Shadja

Learn Hindustani classical ragas by singing: a tanpura drone, a sing-along piano that follows each raga's rules, call and response, and a microphone tuner. Western scales are one tap away.

Live: https://vishmatta.github.io/shadja/

Shadja (षड्ज) is the formal name for Sa, the home note every other note is measured from.

Start here

1. Pick your Sa. Choose a home note that sits comfortably low in your voice.
2. Start the drone. It keeps Sa sounding so you always hear home. Both (tanpura with a steady bed) is the default.
3. Press Play and sing along. The big display shows the note to sing now and the next ones. Try Aroha (going up), then Avaroha (coming down), then the Pakad (the raga's signature phrase).
4. Turn on the tuner. Sing a note, hold it, then stop or move to the next one. Your last notes stay on screen with how close you were.
5. Try call and response. The app plays a short phrase and you sing it back.

Features

• 12 ragas in a beginner learning order: Yaman, Bhupali, Bhairav, Kafi, Bhimpalasi, Khamaj, Bihag, Bageshree, Bhairavi, Malkauns, Todi (Miyan ki), Darbari Kanada. Each has its aroha, avaroha, pakad, vadi/samvadi (the most and second-most important notes), resting notes, time of day, and look-alike ragas to watch for.
• A piano that follows the raga, with sargam labels, rings on resting notes and up-only or down-only arrows. Strict mode keeps you to the raga's notes and directions.
• Play orders: aroha, avaroha, both, pakad, random phrases that follow the raga's rules, and alankars (warm-up patterns in pairs, threes and fours). Speed 40–160 notes per minute, with loop and replay.
• Drone: steady, tanpura (a physical model of plucked strings) or both.
• Tuner:
  • Feedback after each note (the default, better for training your ear) or a live needle.
  • A history of your last 6 notes.
  • It ignores the drone leaking from the speaker into the mic.
  • A Mic settings and check box with a mic level meter and mic choice.
• Keeps your screen awake while the drone, playback, tuner or call and response is running, so the drone isn't cut off when your phone locks (switch in Advanced).
• Phone and desktop: one column on a phone. On a laptop, the piano and sing-along display stay pinned on the right.
• Light and dark mode follow your device.
• Western scales (16, including major, minor, the modes, pentatonics and blues) behind the System switch.

Tuner tips

• Headphones give the cleanest reading. Without them, the drone and piano leak into the mic.
• With AirPods, choose the iPhone microphone in Mic settings and check. Using the AirPods mic switches them to phone-call quality, which makes the drone sound thin.
• If the drone gets quieter when you sing, AirPods Conversation Awareness may be lowering it. Turn it off in Settings → your AirPods. The other likely cause is Mic cleanup (echo cancellation), so try it both on and off.
• Stay quiet for 2 seconds after starting the drone with the tuner on. The tuner is measuring how much drone reaches the mic. If you sang or moved the phone, press Measure the drone again.

Privacy

Your microphone audio is analysed on your device and never recorded or sent anywhere. The app makes no network requests, except for loading the Google Fonts stylesheet.

Requirements

• A recent Safari, Chrome, Edge or Firefox.
• The tuner needs https (the live site) or localhost, because browsers only allow the mic there.
• Keeping the screen awake needs Safari 16.4+ or Chrome 84+. On iPhone home-screen web apps, it needs iOS 18.4+. Where it isn't supported, the switch is hidden.

Run it locally

Everything is in index.html: vanilla JavaScript and the Web Audio API, with no build step and no dependencies.

python3 -m http.server

Then open http://localhost:8000.

For contributors and AI agents

• AGENTS.md: rules, code map, audio lessons and how to test. Read this first.
• docs/HANDOFF.md: the original project handoff, kept frozen as a snapshot.
• docs/DECISIONS.md: what has changed since the handoff (living log).
• Issues: planned work, labelled priority: high, priority: medium or priority: low.

Licence

No licence: all rights reserved. You're welcome to read the code and try the app, but reuse needs permission.