Modes In Music and Their Indian Equivalent (Thaats)

I was recently jamming with my vocalist friend, proficient in Hindustani classical music, and once again felt the need to spend time outside the traditional modes of the major scale.

You see, Indian classical music, whether it be Hindustani or Carnatic, has been highly melody-based. Time and time again, I have shared the fact that chords were not even a part of Indian classical music, as a concept.

I keep repeating because it came as a surprise to me, yet it explained why so much is going on with the scales in Indian Music and also the absence of extended chords, which is something we'll explore later.

Melody has always been the king; even Bollywood adapted to the idea. And now that movie songs aren't as dominant as they used to be, even Indian indie artists have accepted the idea.

If we look at the artists such as Anuv Jain and The Local Train, the songs, at least the ones which blew up, have had very strong vocal melody, and that really makes my case, I suppose.

Well, so intensive melody play requires a broader landscape of scales, and thus, there are a huge number of scale variants within Indian music theory.

So I asked my friend, "What's the closest equivalent of scales in Hindustani music?" and he came up with the answer, Thaats. *The word comes from Hindi/Sanskrit roots meaning "framework" or "arrangement" - highlighting its role as an organizational system rather than performance material.

Now, for the longest time, I used to think of scales as ragas, being as uninformed as I am about Indian Classical. Ragas apparently are derived from thaats and are rather more nuanced.

There are 10 Thaats, to be specific, and although I'm gonna share the names and everything, don't be obliged in any way to memorize, that'd be useless, to be honest, because at the end of the day, it's really about flavor, how can you bring that out in your music. Pakad, aka the characteristic phrase that identifies a raga is completely absent in Western scale theory and shows how Indian music emphasizes melodic patterns rather than scale structures.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves, though.

So... there are 10 thoughts. The good news is, six of them (Bilawal, Kalyan, Khamaj, Kafi, Asavari, and Bhairav) are the same as modes of the major scale, except for the locrian, a mode based on the seventh note. 10 Thaats with Western Equivalents

Thaat	Notes (Swaras)	Western Scale Equivalent	Mode / Scale Name
Bilawal	S R G M P D N S (all shuddh)	C D E F G A B C	Ionian / Major
Kalyan	S R G Tivra Ma P D N S	C D E F♯ G A B C	Lydian
Khamaj	S R G M P D Komal Ni S	C D E F G A B♭ C	Mixolydian
Bhairav	S Komal Re G M P Komal Dha N S	C D♭ E F G A♭ B C	~Double Phrygian / Custom Scale
Poorvi	S Komal Re G Tivra Ma P Komal Dha N S	C D♭ E F♯ G A♭ B C	~Lydian ♭2 ♭6
Marwa	S Komal Re G Tivra Ma P D N S	C D♭ E F♯ G A B C	~Lydian ♭2
Kafi	S R Komal Ga M P D Komal Ni S	C D E♭ F G A B♭ C	Dorian
Asavari	S R Komal Ga M P Komal Dha Komal Ni S	C D E♭ F G A♭ B♭ C	Aeolian / Natural Minor
Bhairavi	S Komal Re, Komal Ga, M, P, Komal Dha, Komal Ni	C D♭ E♭ F G A♭ B♭ C	Phrygian
Todi	S Komal Re, Komal Ga, Tivra Ma, P, Komal Dha, N	C D♭ E♭ F♯ G A♭ B C	~Phrygian ♯4 / Hungarian Minor Variant

The remaining four are, as one could say, intense.

At least two or more notes are altered, unlike the first six modes of the major scale.

This asks for a deep dive,

If we do a quick walkthrough of the modes, you’ll see that it all kicks off with Ionian, which is literally the major scale.

No surprises there.

The moment you step into Dorian, things start getting interesting. It still looks like a minor — you’ve got your root, second, flat third, then fourth and fifth — all good — but then suddenly, boom, the sixth shows up, and it’s not flat like you’d expect from a natural minor.

As if someone cracked a window open in a dark room. That one note changes the entire mood — to me, it brings this feeling of lightness or liberation — but again, that’s just my lens. I’m not here to pin it down with fancy emotional tags or genre names. Feel what you feel.

Now, Phrygian — you don’t even have to finish the scale to feel the shift. That flat two right at the start hits you like a warning bell. It's serious. Ominous, even. A lot of people jump straight to “Spanish” or “Arabic” or “medieval” when they hear it, and sure, maybe there’s a reason those labels float around.

But really, reducing entire musical cultures to a single note — a flat two — is kind of lame, right?

Still, I get it — we’re just trying to build mental images here for those of you trying to really internalize this stuff.

