The Evolution of Black Hole States

We discuss the evolution of black hole transients on the basis of a few systems that were intensively observed with the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (rxte). We focus on the global evolution and the observed state transitions. Rather than giving a numerical recipe for classifying observations, we try to identify times during outbursts at which clear changes occur in the X-ray variability, X-ray spectral, or multi-wavelength properties.