The previous section illustrated a few simple pentatonic ragas in an effort to show how you could get different melodies from sets of five notes. In this section, we will see how many other ways there are to group notes to form ragas, not just in terms of the number of notes, but also based on musical phrasing, or by combining two ragas to get a new raga, and so on. Again, I thought you might also find it interesting to learn something about the traditionally prescribed time for performing or enjoying a raga and the mood (rasa) or emotional content (bhāva) associated with it, and have accordingly provided a short description for each raga. My descriptions are mainly based on the mood traditionally assigned to the raga but I also go by my personal understanding and experience of it.

Let's begin with examples of ragas based on the number of notes they use.

Raag Marwa (hexatonic)

Raag Marwa is sung during the late afternoon hours up to sunset. It is one of the major ragas in Hindustani classical music and is taken very seriously. One of the interesting things about Raag Marwa is that it de-emphasizes the tonic (sa) and excludes the perfect fifth (pa). This makes it a very unsettling raga, mainly evoking dark moods of foreboding and anxiety. It can also portray compassion or resignation in the face of some inner struggle.

Raag Bhairav (heptatonic)

Bhairav is another very important raga in the Hindustani classical tradition. It is a morning raga, and solemn peacefulness is its ideal mood. It is very easy, however, for this scale to deteriorate from peaceful to melodramatic, and artists must watch out for that. I think it was Ustad Vilayat Khan who once described Raag Bhairav as the music in the mind of Lord Shiva as he meditated in the Himalayas. That made an impression on me. Picture Shiva-the-terrible, absorbed in the deepest meditation in a dark cave in the Himalayas. Everything is still, except for the occasional dripping of a stalagtite. Then dawn breaks and the first rays of sunlight penetrate into the cave. Imagine the music in the mind of this man of terrifying passions at that time in his state of perfect peacefulness. And that, to me, is what Raag Bhairav should be.

Raag Pahadi

Pahadi is an evening raga that combines both playful and pensive aspects. It has a very charming, folksy flavor. The notes S R G P D form the backbone of Raag Pahadi, which makes it a very close cousin of the pentatonic Raag Bhupali. The other notes of the octave are incorporated into this framework judiciously. Here is a simple sol-fa song to demonstrate a few typical note combinations. In this example I have only combined the nine most prominent notes used. The remaining notes are used only rarely and have to be done with the greatest care and expertise to retain the raga's identity.