F# Phrygian — Sitar

F# Phrygian is 7 notes to the octave (modes family), drawn here across the Sitar's CGCGC strings with every F# marked, so home stays visible from anywhere in the pattern.

Very dark minor with a half-step above the tonic. Spanish, Flamenco, and metal flavor — exotic, tense, and mysterious.

Heard in: Flamenco, metal, dark film scores — Carlos Santana solos, Joe Satriani's "War", Moorish and Andalusian music.

Five strings tuned CGCGC put a 12-TET scale map in an honest place: it names every fret and marks every root, but it cannot draw meend, the pitch a sitarist bends into rather than frets outright. Read this as a Western scale laid over the strings, and the thaats engine as the raga-native classification sitting beside it.

A sitarist does not run this scale as a ladder — a raga moves through its own ascent and descent, skips notes deliberately, and lingers on the swaras it favors. Treat this map as a place to find pitches, not a phrase to play.