Notes: Swaras vs the Staff
You already know all twelve notes. They just have different names — and one big difference in how they behave.
The twelve positions are your twelve semitones
Indian classical music divides the octave into twelve positions, exactly like the twelve semitones on a piano. Measured in semitones above Sa (the tonic), they are:
| Swara | Semitones above Sa | Western equivalent (if Sa = C) |
|---|---|---|
| Sa | 0 | C |
| re | 1 | D♭ |
| Re | 2 | D |
| ga | 3 | E♭ |
| Ga | 4 | E |
| Ma | 5 | F |
| Ma# | 6 | F♯ |
| Pa | 7 | G |
| dha | 8 | A♭ |
| Dha | 9 | A |
| ni | 10 | B♭ |
| Ni | 11 | B |
Tap the swaras
The twelve positions of one octave, from Sa. Tap a key, or use the arrow keys and Enter.
Three naming rules, and you're done:
- Lowercase = flat. re, ga, dha, ni are the komal (flat) notes. Only these four can be flat.
- Uppercase = natural. Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha, Ni are shuddha (natural).
- Ma# is the one sharp. Tivra Ma — the only note that can be sharp. There is no "Sa#" or "Pa♭": Sa and Pa never change.
That's the whole pitch system. No key signatures, no double sharps, no enharmonic respelling headaches.
The big difference: Sa moves
On a piano, C is C. On a sitar, Sa can be any pitch — it's wherever the singer or player puts it, and every other note is measured from there. If you've sung movable-do solfège (do = the tonic, wherever it lands), you already understand this: Sa is do.
This is why there are no key signatures. A key signature exists to say "we're not in C anymore." Here there is no "in C" to leave — the tonic is a choice, not a place. On the Virtual Sitar you just pick your Sa from a dropdown and the whole instrument follows.
Reading the letters
Around the site you'll see notation like S R G m P D N S'. Each swara is
its first letter, with the same case rule as above — and one exception
worth knowing up front: in typed notation, m is tivra Ma (the sharp)
and M is shuddha Ma. Ma has no flat, so the lowercase letter was free to
mean its one variant.
Two marks handle octaves:
- A trailing
'means the upper octave (taar saptak) — think 8va alta. - A trailing
,means the lower octave (mandra saptak) — 8va bassa. - No mark means the middle octave, where you live most of the time.
So S R G m P D N S' with Sa = C reads exactly as C D E F♯ G A B C —
which you might recognize as the Lydian mode. (That's Yaman's scale, and
you'll meet it properly in the next lesson.)
Practice this: open the Practice page, set Sa to C, and
play S R G m P D N S' on the Virtual Sitar, slowly. Say each note's
Western name out loud as you play: C… D… E… F♯… G… A… B… C.
Done when: you can read S R G m P D N S' as fluently as C D E F♯ G A B C.
In the main track: Understanding Swaras covers the same twelve positions in more depth, including the octave system.