Raga Guitar

I love playing my guitar, and I play a Jackson electric guitar currently. I like to play blues, some rock music, lots of different things. I am of course an amateur at it, and have no formal training as such. I really like playing exotic scales, and really like play raga-style or Indian-style music on my guitar. I have always loved Indian music, with a particular affinity for the late, great Ravi Shankar. Of course love to own a sitar, but they are quite expensive. I may get a banjira mini-sitar at some point. I like collecting musical instruments, and own a decent shakuhachi flute. At some point I have some plans to mix some Japanese komoi scales to some taiko drum, koto loops or backing tracks, but that is another post, altogether.


For now, though I choose to use my guitar, and I do keep it in standard EADGBE tuning and I play and experiment around with different amp emulator settings to try to create a sitar-like sound or at least an Indian-atmospheric sound, which I have done to my own relative satisfaction.

I currently use Guitar Rig 5, routed through my computer stereo system, but I do own a beloved old Crate amp, which I have had for many years. I don't the amp much, because Guitar Rig is so versatile with so many features, but I would not be without it.

At some point, I may invest in a Ravish Sitar pedal for the guitar, but they are expensive as well running into the 200 dollar region. The pedal is quite unique however, as it simulates the metallic buzz of melodic sitar leads and the characteristic sounds of sympathetic string drones that react to your playing.
I personally believe it is one of the best guitar synth pedals ever made.
In the interim, though I am satisfied with what I have on hand.

I suppose it might be worth, linking all of this to some sort of esoteric or spiritual theme.
For me, playing the guitar is enjoyable and very meditative in nature no matter what style or genre of music I am playing. One can get into a good jam and forget or transcend, every day worries and struggles.


As Pandit Ravi Shankar noted - ragas are like jazz or blues improvisations basically. They of course, follow different forms, but what I find most intriguing is to improvise.

For me, it is a relaxing meditative exercise, and the practice itself with the different scales is good overall practice for the guitar.





Of course, this is not intended to be an inclusive in-depth monograph upon the subject, as it is of course a vast, immense topic, that can be somewhat intimidating, and can prove thorougly confusing for the amateur or casual musician. I have sifted through dozens of websites, some helpful, some less helpful, and others offering to be helpful if you are willing to pay for classes.

I don't really want to pay for classes as it is a rather casual thing for me, so it is a matter of sifting out what is most important and just starting to work with that. The best way I have found, is to find tabla and tanpura backing tracks, and to practice scales along to them. This is good meditative and scale practice in any case teaching you to work the fretboard. There are, in fairness some decent videos on YouTube to help out, with techniques and some finer points.

One discovery I came across, practicing ragas, carnatic, and hindu scales on the guitar, was I had assumed that time was set by the tabla drum meter and it is - but the strings on a sitar or a guitar, are plucked or struck according to the tonal form of the song. It is based on the "seven swaras". The easiest way to understand these is they are equivalent to the "do re mi" of Western music. I hadn't realized this before, and was strumming using the standard Western guitar patterns, and alternate picking, etc.



When you look at the tab which shows the swaras or musical syllables - along with the standard bar notation, what you do is to hit the string where it notes the consonants 'Ma', 'ha', 'de', 'va' 'su', and 'tham' but not on not on vowels or any extensions. It gets more complicated from there however, and can be confusing. What it is technically speaking is a double harmonic scale. That is complicated to explain or grasp, but the basis is it contains two harmonic tetrads featuring augmented seconds - meaning the "gaps" so to speak in the scale are what give it that exotic sound. As an example the Pink Panther Theme, originally played in the key of E minor, is noted for its quirky, unusual use of a double harmonic minor scale.



All the remaining swaras should be played using hammer-on, pull-off and slides. It may seem arcane, but it had mightily puzzled me how the strumming or strings were and are played as it does not of course conform to the Western model of guitar strumming patterns or alternate, and sweep picking patterns. The thing I couldn't figure was how you know when to pluck a string, and when to do hammer-ons, pull offs and slides as it is not noted. It sort of made a bit of it click into place as to why the long sustains are used, and of course the sympathetic strings of the sitar, which provide tonal value between strikes of the string, hammer-ons, slides, etc.

This is a very good video. It shows very clearly and slowly the basic tonic of a marwa.
A marwa is a hexatonic Indian raga. Pa, the fifth tone is omitted. Marwa is also the name of the thaat. The thaat is a mode in northern Indian or Hindustani music. Thaats always have seven different pitches called swara and are a basis for the organization and classification of ragas in North Indian classical music. Curiously, all ragas have specific times of days or night to be performed. A marwa is considered a sunset or evening raga.

I already practice various pentatonic scales for blues and jazz, and this is an extension of that perhaps.
It is improvisation, and I am not personally that overly concerned if it sounds perfect or strict to a particular raga form. If the tampura drone backing track is in C, then one would use a corresponding C scale.
As far as modes for me, brighter major note sounds and scales would be day ragas or thaat, and more minor notes and minor scales, more suggestive of evening and contemplation.

On that note, here is an excellent resource for this that allows you to pick out scales in different ragas, and graphically shows the notes on a fretboard. I do not know how long this will be offered for free, but it is still available free of cost if you click on the picture, the site will come up in a new window.



I have found this immensely useful. From here I have been actively looking for a tampura drone simulator software, where I can generate tampura drone sound files in different keys to import into Guitar Rig as backing tracks. It would be great to find a tabla simulator software to do the same thing to make drum backing tracks, in particular meters. There are a few, but I have tended to rely on backing tracks and loops for this primarily.

Here is one of the few tanpura drone simulators I have found online that are still free and will generate sound files.

Tanpura Drone Generator

Here is a D sa-pa Tanpura sound file, and a very good one.
D sa-pa Sound

A particular key mentioned in many of the beginner practices is the key of C.
One other raga guitarist, recommends use of the Lydian b9 scale as a good practice form as it is close to many of the raga scales as far as the fretboard.




Of course there is the standard Hindu scale, which is also nice and exotic sounding.
This Indian music scale is called the Asavari scale or raga Asavari. A raga is something between a scale and a composition, it is richer then a scale, but not as fixed as a composition. It is more like a tonal framework for improvisation and composition, just as chord changes and standards are for a jazz musician. The difference is, this is play differently ascending up or down. Its a very good place to start.

Of course the more esoterically minded, might venture that there is some link between the seven swaras, and what is known as the seven chakras. And of course there is.