Technical Ancient Indian Music

Ancient Indian Music By Emma Williams

In western music, an octave has eight commonly used notes, in contrast to the twelve commonly used notes of the Indian octave. In music terms, an octave higher means that all the notes in the tune are twelve notes higher than the melody, but have the same relation to each other and follow the same pattern. An octave can also be twelve notes lower. There are two western scales, major and minor. In ancient Indian music, however, there are many scales, called thats. There are ten popular thats in Ancient Indian music. Many of the ascending Indian scales, called arohas, differ from the descending scales, called avarohas. However, this is not unique to Indian music, as the harmonic minor scale in western music follows this same pattern.