Sridevi Ramesh

INNOVATIVE CARNATIC MUSIC CHAKRA An attempt to make Carnatic music familiar and enable better understanding among music lovers has been made by an IIT-Madras Post Graduate. L.S. Ramesh has designed an innovative Carnatic music chakra (Sri Saraswathi 72 Melakarta chakra) after more than six years of effort, to help lay people, without any music knowledge to �easily see, learn and play Carnatic music, Western as well as Hindustani music. The 72 Melakarta (Main Ragas) have been neatly depicted in the form of a chakra (wheel) wherein the ragas are clearly shown as �dots on the keyboard�. Playing the dots on your keyboard will bring out the melody of the raga. Carnatic Music (South Indian classical ) is a veritable ocean by itself and Venkatamakhi (Indian Musicologist) is credited with classifying the various scales (ragas) into 72 categories which are again classified as belonging to various Chakras (wheels) named as Indu chakra (Indu (moon), Netra Chakra (Netra -eyes) etc. totaling 12 chakras. Each chakra represents six major ragas. All these can be played on your keyboard by yourself, says Ramesh. Many Carnatic ragas have their counterparts in western music. For example Keeravani raga, which is numbered 21 and falls under the Veda Chakra has its equivalent as �Harmonic Minor.� Kalyani raga in Hindustani is called Mecha Kalyani � Melakarta 65 in Carnatic. Bilaval raga in Hindustani is called Dheerashankarabharanam � Melakarta 29 in Carnatic. Similarly other ragas in Hindustani have their equivalents in Carnatic. The money generated from sale of this �SriSaraswathi 72 Melakarta� chart will be used to help the less-privileged children through FACES (Food, Aid, Clothing, Education , Shelter), a voluntary service started by Ramesh and his wife Sridevi.