What is a raga?
A raga is a melodic framework from Indian classical music. It's more than a scale: it sets which notes are used, how the melody climbs and falls, which phrases define it, and the mood (rasa) it's meant to create. Many Hindustani ragas also belong to a time of day or a season.
Two ragas can share exactly the same notes and still sound different, because they move differently. That's why each raga page shows both the notes and the movement.
Reading the notes
Indian music names notes relative to the home note, Sa, like movable do. Pick any key for Sa and everything shifts with it.
| Sargam | Name | From C |
|---|---|---|
| S | Sa | C |
| r / R | komal Re / shuddha Re | D♭ / D |
| g / G | komal Ga / shuddha Ga | E♭ / E |
| M / M' | shuddha Ma / tivra Ma | F / F♯ |
| P | Pa | G |
| d / D | komal Dha / shuddha Dha | A♭ / A |
| n / N | komal Ni / shuddha Ni | B♭ / B |
Lowercase means komal (flat). M' means tivra (sharp) Ma. In the aroha and avaroha, a dot below a note means the lower octave and a dot above means the upper octave. Carnatic Nattai uses R3 (D♯) and D3 (A♯), which are shown by those names.
Aroha and avaroha
The aroha is how the raga ascends and the avaroha is how it descends. They often skip notes or zigzag. For example, Bihag skips Re and Dha going up. Playing a raga "correctly" starts with following these paths rather than running the scale straight.
Hear it your way
Every raga page has an instrument picker: sitar, bansuri (bamboo flute), santoor (hammered strings), harmonium, piano and electric keys. Your choice is remembered. Turn on the Drone for a tanpura playing Sa and Pa underneath, the way ragas are traditionally heard.
Each page also has a Good to know box: stories and traditions about the raga, how many notes it uses, and which Western scale or Carnatic parent scale shares its notes.
Pakad: the raga's catch-phrase
The pakad is a short phrase that instantly identifies a raga, like a riff that tells you which song is playing. Each Hindustani raga page shows its pakad; Carnatic pages show a signature phrase. Tap Play to hear it, or download it as MIDI and use it as a hook, a loop or the start of a melody.
Fusion: genres that fit
Each raga page suggests three Western genres that suit its notes and mood, with a tempo range and a production tip. For example, ragas with the notes of the Dorian mode sit well in lo-fi and neo-soul, and ragas with a flat second often suit flamenco, trap or film scores.
Chords that fit
Ragas are traditionally played over a drone, not chords. For fusion, film and pop, each raga page lists chords built only from the raga's notes. Home chords contain Sa, so they work best at resting points. If no major or minor chord fits, you'll see sus, diminished or power chords instead.
Using the MIDI in your DAW
- Pick your key with the Sa menu so the files match your track.
- Open a raga and tap Download MIDI. Set the tempo, then download the aroha and avaroha, the pakad, the chords, the drone, or everything as a zip. Each chord also has its own download button.
- Drag the .mid file onto a MIDI track in your DAW. This works in Ableton Live, FL Studio, Logic Pro, GarageBand, Cubase, Studio One, Reaper and Bitwig.
- Put the drone on a pad, string or tanpura patch, the chords on keys, and use the pakad and the aroha and avaroha as your note palette for melodies.
Tips for scale tools
- Ableton Live 12, FL Studio, Logic: their built-in scales rarely match a raga exactly. Drop the aroha-avaroha clip into the piano roll as a guide, or use it to see which keys to stay on.
- Keep the drone going while you write. It keeps Sa in your ear, which is what makes a melody sound like a raga.
Your music, not AI's
RāgāKit is not an AI music generator. It doesn't write songs for you, and nothing here comes from a model trained on other people's music.
What it gives you are building blocks: each raga's notes, its movement, its pakad, chords that fit and MIDI files. The phrases come from the Indian classical tradition, and the chords and kits are worked out with plain music-theory rules. The instruments are synthesized right in your browser.
The melody you shape, the beat, the arrangement and the feeling are yours. A track made with RāgāKit is your own work. (The site's code and much of its explanatory text were written with help from an AI assistant. The music tools themselves use no AI: the MIDI, chords and audio come from fixed music rules, traditional phrases and recorded drums.)
Using RāgāKit in your music
Free to use, royalty-free. The MIDI files and audio you download from RāgāKit can go into your own music: releases, streams, YouTube, podcasts, film, TV, games and ads. There are no royalties or fees, and no credit is required (a mention is always appreciated).
Please don't resell or give away the files themselves as a sample, loop or MIDI pack.
