A beginner's practice room, reimagined online. Learn how the ukulele, small, gentle on the fingers, and easy to hold, can carry the sound of the tanpura's drone and the harmonium's melody, one sargam at a time.
Indian classical music is built on the voice and the drone, not on a fixed set of chords, which makes it more approachable on ukulele than you'd expect. These are the three reasons beginners take to it quickly.
Re-tune the ukulele's strings to Sa and Pa, the tonic and fifth, and it hums like a miniature tanpura: the constant drone every raga is sung against.
Nylon strings and a small neck mean sargam exercises (Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni Sa) don't hurt to practise, so beginners build muscle memory without discomfort.
You'll sing and pluck simple raga phrases from lesson one. Notation, note names, and the theory behind each raga follow once your ear already knows the shape.
Even though your hands are on a ukulele, your ear is trained by listening to and alongside these two classical instruments throughout the course.
Compact, quiet enough for a shared living room, and tuned here to sit under a raga's drone. This is where every sargam and every phrase you learn gets played.
Four long strings plucked in a slow, endless cycle, laying down the Sa that every note of a raga is measured against. You'll hear it under each lesson track.
Bellows and reeds give you a steady, tuned pitch to sing and pluck against, perfect for checking that your ukulele's Sa is really sitting in tune.
Structured like a raga itself: slow and grounded at first, opening up gradually. No prior music training assumed.
Get comfortable holding the ukulele and re-tune it to Sa and Pa so it can sit under everything you play from here on.
Sing and pluck the seven swaras against the drone, matching your ukulele to the harmonium's pitch by ear.
Learn short, singable phrases from beginner-friendly ragas like Bhupali and Yaman, played slowly on the ukulele.
Put everything together on one well-loved bhajan, accompanying your own voice on ukulele the way a harmonium would.
Before you get to chords, get a feel for the two instruments themselves: a real four-string ukulele you can strum with your mouse or finger, and a harmonium keyboard tuned to the B scale, Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni Sa.
Before you pluck a single note, get familiar with the ukulele itself: headstock, tuning pegs, nut, fretboard, frets, and the four strings tuned G · C · E · A, down to the body, bridge, and saddle.
Click a single string to pluck it, or press and drag across all four to strum, just like the real thing. Standard reentrant tuning: G · C · E · A.
Press and hold a key to sound it, the way a bellows-driven harmonium key behaves. Sa, Ma, and the octave Sa sit on white keys; Re, Ga, Pa, Dha, and Ni sit on the black keys in between, exactly as they would on a real harmonium tuned to B.
Untuned white keys (C4, D4, F4, G4, A4) are outside this scale. They're there so the keyboard looks and plays like a real harmonium, but the sargam only lives on the highlighted keys.
Hit "Play swara" to hear the reference pitch from the harmonium, then "Record & check" and sing or pluck that same note into your microphone.
Hit "Play chord" to hear the target on a synthesised ukulele. Then hit "Record & check," strum the same chord into your microphone, and we'll listen back and tell you whether it matches.
This runs entirely in your browser: nothing you record is uploaded or saved anywhere. You'll need to allow microphone access when prompted, and it works best in a quiet room, played on an acoustic or amplified ukulele held close to your device's mic.
Short enough to fit before work or between classes, filmed close on the fretboard.
A weekly video call slot to fix tuning, posture, or a phrase that isn't landing.
Downloadable tanpura and harmonium recordings to practise against at home.
Simple, beginner-readable notation, no staff notation required.
"I'd never held an instrument before this. Six weeks in, I can play a Bhupali phrase on my ukulele and actually recognise it when I hear it in a film song."
"Tuning the ukulele to the drone changed everything for me: suddenly the sargam exercises made sense as music, not just an exercise."
"I use it to accompany my own singing now, the way I used to wish I had a harmonium for. Small instrument, big difference."
Start with a free trial lesson: no ukulele experience, and no classical music background, required.
Start free trial