Then comes Lydian, which is basically the major scale with a simple twist — the fourth goes up by a semitone. That’s it. Sharp four. But that tiny shift makes it feel oddly floaty, picture walking on air with a jetpack on. People say it sounds “dreamy” or “open,” and yeah, it really does.

Mixolydian — again, super close to major — but here the seventh drops down. So you're cruising along in major-land, and then the final note tugs you back instead of leading you home. That flat seven has its own lazy, bluesy, maybe even folksy charm. And yeah, if you're a guitar player, visualizing all this on the fretboard can really help.

Just picture that one note pulling back — that's Mixolydian.

Aeolian, that’s your classic natural minor. Nothing shocking here if you’re already familiar with minor. It’s moody, it’s emotional, and it sits deep in your gut.

Then finally, we hit Locrian, and this one — well, it’s weird on purpose. Nobody really writes a happy song in Locrian. It’s unstable. You can feel the tension in every corner of it, especially because the fifth — that solid, grounding note — is flat.

So there’s no real resolution. It’s like a movie that ends with a blackout and no credits. Not everyone’s into that.

I have described the modes and their flavours from a composer's point of view, which can always differ, as when you're composing, you're 'creating' something, and when you're creating, there are no rules, it's your creation! It's the best of you!

No one's gonna scold you if you played the chromatic scale and uploaded it to Spotify, really! Honestly, try doing that, maybe you'll blow up, who knows?

So you see — across all these modes, what’s fascinating is that only one note at a time is doing the heavy lifting — One small shift, and boom — a whole new vibe.

And you might wonder why I keep returning to major and minor as the base grid? Why treat them as home turf?

Well, because — let’s be real — that’s how we hear. That’s how we’ve been wired, or maybe conditioned. Either way, whether it’s nursery rhymes or Bollywood melodies or video game soundtracks, our ears default to asking: Is this major or is this minor?

Even if we don’t consciously ask it, the brain decides. It hears the third, hears the sixth, and bam — it starts tagging emotions accordingly.

That’s why something like Dorian jumps out — because you hear what feels same a minor scale, and then that natural sixth sneaks in like a plot twist. Or Phrygian — that flat two slaps you across the face before the story even starts.

Same with the major modes — Mixolydian’s flat seven gives it this grounded, laid-back hang, while Lydian’s sharp four lifts off the ground like a drone with no destination.

And here's a little secret for those still piecing it together: out of the seven modes of the major scale, three are major-type and three are minor-type. That symmetry is baked in — Ionian, Lydian, Mixolydian give you the major family, and Dorian, Phrygian, Aeolian form the minor family. Locrian... well, Locrian’s out there doing its own thing, crashing the party with its flat five and existential dread.

That’s why, even in my ear training modules, the very first layers focus on being able to distinguish major from minor. Because once you can lock in that fundamental split, all these modal flavors become way easier to decode.

As for why major and minor are so deeply embedded in us...

Honestly, I’ve stopped trying to find a neat answer. With the kind of info overload and cultural mashup we’re living in — where a YouTube algorithm throws medieval lute music between two EDM tracks — maybe it’s not even about theory anymore.

Maybe it’s muscle memory. Or mass exposure. Or maybe it's just the sound of a harmonic series quietly doing its job behind the scenes while we assign all this meaning.

I don’t know what the answers are going to be — and to be honest, diving too deep into theory sometimes feels contradictory as it goes against my own bias. Which is that at least 50% of the time, if not more, should be spent playing. Hands on the instrument. Ears on the sound. Not eyes on a chart.

But yeah, time and again, I find myself slipping back into these little thought-rabbitholes, these patterns of questioning — and honestly, it's those very investigations that have ended up teaching me the most.

I still remember sitting with the guitar for hours, not even playing, gazing at the fretboard. Trying to visualize. Trying to make sense of it.

In my head, it was like learning a city map— I couldn’t roam until I knew where I was.

And since we’re talking modes — actually, I should be using the word flavors.

I’ve really come to think of scales and modes as flavors. That metaphor works. Especially for those of you who’ve found modes a little intimidating — and I know that’s a lot of people.

Let me say this upfront: if you’re not very comfortable with the basic feeling of major and minor, then honestly, this whole thing might not be the right rabbit hole yet. You’ve got to be able to hear something and just feel it — “this sounds major” or “this sounds minor.” That’s your first checkpoint. That’s level one.

Because if you’re not solid on that, then things are going to get messy real fast. The next layer in this journey — the Western modal world — is basically about how a single note beyond the third starts moving around, and how that movement gives the mode its unique spice. But if your inner compass isn’t already tuned to major vs. minor, then the other subtleties won’t register as flavor — they’ll rather register as confusion.

Quick Recap,

Step 1: Distinguish between major and minor.

Step 2: Single note alterations on top of major/minor.

