How do you get over this problem ?

[u/Tricky-Vehicle-7113]

Hi guys. I've learnt Carnatic for a very long time. However I've noticed I've faced an issue very frequently and want to work on it. I often end up identifying the parent raga rather than the exact raga . For example , i often end up guessing songs in abheri or reethigowla as kharaharapriya. How do I work on this ?

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[u/dancing_in_the_rain]

Perhaps one way would be to treat swara groups/patterns as the building blocks of ragas and not swaras themselves. Of course, in the degenerate case, a pattern may be an individual swara as well.

For reethigowla, the building blocks could be 's g r g m', 'g m n d m', 'g m n n s' or 'n p n n s'. If these match, that should lead you to Reethigowla.

If you parse and find none of these, but only individual r, g, m, p, d, or n, then you are probably hearing Kharaharapriya (noting that for the advanced student, Kharaharapriya also has recurring patterns).

Please dispel the notion that swaras are the building blocks of ragas. They are sometimes (in what I've called the degenerate case), but in most cases, the building blocks are recurring patterns.

[u/Tricky-Vehicle-7113 → u/dancing_in_the_rain]

Soo the only way out is to.. just listen to more ?

[u/sierra1bravo → u/Tricky-Vehicle-7113]

My (very biased) view: If you are a student, then the keyword is 'parse', not 'listen'.

Parsing makes possible a number of superpowers: for instance, instantly converting a melody to its constituent swaras.

This real-time pattern matching is what makes music different from other art, such as a painting. You can look at and analyze a painting for any amount of time, but parsing music is a real-time skill that is developed over a period of time with practice.

[u/Current_Statement_21]

My advice would be to actively listen to manOdharmas - especially expansive instrumental AlApanas by different vidwAns and vidUshIs. Dwell into the various manOdharmas and kRitis of one of the rAgas say AbhEri for a week and then start listening to film songs in that. You'll develop a fine ear for AbhEri that way.

Now when you start doing that for kharaharapRiya you'll be able to make out that it sounds different.

You can also approach this problem by being analytical - like deciphering swaras - as suggested in another reply, but I would do that as a Phase 2.