How to write Hindustani Bandish notations online
In this article, we’ll take a look at the Swara Notebook, an open source notation editor for writing a Hindustani Sangeet Bandish. Swara Notebook is a web app where you can type your notations & play it back to listen to the notations.
On opening the Swara Notebook page, you’ll be shown a a screen similar to this:
The top half of the screen shows the notations, and the bottom half of the screen is a Whatsapp-style keyboard that shows the Svaras.
The Svaras can be seen in three rows, the top row being the higher or Taar octave, the middle row showing the middle octave, and so on.
While typing the Svaras, the notes of the Santoor are played, making is easy to figure out if the notes you typed sound correct.
How to play the Bandish?
Clicking on the ►(Play) button in the top row activates Play mode, where the Bandish can be played on the Santoor, with a Tabla or metronome accompaniment. The speed can be chosen too, and set between 60 and 300 bpm.
How to add two beats (Dugun) or more, per beat
The top of the keyboard has a row with numbers 1, 2, 3 & indicating the number of notes per beat.
By default, only one note per beat is typed on clicking on a Svara. Clicking on “2” will mean that two notes per beat can now be entered.
Similarly, you can enter 3 or 4 notes per beat as well.
Note that you need to click on 2 (or 3 or 4) before you type the Svaras. You can always rectify the mistake by deleting the previous Svaras, clicking on “2” and typing the Svaras again.
How to type Komal Svaras (or any other Svaras)
Clicking on the “Rag” button in the top row will open up the Svara Selector. This lets you select Svaras separately, or you can pick a particular Raga (which will automatically show only Svaras from that Raga)
Only the Svaras that are selected will appear in the keyboard, making it easy to avoid typing incorrect Svaras.
How to select or change the Taal?
By default, the Bandish you type will be formatted to Teentaal (16 beats). Clicking on the “taal’ button in the top row will let you change the Taal
How to save the Bandish?
If you haven’t logged in, the first time you’ll see a Cloud upload button. This will prompt you to log in (with your Google / Gmail account), after which you can save the Bandish by giving it a title.
The buttons next to that are
- The Print button ( to print the Bandish, obviously)
- The menu button (which lets you view all the Bandishes you’ve written so far).
I wrote a Bandish, how do I share it?
Click on the menu button in the bottom left. This will show a menu with options
- My notations (The Bandishes that you’ve written)
- New Bandish
Clicking on My notations will show you the list of all the Bandishes, where you can click the share button to share the Bandish.
How to read the Bandish notations in Hindi or Bangla
Simple: Just click on the button to left of the Taal button. This lets you switch between English, Hindi (Devnagari) or Bangla to read and write the notations.
