The musician may take one raga and play that for hours, or he may go from one raga to another. But the more he plays one raga, the more he indulges in that, the more he impresses his soul with it, the more he will find in that. The ragas have sometimes been understood as scales. They are not scales but patterns of notes within the octave. There are four different sorts of ragas: ragas of six notes, ragas of seven notes, ragas of odd notes, and ragas of even notes, ascending and descending.