Hindustani music, through the sitar

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Move Sa and the same phrase moves with it: in this music every note is named from home, wherever the player puts it.

Hear it: one phrase from two SasSwaras and the staff

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Twelve positions name the swaras, but a swara is tuned by ear against Sa and is often reached by a glide — more than a key on a keyboard.

The swaras: shuddha, komal, tivraHear the pitch move between themWhich note? One swara over the drone

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The same five notes as a run and as Bhupali sound like two different things — and one note changed turns Bhupali into another raga.

Hear it: a scale, then a ragaRemove the heart noteRaga, scale and mode

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Notes it leans on, places its phrases come to rest, families of phrases and the register it climbs through: heard in two ragas, all the way down.

Hear it: the heart noteBhupali, its shape and grammarYaman, its shape and grammar

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The same phrase with a meend and without, a held note and a shaken one: in a raga the ornament is often the note itself.

Hear it: meendGamakMeend, gamak, andolan, kan and murki, side by side

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A phrase over the tanpura, then without it: every note of a raga is heard as a distance from Sa, and the drone keeps Sa sounding.

Hear it: with the drone, and withoutNo chords: the drone

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A tihai landing on sam, the claps and the wave of teentaal, one phrase at one to four notes a beat: rhythm as a cycle, not a bar line.

Hear it: sam and the tihaiThe Tala studioThe laykari ladder

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A whole short Bhupali, alap to tihai, with a line at each part saying what it is for and what to listen for.

Hear it: the Listening RoomA performance is an arc

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Two phrases one note apart, a phrase to write down and check, the note a phrase leans on: the ear learns by comparing.

Hear it: hear it, write itVadi SpotterRaga Detective