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World Music Day

Music is the shorthand of emotion
-Leo Tolstoy

           We can't imagine a world without music. Music is in our blood. It is not only humans, but other living beings also react to music. It is a fact that termites work faster when music is on. All living beings react to the vibrations produced by objects, whether it be music instruments or other.


Any sound that has a rhythm, we can call music, i don't know whether most of you would agree with me. But in simple words music should be able to convey the mood to audience. That is why some says 'silence is music', every one knows the kind of feel silence conveys. Every living soul will react to good music. Actually speaking, every living being react to music in different ways as different brains interpret the same sound differently. However the impact of sound waves on brain is formidable. We react to the frequencies differently, as our approx. audible frequency (AF) range is 20 to 20,000 Hz. The frequencies above and below AF is rather felt than heard, we all know about the shock waves, the only difference is that,unlike ordinary sound waves, the speed of a shock wave varies with its amplitude.

If we talk about Indian Classical music, it would take years to conclude, because it is as vast as the ocean. We have basically two branches of classical music here, one is Carnatic (South India) and the other is Hindustani (North India). Indian Classical Music is based on 'ragas' which makes our music special and gives a haunting mood. A particular 'raga' can be improvised or personalised depending on the musician. It gives our music flexibility. We have ragas for morning and evening. With the help of ragas we can describe the particular mood or the feel of a situation like calmness, sadness, happiness etc.

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