Ragas, pentatonics beyond the blues, and Middle Eastern tonalities reshaped rock’s sonic vocabulary. Below: an expanded essay followed by a color-coded inline chart and a short diagram showing how these tonalities map onto rhythm, instrumentation, and listener experience.
I. Expanding the Palette: From Twelve Tones to the Infinite
Most Western rock operates within equal temperament — twelve fixed pitches — but once musicians heard outside traditions they began to reimagine what a scale could do. Indian ragas, Arabic maqams, Japanese pentatonics and African polyrhythms encouraged artists to prioritize drone, texture and modal time over chordal motion. This shift freed rock from strict harmonic closure and opened new spaces for trance, ritual and textural storytelling.
II. Indian Ragas and the Search for Transcendence
In the 1960s artists sought transcendence in Indian classical music. George Harrison’s work with Ravi Shankar popularized raga thinking in pop. Songs such as Within You Without You and extended improvisations by other bands moved toward sustained drones and modal improvisation rather than Western chord changes.[1][2]
The Doors’ “The End” layers Dorian/Mixolydian phrases over sustained pedals; Robby Krieger’s open tunings and jhala-like strumming are direct heirs of lessons many Western players took from Indian masters.[3]
III. Pentatonics Beyond the Blues
The five-note scale is ubiquitous in rock — but not always the blues pentatonic. When artists borrow Japanese, African, or Celtic pentatonics, the same five notes behave differently due to phrasing and rhythmic context.
The Byrds' work on Eight Miles High combines jazz phrasing with pentatonic inflections to create a hybrid sound that suggests the koto while remaining purely rock-based.[4]
IV. Middle Eastern and North African Modalities
Phrygian, Phrygian dominant (sometimes called “Hijaz”-flavored by Western writers) and other scales introduce augmented seconds and flattened seconds that Western listeners perceive as “other.” These intervals produce tension and longing that many rock composers exploited to suggest exoticism or spiritual distance (Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, later desert-rock artists).[5]
V. Instrumental Technique: The Sound of Borrowed Tonality
Guitar: open tunings (DADGAD, others), sympathetic string resonance, micro-bends and sustained distortion create sitar-like overtones. Bass: pedal drones and minimal movement anchor modal textures (see John Paul Jones’s approach on “Kashmir”). Keyboards: organs and synths supply long drones and micro-glides. Wind & Strings: flute, sitar, violin and mellotron are often used to mirror modal ornamentation and taksim-style improvisation.
