Sargam is how Indian classical music names, sings, and writes its notes. The word itself is the first four syllables run together — Sa, Re, Ga, Ma — the way Western musicians might say “do-re-mi.” If you are learning harmonium, bansuri, or any Hindustani instrument, sargam is not a preliminary to the music. It is the music’s own language, and every raga you ever learn will be handed to you in it.
The seven swaras
| Swara | Full name | Western solfège parallel |
|---|---|---|
| Sa | Shadja | do |
| Re | Rishabh | re |
| Ga | Gandhar | mi |
| Ma | Madhyam | fa |
| Pa | Pancham | sol |
| Dha | Dhaivat | la |
| Ni | Nishad | ti |
Sa is movable. There is no fixed “concert Sa” — you set it wherever suits your voice or instrument, and everything else is tuned relative to it. This is why Hindustani musicians practise against a drone sounding Sa (and usually Pa): the drone is the reference your ear measures every other swara against.
Shuddha, komal, and tivra
Two swaras never move: Sa and Pa are achal (fixed). The other five have two forms each:
- Re, Ga, Dha, Ni each have a shuddha (natural) form and a komal (lowered, flat) form.
- Ma has a shuddha form and a tivra (raised, sharp) form.
That yields twelve positions in the octave — the same twelve as a Western chromatic scale, arrived at by a different road. In the standard written convention (Bhatkhande’s, the one most printed material uses), a komal swara takes a short line beneath its letter — Re Ga Dha Ni — and tivra Ma takes a small vertical stroke above: Ma. A plain letter is shuddha.
Ragas are defined partly by which forms they take: Yaman uses tivra Ma with everything else shuddha; Bhairav takes komal Re and komal Dha. When all seven are shuddha, the ladder matches the Western major scale.
Octaves: the three saptaks
A dot below a swara puts it in the mandra saptak (lower octave); an unmarked swara sits in the madhya saptak (middle); a dot above puts it in the taar saptak (upper). So the Sa above middle Sa is written Sa with a dot above — sung and played an octave higher.
A worked example
Every Hindustani student meets this material in the first lesson: the plain ascent and descent, then patterned exercises called alankars (also paltas). With all-shuddha swaras and Ṡa marking taar Sa:
Read the alankar aloud: three steps up, shift the starting note one higher, three steps up again, all the way to the top — then mirror it down. Sung slowly against a drone, this one exercise trains pitch, sequence, and breath at once. It is also the shape of things to come: the fast melodic runs (taans) of a mature performance are alankars grown up.
Sargam’s place in riyaz
Riyaz is the tradition’s word for disciplined daily practice, and sargam is its backbone. A riyaz session classically opens with long, steady notes on Sa against the drone — pure sur, tuning the ear before anything moves — then alankars through the raga’s swaras, then the raga’s own phrases, sung or played in sargam before they are ever ornamented. Naming the note while you produce it welds ear, voice, and hand together; that weld is the whole point.
The apps are built around exactly this practice: Harmonium: Riyaz & Sur shows sargam notation natively and gives you a tuneable tanpura-style drone for sur practice, with a structured raga and riyaz course. Flute Studio: Bansuri teaches a raga curriculum and — unusually — hears the ornaments themselves, detecting meend (glides) and gamak (oscillation), not just pitch. And melody is only half of riyaz: rhythm lives in the taal, the cycles kept by the tabla — unpitched, so its language is strokes (bols) rather than swaras, taught cycle by cycle in Dha: Tabla Bols & Taal.
All three grade your practice honestly, on-device — the feedback of a teacher who never flatters, in the notation the music actually lives in.