Raaga Sivaranjini

C Sivaranjini has the following notes : C D Eb G A C (wiki entry)

Writing the scale as intervals we get : Root – major 2nd – minor 3rd – fifth – major 6th – root

Minor 6th chord

Spelling of a minor 6th chord : root – minor 3rd – fifth – major 6th

We see that all the notes in the minor 6th chord are present in the sivaranjini scale.

Inversion of minor 6th chord

Let us take C minor 6th as an example.

C minor 6th : C Eb G A

Now let us rearrange the order of notes of C minor 6th.

A C Eb G is one possible rearrangement of the notes of C minor 6th.

Now if we take A as the root, the sequence of notes can be spelled as follows in terms of interval naming :

A C Eb G : Root – minor 3rd – flat fifth – minor 7th

This is the spelling of a minor7th flat five chord.

C minor 6th can be rearranged as A minor 7th flat fifth

So two possible chords of C shivaranjini are :

  • C minor 6th
  • A minor 7th flat fifth

A  minor 7th flat fifth and associated raga

A minor 7th : A C Eb G : Root – minor 3rd – flat fifth – minor 7th

Add the fifth note to the notes in the minor7th flat fifth chord.

We get this sequence of notes : A C Eb E G A

root – minor 3rd – flat fifth (sharp fourth) – fifth – minor 7th

This is a five note scale got from the fourth mode of the harmonic minor scale and is a much used scale in indian music.

Here is one of my videos, improvising on the 4thd mode of harmonic minor

Note that Shivaranini has a D while this raga has an E while all the other notes are the same. So though Cminor6th and A minor 7th flat fifth have the exact same notes, the two ragas we talked about differs by one note.