How to read notations in Carnatic music

Often music notes confuse us with the punctuation marks, upper case and lower case letters. In this post I have tried to explain most commonly used punctuation marks and tala symbols.

Punctuation marks:

, A comma indicates the space of one akshara kala or note.

; A semi colon represents two akshara kalas or space for 2 notes

Upper case letters e.g. S indicates two akshara kalas .In this example, two shadjas. Some websites also use upper case to denote upper octave swara. Note the difference in shadjas in the example below.

e.g. s r g m p d n S

Lower case notes- Just one akshara kala or note

l A simple vertical line represents the end of an angha. Be it a laghu,dhruta or anudhruta

ll Double vertical parallel lines indicate the end of an avarta of tala

– A hyphen is mostly used in varnas just to indicate how the swaras need to be split within the tala. You can see this mostly in Ganamrudha varna bodhini. They indicate where to give pause within the boundary of the tala.

Underlines: Underlines indicate that the swaras should be sung together and faster within a particular beat

Wavy lines: These are rarely used to indicate that the notes should have gamakas

Dots: A dot below a swara indicates a lower note and a dot above the swara indicates higher note. “s” without the dot denotes the adhara shadja or base shadja of our shruti. “s” with a dot above shows upper shadja. “p” with a dot below is the lower p below the adhara shadja.

Tala marks:

X : An mark indicates a beat
: A tick indicates flipping of palm

Numbers: Numbers 1, 2, 3 are used to indicate finger counts

1.A simple example of Adi tala. Each beat/finger count has 4 swaras. Adamodigalade is the lyric by Thyagaraja.

X            1                      2                    3                       X                                     X                   

P ;           D- P                ; M                G R                |  G- gr               S – R          G , – m          P  M                ||

A            da  mo               – di                Gala         de Ra-  –    may          yya  Maa               –    ta 

 

2.An example of deshadi tala:

; ;            ; G                P , g                ; R                | S ;                ;   sn               P – ns                R S                 ||

–  –          – Ra               ghunaa               – ya           ka !         –   Nee  –    Paa-    –  da

REF: http://www.shivkumar.org

Given below is another example with the tala notation ( could’n make a clear image).This is a Dikshidar kriti in Rupaka Tala. Each beat counts 4 swaras. Please note this example covers most of what I mentioned above.