ManyKolam Instrument
Draw a kolam with your finger and it becomes the music. A glowing bead follows your line and sounds a note at every dot it passes.
Draw a loop around the dots
Start from a kolam
Real pulli kolams, woven round their dots by the traditional rule. Tap one to hear it, then draw over it.
Send it as a greeting
Your kolam travels inside the link. Whoever opens it sees it drawn and presses play.
Nothing is uploaded. The drawing is written into the link itself, so there is no account and nothing to expire.
How to play
- Draw a line around some dots. Use a finger, a stylus or the mouse. When you lift off, the line joins back to where it began — a kolam line always closes — and is smoothed into a loop.
- Listen. A bead sets off along the loop and sounds each dot as it goes by. The dot ripples in the colour of the line that played it.
- Add more loops. Up to eight can play together. They share one pulse, so they stay in time with each other however they were drawn.
- Change the powder. Each colour is a different instrument, so one kolam can be a small ensemble.
Tap a single dot to hear its note on its own. Space starts and stops the music, and Ctrl + Z undoes the last thing you did.
What a kolam is
A kolam (கோலம்) is a pattern drawn on the ground at the entrance of a home, a daily habit across Tamil Nadu and much of South India — the same tradition is called muggulu in Telugu and rangoli elsewhere. It is drawn by hand at dawn on a freshly swept, dampened threshold, traditionally with rice flour let fall in a thin stream between the fingers, and it is walked away by evening and drawn afresh the next day.
A pulli kolam begins with a grid of dots, the pulli. In the looped kind — sikku or kambi kolam — a single line winds between the dots, curling round them without touching and crossing itself, until it arrives back where it started. Kolams are at their largest in the month of Margazhi, from mid-December to mid-January, which ends with the harvest festival of Pongal.
The floor on this page borrows from that: dark swept earth, a red kaavi border, white powder, and a line that is never left open.
How the drawing becomes a tune
Each dot holds one note. The dot at the centre is Sa, tuned here to middle C. Every dot to the right or upward is one step higher in the raga; every dot to the left or downward is one step lower. So a line climbing to the top-right corner rises through the scale, and a line that stays along the diagonal from top-left to bottom-right keeps returning to Sa.
At every point, your line belongs to whichever dot it is nearest, as long as that dot is within about four-fifths of a dot-spacing. Each unbroken stretch beside one dot is one pass, and the dot sounds once per pass — when the bead is closest. A line woven between the dots plays them in the order it goes by; a line that goes all the way round a single dot plays that dot once per lap.
The passes are then set on a steady pulse: travelling one dot-spacing takes one pulse, and no step is shorter than a pulse. Long stretches with no dot become rests. That is why a wobbly loop still keeps time, and why the Speed slider is measured in notes a minute (60 to 240).
Loops only ever repeat themselves, yet the music does not. Two loops of different lengths start together, drift apart and meet again much later — a loop of 10 pulses against one of 24 lines up again only every 120. Add a third and the pattern can run for minutes before it comes round.
The four powders
| Powder | Instrument | How it sounds |
|---|---|---|
| Rice flour | Veena | A plucked string at the written pitch. The default. |
| Turmeric | Bells | Small, soft bells an octave higher. Good for a short, quick loop on top. |
| Kumkum | Flute | A held, breathy note that lasts until the loop's next dot. |
| Sky blue | Deep strings | The veena an octave lower and darker. Good for a long, slow loop underneath. |
The ragas
The dots only ever hold the swaras of the raga you choose, which is why nothing you draw can land on a wrong note. The five-note ragas are the most forgiving, because any two of their notes sit well together when loops overlap. The seven-note ragas have closer neighbours and more bite. Changing the raga re-tunes the dots without changing your drawing, so one kolam can be heard eleven ways.
