The Mathematics Behind Indian and Western Music
South Indian Music has 72 complete scales, whereas Western music has 12 major scales. Let’s go deeper into the mathematical combinations of notes that make musical patterns.
Published in
5 min readDec 31, 2020
Absolute vs Relative Scales
The fundamental difference between Western classical and Indian music, is that Western music has 12 absolute notes. Each note: C, C#, D, etc. has a specific frequency. Concert C is around 262 Hz for example. Ignore harmonics for now (i.e. the higher pitch or lower pitch version of C).
However, Indian music is relative. In Indian music, notes are marked Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Da, Ni, Sa — or short form as below. Note that the end S is the higher pitch version of S.
Mathematical Permutations in Indian Music
The human ear can distinguish 12 semitones in a scale, the 13th is the harmonic of the first note. In South Indian music, the first and middle notes are fixed (S, P). But the others can be permuted over. Note there are 3 possible R, and…
