Raga is an ancient form of music, and I find myself continually drawn to its complex sounds. The sheer number of variations of sound a single raga can make is breathtaking. As a software developer who is enamored with music, I wanted to find a way to capture the essence of raga in an unusual setting, which led me to use Java as the programming language.
We can all relate to the intricate complexity of raga music, perhaps the greatest accomplishment of Western music theory and composition. Within the language of Java, I wanted to capture the essence of this style by experimenting with different possibilities of integration into the language.
Before I got started with the project, I had to look to the basics of Indian music and the Hindi language. To put it simply,a raga is a set of notes that are used to create musical compositions and melodies. Each raga uses specific scale intervals to create an aesthetic feeling within the melodies. Ragas are distinctive for their rules and traditions, and for this project, I chose to stick to a few basic ragas. Additionally, I also spent many hours of research gripping the basics of Hindi in order to better understand the traditional raga structure and scale.
The next step was to figure out how I could successfully build a a small program in Java that would reflect the originality and beauty of raga. In order to do this, I wrote a program that generated random melodies using the Hindi scale I had researched. By looping and overloading the code to generate random notes, I built a production-ready program that created sections of raga music.
My journey through the programming process was a huge success. Not only had I created a program that was functionally sound and produced great results, but I was able to express myself and capture the beauty of Raga music in a new way. I felt like I had accomplished something important.
It was a difficult project, but the difficulties were worth it. In retrospect, I was able to take the knowledge I had gained researching raga and put that knowledge into a context of software development. I am now proud to say that I have created a working program for generating authentic raga melodies in Java, and I hope that this project will help to introduce the riches of Indian music to a brand new audience.