Karthik Srinivasan / is on Nostr

I am a systems, and computational neuroscientist at MIT.

Primary research work is on the neurophysiology and computational modeling on visual attention, eye movements, and executive functions and the theory of neural networks.

Interests span math, science, history, politics, economics, and philosophy.

Last Notes

2024-01-15 02:37:14

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@npub1knz…c73p
I was trained on it as a singer till high school. As you may know about the Indian tradition, it was all by hearing and aural-oral passing. Only later, after I stopped learning/singing and well into college, did it feel like there is group structure etc., to all this
The wiki on it is a good start:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graha_bhedam
I also found this blog from wayback.
https://nvijayanand.blogspot.com/2007/05/partitioning-melakarta-ragas-into.html

2024-01-15 01:25:10

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@npub1knz…c73p
Thanks for the article!
yeah... what's the genus (janya) for a raga is not always very clear/in contention. Some double count it, others are stricter as to what is the parent. And for some, it is hard to assign just one parent, since many compositions/ideas for them have come from both the supposed parent (for eg., major pentatonic Mohanam can be both Ionian (Shankarabharanam) and Lydian (Kalyani)).
The graha/sruti bedham group theory is definitely one of my favorite parts to emerge from the classification structure... including for example (I am using western mode names here) the most common western modes, Ionian-Lydian-Phrygian-Aeolian-Dorian-Mixolydian forming a cyclic group.
And then there are a few which are total isolates. So what do category theory people call such structures, where some elements from subgroups, and some don't. Groupoids? Magma?
I have wanted to build this into an illustrative chart for a long time, but never managed to (more like lazy).

2024-01-15 00:38:40

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@npub1knz…c73p
In carnatic music (the South Indian counterpart), we have the Melakarta classification... which is more complete than the thaat system vis-a-vis the 12 tone scale in western music, and it has 36*2 =72, 7 note scales/ragas. All of them have western modal counterparts and more. We also have compositions and expositions in all of the 72 and their derived/children ragas.
There are also group/permutation structures (graha/sruti bedham, i.e., base pitch shifts) to transform one raga to another. Leaving certain notes out (like having only pentatonic for example), gives rise to janya (child/originating from one of the 72) ragas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melakarta

2023-08-19 21:53:35

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@npub1mev…sf0a
Also, the only cosmology and milk combination reference in India that I am aware of is the churning of Kshira Sagara (ocean of milk), which is paal kadal in tamil, that gave rise to our universe, life and immortality. That is, Indian version of the big bang.