Sargam and the scale

#music/sargam · Note 2 of 9 · part of Guitar

The seven swaras

Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni — then Sa again, an octave up. Written in full: Shadja, Rishabh, Gandhar, Madhyam, Pancham, Dhaivat, Nishad. Nobody says that.

They map onto Western solfège exactly:

Sargam	Solfège	In C
Sa	Do	C
Re	Re	D
Ga	Mi	E
Ma	Fa	F
Pa	Sol	G
Dha	La	A
Ni	Ti	B
Sa'	Do	C (octave up)

Sa is not C

Sa is home, not a pitch. The table above assumes you chose C. Choose D and Re becomes E, Ga becomes F♯, and everything still sounds the same, just higher. This is why the fret shape below works everywhere.

The gaps are not equal

Count semitones from Sa:

	Sa	Re	Ga	Ma	Pa	Dha	Ni	Sa'
Semitones from Sa	0	2	4	5	7	9	11	12
Step to the next	2	2	1	2	2	2	1

Whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half. That is the major scale — and in Hindustani terms, Bilawal thaat, the one where every swara is shuddha (natural).

The two half steps, Ga→Ma and Ni→Sa', are where E–F and B–C sit on a piano.

All twelve, with the altered swaras

Sa and Pa never change. They are achal — immovable. Everything else has an alternative:

Semitones	Sargam	Western (in C)
0	Sa	C
1	komal Re	D♭
2	Re	D
3	komal Ga	E♭
4	Ga	E
5	Ma	F
6	tivra Ma	F♯
7	Pa	G
8	komal Dha	A♭
9	Dha	A
10	komal Ni	B♭
11	Ni	B
12	Sa'	C

Komal = flattened. Tivra = sharpened, and only Ma gets it. Four komal swaras plus one tivra plus the seven shuddha gives the twelve semitones of the octave — the same twelve frets from The fretboard.

On one string

Because a fret is a semitone, the whole scale is just those numbers. Pick any fret as Sa and count:

Sa   Re   Ga   Ma   Pa   Dha  Ni   Sa'
+0   +2   +4   +5   +7   +9   +11  +12

On the 5th string, 3rd fret = C. Take that as Sa:

A|--3---5---7---8---10--12--14--15--
    Sa  Re  Ga  Ma  Pa  Dha Ni  Sa'

Move the whole thing to the 5th fret and Sa is D. Nothing else changes. That is the entire payoff of a movable system.

Across the strings — the shape worth memorising

One string is impractical. This two-string, two-octave box is the one to learn, with Sa on the 6th string:

e|------------------------------
B|------------------------------
G|------------------------------
D|--------------2--4--5--7---  Pa Dha Ni Sa'
A|--------2--3-----------------    Re  Ga
E|--0--------------------------    Sa

With Sa at the 6th string 8th fret (C), that is C major. Slide it to fret 10 and it is D major. The shape never changes — which is exactly the point.

The 2nd string breaks the shape

Any pattern crossing to the B string needs one extra fret, because G→B is a major third rather than a fourth (The fretboard). Everyone forgets this. Everyone plays a wrong note the first few times.

Aroha and avaroha

Ascending is aroha, descending avaroha. Practise both — descending is harder and is where melodies actually resolve.

A raga is largely defined by which swaras it uses going up versus coming down, and which it lingers on. That is well past this note, but it is why the same seven notes produce hundreds of distinct moods.

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