Eight instruments. Four gharana-rooted teaching lines. Two acoustic rooms that stay open from seven in the morning. SARGAM teaches Hindustani classical and Western grade music side by side — on Ghole Road, five minutes from Balgandharva Rangmandir.
SARGAM began in a two-room flat above a stationery shop, with one harmonium, one pair of tabla and eleven students from the Model Colony side of Shivaji Nagar. Sixteen years later the address has changed, the method has not.
Every student — a six-year-old learning her first alankar, a software architect from Baner picking up guitar at 41 — gets the same three things: a fixed weekly slot with the same teacher, a written riyaz sheet for the week, and a stage to play on before the year is out. We keep batches at four so nobody hides at the back.
Twelve minutes of pure tuning against the tanpura before anything else is touched. Pitch is a habit, not a talent.
Taal clapped aloud at three speeds — thah, dugun, chaugun — before the instrument joins in. Rhythm is counted, never felt at.
You leave with a written week: what to practise, for how long, and the exact bar you are allowed to stop at. Signed by your teacher.
One 90-second phone recording every fortnight, sent back with three timestamped notes. You hear what your teacher hears.
Last Saturday of every month, students play for each other in Sabha Hall. Fifteen listeners is the hardest audience you will ever face.
Four levels, from your first sitting to the concert stage. Real durations, real weekly slots, real monthly fees — nothing hidden until you enquire.
Both of these actually work in your browser — no samples, no recordings. The keys are live oscillators, the metronome is a scheduled clock. This is the same drill our beginners run in their first month.
Click, tap or use your keyboard row. Sargam names sit on every key; the raag chips light up which swaras belong.
Keyboard: ASDFGHJK for shuddha swaras · WETYU for komal / teevra.
Sam falls on beat one with a different pitch, khali beats are dashed. Slide the tempo or tap it in.
Prefer a tanpura you can hold? Our practice rooms carry two tuned tanpuras, a Kaunsalya harmonium and a full tabla set — free for enrolled students, ₹180/hour for everyone else.
Book a practice roomA child needs games and a short leash. An adult needs a reason and a realistic Tuesday. We do not put them in the same batch, and we do not teach them the same way.
Ages 5–12
Forty-five minutes, half of it standing up. Rhythm games, clapping ladders and simple bhajans before a single note is written down.
Ages 13–19
Built around school terms and board exam months. The one group where we actively slow down in January and speed up in April.
Ages 20+
For the ones who always meant to. Early-morning 7 AM riyaz slots and 8 PM post-office batches, so nobody has to explain themselves.
We are not an exam centre — we are the room where you get ready for one. Pieces, technical work, aural, sight-reading and musical knowledge are timetabled separately, not crammed in the last fortnight.
Every grade is split into 24 dated sessions with the exam window marked from day one. Parents get the same sheet.
Held in Sabha Hall with an outside teacher on the panel, so the room is unfamiliar on purpose.
Entry forms, session choice and the accompanist booking are done by our office. You only bring the playing.
We describe our faculty by the gharana and school their training comes from — not by whose name we can borrow. Every one of them still practises daily; four of them learnt in this very building.
Trained in the Gwalior-gharana teaching line at Pune; teaches khayal, bhajan and the full alankar ladder. Runs the 7 AM riyaz sitting.
Farrukhabad-baaj grounding with a strong kaida and rela repertoire. Accompanies the annual recital and runs the laya drill for every department.
Imdadkhani-style right hand with a slow, patient approach to meend. Teaches raag structure to vocal students as well.
Maihar-influenced phrasing. Starts every student on a single-hole exercise for six weeks — unpopular, and it works.
Kirana-leaning accompaniment style. Also the person who tunes every reed instrument in the building, twice a year.
Trinity Grade 8 with distinction; handles the full Initial-to-Grade-8 pipeline and every mock panel we run.
Rockschool and Trinity trained. Fingerstyle-first for beginners, plectrum work from level two, gigging band by level four.
Teaches both the seated Carnatic-Hindustani hold and the standard Western hold, and lets the student choose after month three.
Two treated rooms and one ensemble hall, bookable by the hour from 7 AM. Free for enrolled students — open to everyone else at an hourly rate. Pick a room, a day, and your slots.
No staged shoots. These are Tuesday evenings, Saturday baithaks and the two hours before a recital when nobody is smiling yet.
Our annual recital is not an audition. Every enrolled student gets a slot — two minutes for a first-year child, twelve for a Manch-level soloist — on a proper stage with proper sound. Tabla and harmonium sangat is provided by the faculty.
My daughter went in unable to hold a line and came out singing at Balgandharva in front of four hundred people. What changed was the weekly riyaz sheet — suddenly practice had a shape.
I started tabla at thirty-eight, which felt ridiculous. Kedar sir never once made it feel that way. Two years on I sat Grade 3 and cleared with merit. The 7 AM slot is why it survived my job.
We shifted from a bigger academy on FC Road. Difference is batch size — four students, so my son cannot coast. And the practice room means he actually practises instead of promising to.
Names, quotes and outcome figures on this page are illustrative and written for a design demonstration.
One-time registration of ₹1,000 covers your file, the riyaz diary and your first instrument check. Fees are monthly and quoted with GST included.
Group learning at a steady pace. The way most students start.
Small batch of four with practice-room hours included. Our recommended track.
One teacher, one student. For grade candidates and performers.
Seven minutes on foot from Fergusson College Road, four from Balgandharva Rangmandir, and directly opposite the Shivaji Nagar post office lane. Two-wheeler parking in the building compound; car parking on the Ghole Road side after 6 PM.
2nd Floor, Kamala Heights, Ghole Road,
Shivaji Nagar, Pune, Maharashtra 411005
admissions@sargam-demo.in
Replies within one working day
Practice rooms follow the same hours. Tuesday is faculty riyaz day.
Book a free 30-minute trial. You sit in a real batch, not a sales room, and the teacher tells you honestly where to start.
Ask on WhatsAppThirty minutes, no fee, no pressure. Bring the child, or come alone at 7 AM before work.