Example 1: Vasuchakra
Raga modal harmony is an attempt to extend Berklee's modal harmony concepts to South Indian music scales (ragas, or melas). The Berklee method deals exclusively with the Greek modes, assigning to each one of them a characteristic pitch (CP). This characteristic pitch is one of the forming pitches of the tritone, and it gives the characteristic sound to each mode. All possible tertian and quartal chords formed on each of the pitches of the mode are evaluated in terms of their stability and whether they contain the characteristic pitch. Some people have tried to extend this to other scales (see here). My approach is an attempt to exhaustively examine all possible modes included in the melakarta scheme.
Now, the tricky part: what is the characteristic pitch in scales that can potentially contain up to 3 tritones? This is where I had to make a personal, and probably temporal, concession. I just called characteristic pitches all pitches other than the tonic chord (of 3 stacked thirds). A discussion of what pitches in a raga actually make it recognisable is difficult at many levels. To begin with, a raga is much more than a collection of pitches; it is almost like a living entity, a world of musical possibilities that includes special ornaments, combinations of pitches, characteristic phrases, times of that day and moods it is associated with, etc...
So, instead of selecting or rejecting chords on the basis of whether they included or not the CP, I decided a better solution was to enumerate how many of the CPs each particular chord contained. The more CPs a chord has, the better it represents the raga.
Following this method, almost all chords contain a CP. So I decided that, for a chord to be considered as cadential, it would have to contain at least two CPs. Those that contain 3 are most effective (with are those based on the 2nd and the 7th scale degree).
Chords are also classified in terms of their stability. Unstable chords are those that contain augmented or diminished intervals (tritone, augmented 5th, etc).
So, the most sought after chords should be stable, cadential chords. A raga could also be presented as the combination of 2 chords: the tonic chord and the best cadential chord available. This is the way composers like Aka Moon's Fabrizio Cassol explain the scales to jazz musicians. It is definitely much more manageable to think in terms of 2 chords than in a 7-tone scale, especially when soloing.
What about quartal chords, pervasive in modern jazz? My rule was to consider those that contained the following pitch combinations
- major 3rd + sharp 11th
- minor 3rd + 11th
- 4th + 5th
So, I guess the rule was that I considered those quartal chords that showed soome rootedness through the existence of either the 3rd or the 5th. Those with 4,6 or 2,4 were not considered because they would probably be best considered as inversions. Neither did I consider those with semitone between the 4th and the 5ht or the 3rd.
Finally, the 7 sus 4 chord I consider as semistable. Those chords with a tritone or a half tone are considered unstable.
This is a work in progress, which will be published in due time. As an appetizer, here is the analysis of the 8 possible ragas containing the chakra (lower tetrachord) Vasu (1, b2, b3b, #11), one of my favorite chakras.
Raga modal harmony is an attempt to extend Berklee's modal harmony concepts to South Indian music scales (ragas, or melas). The Berklee method deals exclusively with the Greek modes, assigning to each one of them a characteristic pitch (CP). This characteristic pitch is one of the forming pitches of the tritone, and it gives the characteristic sound to each mode. All possible tertian and quartal chords formed on each of the pitches of the mode are evaluated in terms of their stability and whether they contain the characteristic pitch. Some people have tried to extend this to other scales (see here). My approach is an attempt to exhaustively examine all possible modes included in the melakarta scheme.
Now, the tricky part: what is the characteristic pitch in scales that can potentially contain up to 3 tritones? This is where I had to make a personal, and probably temporal, concession. I just called characteristic pitches all pitches other than the tonic chord (of 3 stacked thirds). A discussion of what pitches in a raga actually make it recognisable is difficult at many levels. To begin with, a raga is much more than a collection of pitches; it is almost like a living entity, a world of musical possibilities that includes special ornaments, combinations of pitches, characteristic phrases, times of that day and moods it is associated with, etc...
So, instead of selecting or rejecting chords on the basis of whether they included or not the CP, I decided a better solution was to enumerate how many of the CPs each particular chord contained. The more CPs a chord has, the better it represents the raga.
Following this method, almost all chords contain a CP. So I decided that, for a chord to be considered as cadential, it would have to contain at least two CPs. Those that contain 3 are most effective (with are those based on the 2nd and the 7th scale degree).
Chords are also classified in terms of their stability. Unstable chords are those that contain augmented or diminished intervals (tritone, augmented 5th, etc).
So, the most sought after chords should be stable, cadential chords. A raga could also be presented as the combination of 2 chords: the tonic chord and the best cadential chord available. This is the way composers like Aka Moon's Fabrizio Cassol explain the scales to jazz musicians. It is definitely much more manageable to think in terms of 2 chords than in a 7-tone scale, especially when soloing.
What about quartal chords, pervasive in modern jazz? My rule was to consider those that contained the following pitch combinations
- major 3rd + sharp 11th
- minor 3rd + 11th
- 4th + 5th
So, I guess the rule was that I considered those quartal chords that showed soome rootedness through the existence of either the 3rd or the 5th. Those with 4,6 or 2,4 were not considered because they would probably be best considered as inversions. Neither did I consider those with semitone between the 4th and the 5ht or the 3rd.
Finally, the 7 sus 4 chord I consider as semistable. Those chords with a tritone or a half tone are considered unstable.
This is a work in progress, which will be published in due time. As an appetizer, here is the analysis of the 8 possible ragas containing the chakra (lower tetrachord) Vasu (1, b2, b3b, #11), one of my favorite chakras.
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