The Rāga Orrery
Where melody becomes orbit.
Hear a melodic phrase travel inside a repeating rhythm. Follow each pulse, listen for the phrase, and watch the cycle return to its beginning.
Eight rāga study models · five rhythmic cycles · your own pace
How it works · three steps
01 · ChooseSelect a rāga study and a rhythm. These choices update the instrument immediately.
02 · ListenChoose Create orbit & play. Gold follows the rhythm; blue follows the melodic phrase.
03 · ReturnSam is the beginning of the rhythmic cycle. The melodic phrase has its own length; its return need not coincide with sam.
This is a bounded listening instrument. A rāga is a tradition of characteristic melodic movement, not simply a scale. The orbit is a visual analogy, not an astronomical explanation.
Make your first orbit.
Explorer · choose, play and listen. Musical settings stay with you when you change views.
Your selections apply immediately. Sound starts only when you press Play.
Inside the rhythm · counts, claps and waves
Build a rhythmic orbit
Repeat a short rhythm three times. Change its start, length or gaps to hear where the final stroke lands. Sam is pulse 1 of the selected cycle.
When do two rhythms meet?
Give both rhythms the same steady pulse. How long until both cycle beginnings return together?
Watch the cycles & see the calculation
Method / analogy boundary
Orbit is a visual and structural analogy for cycle, relative position, recurrence, and alignment. The Rāga Orrery makes no claim that astronomical bodies cause or determine rāga or tāla.
MIDI is an export, not the tradition. The file can preserve tempo, tonic, selected identifiers, markers, synthetic rhythm events, note events, and phrase-mode metadata. R1.1 can approximate selected stored pitch trajectories through MIDI pitch bend, but it still does not preserve semantic gesture meaning, complete meend, traditional intonation, vocal nuance, tabla technique, timbral detail, provenance richness, or improvisational knowledge.