Carnatic Music Tools Update: Tanpura and Mobile Apps

In June I wrote about Carnatic Music Tools. A metronome and a tuner. Two pages. I said that was the whole site.

That was not the whole site.

I am still learning. Still slowly. But one thing was still missing in my practice. The tanpura. Without the drone, Sa slowly moves and it is hard to notice.

So I built a Tanpura.

• Four strings — Pa, Sa, Sa, and lower Sa. The standard tuning.
• Ma tuning — for ragas without Pa, the first string can be changed to Ma.
• Pitch — pick your Sa by note or by kattai.
• Waveform — shows each string as it is plucked.
• Keeps playing — go to the metronome or the tuner and the drone does not stop.

I also added a Raga Trainer. It plays sarali varisai in a raga and listens while you sing. It knows all 72 melakartas and the common janya ragas. Then it tells you how close you were to each swara.

The metronome also has a few new click sounds now.

And the big one. Carnatic Music Tools is now an app. It is on the App Store and Google Play. Search for "Carnatic Music Tools" in your app store.

Why an app when the website works? On the phone, the website stops when the screen goes off. The app does not. The tanpura and the metronome keep playing in the background, screen off, even with no internet.

Same as before. Free. No login. No tracking. No ads. Ever. The app also.

More features will be added as I progress in the learning.

Try it out →