Raga system
A raga in Carnatic music prescribes a set of rules for building a melody – very similar to the Western concept of mode.
It specifies rules for movements up (aarohanam) and down (avarohanam), the scale of which notes should figure more and which notes should be used more sparingly, which notes may be sung with gamaka (ornamentation), which phrases should be used or avoided, and so on. In effect, it is a series of obligatory musical events that must be observed, either absolutely or with a particular frequency.
In Carnatic music, the sampoorna ragas (those with all seven notes in their scales) are classified into a system called the melakarta, which groups them according to the kinds of notes that they have. There are seventy-two melakarta ragas, thirty six of whose madhyama (subdominant) is shuddha (perfect fourth from the tonic), the remaining thirty-six of whose madhyama (subdominant) is prati (an augmented fourth from the tonic). eg kalyani shanmukhapriya.
The ragas are grouped into sets of six, called chakras ("wheels", though actually segments in the conventional representation) grouped according to the supertonic and mediant scale degrees. There is a system known as the katapayadi sankhya to determine the names of melakarta ragas.
Ragas may be divided into two classes: janaka ragas (i.e. melakarta or parent ragas) and janya ragas (descendant ragas of a particular janaka raga). Janya ragas are themselves subclassified into various categories.
Tala system
Tala refers to a fixed time cycle or metre, set for a particular composition, which is built from groupings of beats.[citation needed] Talas have cycles of a defined number of beats and rarely change within a song. They have specific components, which in combinations can give rise to the variety to exist (over 108), allowing different compositions to have different rhythms.
Carnatic music singers usually keep the beat by moving their hands up and down in specified patterns, and using their fingers simultaneously to keep time.
Tala is formed with three basic parts (called angas) that are laghu, dhrtam, and anudhrtam,
There are seven basic tala groups that can be formed from the laghu, dhrtam, and anudhrtam:
Ata tala Dhruva tala Eka tala Jhampa tala Matya tala Rupaka tala Triputa tala