pressure since I can take all the time I want :-).

[Maha-Rajan]

Well if that's the case, who doesn't want more cultural inclusiveness in a well designed app...

Go fo it... 🤗 Take your time...

[thetwom]

Maybe you can help me out in understanding the notation better. In Carnatic seem to be to be multiple names for the same note (e.g. Ri2/Ga1). So what should be used?

[Maha-Rajan]

The reason we have two solfege of the same note is kind of similar to the usage of sharp and flat for the same note depending on the context. The context here being the Ragas (Classical modes)...

So Without much confusion the best possible way to implement this style of notation is just to show both at the same time..

C - Sa C♯ - Ri₁ D - Ri₂ | Ga₁ D♯ - Ga₂| Ri₃ E - Ga₃ F - Ma₁ F♯ - Ma₂ G - Pa G♯ - Dha₁ A - Dha₂ | Ni₁ A♯ - Ni₂ | Dha₃ B - Ni₃

This would be easy for understanding and implementing... This is for Carnatic . The only thing that would change for Hindustani is (Ri₁Ri₂Ri₃) would be (Re₁Re₂Re₃) and the rest would be same... I hope this helps...

[thetwom]

Thanks for the quick reply. Unfortunately, this makes the implementation much more difficult. I don't want to show both notes at the same time for two reasons: 1. it is not as quick to recognize since there is twice as much "text" as needed, 2. it needs more space and this becomes more difficult to keep everything aligned.

We could think of switching the two formulations with the flat/sharp switch, but also this needs some extra treatment, since e.g. D has two names, which stays unchanged over flat/sharp switches. But I guess, this can be solved.

Then I realized the subscripts/underlines might be not as easy as I hoped ... so quite a few challenges. So, I have to see, when I find the time to really tackle all this issues ... not as quick as I has hoped :-(

[Maha-Rajan]

yes, the length and the subscripts would be a pain to get right. no sad faces. I'm glad that you took your time to find a solution. maybe someday someone else could find a better solution for this mess in our notation system.

[thetwom]

not saying, I won't manage it ... but at least it will be not as quick as I was hoping for ...

[thetwom]

Ok, I took some time and tried to get it working. Maybe you can try this version and give feedback: v6.1.0-rc1

The different notes are switched with the prefer-flat setting (or the shortcut at the bottom right).

[Maha-Rajan]

I woke up with your notification on my e-mail and i just tried it out. This is the best thing that i have woken up to for a long time. This would have taken a lot of time and labour. Thanks a lot for this. The implementation is not what I expected how it should function but i can live with it.

[Maha-Rajan]

On second thought i believe there is a better solution with this. I'll try to provide it in the next 2 days and list out the pros and cons of it. You can decide to change or release this to the stable build.

[thetwom]

Thanks a lot for testing! Indeed, before you are just "living with it", please let my know your experience, what you expected, what is annoying, ... . Maybe there is the chance of improving it.

[Maha-Rajan]

Hey I asked around with my music teacher and other Indian music students and in conclusion they to felt the implementation could be changed. These are the changes that we agreed upon...

1. There need not be two options such as Hindustani and Carnatic in the notation option rather just one called "Indian Solfege" as the only difference between Carnatic and Hindustani is (Ri) is replaced with (Re).

2. Having Sharp and flat as an option is non-functional in both these systems so we could replace ( ♯/♭ ) with ( C/H ) if "Indian Solfege" is selected. which will fix the issue of removing the two notation options on the settings page while eliminating the non-functional sharp/flat option.

   3. And finally the functionality the sharp and flat provided to change between Ri1,Ri2,Ri3 to Ga1,Ga2,Ga3 could be more simplified as most of time it depends on the Classical modes which is irrelevant to the functionality this app is providing.

So the revised one would be as follows...

C - Sa C♯ - Ri₁ D - Ri₂ D♯ - Ga₁ E - Ga₂ F - Ma₁ F♯ - Ma₂ G - Pa G♯ - Dha₁ A - Dha₂ A♯ - Ni₁ B - Ni₂

The C/H option that will replace the ♯/♭ when Indian Solfege is selected will change Ri (Carnatic) to Re (Hindustani)...

That felt a lot 😅... Hope this help...

[thetwom]

Thanks a lot for the feedback. Before I adapt the app, please help me to better understand the situation and also allow to to describe my view ... :-). It is often much more efficient doing a change where you really understand the motivation in contrast to just following some ideas :-).

1. So I understand that different note names are not important for a tuner, since it depends on the context of the musical piece, and this is not given for a tuner. So, the suggestion to have no flat/sharp switch behaviour seems evident :-).
2. "We need no different option for Carnatic/Hindustani, but can reuse the sharp/flat switch as a "flavour" switch." In principle I can follow the idea, but on the other side I wonder why we should do that. Obviously Carnatic and Hindustani are different notations, so why not treat them like that? Do you think it puts too much weight on Indian notations if we have two notation options? Is it needed to switch quickly between the two notations systems? Or are there other reasons?
3. In one of the previous posts you wrote, that the current way is "not what I expected how it should function but I can live with it". I am really interested to understand what you originally expected. Changing the current way to the newly proposed way seems just like minor adjustments, so I wonder whether the missed expectations were just these details or if there is more?

