Swara (Sanskrit: स्वर) or svara is an Indian classical music term that connotes simultaneously a breath, a vowel, a note, the sound of a musical note corresponding to its name, and the successive steps of the octave, or saptanka. More comprehensively, it is the ancient Indian concept of the complete dimension of musical pitch. At its most basic comparison to western music, a swara is, essentially, a "note" of a given scale. However, that is but a loose interpretation of the word, as a swara is identified as both a musical note and tone; a "tone" is a precise substitute for sur, relating to "tunefulness". Traditionally, Indian musicians have just seven swaras/notes with short names: sa, re, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni, which they collectively refer to as saptank or saptaka. This is one of the reasons why swara is considered a symbolic expression for the number seven. In another loose comparison to western music, saptak (as an octave or scale) may be interpreted as solfège, e.g. the notes of a scale as Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti (and Do).Saptak can named as heptave because it contains seven notes.

The word svara (Sanskrit: स्वर) is derived from the root svar- which means "to sound". To be precise, the svara is defined in the Sanskrit nirukta system as:

The Kannada word svara and Tamil alphabet or letter suram do not represent a sound, but rather more generally the place of articulation (PoA) (பிறப்பிடம்), where one generates a sound, and the sounds made there can vary in pitch.

The word is found in the Vedic literature, particularly the Samaveda, where it means accent and tone, or a musical note, depending on the context. The discussion there focusses on three accent pitch or levels: svarita (sounded, circumflex normal), udatta (high, raised) and anudatta (low, not raised). However, scholars question whether the singing of hymns and chants were always limited to three tones during the Vedic era.

In the general sense svara means tone, and applies to chanting and singing. The basic svaras of Vedic chanting are udatta, anudatta and svarita. Vedic music has madhyama or ma as principal note so that tonal movement is possible towards lower and higher pitches, thus ma is taken for granted as fixed in any tonal music (madhyama avilopi, मध्यम अविलोपी).

One-svara Vedic singing is called ārcika chanting, e.g. in chanting the following texts on one note:

or the like. Two-svara Vedic singing is called gāthika chanting, e.g. in chanting the following text on two notes:

The musical octave is said to have evolved from the elaborate and elongated chants of the Samaveda, based on these basic svaras. Siksha is the subject that deals with phonetics and pronunciation. Naradiya Siksha elaborates the nature of svaras, both Vedic chants and the octave.