Swarplug 3 Torrent
The Practice pane sets up a virtual Indian group for you. When I was growing up, Indian music in Britain was a very underground thing. Apart from immigrant families like mine and perhaps a few Beatles-influenced Western fans, there wasn't a great market for it or appreciation of its unique possibilities. Now, however, nary a day goes by without another advert Bollywooding it up or trance act sampling some 'Indian atmosphere'. Add that to the mainstream success of artists like Asian Dub Foundation, Nitin Sawhney and Talvin Singh and you can see that Indian music is finally becoming a visible part of British musical culture.
2019-2-27 Swar Systems Swarshala & Swarplug. Indian Music construction kit. Software; Published August 2003. Despite my passing criticisms, the Swarshala 3 Pro/Swarplug bundle is a very impressive package. It takes you by the hand and leads you into the basics (and not-so-basics!) of Indian musical theory, each step of the journey being signposted.
And American too, judging by the Indian flavour in tracks from Missy Elliot, Redman and other hip-hop/R&B heavy hitters. I'm lucky in that I grew up listening to my parents' record collection. So I'm naturally familiar with the sound of Indian music, whether it's the pukka classical tunes my dad prefers or the more poppy Hindi film soundtracks my mum sings along with. But to a puzzled outsider, Indian music may seem initially intimidating and they may approach it filled with questions. Is it true the classical form doesn't change chords?
What are the different instruments you need to get that Indian flavour? What's that instrument that sounds like a goose being throttled? Into this breach step Swar Systems (), a Swiss company who specialise in Indian music software. Their Swarshala 3 Pro/Swarplug bundle can provide not only Indian instruments in VST Instrument form (Swarplug) but also teach you about Indian music and provide a virtual Indian backing band for you to practise with (Swarshala). For those who prefer to use a hardware sampler, Swartrax packages the same sample library in Akai format, but includes the MIDI files and Librarian application, which are important components of the product. Swarshala 3 Pro is Windows-only (although its Learn section is available separately as a $50 cross-platform application called Swar Tutorial) and installed painlessly on my XP PC.
After the CD self-ran and installed Swarshala, I simply inserted the authorisation floppy and, following the obligatory chuntering and whirring, Swarshala was authorised. The program is divided into three main sections: Learn, Practice and Compose, all aptly labelled.
The Learn section is a virtual encyclopaedia of Indian classical music. This is not to say it deliberately excludes Indipop but rather that modern Indian pop is very cross-fertilised with Western music as well as still having obvious Indian roots both in classical and folk songs.
Acer revocenter. For those who don't want to stretch to the full Pro version of Swarshala, Swar Systems also offer the cut-down Standard version. This is limited to three instruments — tabla, harmonium and tanpura — and lacks the Compose section and piano-roll view, plus the ability to export in Wave or MIDI file formats. Learn is further sub-divided into three sections, the first of which is Initiation.
This is, thankfully, not some A Man Called Horse-type ritual but the background to Indian music, its basic building blocks and a very detailed history of its development. I found this section fascinating, especially the little jewels of information about the influence the Muslim conquest of India had. Once slight criticism I'd make is that the information in all of Swarshala is presented in a scrolling window which has a kind of wood-grain pattern behind it to match the rest of the interface. Although this looks attractive, it does make it more difficult to read and I found myself squinting several times. Perhaps if the background was rendered lighter it would contrast more with the text? In the Raga subsection the melodic basis of Indian music is explained.
Many examples are presented to listen to, in both aroha (ascending) and arova (descending) form. A couple are also presented with improvisations within the raga, as you may hear them in performance. These samples are quite long and since they're of a singer, it's easy to couple the notes they're singing (which are in the Indian do-re-mi form) with Western equivalents. This makes it far easier to translate into your own playing, on whatever instrument you use.