Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Ideas and innovations in Indian classical music
Nick H
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Post by Nick H »

Yes, I think you are absolutely right, and I have seen before Hindustani artists instructing, or even correcting, their tabla players as to what pattern to play.

In this particular instance, I think she was giving the tempo as much as anything else. I don't know, but suspect there must be a lot of different patterns that begin na dhin dhin na

sridharrajagopal
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by sridharrajagopal »

Hi there!

I am new to this forum, and saw this thread. I saw mention of metronomes and such for keeping track of the beat. I have developed an iPhone/iPod touch/iPad app called Talanome, which is specifically tailored for Carnatic music - do check it out at http://www.upbeatlabs.com/ or on iTunes at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/talanome ... ?mt=8&ls=1 or on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/Talanome/105127739567317 . Hope you like it! Welcome your feedback!

Cheers,
Sridhar Rajagopal

mohan
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by mohan »

sridharrajagopal wrote:Hi there!
I saw mention of metronomes and such for keeping track of the beat. I have developed an iPhone/iPod touch/iPad app called Talanome, which is specifically tailored for Carnatic music
Sridhar - it looks pretty neat. Does it include chapu talas as well?
Is there an android version too?

sridharrajagopal
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by sridharrajagopal »

Hi Mohan,

No, it does not include chapu talas ... not yet, hopefully soon!

Android version would take longer to port - at this time, I'm just exploring the platform and the possibility.

Thanks,
Sridhar

sridharrajagopal
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by sridharrajagopal »

Mohan, btw, Chapu talams have been available for a while on Talanome. Android version is still a to-do. :-/

radmahesh
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by radmahesh »

Hi all,

Here is a great lesson from the great Violin Maestro Dr.M.Chandrasekhar for keeping Talam for instrumentalists. Sri.M.Chandrasekhar is my Guru's Guru. He visited our place for a concert a couple of weeks ago. I asked him about this difficulty in putting Talam while playing Manodharma swaras in veena. He advised me

"To sing varisais and put the talam in foot and not by hand. He asked me to do this for all alankarams starting from Eka Talam, Rupaka Talam, Triputa Talam, Matya Talam, Jhampa Talam,Ata Talam and finally Dhruva Talam. Simultaneously he asked me to practice varnams vocally with talam in the foot. He said you have to keep on doing this when you take class for kids too as it becomes additional practice. He added, whenver you listen to a song start using your foot to keep the rhythm. In a nutshell, IT SHOULD BECOME YOUR SECOND NATURE. Unknowingly you will realise that you have mastered the art of keeping the rhythm using the foot."

Basically my rhythm sense is not that good when it comes to instrument due to this difficulty. Now the result. I am doing this for the past two weeks now. To my sheer happiness I find that I can keep the rhythm of Adi and Rupaka Talam in my foot. Now I have to try for the swarams. I am hell bent on doing it. I consider myself as a kid who started to learn keeping the rhythm by foot, temperorily forgetting my age.

This really works.. |( :D ;) :| :clap:

Nick H
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by Nick H »

All over the world people are tapping their toes to music. Somehow, rhythm seems to come naturally to the feet. Regularly, when my hand waves uselessly in the air, I notice that one of my toes still has the beat!

Where the fingers come in useful is for counting. It is a challenge to do that with the feet.

Western classical artists have to keep rhythm without any external display. I often wonder about that: how do they do it? Where do they feel it? As if there was an answer, which would magically enable me to do the same.

:$ OK, there is an answer. The same as with many skills: practice!

vasanthakokilam
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by vasanthakokilam »

Good points radmahesh and Nick. Elaborating on that,

Well, that foot tapping rhythm is natural when that rhythm is regular and not syncopated. And when the hand, fingers and foot are all doing the same thing, the brain does a great job. But once your fingers are needed for some other motion, especially something anti-parallel, the natural brain tendency is to bring all of them in order there by destroying one or the other. Brain is optimized, in its natural state, for doing real world things that help us survive. Say, for walking and running where that hand-foot coordination is necessary. So what we try to do here is unnatural in that sense. That requires lots of practice to teach the brain those new tricks.

So, definitely, It is practice. Important thing is to not stop at intellectual understanding of it but actually do it. That is the difference between radmahesh and I :) I better get on it.

