John is a music lover from Bangalore. He writes the Learn guides at BeatRootRaga from the label's own recording, mixing and mastering work, and each guide is reviewed by BRR, the musicians around the label, before it is published.
Articles
Raga Yaman (Kalyani)
Yaman is a seven-note Hindustani raga, a melodic framework, with a raised fourth; Kalyani shares its scale but uses different phrasing and ornaments. Traditionally associated with evening, Yaman can sound serene or devotional; hear its character through Ni Re Ga, starting below Sa, the home note.
What is a raga? A plain-language guide for listeners
A raga is a melodic framework in Indian classical music for creating pieces and inventing melody during performance. Listen for four things: which notes appear, how the melody moves, where the musician lingers, and which short phrases return.
Thaat and melakarta explained
A thaat in Hindustani music and a melakarta in Carnatic music are seven-note parent scales used to organise ragas, the melodic frameworks musicians perform. Hindustani music uses 10 practical categories, while Carnatic music uses 72 allowed scale combinations; these help identify note relationships, not a raga’s phrases or character.
Raga Kirwani (Keeravani)
Kirwani is a raga, a musical framework, using C D Eb F G Ab B when Sa, its home note, is C. Heard in concerts, light classical music and film scores, it often suggests longing; listen for Ab rising to B, then C.
Raga Hamsadhwani
Hamsadhwani is a five-note raga from the Carnatic tradition, using Sa, Re, Ga, Pa and Ni, or C D E G B with Sa as C. It often opens Carnatic concerts; hear its bright, devotional character by playing the notes over C and G, noticing B resolving to C.
Raga Charukeshi (Charukesi)
Charukeshi comes from Carnatic music and uses Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, lowered Dha and lowered Ni. Heard in concerts, light music and film scores, its bittersweet character is clearest in the descent from lowered Ni through lowered Dha to Pa.
Raga Bhoop (Mohanam)
Bhoop, or Bhoopali, is a raga (melodic framework) using Sa, Re, Ga, Pa and Dha; Mohanam shares its notes, but uses Carnatic phrasing and ornaments. An evening raga with a calm, devotional mood, Bhoop is often taught early; hear its character through Ga Re Sa and Dha Pa Ga.
Female version covers: how to arrange, record and release one
For a cover, a new performance of an existing song, fit the melody to your voice, rebuild the backing, and record full vocal takes. Before uploading to YouTube or streaming platforms, check cover rights, credit the original writers, and follow your distributor’s cover-song process.
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Aim around minus 14 LUFS, a unit measuring loudness, with true peak, the maximum reconstructed signal level, at or below minus 1 dBTP (decibels true peak). Use gentle processing and preserve dynamic range, the contrast between quiet and loud passages, to keep the voice forward, the drone steady and vocal ornaments expressive.
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What is a ghazal? Structure explained with two BeatRootRaga originals
A ghazal is poetry built from self-contained couplets, or pairs of lines, joined by rhyme and a shared pattern of line length and rhythm. When sung, a returning melody connects the couplets, while repeated lines, melodic changes and pauses give listeners time to hear the meaning.
Sa Re Ga Ma: sargam explained for beginners
Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha and Ni are Indian music’s seven basic notes; sargam means singing or writing melodies with these syllables. To read and sing sargam, choose your home Sa, follow the note names and octave marks, and recognise the natural, lowered and raised forms.
Pallavi, anupallavi and charanam: the three parts of a Carnatic song
In a typical kriti, the main composed song form of Carnatic (South Indian classical) music, the pallavi is the opening section that returns. The anupallavi is the second section, developing the opening, while the charanam is the concluding section and usually the longest.
Krishna flute music: what bansuri meditation music is and how to listen to it
Krishna flute music usually means music on the bansuri, North India's bamboo flute, named for its association with Krishna in Hindu stories. In a slow piece, listen for held notes, slides and returns to Sa, the home note, against the drone, a steady reference sound.
Jaun Elia: the poet behind Kitne Aish Se Rahte Honge
Jaun Elia was an Urdu poet whose speakers argue with themselves and mock their own grief. Hear his words in BeatRootRaga’s Kitne Aish Se Rahte Honge, composed by Alap Desai and sung by Gayatri Asokan.
Charanam meaning: what a charanam is and how it differs from the pallavi
A charanam is the concluding section of a composed song in Carnatic (South Indian classical) music, usually bringing new words and a fresh melody. The pallavi is the opening section that returns as a refrain, while the charanam develops something new before leading back to it.
