The instrument holds the swaras of the raag belonging to your prahar, and only those. A swara the raag does not use is not marked wrong — it is absent. Reach for it and nothing sounds.
That is deliberate, and it is the quickest way to learn an absence. Lalit has no Pa; Bhupali has neither Ma nor Ni; Malkauns has no Re and no Pa. A student told about a missing note remembers it for an afternoon. A student whose hand finds nothing there remembers it for good.
The swaras come from the raag's own ascent and descent, tuned in just ratios against Sa — the same numbers the figure on the station is drawn from, and the same ones a tanpura reinforces. They are not the piano's twelve.
On a laptop, the camera tracks one hand. Height chooses the swara, so raising your hand raises the pitch; bringing thumb and finger together quietens it, apart sounds it. A hand out of frame is silence, not a held note. Nothing is recorded: the frame is measured, drawn and thrown away in the same instant.
On a phone the camera is awkward to hold, so the swaras stand as strings across the screen. Touch one, or slide across them.
Keys and a roll are on both. Play the keys; arm Record and what you play is written into the grid at the step it lands on; tap a cell to place a swara by hand. Loop it and sing against your own phrase — which is a better use of a loop than listening to it.
The figures every student is set, worked out against the raag of the hour rather than against a scale with nothing to do with it. Sa Re Ga Ma, then Re Ga Ma Pa, up the raag and back down; then three at a time; then skips; then figures that turn.
Start slower than you want to. The point of an alankar is evenness, and evenness is destroyed by speed long before it is destroyed by difficulty. When a figure is secure, take one that changes direction — most people discover there that what they had was momentum rather than control.
Sa sits at 174.61 Hz by default, which is F, low enough to leave two octaves of room without shrieking. The A = 432 switch moves everything this site sounds itself — this instrument, the drone, the kharaj target — about a third of a semitone lower. It is a pitch, nothing more; no other claim is made for it here.
The drone follows the raag: Sa and the fifth, except where the raag has no Pa, in which case the fourth stands in. A Pa drone under Lalit would contradict the raag printed beside it.