Not practicing practice is not a good practice!!!

It is quite impressive to see the accurate foot tapping skills of my 14 year old niece. She is a flute player in the high school orchestra and she also learns CM. That western music training gave her a lot of technical skills. Say, in half a beat, which is two quarter notes long, she can very naturally play some combination of 1/32 notes, 1/16th notes and 1/8th notes, just by looking at the notation while the foot is tapping to a constant beat. She can't even relate to why I was impressed with her foot tapping skills. I do not think her CM teacher taught her any of this but those skills are indeed needed in CM. In fact even more so with gathi changes which can play havoc if such foot tapping skill is a bit loose. Akellaji's students will have these skills in the early stages as well since his teaching method starts with getting a strong footing ( pun unintended! ) in laya.

She and I were trying our hand in putting together a tune in an obscure CM raga. It is a big chore for me to simultaneously evolve the melody and arrange them within the beats while at the same time checking how good it is by playing it. Collaborating with her changed it to a fun activity. She could play the under-construction melody on her flute while tapping her foot, make small adjustments so things fall on the beat and write them down in the staff notation. She can then play it repeatedly in a carbon copy manner as we worked on variations on it until it sounded satisfactory to both of us.

Nick H
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by Nick H »

The foot can tap through syncopation ... although if the syncopation becomes long and complex, as in a difficult korvais, then, yes, even the foot may be lost! :)

Radhika-Rajnarayan
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by Radhika-Rajnarayan »

As the old popular song said, (modified here!) "Use Talometer, Dear Henry, dear Henry dear henry" - how many of you know that it's been around for 35 years? Of course, now it's fashionable to develop or use 'apps' for everything ..
The Talometer can do many things apart from showing the taalam at any speed or pitch - you can set nadai, set it to start before the beginning of the tala (so that you can start the music bang on the samam) and do a multitude of things. A Talometer helps even percussion artists who employ unbelievably complicated patterns. Oh, it also shows you which the last laghu is, in case there is more than 1 laghu, like Ata , Dhruva and Matya taalam... it really helps an instrumentalist. Yet, all these years, we were told by many people 'oh, it's a machine, we can't sing with bhaavam. When we sing with bhaavam we like to slow down or speed up a bit..' can you believe that?
The method that earlier generations of teachers used, as mentioned in the earlier post - about keeping talam with the foot, is invaluable. But with slower taalams or complex patterns it becomes difficult to give your imagination a free rein. You get bogged down. You DO need another person to maintain talam, or a talometer. That is why in Hindustani music, where the laya is very slow, the talam is maintained by the tabla (unlike our mridangam which is played creatively)- the tabla is used as an 'audio-talometer', so to speak, and the different bols indicate different points of the cycle. The electronic tabla too, is a machine, yet it's universally accepted. But the Talometer.... |(

Western classical rhythms are easier - even when syncopated, but jazz- that's tough, like our music. It takes all your concentration to keep time to some of the more complex rhythms in jazz. Great fun trying, though!

mridhangam
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by mridhangam »

This is a fantastic post i dnt know whether i have seen it and made any postings earlier. I would like to contribute but a little later after going through the entire conversations by our fellow members.

Mannarkoil J Balaji

girish_a
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by girish_a »

That's wonderful sir! Looking forward to your participation.

SrinathK
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by SrinathK »

This brings back a lot of memories for me and there is a lot I want to write about this and it will span several posts. In my life the one thing that nearly killed my musical story was my unfamiliarity with rendering talas while playing the instrument. As a vocalist I had no problem with the talas though my laya gnana was not very good. But the violin was a merciless instrument. When I was a kid I had to play along with a mridangam on Sivarathri at a well known temple and never having done anything like that ever before I really struggled to find my way as I got very confused by what the mridangam was playing. Fortunately the mridangist and all the other musicians who had come for the program were very helpful and supportive and showed me the tala and so I was able to play something. But I knew within myself I had played badly and although everyone was very appreciative I was totally embarrassed on the inside. I had been brought up on listening to great music so playing badly was far more painful than any criticism. I would have been much happier if someone had come to me and told me "You didn't do this right. This is your problem and you have to solve it like this..." But nope, all I got was a lot of praise...