Tivra
Tivra means sharp, the raised form of a note in Indian music. Only Ma has a tivra form, written Ma' on BeatRootRaga pages.
Thaat
A thaat is a seven-note parent scale used in Hindustani music to classify ragas, the melodic frameworks musicians perform. It is a classification tool, not something performed.
Sthayi
Sthayi is the first section of a Hindustani classical composition. It stays mostly in the lower and middle range and serves as the refrain, the part that returns.
Shruti
In Indian music theory, shruti is the smallest pitch interval, or gap between pitches, that a trained ear can tell apart. In studio and concert talk, shruti means the pitch a singer chooses for Sa, their home note.
Sa
Sa is the first swara, or note, in Indian music and the home note from which every other note is measured. It has only one form, but a singer can set it to any pitch that suits their voice.
Mukhda
Mukhda, literally “face”, is the opening section of a Hindi film song, with its first lines sung to the main melody. These lines return after every verse and usually give the song its title.
Avaroha
Avaroha is the descending order of notes in a raga, a melodic framework in Indian classical music. It is the path the melody takes from the upper Sa down to the home Sa.
Antara
An antara is a verse of a Hindi film song, or the second section of a Hindustani classical composition. It brings new words and a new melodic idea, usually moving higher before leading back to the opening section.
Vikrit swara
A vikrit swara is a note with an altered form as well as its natural form. You meet these forms in ragas, melodic frameworks shaped by note choices: Yaman uses raised Ma, while Bhairav uses lowered Re and Dha.
Alankar
An alankar is a fixed pattern of notes repeated up and down a scale as a practice exercise. Students sing alankars daily to practise note pitch and build speed.
Achal swara
Achal swara means an immovable note in Indian music: Sa and Pa each have only one form, never lowered or raised. You hear both in the tanpura drone, the continuing sound of Sa and Pa together.
Shadava
Shadava means using six of the seven swaras, or notes. It describes a raga, a melodic framework in Indian classical music, or the notes it uses going up or coming down.
Nadai
Nadai, also called gati, means the number of pulses, or smaller counts, inside each beat in Carnatic music. You will hear it in percussion playing and swara passages, which are musical note passages.
Alapana
Alapana is an exploration of a raga, a melodic framework, without a fixed beat in Carnatic music. You hear it before a composition in the same raga, with singers using syllables such as ta da ri na rather than words.
Dhrupad
Dhrupad is the oldest form of Hindustani classical singing still performed, with long held notes, little ornament and close attention to pitch. Recordings by the Dagar family are a reference point for hearing the style.
Bansuri
The bansuri is North India's side-blown bamboo flute, with six or seven finger holes and no keys. You will hear it in folk, devotional and concert music.
Tihai
A tihai is a rhythmic phrase repeated three times, with its final note on sam, the first beat of a taal, or repeating rhythmic cycle. It is the standard way to end an improvisation in Hindustani music, on tabla, sitar or voice.
Teentaal: the 16-beat cycle of Hindustani music
Teentaal is a 16-beat Hindustani rhythmic cycle counted in four groups of four, with claps on 1, 5 and 13, and a wave on 9. Its theka, or basic tabla stroke pattern, is dha dhin dhin dha | dha dhin dhin dha | dha tin tin ta | ta dhin dhin dha.
Niraval
Niraval is a practice in Carnatic (South Indian classical) music where a musician improvises different melodies on one line of a composition. The words and their position in the taal, the rhythmic cycle, stay the same.
Tanpura
The tanpura is a long-necked string instrument that provides a drone, a continuous pitch reference beneath the music. Heard behind almost every Indian classical performance, it establishes Sa, the home note the singer tunes to.
Swarasthana
Swarasthana means the place of a note, one of the twelve pitch positions in an octave. In Carnatic music, these positions help build parent scales; in Hindustani terms, they describe which of twelve keys a note falls on.
Misra
A misra is a single line of Urdu poetry, and two misras form a sher, or couplet. You will meet it in ghazal singing, where singers may repeat the first line before delivering the second.
Murki
A murki is a fast, light cluster of two or three notes around a main note in Indian music. You will hear it in film songs and ghazals, sung poems built from self-contained pairs of lines.
Qafia
Qafia is the rhyming word or syllable just before the radif, the refrain repeated word for word. You hear it in sung ghazals, poems built from self-contained pairs of lines joined by rhyme and a shared pattern of length and rhythm.
Harmonium
A harmonium is a small, hand-pumped reed organ with a keyboard. In Indian music, it accompanies singers by following their melody and providing a steady pitch reference.
