Glossary · glossary · 1 min read
Meend
मींड; the glide between notes
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.
By John, Music lover from Bangalore · Reviewed by BRR · Last reviewed 29 Sept 2026
Meend
A singer can slide the voice from one note to another without a break. This is meend, a smooth glide between notes. It is an ornament, a way of shaping a musical phrase. You hear the pitches between the starting and ending notes.
A raga gives notes rules for movement, emphasis and phrasing, rather than treating them as a list. Meend helps express that identity. The approach matters: gliding towards a note from below or from above is part of how a raga takes shape.
Where you will hear it
You will hear that movement in both voices and instruments. Meend, a continuous glide from one note to another, is a basic ornament, or way of shaping notes, in Hindustani music. A singer makes it by sliding the voice without a break.
On a sitar, the player pulls a string sideways to bend its pitch. On a sarangi or bansuri, the player moves a finger. The action changes with the instrument, but listen for the same connection: one note moving into another rather than sounding separately.
Keep going
- 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.