swarasense

Learn: Carnatic Music Glossary

Short, accurate definitions of the terms you'll see across Swarasense's raga pages and practice tools.

Swara
A musical note in Carnatic music. There are 7 basic swara positions per octave (Sa Ri Ga Ma Pa Da Ni), several of which have two or three pitch variants used across different ragas.
Gamaka
An oscillation or ornament applied to a swara — a slide, shake, or bend rather than a static pitch. Gamakas are not decoration on top of a raga; in Carnatic music they are usually what makes a raga identifiable at all.
Raga
A melodic framework: a specific set of swaras with a defined ascending line (arohana) and descending line (avarohana), characteristic phrases, and typical gamakas. A raga is closer to a whole melodic language than a Western "scale".
Arohana
A raga's ascending scale — the swaras it uses on the way up, in order.
Avarohana
A raga's descending scale — the swaras it uses on the way down. In many ragas this differs from the arohana, sometimes using different swara variants or skipping notes.
Shruti
The fixed reference pitch a performance is tuned to — the singer's or player's Sa. Every other swara is sung and judged relative to this one pitch, usually sustained through the performance by a tanpura or shruti box.
Melakarta
One of the 72 parent scales of the Carnatic system: a 7-note (heptatonic) scale that uses one swara variant per position and, taken together with the other 71, covers every possible combination across the 12 semitones in an octave.
Janya
A raga derived from a melakarta parent scale — typically by omitting swaras (fewer than 7 in arohana/avarohana), using different swara variants at different points, or taking a different path up than down. Most performed ragas are janya ragas.
Thaalam
The rhythmic cycle that organises time in a Carnatic performance: a fixed, repeating pattern of beats (marked by claps, waves, and finger counts) that a composition or improvisation is set against.
Sarali Varisai
The first set of vocal exercises taught to beginners: simple ascending-and-descending swara patterns sung straight through the octave, used to build pitch accuracy and voice control before gamakas are introduced.
Kampita
One of the most common gamaka types: an oscillation that swings around a swara rather than sitting still on it. Different ragas use kampita at different speeds and widths on different swaras — one reason the same swara can sound different from one raga to the next.

Guides & how-tos

Want to see these ideas in a real raga's scale? Browse the full raga catalogue.