In case it didn’t catch your attention, lookout for the small audio icon that has cropped up next to the raga title in our app. Clicking that will now play the notes of the displayed raga via MIDI, making it even more easy to explore carnatic or hindustani ragas and get familiar with their sound. Now you can start with ragas that you know, find others that are similar to them (hint: use the note/interval filter) and then start listening to how they sound, all without even picking up your instrument!
Its just an acoustic grand piano sound for now (even for guitar), turns out I am a bit lazy when it comes to hunting down a good sound font file for guitar and then getting it converted to a midi.js compatible format and then using it. If you stumble across something available on the web, please drop me a note and I will get it added to the guitar app.
The idea to add sound to the raga app came up when I stumbled upon the awesome MIDI.js. This nifty JS plugin lets you manipulate anything from simple midi notes to complex tracks and even supports plugged-in visualizations. Check out mudcube’s page for a more psychedelic experience of midi. And talking about midi in the world of indian classical music, I also came across ragam roll, which uses MIDI.js and lets you generate and play back midi files starting from carnatic notation!
So why not dive right into the midi-fied raga app and start listening to the sound of ragas that you were too lazy to try out with your instrument!
Edit: As an after thought, I went ahead and added MIDI playback for chords also (just click the speaker icon to the left of the note dragging pin). Seems like a neat idea to play the raga notes and also superimpose the chord sound on it. Makes it simpler to experiment instead of shuttling between the mouse and your instrument. Thinking in that direction, I also modified the raga notes to keep playing in a loop. So just let the notes play while you try out chords over it either via MIDI or using your instrument