Beginners' Worksheet
Introduction to Harmonium and the 12 scales
Our first task is to understand Harmonium keyboard. As we must acknowledge that Harmonium is basically a European Instrument, originated in Vienna (Austria), and France. The First time Harmonium was patented in 1840 by a french man Alexander Debain. It came to India along with British in the late 19th century. Indian Instrument manufacturers in Kolkata developed the present day smaller sized Indian version with hand pumped bellows. Since then India has become the largest
manufacturer of Indian Style Harmoniums.
Names of the notes and corresponding keys on Harmonium Keyboard is standardised
according to first 7 English Alphabets:
The very first white key is called C, from there onwards next 6 white keys will be B C D E F G A and B followed by C again. The black keys in between white keys get their names from their adjacent white keys with the word sharp and symbol of # added to them.
A B C D E F G
WHITE KEYS
BLACK KEYS
CDEFGAB
C#
D#
F#
G#
A#
Commonly, harmonium keyboards consists of 38 or 42.
The 7 white keys and 5 black keys together makes one octave, and harmonium consists of usually 3 full Octaves and a few additional keys. These 3 Octaves are Lower, Middle and Higher Octave.
From here we must look into the Swaras to learn Raga Music. In contrary to standardisation of western notes and scales, the scale of Indian music cant be fixed in the same way. So, we can pick any key as our Sa, which is the fundamental reference point for Indian scale and find other swaras in the proper intervals.
We use the word Saptak instead of Octave.
In one Saptak we have:
7 SHUDHA SWAR
S/Sa
4 KOMAL SWAR
R/Re
r/re
G/Ga
g/ga
m/ma
P/Pa
D/Dha
d/dha
N/Ni
n/ni
1 TEEVRA SWAR
M/Ma
Altogether they are 12 swaras in one Saptak.
Now we need to pick a key on the Harmonium to fix our S. Usually Adult male scales differ from female and kids’ scales particularly to learn Ragas.
Ascending Order of the swara-s is called ‘Aarohi’
Descending Order of the swaras is called ‘Avrohi’.
A Scale
Use the following table to learn Arohi and Avrohi to play and sing Swara-s if key of A is fixed as Sa :
MIDDLE
SWARA-s
S/Sa
R/Re
G/Ga
m/ma
P/Pa
D/Dha
N/Ni
Ś/Śa
KEYS
A
B
C#
D
E
F#
G#
A
FINGERS
THUMB
INDEX
MIDDLE
THUMB
INDEX
RING
LITTLE
A# Scale
Use the following table to learn Arohi and Avrohi to play and sing Swara-s if key of A# is fixed as Sa :
INDEX
SWARA-s
S/Sa
R/Re
G/Ga
m/ma
P/Pa
D/Dha
N/Ni
Ś/Śa
KEYS
A#
C
D
D#
F
G
A
A#
FINGERS
INDEX
THUMB
INDEX
MIDDLE
THUMB
MIDDLE
RING
B Scale
Use the following table to learn Arohi and Avrohi to play and sing Swara-s if key of B is fixed as Sa :
MIDDLE
SWARA-s
S/Sa
R/Re
G/Ga
m/ma
P/Pa
D/Dha
N/Ni
Ś/Śa
KEYS
B
C#
D#
E
F#
G#
A#
B
FINGERS
THUMB
INDEX
MIDDLE
THUMB
INDEX
RING
LITTLE
C Scale
Use the following table to learn Arohi and Avrohi to play and sing Swara-s if key of C is fixed as Sa :
MIDDLE
SWARA-s
S/Sa
R/Re
G/Ga
m/ma
P/Pa
D/Dha
N/Ni
Ś/Śa
KEYS
C
D
E
F
G
A
B
C
FINGERS
THUMB
INDEX
MIDDLE
THUMB
INDEX
RING
LITTLE
C# Scale
Usually for adult male scale we’ll use C# as our S.
Use the following table to learn Arohi and Avrohi:
KEYS
C#
D#
F
F#
G#
A#
C
C#
FINGERS
INDEX
MIDDLE
THUMB
INDEX
MIDDLE
RING
THUMB
INDEX
SWARA-s
S/Sa
R/Re
G/Ga
m/ma
P/Pa
D/Dha
N/Ni
Ś/Śa
D Scale
Use the following table to learn Arohi and Avrohi to play and sing Swara-s if key of D is fixed as Sa :
MIDDLE
SWARA-s
S/Sa
R/Re
G/Ga
m/ma
P/Pa
D/Dha
N/Ni
Ś/Śa
KEYS
D
E
F#
G
A
B
C#
D
FINGERS
THUMB
INDEX
MIDDLE
THUMB
INDEX
RING
LITTLE
D# Scale
Use the following table to learn Arohi and Avrohi to play and sing Swara-s if key of D# is fixed as Sa :
THUMB
SWARA-s
S/Sa
R/Re
G/Ga
m/ma
P/Pa
D/Dha
N/Ni
Ś/Śa
KEYS
D#
F
G
G#
A#
C
A
D#
FINGERS
INDEX
THUMB
INDEX
MIDDLE
RING
INDEX
MIDDLE
E Scale
Use the following table to learn Arohi and Avrohi to play and sing Swara-s if key of E is fixed as Sa :
MIDDLE
SWARA-s
S/Sa
R/Re
G/Ga
m/ma
P/Pa
D/Dha
N/Ni
Ś/Śa
KEYS
E
F#
G#
A
B
C#
D#
E
FINGERS
THUMB
INDEX
MIDDLE
THUMB
INDEX
RING
LITTLE
F Scale
Use the following table to learn Arohi and Avrohi to play and sing Swara-s if key of F is fixed as Sa :
INDEX
SWARA-s
S/Sa
R/Re
G/Ga
m/ma
P/Pa
D/Dha
N/Ni
Ś/Śa
KEYS
F
G
A
A#
C
D
E
F
FINGERS
THUMB
INDEX
MIDDLE
RING
THUMB
MIDDLE
RING
F# Scale
Use the following table to learn Arohi and Avrohi to play and sing Swara-s if key of F# is fixed as Sa :
KEYS
F#
G#
A#
B
C#
D#
F
F#
FINGERS
INDEX
MIDDLE
RING
THUMB
INDEX
MIDDLE
THUMB
INDEX
SWARA-s
S/Sa
R/Re
G/Ga
m/ma
P/Pa
D/Dha
N/Ni
Ś/Śa
G Scale
Use the following table to learn Arohi and Avrohi to play and sing Swara-s if key of G is fixed as Sa :
KEYS
G
A
B
C
D
E
F#
G
FINGERS
THUMB
INDEX
MIDDLE
THUMB
INDEX
RING
LITTLE
G# Scale
Use the following table to learn Arohi and Avrohi to play and sing Swara-s if key of G# is fixed as Sa :