Scale Lesson

• Music Theory
• Piano Chords
• Piano Chords in the Key of C
• Piano Chords in the Key of D
• Piano Chords in the Key of E
• Piano Chords in the Key of F
• Piano Chords in the Key of G
• Piano Chords in the Key of A
• Piano Chords in the Key of B
• Guitar Chords
• Guitar Chords in the Key of C
• Guitar Chords in the Key of D
• Guitar Chords in the Key of E
• Guitar Chords in the Key of F
• Guitar Chords in the Key of G
• Guitar Chords in the Key of A
• Guitar Chords in the Key of B
• Scale Lessons
• Chinese scale (Major Pentatonic scale)
• Oriental (Arabic) scale
• Indian scale
• Spanish scale
• Gypsy scale
• Natural minor scale (Aeorian Mode)
• Harmonic minor scale
• Melodic minor scale
• Major scale (Ionian Mode)
• Dorian scale
• Phrygian scale
• Lydian scale
• Mixolydian scale
• Locrian scale

Indian scale

This time, I introduce one of the Indian scales named Marva That. (Pronunciation of "that" is close to "taat")

"That" is the Indian mode(scale) which is used in Indian traditional music called Raga. Although I don't have the specialized knowledge about That and Raga, both seems quite similar to each other .

Let's Listen to my song called "Bond of India" using Marva That.

This Indian scale has really unique intervals includes following notes.

Indian scale C Db E F# G A B

	C		D		E	F		G		A		B
Indian scale	♪	♪			♪		♪	♪		♪		♪

Pitch names in India

	C	D	E	F	G	A	B
India	Sa Shadja	Ri Rishabha	Ga Gandhara	Ma Madhyama	Pa Panchama	Dha Dhaivata	Ni Nishada

There's no scale which has similar interval in the church mode. For instance, note appears continuously at every semitone(B-C-Db). Though we can find it in the 8 notes scale such as a Spanish scale, it's quite intriguing.

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Difficulty of Indian Music

Indian music is mainly composed by combination of Sitar and Tabra. And they have an unique rhythm and some kind of "Mode" structure. When you compose a song using the Indian scale, it might not be a bad idea to use the semitone(as indicated above) and disjunct motion effectively.

Example to use the semitone and disjunct motion effectively

Indian music lacks tonality we are accustomed to. And on top of that, their rhythm theory called Tala consists of 120 patterns and a little extra.　It is necessary to learn a difficult theory if you want to compose an Indian music purely.