Practice was no better. I had to practice alone and I could not play freely because I had no idea where I was and no one around could put the tala for me. I did not know that there were metronomes and all these softwares back then. This was also the time when academic commitments meant I had to stop classes too. So at some point I got stuck -- my krithi playing never improved and neraval, kalpanaswaras and the like were out of the question. It dented my confidence very badly and I refused every chance to perform at any competition or even at small family functions simply because I did not want to suffer that embarrassment again. Essentially my musical development came to a halt right there. I tried putting the tala on my feet, but it was unsteady and when my mind was busy focusing on playing I forgot the counting. Back then I did not even know how to practice in any efficient manner. I would wonder how the great Lalgudi was such an unparalled laya genius and how their school could put the tala on their feet. Frustration ruled and confidence suffered...I stopped playing for a long time in college (2 years in fact) as I had given up hope. I only wonder where I could have gone if I knew then what I know now.

I would advise students not to venture into music on their own without sufficient gnana in raga, tala, swara, and compositions. And I warn all violin students of this fact -- no other musician (incl. instrumentalists) is subjected to the kind of "laya terror" that a violinist must face -- I have seen it in every concert and have even been at the receiving end when I played once as an accompanist (just as before, with no idea at all what a concert demanded). Among all instruments, putting tala while playing the violin is the hardest -- the posture is difficult and the instrument itself is extremely challenging. If your laya skill is not strong, your musical development will stop after a point and your confidence will be badly dented and if you are a performer you will be subject to many frightening and even humiliating moments -- at the end of which you may even be blamed for ruining the concert because you failed to accompany well. And forget about solo...you won't make it far past the start line. Most of the neravals and swaras you hear in competitions are all totally rehearsed stuff (this applies to the majority of participants) and are not representative of real laya expertise. Akellaji is absolutely correct when he says that laya is the foundation for confidence in playing any instrument.

SrinathK
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by SrinathK »

It was only much later after I came across this forum and read all the posts in this thread and listened to a recording Lalgudi lec dem that I realized what had really gone wrong all that time. @vasanthakokilam I can read some staff notation myself. The key to your niece's rhythmic sense is precisely because of how staff notation works. First and foremost the music is WRITTEN down and writing is always a very powerful learning tool -- not using the pen and paper is a big mistake. Actually memorizing without pen & paper should be introduced only much later (and only for training the advanced student's memory and grasping abilities). Not using the pen and paper is very inefficient and instead it forces you to repeat a line endlessly till you get it -- a big waste of time and energy as the brain will switch off after a sufficient degree of autopilot has been attained.

Second, the nature of staff notation means that the student must first necessarily master the rhythmic component of the music first before the sound & notes, otherwise sight reading is impossible. Both these circumstances essentially force one's brain to think, understand and create the music at least 10 times before playing it once. This is a particular kind of practice known as DELIBERATE PRACTICE and it is much more demanding on the mental faculties of the student -- it forces the brain to keep thinking every time and stay engaged. In the long run it is deliberation which strengthens musical intuition, not instinctive guesswork. In fact these practice systems have been researched for a very long time in their system owing to the complex nature of their compositions and the kind of technical demands they throw at a student. Teaching and learning techniques have come a long way as a result of this with much innovation and powerful techniques. Students are taught how to practice in their mind and the best can work out entire concertos that way even they cannot physically practice their instrument. They have to keenly observe and analyze their own performances. The very best players and geniuses in any field all have this element of deliberate practice in common. LGJ was a in fact a master of this device -- he would call it "intelligent practice". In that lec dem he divided a composition into it's melodic, rhythmic and lyrical components and mentioned about learning each of them correctly.

Innovation in music is great, but I say research and innovation in the field of teaching and learning music is equally important. There is a lot I have yet to learn about the art of learning -- a result of all the frustrations I have faced while spending most of my tryst with music trying to teach myself.

