Indian Classical Music

Namaste! My name is Sādhana, and you seem to have stumbled upon my website on Indian classical music.

Indian classical music is a very rich and beautiful tradition of music that goes back over 3,500 years. Over the millennia, it has evolved into two distinct schools - the Hindustani school, which is prevalent in North India, and the Carnatic school, which is prevalent in South India. The two are quite similar on a fundamental level, but have evolved to develop distinct styles over the centuries.

This website mainly focuses on the North Indian or Hindustani school of Indian classical music.

The idea for this website came to me because I know many people who enjoy Indian music and would love to understand it better, but most of the information available online assumes a certain basic familiarity with Indian classical music concepts to begin with.

So I decided to make an effort to explain the basic concepts from scratch, demonstrating through examples with notations (both Indian and Western) at each step. Even in simplified forms, Indian music is hard to notate because it uses a lot of ornamentation. Western staff notation, moreover, is not really suited for Indian classical music, because of the many differences between Indian and Western classical music in the way some of the most fundamental concepts are approached. But I think having a score, no matter how partial, is bound to be useful for beginners.

The sidebar (or menu icon if on a mobile device) is for easy navigation. I would recommend reading the pages in the order presented, as the concepts have been arranged to become increasingly clear as you go along, but feel free to go back and forth if you like.

In addition to this website, which is designed as a textbook to explain the basics of Indian classical music, I also write a blog about the historical, regional, technical, and cultural aspects of Indian classical music. Please do visit and take a look. And if there are any topics you would like to hear more about, please leave a comment under one of my blog posts.

Sādhana