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Sambamoorthy as composer
 Professor Sambamoorthy was a versatile vaggeyakara who authored both the lyrics and music for his compositions.
He has composed many musical forms like kriti, sutra gitas, murcanakara mela ragamalika, etc. He has also composed songs based on musicological facts. His total number of compositions are in excess of 150 pieces.
1. Modal shift of tone – The modal shift of tone or graha bheda is that if a tonic is shifted in a scale it gives rise to another scale. Sambamoorthy has composed sutra gItas based on this. The lyrics are such that a student can easily remember the ragas that arise when graha bheda is performed in each svara of the scale. For example, 'Shankara todi kal hari nata' in Sankarabharanam and 'Mohana madhya hindola shuddhodaya ravi candrika' in
Mohanam.
2. Murcanakara mela ragamalika – This is a long composition that explains the scales that arise out of each mela and the svaras that give rise to these scales. Only those scales that are acceptable to south Indian music are considered. For instance, the prati madhyama is not taken into account as a svara for performing modal shift.
This is because it will give rise to a dvimadhyama scale that is not acceptable. The ragamalika has seven sections. The first six sections deal with two cakras each and the last section mentions the names of the cakras. Each section is composed in a raga that is a janya of one of the melas in that section.
For instance, the first section is in Dhanyasi, a janya of Todi, which is the 8th mela, and the last section also mentions that 122 melas arise out of the 72 because of modal shift. An example of the sahityam will illustrate the concept behind this composition. 'Ratnangi ri ma gamana jhankaram' - This means if the modal shift is performed on the raga Ratnangi on 'ri' and 'ma', the resulting ragas will be Gamanashrama and
Jhankaradhvani.
3. In a kriti in Bhairavi starting with the words 'Bharatamuni padamulanu' Sambamurthy gives the names of the lakshanakAras like Bharata, Matanga, etc., in chronological order.
4. Besides, Sambamoorthy has also composed songs in Manipravala where the pallavi is in Tamil, anupallavi in Telugu and the carana, a mixture of both.
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