tea for two wrote: ↑Wed Jul 28, 2021 7:55 am
Approximately 200 Modes yes 200 in Indian music.
I had a look into this and I think you mean there are over 200 ragas. A raga isn't exactly a mode as we understand it -- there is more to it. It's a vehicle for improvisation and includes melodic phrases. A parallel would be a jazz standard which is also a vehicle for improvisation, but the parallel is not exact as a raga is not a song or a melody.
There are scales called thaats that are a way of classifying ragas. Probably important to think about it that way round -- the raga comes first and the thaat is used to classify the raga. In the northern tradition there are ten thaats and on the raga Wikipedia page there is notation for nine :
You can see Indian music has its own solfege. The practice is to use flats (komal) for all scale degrees except the fourth which can be natural or sharp (tivra). When all scale degrees are natural we have ... the major scale. Coincidence or what? Or maybe people like the sound of that one.
Bilawal : Ionian
Kalyan : Lydian
Bhairav : Phrygian
Those three thaats are modes of each other.
Purvi : Lydian b2 b6
Not a very satisfying name -- it's merely a description as this step pattern doesn't appear in any of the major or minor scales we are familiar with. It could also be :
Purvi : Blues scale with an added natural seventh.
To see how Purvi contains a blues scale I've started on the natural seventh. It's easier to think of it as C# blues scale : C# E F# G G# B C# + C natural (B# spelling it correctly).
Purvi could also be thought on as chromatic enclosures (i.e. the semi tone above and the semitone below) around the root and fifth + the major third
Marva : Lydian b2 or
Marva : Blues scale with added b2
In this case it's F# blues scale -- F# A B C C# E F# + G
Bhairavi : Phrygian #4
Asavari : Aeolian
Kafi : Dorian
Todi : Phrygian #4 natural 7
Again a merely descriptive name. Todi could be thought on as the minor version of Purvi -- chromatic enclosures around the root and fifth + the minor third.
The tenth thaat is Khamaj : Mixolydian.
I have also seen Bhairav given as the double harmonic which you will know the sound of from
Miserlou, the theme from
Pulp Fiction.
If you turn these scales/modes/thaats/pool of notes to improvise with into sound then you've left the realm of theory and moved into practice. To get a feel for them every time there's a semitone bend up to it. Shakti have a track
India which is bendtastic.