Maqta
A maqta is the final pair of lines in a ghazal, a poem built from self-contained pairs of lines, where the poet includes their pen name. You meet it in sung ghazals, where it closes and signs the poem, though not every ghazal has one.
Mridangam
The mridangam is a double-headed barrel drum that accompanies Carnatic music, played horizontally with both hands. Its name comes from Sanskrit and means “made of clay”, referring to its ancient form.
Tabla
Tabla is a pair of hand drums, one smaller and higher-pitched, the other larger with a pitch the player can bend. It provides rhythm for most Hindustani music.
Taan
A taan is a fast, improvised run of notes in Hindustani music, sung to a vowel or the words of a composition. You will hear taans late in khayal, a form of Hindustani singing, after the slow development.
Kayda
A kayda is a basic compositional form in a tabla solo, built from a short theme and variations. The variations rearrange only the theme’s bols, the syllables that name drum sounds.
Matla
The matla is the opening couplet, or pair of lines, of a ghazal, a poem built from self-contained couplets linked by rhyme and rhythm. You hear it at the start of a sung ghazal, where singers often repeat it to establish the melody.
Mandra, madhya and taar saptak
A saptak is an octave, named relative to the singer’s Sa, the home or reference note. Mandra is the lower octave, madhya the middle octave, and taar the upper octave.
Manodharma
Manodharma means improvisation in Carnatic music, or music invented during performance rather than composed beforehand. You will hear it in concerts alongside composed pieces called kritis.
Kalpanaswaram
Kalpanaswaram is improvised singing of the note names, sa ri ga ma pa da ni, in Carnatic music. You hear it after a composition, with note passages returning to a chosen song line exactly on the beat.
Tillana
A tillana is a fast, rhythmic composition in Carnatic (South Indian classical) music, built mostly from syllables such as “tha dhim thaka”. It appears at the end of concerts or dance recitals, with a short passage of words in the charanam, the concluding section.
Nyasa
Nyasa is the note on which a musical phrase comes to rest. You hear it in ragas, melodic frameworks in Indian classical music, where certain notes let a phrase pause and settle.
Alap
Alap is the slow opening without a set rhythmic cycle in a Hindustani performance of a raga, a melodic framework. The singer or instrumentalist introduces its notes, characteristic phrases and mood before the rhythm begins.
Sangati
A sangati is a melodic variation of one line in a Carnatic (South Indian classical) composition. The words stay the same while the tune changes with each repetition, usually becoming more elaborate.
Chalan
Chalan is the characteristic movement of a raga, a melodic framework in Indian classical music. You hear it in compositions and melodies invented during performance, through how notes are approached and which turns are used or avoided.
Laykari
Laykari is rhythmic play: singing or playing a phrase at a different speed or grouping against the beat, then meeting it again. You will hear it in khayal and dhrupad singing, and especially in instrumental music.
Bhajan
A bhajan is a devotional song in the Hindu tradition, sung to a deity, a saint or the divine in general. You will hear bhajans in temples, at home and in concert, and many film songs borrow their form.
Meend
Meend is a smooth glide from one note to another without a break. You hear it in Hindustani singing and instrumental playing as an ornament, a way of shaping a musical phrase.
Drut
Drut means a fast tempo, or pace, in Hindustani music. You will hear it as a performance moves towards its rhythmic climax, often with busier accompaniment.
Bandish
A bandish is a fixed composition in Hindustani classical music, a short song with words that a performer sings and improvises around. You will hear it in musical forms such as khayal, dhrupad and thumri.
Andolan
Andolan is a slow, gentle sway between a held note and a slightly lower or higher pitch. It appears on particular notes in ragas, melodic frameworks that guide note movement and emphasis, including Raga Darbari.
Kan
A kan, or kan swara, is a grace note: a light touch of a neighbouring note just before or after the main note. In Hindustani music, the voice may brush Re or Ma instead of landing directly on Ga.
Madhya laya
Madhya laya means medium tempo in Indian music, between vilambit, slow tempo, and drut, fast tempo. You will hear it in instrumental compositions and in the middle section of khayal, a vocal form.
Vilambit
Vilambit means slow tempo in Hindustani music, relative to madhya (medium) and drut (fast), rather than a fixed number of beats per minute. You will hear it in the opening bada khayal (vocal piece) of a concert, before the same raga (melodic framework) is taken up faster.
Avartan
An avartan is one complete cycle of a taal, a repeating rhythmic cycle, from sam, the first beat, to just before the next sam. Compositions and improvised passages are measured in avartans.