On a score the rhythm is hidden under all those flags and staffs and rests and you have to decode it first. Then you have to see how the rhythm fits into the bars and measures. You have to count not only notes (sollus) but also count the duration of rests (kaarvais). So right from very simple pieces with simple rhythms to complex and elaborate arrangements rhythm is foremost in musical interpretation. Kaalapramanam sense is also very important as in western music, students should not only know when to play in constant speed but also where to slow down and speed up (rubato) and it is all governed by the mood of the tempo and aesthetic sense. While tala is the jewel of Indian music, Western isn't any less complicated in rhythmic patterns, slow and fast. In fact their rhythms can end and begin at 1/4 th, 2/6 th or 2/5th of a beat (which is equivalent to exposure to a wide variety of eduppus in trishram, chatushram, khandam and even mishram or sankeerna nadais -- does this remind you of Palani Subramania Pillai and tavil vidwans?) I'm not really surprised at your niece's skill. In fact in Carnatic music it is very difficult to grasp the complex nadais without a lot of analysis with a pen and a paper and rhythmic exercises in the beginning stage.

As for me, I have started practicing laya exercises recently with the help of fine metronome and it is a remarkable software. I recommend all instrumentalists to use such programs for their practice when there is no one to help them with the tala. I have started Akellaji's exercises in rhythm and I'm going to take out all my pent up rage and practice them in every tala, every nadai, every kalai and eduppu point with a focus on working out how each pattern can be used as an ending pattern for different eduppus. I'm also getting interested in this topic of talaprasthara and the algorithm to derive those rhythmic patterns of any number of units is invaluable for my rhythm practice -- so far I have only come to 6 units, but I have a notebook. Ok I know that because of my job my time is short, but so far, it has worked very well for me and I'll get there in time. There is also something else I am working on for rendering tala-angas on the feet ... but I've already vented out a lot here so I'll write more about that later.

vasanthakokilam
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by vasanthakokilam »

Akellaji is absolutely correct when he says that laya is the foundation for confidence in playing any instrument.
As I was reading your first post, i thought you will be a big fan of Akellaji's methods. Then I saw the above! Nice.

Right.

What is the point of flesh and blood with out a skeleton?

rajeshnat
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by rajeshnat »

Srinathk
Very nice post . I am bit curious to know whom you acccompanied and if it is ok you can put the clips too. One of my favourite musician always says with rAgas you fairly reach a steady state and only with layam you grow as a very matured and successful musician . keep continuing with your posts

Nick H
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by Nick H »

The violin, the flute, the veena ...and the mridangam.

All have to be played with two hands, leaving none free for this waving and clapping stuff. Some musicians substitute feet, toes, knees, etc: for those that require an external expression and place-keeping method of talam putting, I guess there are enough bodily bits to go around.
What is the point of flesh and blood with out a skeleton?
The skeleton is on the inside! And that is where laya sense has to be. I never saw my mridangam guruji give any external show of talam ever, except when another artist was in need, when the correct finger would be shown immediately: not only is the beat internalised, but the counting is too. I think it very likely that the putting of tala is quite unnecessary for most of our accomplished artists outside of practice and composition, but they continue to do it out of habit.

Now, it is easy for me to say this --- because I can't do it. :$ Accurate rhythm and counting is just one of the many skills that amaze me in musicians of all genres.

So, the question that has been on my mind for decades is: How do musicians do it? Just where is this magical organ of rhythm? If I was able to locate it and touch it in myself, would layam ability then start to flow?

Recently, I came across something that made me think that there is probably no "magical organ of rhythm," but that there may be as many ways of sensing and experiencing it as there are people! This is where I got that idea: Richard Feynman: Ways of Thinking (YouTube). Feynman is always worth listening to, and what he has to say here about his own experience with a counting/timing experiment, and comparing it with that of a colleague, is fascinating, and throws some light on my mystery. Do please watch this video snippet, everyone! And, perhaps, tell us how you count. How I do it is pattern-making thing that might be like Feynman goes on to mention, except that he uses that to be able to do two countings at once.

The visual pattern thing, by the way, was given to me by a fellow mridangam student, one of the other "grown-ups" in the class and a pro drummer. When it was obvious that I had great difficulty in playing something four times, keeping count, he told me: "It's easy, for four, visualise a square, for three, visualise a triangle..." For five, I have a square with a dot in the middle. All this like the dots on dice. It is not too hard to extend this to bigger things, like 4*3 is a square of triangles. For some this may suit; for others it may not, but if it does suit, then I'm sure that, with practice, and developing a fixed inner-vision code for oneself, that it could be developed into a non-physical talam-keeping method.

vasanthakokilam
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by vasanthakokilam »

Nick, that is an interesting twist to what I meant in an orthogonal direction. Quite true.

Taking that analogy a bit further, the same is true in buildings. There is a structure which defines the shape ( rhythm ) and the outer coverings provide the aesthetics ( melody ). The outer shape in buildings do have a regular pattern which provides its own rhythmic aesthetics with some occasional irregularities to break the monotony.

And then occasionally, we see some buildings where the structure is very much seen and not that covered up. There the rhythm takes priority and acts as the main source of aesthetics and everything else recedes to the background but still adding to the overall impression in subtle ways. We see that in music as well.

Nick H
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by Nick H »

A bit lost. The shapes are not an analogy, but a basic method of counting, like coins, pebbles, or maybe beads on an abacus. As such, they are just numbers. It is not a matter of priority. You cannot have sums without counting; you cannot have music without numbers.

The question is: how do we fee/think/whatever those numbers? What is the mechanism? Did you watch the Feynman snippet? I think you would enjoy it. In fact, if you have not seen them before, I suspect you might end up watching the rest of that series too. I'm particularly impressed with what he says about god, and about rubber bands! :)

vasanthakokilam
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by vasanthakokilam »

Nick, I did not watch the Feynman video now but I remember watching that before. Quite an interesting thing.

On the other topic, I am indeed using shape and structure as the analogy for rhythm. Because the periodic and countable aspect of rhythm are in fact the mechanical aspects of it. But what does it contribute to music at an innate level. It is structure, stability and shape. In that sense, I am invoking skeleton as the analogy for rhythm, not the external manifestation of it but the inherent aspect of music, and flesh and blood as the analogy for melody.

To make the point even further, you can indeed have music without numbers but not reasonably interesting music without a distinguishable structure. For example, an alapana has a rhythm but that is hard to express in terms of tala. But it definitely has a structure in the time domain.

Nick H
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by Nick H »

You can't have music without numbers, because there are two kinds of numbers involved, those that determine rhythm and those that determine pitch --- but, sure, I take your point that not all music includes both of those, and it is certainly possible to have music without rhythm, and, in the context of this conversation, that is music without numbers. However, unless we move into the more unusual sorts of music (I was listening to the output of a fractal tune generator a couple of days back (Tune Smithy) for instance) then we have a skeleton, which is rhythm, and whether it is noticeable to the listener or not, it is there, and, in our carnatic music is it particularly inflexible even. "The track the train runs on," is one way that my mridangam teacher expressed it.

Music that is outside the scope of regular repeating periods of constant value is outside the scope of the conversation, because then we wouldn't be talking about how to put the tala!

(Oh, wait... of course there is carnatic music that does not have entirely regular patterns --- but not much?)

vasanthakokilam
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by vasanthakokilam »

Nick, when I wrote that, I was not even stepping too far from practical music. Consider the alapana. There is rhythm in it but it is not to a thala. If you restrict the definition of rhythm to the rhythm of a CM song, what you say is true. I should not have said anything about numbers, I got side tracked there.

Anyway, that is not my main point regarding structure.

My inclination is to think of rhythm as providing form to the music. The other characterizations like 'the track the train runs on' are true but this interpretation is along an orthogonal axis as for as musical aesthetics are concerned. Here, I am strictly talking about how the patterns and groupings of swaras define the aesthetics we perceive in music and not the external manifestations of it in terms of beats, repeating patterns of beats or cycle length etc. That structure provide a lot of definition to the song. Like how two songs in the same raga with similar melodic aesthetics and set to the same thala can sound different. That is the aspect I am thinking of: when such differences are contributed primarily by the internal structure of how the notes are organized. (May be that word 'structure' invokes too much of a 'static' vibe and hence does not fit with the dynamic thing that rhythm in a song is.)

Nick H
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by Nick H »

VK, I was being somewhat restrictive only because of the subject of the thread, which focusses not only on tala but on the manifestation of it as a practical necessity for musicians when singing and playing. They have a necessity of counting and beating, internally or externally (to the person, not the song) without which the music will be inaccurate, or even loose the definition of which you speak, and, ultimately, it's very form. So this is about a manifestation whether it is manifested with hands, legs or brain (???) cells* which is separate to the song itself but without which the song cannot be performed properly.