Ragas belong to the Indian classical tradition, not to anyone. If you build on a specific existing song or composition, that work's own rights still apply. The full terms are in the RāgāKit License.
The drum sounds
The taal pages use sampled drums: single strokes recorded from a tabla, a mridangam and a dholak, which RāgāKit retunes to the Sa you pick and plays in each taal's pattern. They are not recordings of a drummer playing. They come from recordings that their makers released into the public domain (CC0) on Freesound. Thank you to them:
- Tabla: the "tabla bols" collection by mmiron (single strokes: Na, Tin, Tun, Te, Re, Ke, Ghe).
- Mridangam: strokes cut from recordings by Ajay Srinivasamurthy (ajaysm).
- Dholak: recordings by curesforbrokenhearts (treble and bass heads) and iyankc.
The lo-fi, trap and house kits are electronic sounds made in your browser, the way drum machines make them. The folk grooves and the mridangam patterns are simple teaching forms; real players add their own variations.
Ornaments and the notes in between
A raga lives in how notes are sung and played: slides (meend), shakes and turns (gamaka), and in some ragas a slow sway around a note, like Darbari's komal Ga. MIDI and a keyboard can only show the notes and the shape of a phrase. Use them as your starting point, and add pitch bends, slides and your own feel on top.
Sources and review
The raga and taal descriptions, facts and phrases on RāgāKit were written for this site, with help from an AI assistant, from widely taught knowledge of Hindustani and Carnatic music. Nothing is copied from books or other websites. The ragas' scales, their traditional catch-phrases (pakad) and the taal patterns belong to a shared tradition that is centuries old.
The ragas' notes, movement and phrases follow widely taught versions. Traditions and teachers often differ, so RāgāKit shows one common version rather than the only correct one. The content has been through a fact-check, and a review by an experienced musician is planned but hasn't happened yet.
If you spot a mistake, please say so in the feedback box on that page. Corrections from musicians are the most useful feedback RāgāKit gets.
To go deeper, these are standard references (RāgāKit isn't affiliated with them):
- Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande, Hindustani Sangeet Paddhati and Kramik Pustak Malika: the thaat system used to group Hindustani ragas.
- Walter Kaufmann, The Ragas of North India (Indiana University Press, 1968).
- Joep Bor (ed.), The Raga Guide: A Survey of 74 Hindustani Ragas (Nimbus Records, 1999), a book with recordings.
- P. Sambamoorthy, South Indian Music (multiple volumes): a standard course in Carnatic music, including the melakarta system and talas.
Privacy
RāgāKit has no accounts, ads or cookies, and builds no profiles. It counts visits and actions (like Play or Download) anonymously, with the approximate place of the connection, to see what's useful. Feedback is anonymous and private. We only ask for an email if you sign up for news, and every email has an unsubscribe link. The full Privacy Policy explains everything, and the Terms of Use cover using the site and app.
Acknowledgments
RāgāKit is built with these, used under their licenses. Thank you to their makers.
- Drum samples (tabla, mridangam, dholak): single strokes from public-domain (CC0) recordings from Freesound by mmiron, Ajay Srinivasamurthy, curesforbrokenhearts and iyankc. See The drum sounds.
- Fonts: Hind and Rozha One, both by Indian Type Foundry, under the SIL Open Font License 1.1 (Hind license, Rozha One license).
- iPhone, iPad and Android app: built with Capacitor by Ionic (MIT License), including the App, Filesystem, Haptics, Share and Local Notifications plugins. The Android app also uses Google's AndroidX libraries (Apache License 2.0).
- Pitch detection for singing practice: our own implementation of the YIN method published by Alain de Cheveigné and Hideki Kawahara (2002).
- Raga finder ("What raga is this?"): our own code, based on published methods for pitch detection (YIN) and for matching the notes a piece uses against each raga.
- Guide voice in guided practice: recorded for RāgāKit by its maker.
- App Store badge: the official "Download on the App Store" badge from Apple's marketing tools, used as Apple's guidelines describe.
- Hosting: Cloudflare.
Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone and iPad are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc. Android is a trademark of Google LLC. QR Code is a registered trademark of DENSO WAVE INCORPORATED. RāgāKit is not affiliated with or endorsed by these companies.
MIT License notice for Capacitor: Copyright © 2017-present Drifty Co.; plugins Copyright © 2020-present Ionic. Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
Coming next
More ragas, chord progressions, and more ways to bring ragas into your DAW. Sign up at the bottom of the page to hear first.
Help shape RāgāKit
Tell me what helped and what's missing. It goes straight to the person building this and stays private. It's anonymous: no name or email needed. Want news of new ragas and packs? Use the email sign-up at the bottom of the page.