So here’s where things really start to get spicy.

The remaining four Thaats — the ones that don’t have a direct Western equivalent within the major scale framework — to me, they kind of represent Step 3 in this journey. They still orbit around the idea of major or minor, sure, but now we’re talking more than one note being altered from the core major/minor blueprint.

Spoiler alert: three of them are major-type scales. But again, not just one rogue note as in Lydian or Mixolydian — here, it’s two or more notes stepping outside the grid. And that’s when the flavor really starts to drift. You lose the homey, familiar feeling of major or minor, and you’re suddenly somewhere else entirely.

Which is probably why, when these Thaats (or their Western equivalents, or cousins) do show up in songs, they’re usually there for a particular moment, a specific phase, not the whole track. And naturally, this got me thinking about progressive rock, jazz, metal — those genres that are kind of built to chase unusual moods.

Actually, I’ll go further — one of these four Thaats (specifically the one that maps to the Double Harmonic Major) has become almost a religion in metal.

That scale — 1, ♭2, 3, 4, 5, ♭6, 7, 8 — the sacred spice blend in the riff kitchen. Super dramatic, super heavy, and used a lot even by players who never sat down and “studied” it. And that’s the point.

Because a lot of these bands and songwriters didn’t know the theory. They weren’t quoting Thaats or modes or naming intervals. They were just following their ears. Following what felt intense, what felt fresh.

And on that note — yeah, let me bring up Kurt Cobain. Not because I have a grudge against the guy or I’m tired of seeing him on every second T-shirt (though, sure, that too), but because he’s a great example.

There’s that story — maybe you’ve heard it — about how he once couldn’t find F♯ on the G string, as told by his manager. And that’s wild, right? Because the music he wrote still hits so hard. He didn’t need to know the name of the note to use it.

And funnily enough, I’ve seen more than a few of my own students get totally hooked on guitar after watching that 1992 Nirvana concert. It’s a thing now.

So no, I’m not trashing Kurt. I love the guy. I bring him up because a lot of Nirvana’s melodies really live in that space I was describing — where more than one note feels “off” from traditional major or minor. The tension is built in.

That kind of flavor is everywhere in their music. And maybe, just maybe, that’s part of why Nirvana has such a massive fandom here in India. There’s something about that rawness and that flat 2nd interval magic that clicks with listeners here.

I'll never get over how metal India already is, but maybe hasn’t realized it yet. Maybe Bloodywood is doing the job of waking people up to that, and hopefully it works. Anyways,

Altering two or more notes relative to the major/minor framework. That’s where things stop being “quirky” and start becoming seriously unfamiliar, which, for a lot of listeners, is where resistance begins.

And I’d like to double-click again on the fact that we hear everything through the lens of major and minor, whether we know it or not. That’s our default emotional software.

Maybe that’s also why hardly anyone, at least in my experience, just casually gets into jazz or highly chromatic music from day one. There’s a build-up to that.

That’s exactly how my own listening evolved.

Having released an EP with some progressive metal influence, what I’ve learned is: when you’re composing, none of this theory actually saves you at first.

But if you happen to be stuck, and you’re fluent in the “flavor map” — that internal picture of what notes live where — then yeah, it’s incredibly helpful. Especially when you’re trying to move a phrase to a new emotional place.

Step 4: Flavor beyond structure.

This is where you’re no longer confined to seven-note modes or octave-based scales. You might hear a phrase — a handful of notes, not even a full scale — and you feel what it’s doing. That’s the point where chords start to play a big role, too. Chords become these signposts that color the melodic movement and help paint the emotional landscape.

A quick sneak peek into the four Thaats which don't directly align with modes of the major scale...

Double Harmonic Major (a.k.a. Bhairav Thaat / Byzantine scale)

This one is probably the most "metal" scale out of the bunch — and with good reason. That ♭2 and ♭6 combo creates this beautiful tension that feels ancient and aggressive at the same time. Think Egyptian vibes, Persian textures, or anything that sounds like it belongs in a boss battle inside a burning temple.

Hungarian Minor Variant (a.k.a. Todi Thaat)

A variant of the Hungarian minor scale — If you’re counting, that’s four deviations from the natural minor scale! It has a slippery tension that makes it insanely expressive. Guitarists love this for neoclassical runs — Yngwie Malmsteen territory — and film composers lean on it when they want something dramatic but grounded.

You can think of this one as Phrygian Dominant meets Harmonic Minor with a Lydian twist. Yeah, I know — it’s a mouthful. But it’s also an earful, in the best way.

The remaining two, Marwa and Poorvi Thaat, do not have a mainstream Western equivalent. Might as well think of them as some kinda altered scale! Say Bye!

Anubhav Kulshreshtha

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