Glossary of Terms
The working vocabulary of both traditions, written plainly. Definitions here are our own, meant for a student encountering a word for the first time.
- Swara
- One of the seven scale degrees — Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha, Ni — heard as a pitch with a character, not merely a frequency.
- Śruti
- The reference pitch a singer or player tunes to. Every swara is measured from it, so two performers in different śruti sing the same rāga at different absolute pitches.
- Rāga
- A framework of chosen swaras, a way of moving between them, and the mood that movement produces. A scale is one small part of it.
- Thāṭ
- A parent scale used in Hindustani theory to file rāgas by their note-set. Bhatkhande arranged the repertoire under ten of them.
- Melakartā
- The Carnatic equivalent: seventy-two complete parent scales generated systematically, each with a number and a place in a chakra.
- Ārohaṇa / Avarohaṇa
- The ascending and descending outline of a rāga — which notes appear going up, which coming down, and which are skipped.
- Vādi / Samvādi
- The rāga’s most emphasised note and its answering note, usually a fourth or fifth apart. Phrases tend to gather around them.
- Pakaḍ
- A short signature phrase that identifies a rāga at once, the way a few words identify a familiar voice.
- Chalan
- The characteristic gait of a rāga — the turns, approaches and hesitations that make its scale sound like itself.
- Tāla / Tāḷa
- A cycle of beats with an internal structure of stressed and unstressed divisions, counted with claps and waves.
- Mātrā
- A single beat of a tāla cycle.
- Sam
- The first beat of the cycle — the point of arrival that both musicians aim for.
- Khāli
- A section of the cycle marked by a wave rather than a clap, felt as a release of weight.
- Ṭhekā
- The basic drum pattern that states a tāla, spelled out in bols.
- Bol
- A spoken syllable standing for a drum stroke (dhā, dhin, tā, ka) or for a word of text in a composition.
- Layakārī
- Play with tempo and subdivision — doubling, halving, or crossing the pulse while the cycle holds.
- Ālāp
- Unmetered opening exploration of a rāga, without drum, where the notes are introduced one relationship at a time.
- Bandiś
- A fixed composition in a rāga and tāla, with sthāyī and antarā sections, learned by heart and then opened up.
- Sthāyī / Antarā
- The first section of a bandiś, living mostly in the lower and middle octave, and the second, which rises into the upper.
- Khyāl
- The principal Hindustani vocal genre: a short composition treated at length, slow then fast, with improvisation throughout.
- Dhrupad
- An older, austere vocal form with extended ālāp and syllabic text, sung with restrained ornament.
- Ṭhumrī
- A lighter romantic genre where the text and its shades of feeling govern the treatment of the rāga.
- Tarānā
- A fast piece sung on non-lexical syllables, closer to instrumental figuration than to song.
- Gat
- A fixed instrumental composition on sitar or sarod, set to a tāla and elaborated in cycles.
- Kṛti
- The central Carnatic composed form, in three parts — pallavi, anupallavi, caraṇa — with a named composer and text.
- Varṇam
- A study piece that condenses a rāga’s characteristic phrases; sung and danced, and used to build stamina.
- Gamaka
- Carnatic ornament: the shakes, slides and oscillations without which a scale is not yet a rāga.
- Meend
- Hindustani glide between notes, drawn on a string or in the voice, carrying the pitches in between.
- Sargam
- Singing by note-name; also the solfège syllables themselves.
- Alankār
- Graded melodic patterns run through the scale to train accuracy, breath and evenness.
- Palṭā
- A short figure transposed step by step through the scale — the daily bread of riyāz.
- Riyāz
- Sustained, deliberate practice; the discipline of returning to the same small thing until it becomes yours.
- Gharānā
- A lineage of teaching with its own repertoire, aesthetic and technical preferences, named for a place or family.
- Guru–śiṣya paramparā
- Transmission from teacher to student in person and over years, by imitation and correction rather than by text.
- Tānpūrā
- The long-necked drone instrument whose overtones establish śruti and hold the tonal ground of a performance.
- Samay
- The hour of the day or the season with which a rāga is traditionally associated.
Every definition on this page is written by our faculty. Where a term has different senses in Hindustani and Carnatic usage, we have said so rather than flattening the difference.