Indian classical music? We all might have heard it before, but how does it really work? What’s the structure? Indian classical music allows you to compose and create almost whatever you want. You can do on-the-spot improvisation, compose melodies in advance, or take ideas from someone else’s creations. Indian music has a basic structure, raga, and seven swaras.
First, we need to understand Ragas and swaras. Swaras are like Indian notes. For example, Sa is equivalent to Do, Re is equivalent to re, and Mi is equivalent to Ga. So, the Indian note scale goes like this: sa, re, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni, sa. It’s very similar to the western scale: Do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do. But, what is a raga, and how does it correspond with swaras? A raga is just a specific order or style of how you play certain notes. For example, if you play the ascending scale in the raga Hemant, it would sound like this: Sa, ga, ma, dha, ni, sa. It skips re and pa (sol). But if you play up in the raga Ahir Bhairav, it would sound like this: sa, re, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni, sa. It skips no notes. Ragas can also differ depending on their flats and sharps. Two ragas might have the same ascending or descending scale, but are different because one has a sharp note, and the other one doesn’t. One important rule of Indian music is that you must follow the structure of every raga. You can not play a re on the way up if the ascending scale in your raga skips re.
Now, since we understand ragas, we can now talk about the basic structure. The structure starts very slow. A very calming combination of notes, and then gets faster and faster as you get closer towards the end. It has five main parts: First is the alap, which is a slow free for all combination of notes that are played at the beginning of a piece. Next, is a vilambit gat, which is a slow melody that is played after the alap. Then comes the drut gat, or ati drut gat, which are fast melodies played in the middle of a performance. After that is the jala. The jala is an even faster part of the piece that is performed by striking one note, and then playing “do” three, two, or just one time.
The last part of an Indian Classical piece is the ending taan and Tehai. These are the fastest parts of the piece. The taan is usually played three or four times, but the Tihai is always played three times. As you can see, the structure is very unique from other types of music.
North Indian musicians don’t play alone. They always play with tabla. Tabla are the North Indian drums. So how do the tabla and the instrument play together? They go in a fixed beat structure. The most common beat structure, or taala, is tintal. Tintal is 16 beats. When musicians play a gat, a Jala, or an ending tihai, they usually start on beat 1. Then, the music flows through the next 15 beats and then starts over back on 1. It’s a cycle.
As you can see, Indian classical music is very complex. There are many more concepts of Indian music to talk about, such as bistars, gat taans, and Jhor. But we won’t get into that in this article.
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Here is a video link of Pandit Tarun Bhattacharya playing Raga Hemant: