This note contains a new characterization of modulation spaces M p (R n ), 1 ≤ p ≤ ∞, by symplectic rotations. Precisely, instead to measure the time-frequency content of a function by using translations and modulations of a fixed window as building blocks, we use translations and metaplectic operators corresponding to symplectic rotations. Technically, this amounts to replace, in the computation of the M p (R n )-norm, the integral in the timefrequency plane with an integral on R n × U (2n, R) with respect to a suitable measure, U (2n, R) being the group of symplectic rotations. More conceptually, we are considering a sort of polar coordinates in the time-frequency plane. In this new framework, the Gaussian invariance under symplectic rotations yields to choose Gaussians as suitable window functions. We also provide a similar characterization with the group U (2n, R) being reduced to the n-dimensional torus T n . the symplectic group Sp(n, R) is the subgroup of 2n × 2n invertible matrices GL(2n, R), defined bywhere J is the orthogonal matrix J = 0 n I n −I n 0 n , (I n , 0 n are the n × n identity matrix and null matrix, respectively). Here we consider the subgroup U(2n, R) := Sp(n, R) ∩ O(2n, R) ≃ U(n)2010 Mathematics Subject Classification. 42B35,22C05.