Alankara

Alankara (Sanskrit: अलंकार, romanized: Alaṃkāra), also referred to as palta or alankaram, is a concept in Indian classical music and literally means "ornament, decoration". An alankara is any pattern of musical decoration a musician or vocalist creates within or across tones, based on ancient musical theories or driven by personal creative choices, in a progression of svaras. The term alankara is standard in Carnatic music, while the same concept is referred to as palta or alankara in Hindustani music. The ancient and medieval music scholars of India state that there are unlimited creative possibilities available to a musician, but each scholar illustrated the concept with a set of alankara. Datilla discussed 13 alankaras, Bharata Muni presented 33, Sarngadeva described 63 alankaras, while mid medieval scholars presented numerous more. The Indian music tradition classifies alankara as rational or irrational, wherein irrational alankara being those that cannot be reduced to a fixed scale degree pattern. The Indian theory of gamaka covers the group of irrational alankara. The concept of alankara applies to both vocal and musical instrument performance. Purandara Dasa, the father of modern Carnatic music, developed learning exercises for students based on alankara and svaravali, where the student systematically repeats a certain set of patterns over three octave registers, across various ragas and talas.