Khayal
Khayal means “imagination” or “thought” in Urdu and Persian. It is the main vocal form of Hindustani classical music today, where singers invent melody around a bandish, a short composed piece.
Vakra
Vakra means “crooked” in Indian music. It describes a note path that turns back or skips and returns instead of moving straight up or down.
Gamak
Gamak is a forceful swing between a note and its neighbour, made by a voice or instrument. In Hindustani music it is one ornament, or note-shaping movement; in Carnatic music, gamaka is the general word for all such ornaments.
Tali
Tali is a beat marked with a clap when you count a taal, a repeating rhythmic cycle, by hand. You meet it when learning to count cycles, such as teentaal, which has claps on beats 1, 5 and 13.
Qawwali
Qawwali is the devotional music of South Asia’s Sufi shrines, sung by a group led by one or two main singers. Handclaps mark the beat as repeated phrases build towards faster singing and higher notes.
Tarana
A tarana is a Hindustani composition sung to syllables such as “dir dir” and “tanana” rather than words. It is usually fast and often closes a vocal performance, letting the singer show speed and rhythm.
Ragam Tanam Pallavi
Ragam Tanam Pallavi, often shortened to RTP, is the longest and most improvised item in a Carnatic (South Indian classical) concert. Its three stages move from free melodic exploration to pulsed improvisation, then to developing a single composed line within a fixed rhythmic cycle.
Varnam
A varnam is a compact composition in Carnatic (South Indian classical) music that shows the full range of a raga, a melodic framework. Students learn it after basic exercises, and it often opens a concert.
Thumri
Thumri is a light classical vocal form from North India, associated with Lucknow and Banaras. Its songs usually express love and longing in a woman's voice, often addressing Krishna.
Charanam
Charanam is the concluding section of a Carnatic (South Indian classical) composition, usually the longest, with new words and a fresh melody. In South Indian film songs, each verse is called a charanam.
Samvadi
Samvadi is the second most important note in a raga, a melodic framework in Indian classical music. In Raga Bhoop, Dha is the samvadi and Ga is the vadi, the most important note.
Komal
Komal means “soft” and, in Indian music, refers to the lowered, or flattened, form of a note. Re, Ga, Dha and Ni have komal forms, while the natural form is called shuddha.
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Melakarta
A melakarta is a parent scale in Carnatic music that uses all seven notes in order, going up and coming down. There are 72 melakartas, which help organise ragas, the melodic frameworks musicians perform.
Sampoorna
Sampoorna means complete. In Indian music, a sampoorna raga, a musical framework, uses all seven notes both going up and coming down.
Mukhda and antara: how a film song is built
In a typical Hindi film song, the mukhda is the returning opening section, while an antara is a verse with new words and melody. This pattern comes from Hindustani classical music; listen for the verse climbing higher, then leading back to the opening tune.
Aroha
Aroha is the ascending order of notes in a raga, a melodic framework in Indian classical music. In Raga Bhoop, it is Sa Re Ga Pa Dha Sa', with Ma and Ni left out.
Matra
A matra is a single beat of a taal, a repeating rhythmic cycle. Teentaal has sixteen matras, so counting from one to sixteen and returning to one takes you once round the cycle.
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Pallavi
Pallavi is the opening section of a Carnatic (South Indian classical) composition and its refrain, the part that returns. In a Malayalam film song, it is the opening part everyone sings along to, which returns after every verse.
Janya
A janya is a Carnatic raga, a melodic framework, derived from a melakarta, one of 72 seven-note parent scales. Hamsadhwani is one example, using the five notes Sa, Re, Ga, Pa and Ni.
Kriti
A kriti is the main composed song form of Carnatic (South Indian classical) music. It has words, a fixed raga (melodic framework), a fixed tala (rhythmic cycle) and named sections.
Anupallavi
Anupallavi is the second section of a Carnatic (South Indian classical) composition, following the pallavi, the opening section that returns. It usually develops the opening idea, climbs into the upper part of the range, and leads back to the pallavi.
Pakad
Pakad is a short identifying phrase, or group of phrases, in a raga, a melodic framework in Indian classical music. The word means “grip” or “catch”, and the phrase carries the raga’s typical movement and emphasis, not just its notes.
Sher
A sher is a pair of lines in a ghazal, a poem of self-contained pairs linked by rhyme and a shared rhythmic pattern. The first line sets up a thought, and the second completes or turns it.
Dadra
Dadra is a six-beat taal, a repeating rhythmic cycle, arranged in two groups of three. Dadra also names a light-classical song form sung in this rhythm.
