KalaSudha Composer is open for testing. Earlier this year, we shared a first look at our browser-based notation editor for Hindustani classical music. Since then, we rebuilt large parts of it and added the pieces you need to keep and use your work: a place to store compositions, drafts that save themselves, playback, printing, and stable links you can share. Anyone with a KalaSudha account can open it now at /compose and start writing.
We are calling this the first release, and we want your help to make it solid.
A built-in walkthrough to get you started
Open the editor for the first time, and the Compose walkthrough opens on its own. Click Next to move through it step by step. It points out each part of the screen as you go: the raga, taal, and script selectors at the top, the swara keyboard along the bottom, the controls for octave, meend, note density, and beat width, and the Save Composition button. By the last step, you have seen the whole editor without reaching for a manual.
A home for your compositions
The preview lets you write a bandish. It gave you nowhere to keep them. Now your My Compositions page lists everything you have written, with the raga, taal, visibility, and the date you last touched it shown on each card. When your library grows, filter by raga or taal, search by title, narrow by visibility, or jump to a date range. From the same page you open, view, print, or delete a piece.
Drafts that save themselves
Close a tab by mistake, and you should not lose an hour of notation. The editor now syncs your work to the server while you write. You choose how it behaves: off when you want full control, automatic as you go, or a steady save every thirty seconds. Come back later, and your draft is where you left it.
Hear what you wrote
Press play and the editor sounds out your composition beat by beat, highlighting each note as it goes. Pick the voice that suits the piece: harmonium, piano, guitar, sitar, flute, or violin. Treat it as a sketch, enough to catch a wrong note or test how a phrase sits in the taal. The playback is not very polished yet, and it is one of the first places we will put real effort soon.
Print and share
Every composition has a clean print view built for paper. Open it, and your browser's print dialogue gives you a PDF to hand to a student or carry to a lesson. For online sharing, each piece has its own stable link. Keep it private, unlisted so only people with the link can open it, or public for anyone to find. The link stays the same whether the piece is a rough draft or a finished bandish.
The writing surface, in more detail
The editor follows the structure of a bandish. You work in sections: Sthayi, Antara, Sanchari, and Abhog. Inside each, you add rows and fill beats from a swara keyboard, set the octave for any note, and write lyrics under the line. Mark a meend across the notes it spans. Set how many notes sit in a beat, widen or tighten the beat spacing, and show the theka when you want the rhythm in front of you. Notes display in eight Indian scripts, so you write in the one you read fastest.
Start from a sample
A blank grid is a hard place to begin. Click Load Sample instead, and you start from a real piece you can study, edit, or rework into your own. This release ships with three: Yaman Kalyan - Piya Bin, Bhairav - Jai Jagdish Hare, and Bhupali - Jago Mohan Pyare, a pentatonic raga that suits beginners. More samples are on the way.
Where this is heading
We did not build Composer as a standalone thing. It belongs to the same effort as our concerts, our artist tours, and the KalaSudha Academy. As our first cohort courses take shape with Pandit Debasis Chakroborty and the maestros we are proud to call partners, we want the bandish you learn in a live lesson to open right here, ready to study, annotate, and make your own. A guru hands you a composition; you carry it into Composer and live with it between sessions. That is the loop we are building toward, and it has us genuinely excited.
There is more we are not ready to name yet. We have plans to publish: curated bandishes, teaching material, and a shared library that gives these compositions a proper home online, shaped by the artists and students who know them best. It is early, and we would rather show you than promise. For now, Composer is the first brick.
Help us make it stable
This is a first release, and your usage is the test. Write the bandish you teach. Push it across scripts, long compositions, and awkward talas, the things that tend to break software. When something goes wrong, or when you wish it did something it does not, write to us at [email protected]. Tell us what you were doing, what you expected, and what happened. Enhancement requests are as welcome as bug reports. We are shaping the next release around what you find.
Open /compose, write something, and tell us how it goes. We are in this for the long run, and we would love your ear and your honesty while Composer is still taking shape. For where it started, read our first look at KalaSudha Composer.
