In Indian tradition, music is a combination of three separate art forms:
1. Singing
2. Playing and
3. Dancing

These art forms are learned and performed through Raag and Taal. ‘Raag’ is the dictator of melody and the ‘Taal’ is the dictator of Rhythm. In addition, melody is the product of sound and the rhythm is product of time. Therefore, ‘the music is the art of manipulating the ‘sound’ through ‘time’.

The time affects music in two different ways. First through rhythm is obvious. However, the time is also at work producing the musical sounds that are useful in melody. The universe is full of sounds, but every sound is not musical.

Therefore, the next question is, what is a musical sound?
Each sound can have two segments:


1. The strike and
2. The resonance

In Hindi, these are known as ‘Aghaat’ and ‘Kampan.’ The strike is not a musical sound, but its resonance is. Let’s explore that further. When an object is hit, the first movement it creates in the air is not musical. After the initial strike, the object either will resonate at a fixed frequency or will stand still. If the object creates a tone at a fixed frequency, that tone can be useful in music. Without that resonance the sound will be nothing more than a ‘tick.’

In Sanskrit, these are known as ‘RaNit’ and ‘AnuraNit.’ The ‘AnuraNit’ is the mother of Sharuties.

Now the question is, how long this resonance has to be?
Musically speaking, it has to be long enough so our brain can register it as a musical sound. With the damper on, you can run your hand on a piano keyboard as fast as you can and brain still registers the pitches. Therefore, the length has to be in mere milliseconds. Nowadays if you use a digital audio editor, keep cutting a wave file of a single note, eventually it loses its tone. At that point, it becomes an unmusical ‘strike’ or a click. All those who work with digital editors know that there is an annoying ‘tick’ hidden in the beginning of every pleasant sound. The minimum length of a note varies with the frequency. Naturally, higher the frequency, sooner the note is detected.

The sages of music knew these things without the help of DAWs thousands of years ago.

When more than one frequency is present in the air, they interact with each other. Their vibrations overlap. The sound changes. Some frequencies compliment each other and others do not. The intervals of notes in an octave are directly related to their power to influence the other frequencies.

The enlightened ones have recognized this effect equally all around the world. One way or the other, they set up the notes that share similar frequencies. In India, the practice of setting up the note intervals was based on Sharuties. We will start to explore the ‘Sharuti System’ in the next post.

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