Now, please let me express some doubts and please share your view on these:

• "Change the sharp/flat switch to Hindustani/Carnatic." While this seems like a good solution at first glance, it spreads one issue over two different places. So there is not a single place to set the notation, but two: The notation itself (Indian solfege) and the flavour. For an UI view I would say that we should keep things at the same place, when they are about the same issue. That is why I wonder, why you would replace Hindustani/Carnatic with just Indian.
• There is one more thing about this switch, which I don't fully now how to deal with it: There are temperaments with more than 12 notes. The notation, the app is using, follows some specific modifier rules based on sharp/flat and more symbols. So this leads to the question, how to deal with this. Probably musicians, using these exotic temperaments deal with western notation anyway and we don't have to care. But at the moment the Indian notations are just mixed with the sharp/flat symbols, which at least makes this working (but might not make sense). For that, the flat/sharp switch then has still a meaning. Arguably, this might not make sense anyway, but at least it is still consistent.
• Apart from non-12-note temperaments I understand, that having the flat/sharp switch does not make sense at all, so it is annoying and we probably should remove it in this case.

Looking forward to your feedback ...

[thetwom]

What I currently don't understand: The notation you give earlier seem to be inconsistent with the later ones. E.g. before, you were saying D# - Ga2 | Ri3, but later you say D# - Ga1. So is this later notation more Hindustani style?

[Maha-Rajan]

I'm extremely sorry... I didn't realise you had asked a question before. How stupid of me. I'll answer both the previous and the current question in detail as much as possible in the next 24hr....

Again I'm extremely sorry... I do not keep track of notifications a lot and i might have slipped on the previous question.

And, Thank you for still reaching out...

[thetwom]

No worries. I am in no hurry and it is totally clear that sometimes we miss messages ...

Take the time you need for answering.

[Maha-Rajan]

Thanks for your patience. I completely agree with your take on the issues the changes might bring.

1. Having two places to choose the notation would be not intuitive so perhaps the correct way is the way it's already been done. Having them be chosen on the settings page. But as you said the sharp/ flat will be of no use apart from the fact it will look consistent over different temperament styles. The reason i felt both the notation could be grouped together as just Indian solfege is because it seemed too prevalent in the settings even though the difference between them exist on linguistic/ cultural differences. So yes having them seperate does make sense.

2. It's not inconsistent as both are true. And it kinda does look it's closer to hindustani style in some context.

Let me explain it as much as possible

How many notes are there in Carnatic/Hindustani music?

(7 ) - Pure Notes (C,D,E,F,G,A,B) (Sa,Ri,Ga,Ma,Pa,Dha,Ni,)

(12) - equal temperament in an octave that is same as Western. And this is what someone who wants to tune their voice or instrument would use.

C - Sa , C♯ - Ri₁, D - Ri₂, D♯ - Ga₁, E - Ga₂, F - Ma₁, F♯ - Ma₂, G - Pa, G♯ - Dha₁, A - Dha₂, A♯ - Ni₁, B - Ni₂

(16) - This is kind of similar to Sharp/flat but with more rules that are followed in creating a Raga(~Mode). And you understood this is not something important for a tuner but why does the notation change? It's actually just for convience and not something etched in grammar

To give an example in some of the notation my teacher would give me or even i would write i don't write whether it's F(Ma1) or F♯(Ma2) I'll just write it as "Ma" without any numbers as i know the context already. So the notation are more flexible but their position in pitch is what matters.

The reason they are flexible is because both carnatic and hindustani style are taught more in a auditory sense that in a visual sense. So notation do not play a huge deal. So when we use notation for pitch identity we just use R1 and R2 but when we are creating modes we will use R1 R2 R3 both are correct it their own context. The reason it feels it's closer to hindustani is because they would not care a lot on the inconvenience of using R1 and R2 in a same mode. We usually take the convience and change the R2 as G1 again in western sense carnatic would use (C♯ D) but a hindustani would use (D D♭) again all this is in context of modes and for just pitch identity the 12 notes equal temperament is what we both use and in that we use the same notation style that I've mentioned above except for Ri being Re.

I hope it clears your questions...

[thetwom]

Thanks for the clarifications. Still hard to grasp, but in the end I will rely on your judgement :-). I adapted the notations and released it in v6.2.0. Should appear in play store and fdroid during the next days. Let me know when further improvements are required.

[Maha-Rajan]

Thanks a lot for this... It's perfect 👏... A small grudge with myself was i wasn't able to give proper clarification that's easy for you to understand.. but even we the practitioner sometime get confused a lot with our system of music as it's more in auditory sense passed down across generations of teachers and disciples... I wish we sometime had a well defined visual representation... But that's part of cultural differences... Anyways thanks a lot for this. nothing more that I could ask from my side...

May be I could suggest a song for you to get introduced to Carnatic music? I'll send a link to something that's palatable for you. This is a Carnatic Alternativa Rock song...

👋Bye