Generative AI and Carnatic Music

Part 1: Discovering New Ragas?

Guru Namaskaram:

My heartfelt respects to my dear teachers of Carnatic Music:

Sri Amrithabharathy ( Violin ) - Trichy, Tamilnadu, India

Sri Shanmugam (Vocal) -?Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Sri Guitar Prasanna?(Vocal) - Boston, MA, USA

Mr. Brett Manning (Speech Level Singing, Vocal Coach) - Nashville, TN, USA

Padmavibhushan Dr. M. Balamuralikrishna (Vocal) - Chennai, Tamilnadu, India

It has been my good fortune to have learnt the beautiful art of Carnatic Music from great and kind teachers named above.?I have been fortunate enough to have as my last teacher, Chevalier des Arts, Padmavibhushan, Mangalampalli Dr. Balamuralikrishna.?Not only as a great composer of Carnatic Music and a brilliant vocal performer with a truly gifted voice, Guru-ji was well known for having discovered and named new #Ragas ( with 4 notes and even 3 notes in the ascending and descending scale), some of which he has taught me through his own compositions. ?

With the advent of Generative AI, and inspired by his discoveries, this is a small experiment to see how Large Language Models (LLM) can help discover new Ragas to potentially add to the rich repertoire of Ragas in Carnatic Music and to further compose Sahityas (Lyrics) and Thillanas (Bharathanatyam numbers) in these new Ragas.

Consider the following LLM Prompts and the response of a GenAI model:

Prompt 1:?

Create a Carnatic Music Raga with 4 notes with a joyful mood. ?Then name this new Raga based on its mood.?Ensure that this Raga with its ascending and descending scales should be both new and unique.?Finally provide the western notation of this Raga for its Arohana and Avarohana.

LLM response 1:?

Let's create a new Carnatic Music Raga with a joyful mood using four notes. We'll use the following notes: Sa, Ga, Ma, and Pa. This combination often creates a sense of joy and brightness.?Based on its mood, we could name this new raga "Haripriya," derived from the Sanskrit words "Hari," meaning joyful or blissful, and "Priya," meaning beloved or pleasing. So, let's call this new raga "Haripriya."

Here's the Arohana and Avarohana of Raga Haripriya in Western notation:

Arohana: C E G A

Avarohana: A G E C

Prompt 2:?

Create a Carnatic Music Raga with 6 notes with a serene mood. ?Then name this new Raga based on its mood.?Ensure that this Raga with its ascending and descending scales should be both new and quite unique.?Finally provide the western notation of this Raga for its Arohana and Avarohana.

LLM response 2:?

Let's create a new Carnatic Music Raga with a serene mood using six notes. We'll use the following notes: Sa, Ri, Ga, Ma, Dha, and Ni. This combination often evokes a peaceful and calm feeling.?Based on its mood, we could name this new raga "Shantiraga," derived from the Sanskrit word "Shanti," meaning peace or tranquility. So, let's call this new raga "Shantiraga."

Here's the Arohana and Avarohana of Raga Shantiraga in Western notation:

Arohana: C D E G A B

Avarohana: B A G E D C

This may be just simple examples of the beginning of Human-AI creation in Fine Arts and the coming together of a long-living and beautiful form of Music and the modern age of AI.

If you can sing or play in your favorite melodic instrument, the above notes of the two generated Ragas, Haripriya and Shantiraga, check to see if they truly induce a joyful and serene mood, respectively.

Prince Rama Varma Shobhit Varshney Sandhya Ranganathan Iyer Ambhi Ganesan Shridhar Pandit Daniel Kurtz Bruce Tyler Manish Goyal Satish Hiranandani Jeevan Duggempudi Arun Venkatesan Suresh Subramanian Narayanan Subramaniam Roop Kiran Guduri Arul Arasan Stephen Bonner Mahogany K. Mead Andrea Dobrindt Mark Freeman Catherine Reese Bill Comtois Sridhar Jonnala Dr. Saigeetha Jegannathan Sumeet Parashar, PhD Shankar Iyer Prakash Ramachandran Raj Iyer, Ph.D.