The note is not a point. It is a journey between points.
On a fretless instrument, the pitch between two notes is not silence to be crossed — it is the music itself. The sarod player's meend slides a whole phrase without stopping; the oud player's taqsim bends a maqam into being. Staff notation cannot hold that glide. A melograph can.
Ragascript reads a recording and draws its pitch over time — not as notes on a stave, but as a continuous line, measured in cents against a tonic you choose. It is a trace, not a transcription. A way to look closely at what the ear already knows.
Raga and maqam are both heard against a drone — relative to a home pitch, never to absolute frequency. So Ragascript asks you to set the reference your ear calls home, and reads every rise and dip from there.
These traditions pass from teacher to student, ear to ear — a silsila, an unbroken chain. A melograph cannot replace that transmission. But it can let a student slow a phrase down, compare two renderings, and keep a line that might otherwise fade. Ragascript draws the line; you bring the ear.
Fundamental frequency is estimated with librosa's pyin, then converted to cents relative to your tonic. A confidence ribbon shows where the estimate is sure — and where it isn't.
The sarod and the oud share a fretless, microtonal voice across two great traditions. The melograph reads them in the same language: a line in cents, over time.
No tuning is assumed. You hear the tonic, you place it, and the reading follows your ear — private, shared with contributors, or open to all.