Swara Stars
The Carnatic Universe
The Carnatic Universe
A free music learning game by Kairali Arts Centre, Sharjah
In the beginning the universe held a single sound. Indian musicians call it Sa, the mother of all notes. For 2,000 years this secret has passed from guru to student, ear to ear. Now it passes to you.
🔊 Turn your sound up, this game sings.
On iPhone, switch off the Silent switch too.
Every star in this universe is one of the seven swaras of Carnatic music, the classical music of South India. There is no losing here, only listening.
Carnatic music is more than 2,000 years old. For most of that time it was never written down. It travelled from teacher (guru) to student (shishya) entirely by ear, like a secret musical code handed down through generations. This game teaches you the same way: sound first, names later.
The steady hum behind everything is the shruti, played by the tanpura (the music-note button at the top turns it on). Think of it as a blank canvas. The seven swaras, Sa Ri Ga Ma Pa Da Ni, are your seven paint colours, just like Do Re Mi but far older. Mix chosen colours in a pattern and you get a painting with a mood: that painting is a raga. The heartbeat that tells you when to clap is the tala.
Tap any star to hear its voice. Sa and Pa are the anchor stars, they never change. On a keyboard you can press 1 to 8.
Shruthi sings a note, you find its star. Levels grow from one note to little melodies. This is real ear training, the heart of Carnatic learning.
Connect the glowing stars in order and a constellation appears, from the joyful Mohanam to the royal Kalyani. In the Melakarta Forge you can build any of the 72 parent scales yourself and collect them all.
A Carnatic note is never frozen, it swims. Press a star and drag toward its neighbour to bend the pitch, the way a singer or veena player does. The wobble is called kampitam, the smooth slide jarugu.
A comet circles the beats of Adi tala (8) or Rupaka tala (6). Tap anywhere in time with it. In Adi tala the claps fall on beats 1, 5 and 7, just as in a real music class.
The Quiz Master checks what your ears already know, including real listening questions. Eight right answers make you a Little Maestro.
Tap the star dust counter at the top any time. It opens your journey map (the glowing bottom button is always your next step), the Star Bazaar where dust buys new instrument sounds and sky colours, your badges, and your melakarta collection.
The stars here are tuned in just intonation, pure ratios locked to the drone (Pa vibrates exactly 3/2 times Sa), which is why they melt so sweetly into the tanpura, unlike a piano's evened-out tuning. Between the notes live 22 microtones called shrutis, and the seven swaras expand into 16 pitch positions. From those positions exactly 72 melakarta parent ragas are built, indexed by a 1,300 year old letter-to-number cipher called Katapayadi: in Dheerasankarabharanam, Dhee is 9 and Ra is 2, read backwards, 29, its exact seat in the matrix. Rhythm has its own mathematics: 7 base talas times 5 jathi lengths give 35 talas, and 5 gati subdivisions turn those into 175 rhythmic cycles. This game is your first few steps into that universe.
Made with love by Kairali Arts Centre, Sharjah UAE. 35+ years of Indian classical arts education.
Spend your star dust. Owned rewards can be worn any time.
Every parent scale keeps Sa and Pa fixed. Choose how high the other five swaras sit, all 72 melakarta ragas live inside this wheel.