Audava
Audava describes a raga, or melodic framework, that uses five notes going up and five notes coming down. Bhoop is an example, using Sa, Re, Ga, Pa and Dha.
Theka
Theka is the basic drum pattern played on tabla drums that spells out a taal, a repeating rhythmic cycle. It keeps time with one stroke per beat while the melody moves.
Taal
A taal is a repeating cycle of a fixed number of beats, grouped into sections with clap and wave markings. It also carries a basic drum pattern called the theka.
Vibhag
A vibhag is a group of beats within a taal, a repeating rhythmic cycle. In teentaal, a 16-beat taal, the beats form four vibhags: 4 + 4 + 4 + 4.
Khali
Khali means “empty” and names the section of a taal, a repeating rhythmic cycle, marked by a hand wave instead of a clap. The drummer plays lighter strokes here, and the contrast with clapped sections helps you feel where you are in the cycle.
Laya
Laya means tempo, or how fast or slow music moves, and more broadly the sense of time in a performance. A repeating rhythmic cycle keeps the same beat count at any laya; only the space between beats changes.
Radif
Radif is a word or phrase repeated at set line endings in a ghazal, poetry built from self-contained pairs of lines. It ends both lines of the opening pair and the second line of every later pair, becoming a musical refrain when sung.
Bol
A bol is a spoken syllable that stands for a stroke on the tabla, a pair of drums, or another drum. In some contexts, bol also means the words of a song.
Sam
Sam is the first beat of a taal, a repeating rhythmic cycle. It is the arrival point where the melody and the drum meet.
Teentaal
Teentaal is the most common taal, or repeating rhythmic cycle, in Hindustani classical music. It has sixteen beats in four groups of four, with claps on beats 1, 5 and 13 and a wave on beat 9.
Ghazal
A ghazal is poetry built from self-contained couplets, or pairs of lines, sharing a rhythmic pattern and rhyme, usually with a repeated phrase. In Indian music, ghazal also means the sung performance of such a poem in a light classical style.
Vadi
The vadi is the most important note of a raga, a melodic framework in Indian classical music. It is the note a musician rests on and returns to most often.
Rasa
Rasa means flavour or essence, and in Indian music it names the mood a performance is said to carry. That mood comes from the notes, the phrases and how they are sung, not from a rule.
Keherwa
Keherwa is an eight-beat taal, a repeating rhythmic cycle, arranged in two groups of four. Clap on beat one and wave on beat five, then repeat the cycle.
Sargam
Sargam means singing or writing a melody using the note names Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha and Ni instead of words. The word comes from the first four names, Sa Re Ga Ma.
Raga
A raga is a melodic framework in Indian classical music for creating pieces and inventing melody during performance. It sets which notes appear, how they move, which carry weight, and which short phrases identify it.
Tuning to shruti: using a tanpura drone in a mix
Set the project’s pitch from the singer’s shruti, their chosen Sa or home note, after checking the song’s lowest and highest phrases. Tune the tanpura, a plucked instrument providing a drone or continuous pitch reference, to that Sa and keep it beneath the voice throughout.
Taal for beginners: teentaal, keherwa and dadra with clap patterns
A taal is a repeating rhythmic cycle: count 16 beats for teentaal, eight for keherwa, and six for dadra. For teentaal, clap on 1, 5 and 13, wave on 9; for keherwa, clap on 1, wave on 5; for dadra, clap on 1, wave on 4.
Raga vs scale: what Western musicians get wrong
A raga adds rules for movement, emphasis, identifying phrases and ornamentation to a scale or mode, a scale with a home note. Producers lose its identity when they treat it as a note list, ignore its tuning and phrasing, or let changing chords reshape the melody’s meaning.
Bansuri: the bamboo flute explained
The bansuri is North India's side-blown flute, made from one hollow, seasoned length of bamboo with a blowing hole and six or seven finger holes. Fingers and breath change its notes without keys; listen for slides between notes, breath-shaped phrases and returns to Sa, the home note.
Swara
A swara is a musical note in Indian music. The seven basic swaras are Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha and Ni.
Saptak
A saptak is an octave, spanning seven notes from Sa, one of Indian music’s basic notes, to the next Sa. The three named saptaks are mandra (low), madhya (middle) and taar (high).
Shuddha
Shuddha means “pure” and describes a note’s natural, unaltered form in Indian music. For example, Raga Bhoop uses only shuddha notes: Sa, Re, Ga, Pa and Dha.
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