| Raga | Swaras | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Mohanam | S R₂ G₃ P D₂ | Bright and open; the same notes as the major pentatonic scale, and Bhoopali in Hindustani music. |
| Hamsadhwani | S R₂ G₃ P N₃ | Festive; often chosen to open a concert. |
| Shuddha Saveri | S R₂ M₁ P D₂ | Clear and cheerful. |
| Madhyamavati | S R₂ M₁ P N₂ | Calm; traditionally sung to close a concert. |
| Hindolam | S G₂ M₁ D₁ N₂ | Deep and inward; Malkauns in Hindustani music. |
| Shivaranjani | S R₂ G₂ P D₂ | Tender, a little sad. |
| Abhogi | S R₂ G₂ M₁ D₂ | Warm and earnest. |
| Revati | S R₁ M₁ P N₂ | Still, like a chant. |
| Shankarabharanam | S R₂ G₃ M₁ P D₂ N₃ | The notes of the Western major scale. |
| Kalyani | S R₂ G₃ M₂ P D₂ N₃ | Grand and glowing; the raised Ma gives it its lift. |
| Mayamalavagowla | S R₁ G₃ M₁ P D₁ N₃ | The first raga Carnatic students learn. |
The swaras are tuned as just-intonation ratios against Sa rather than to a piano, the same tuning the Carnatic Ragas Player and the Online Tanpura use. The tanpura underneath plays Sa and Pa, or Sa and Ma for Hindolam and Abhogi, which have no Pa. A raga is more than its scale, though: its characteristic phrases and its gamakas are not modelled here. This is a way to play with a raga's notes, not a performance of the raga.
The starter kolams
The five starters and Surprise me are not stored drawings. They are woven on the spot by the rule a sikku kolam follows: give each dot a square of floor; the line touches a square only at the middle of a side and runs a quarter of the way round the dot inside it; where the next square has a dot the line goes straight on and crosses itself, and where it does not, the line curls on round the dot it is at. Followed until it meets its own start, the rule produces closed loops — one loop for some arrangements of dots and several for others.
Woven mat is fifteen dots and a single unbroken line. Diamond comes out as three loops, Courtyard and Margazhi as two each, of different lengths, which is what makes them shift as they play. Surprise me picks a symmetric patch of dots at random and keeps it only if it weaves into three loops or fewer.
Sending a kolam
Press Copy link and paste it into a message. The link contains the dots, every loop and its powder, the raga, the speed, whether the tanpura is on, and your greeting of up to 60 characters. Whoever opens it sees the greeting above your kolam and a button to play it; they can then draw over it and send it on. Save picture downloads the kolam and the greeting as an image, for places where a link will not do.
The kolam is held in the part of the address after the #, which a browser keeps to itself rather than sending to the website, and this page takes it out of the address bar as soon as it has been read. That is also why the address bar stays plain while you draw: use Copy link to get the link. A reload keeps the kolam you were working on in this tab; closing the tab forgets it.
Questions
Do I need to know music?
No. Every dot holds a note from the raga you have chosen and every loop is kept on one steady pulse, so any closed line around the dots will play in tune and in time.
Which note does each dot play?
The middle dot is Sa. Right or up is one step higher in the raga; left or down is one step lower. Tick Swara names to see the letters — a small dot above a letter marks the upper octave and one below marks the lower — or tap any dot to hear it.
Why did my line turn into a loop?
A kolam line ends where it began, so when you lift your finger the end is joined back to the start. A straight stroke becomes a sliver that the bead runs out along and back.
Why is there no sound until I tap?
Browsers do not let a page make sound until you have touched it. A kolam opened from a link waits under a play button for that reason. If you still hear nothing on a phone, check that it is not on silent.
Is anything uploaded?
No. There is no server behind this tool; the kolam exists only in your browser and in the link you choose to share.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes — it is made for a finger. The 5 × 5 grid has the most room between dots on a small screen; the 7 × 7 grid and the Diamond suit a tablet or a mouse.
More to play: Carnatic Ragas Player · 72 Melakarta Ragas · Online Tanpura · Rangoli coloring pages