I’ve heard of the term “Graha Bhedam” before, and maybe listened to a song or two in music concerts.&nbsp;But I’ve never heard such a wide range in a single song!&nbsp;This song piqued my interest on this subject, and I did quite a bit of research on it.&nbsp;Graha means ‘home’ and Bhedam means ‘change’.&nbsp;And Graha Bhedam is essentially to shift the ‘home base’ for the notes without changing any of them in terms of absolute frequency.&nbsp;Let me explain …In Indian classical music, the&nbsp;Sa&nbsp;(Shadaj or Shadjam) is considered as ‘home base’.&nbsp;This is the key note that the Shruti box or the Tanpura plays.&nbsp;This is how instruments (including percussion instruments) are tuned.&nbsp;When we shift home base, the&nbsp;Sa&nbsp;is shifted to another note&nbsp;within&nbsp;the raaga, and the rest of the notes take up relative positions without actually shifting.&nbsp;So let’s say the current position of&nbsp;Ri&nbsp;is taken as&nbsp;Sa&nbsp;… then&nbsp;Ga&nbsp;becomes&nbsp;Ri,&nbsp;Ma&nbsp;becomes&nbsp;Ga, …. and so on such that&nbsp;Sa&nbsp;becomes&nbsp;Ni.&nbsp;Let’s look at this using this amazing song … Shadaj Ne Paya (also spelt Shadajane Paya, षडज ने पाया in Hindi)<iframe class="ql-video" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3MvsdobEZgM?feature=oembed" height="375" width="500"></iframe>This song is from the movie Tansen&nbsp;which was made in 1980 … but the movie never got released!&nbsp;The singer is Yesudas and both Music and Lyrics are by Ravindra Jain. Apparently Ravindra had requested other popular singers of that time who found it too challenging.&nbsp;Even Yesudas is believed to have struggled to&nbsp;do full justice to this song.The song is composed primarily in C Major scale, which consists of all the white keys on your keyboard.&nbsp;Unlike western notation which depends on absolute frequency, the Indian notation is based on a relative frequency – where the base note is set to&nbsp;Sa&nbsp;or Shadaj (Shadjam in Carnatic).&nbsp;When we shift the&nbsp;Sa&nbsp;and derive the other notes relatively, we get&nbsp;Graha Bhedam – known as&nbsp;Murchhana in Hindustani music.The opening lines go like this:Shadaj&nbsp;ne paaya yeh vardaan,&nbsp;shadaj&nbsp;ne paaya yeh vardaanKoi bhi swar&nbsp;Sa&nbsp;thehra kar, koi bhi swar&nbsp;Sa&nbsp;thehra kar …&nbsp;gaa lo chatur sujaanWhich translates to: “Shadaj has got such a blessing!&nbsp;You can fix any note as&nbsp;Sa&nbsp;and sing so cleverly, skilfully”.&nbsp;Initially, I had not paid much attention to the lyrics, but once I realised what is happening I am so awestruck by its sheer brilliance.As the song progresses, the lyrics clearly describe which note is taken as&nbsp;Sa&nbsp;and also names the resulting raag in Hindustani.&nbsp;Each stanza also highlights the komal and teevra swaras involved and any key aspects..&nbsp;In the table below, I have given the Carnatic equivalent as well.&nbsp;And many are Melakarta Raagams too (raagas which have all the 7 notes in proper ascending and descending order), whose number is seen in brackets.&nbsp;Though there are 7 notes in Indian classical music, including the komal, shuddha, teevra variations there are 12 notes.&nbsp;You can see all 12 in the table below, with the black and white keys of the keyboard shown with appropriate colours.&nbsp;For the 7 graha bhedam variations here, start with the purple shaded&nbsp;Sa&nbsp;and cycle back to the blue shaded area on the next octave.&nbsp;If I had shown them all to the right, this table would have been too broad 🙂<img src="https://s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/hobby.cue/image-1734284345401.png" alt="Uploaded Image">The main raagas from Sa to Ni are named in the song itself.&nbsp;For others, I had to get the best match in Carnatic raaga and used that to map the Hindustani raag :-). While browsing through other blogs I found slight difference in the raagas mentioned.&nbsp;Hence, request experts to re-check these note by note and verify. If you notice any better fit for any raag, please do post your comments below.<ul><li><a href="http://hobbycue.com/profile/bhaskarns/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(36, 36, 41); background-color: transparent;">Bhaskar Subramanian</a></li></ul>

I’ve heard of the term “Graha Bhedam” before, and maybe listened to a song or two…