It is only the reckoning of the rhythm which is external to the music. The rhythm itself is intrinsic part of that music, and, as I think you are saying, if it is absent or altered, the song becomes ...a different song. No static vibe to that:dynamic indeed!

(off-topic: please have a look at Tune Smithy, from the same stable as Bounce Metronome. I think you might get a great deal of pleasure from both pieces of software and, also, they may have a place in your researches, which are better informed than mine)


*Which returns to my question: Where do musicians feel this counting mechanism within themselves? Perhaps it has, by long usage, actually come to reside in the hand and the leg? Perhaps it may be different, as suggested by the Feynman thinking, from person to person? SrinathK, other musicians here, whether stage or bathroom --- what is your experience/analysis of this?

SrinathK
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by SrinathK »

Dear Nick H, in continuation of my earlier post, I have made a few observations on the vocal vs. the instrument issue from my experience (being an amateur I must add a disclaimer that I am only in the learning stage and my thought process and ability is nowhere near the league of very great musicians with decades of experience like LGJ or Chandrashekar or a PMI).

The fact is that it is easier to sing and use one's voice than to play the violin. The voice is a part of one's body and after sufficient vocal training, good singing practices become intuitive -- of course there is the fact that in Carnatic music, if you look below the top of the pyramid, there is little tendency to concentrate on tone or even correct vocal practices, so it's not even that hard. Apart from this, in vocal music, the hands are totally free to render the talangas -- this means that the work of counting the tala is taken out of the calculative side of the brain and instead it is delegated to purely kinesthetic memory. The sequence of talangas once memorized eliminates the need to count 1,2,3 and etc... For a layman it's sufficient can say that vocalists put the tala with their hands and in their head -- it is easy to know where you are simply from the tala-anga you are on, if it's a middle finger and it's Adi talam you know you are on the 4th beat and you don't have to dredge your memory or recalculate.

The hands are a most powerful reserve of muscle memory and combined with the intuitive ease of singing means that the act of singing & tala rendering in vocal music requires dramatically less processing power from the calculative side of the brain as well as the part that controls the motor nerves. This means that the vast majority of the brain's available capacity can be diverted to manodharma and mathematics instead.

On the other hand, the violin requires very precise control over bowing and fingering and the use of both hands in addition to processing the music in one's mind which requires considerably more processing power from the mind's motor control department. Playing the violin is not something natural to the human body -- it has to work hard just to get a note right in tune what to speak of memorizing complex bowing nuances. To add to this the toes and feet are nowhere near as flexible as the hands so rendering tala-angas as such is not possible -- the only toe movable to some extent is the big toe. Unlike the fingers, the toes do not have independent muscles to control individual fingers. So the only option is to tap the foot, keeping the tala in memory. This puts a huge strain on one's mental resource and when manodharma & laya mathematics is added to the equation it is equivalent to running an audio recorder recording long phrases -- equivalent to memorizing a complex journey through a city, working out complex math problems while trying to paint an intricate picture, at the same time trying to use mental GPS to find out where the hell you are and judge the distance to the *&##( eduppu point :) :(!! A violinist is a multitasking ninja.

I tried visualization too -- but mostly due to lack of practice, or perhaps due to the inherent nature of video processing it made it even more difficult to focus on the music -- video processing is highly intensive to the brain just as it is to a computer :) A violinists' challenge is even harder because most violinists might not have received the kind of laya training given to percussionists and they have to concentrate on raga, swara, swarasthana and shruti shuddam too. To add to all this misery, the poor violinist may find himself in the unenviable situation on stage where he can barely hear himself and in th end would have to take the blame for "breaking" the concert.

I hope you are aware that the cross legged position of the violinist can easily make your legs go numb (I suffer terribly from this and always need something to cushion myself) if you forgot to regularly adjust your posture and give your nerves some relief -- if that happens you cannot render the tala on the feet at all ! The cross legged position of a violinist is more cramped than normal and that restricts mobility. However I have found if you use a cushion such that your feet alone can freely hang over the edges, it gives them full freedom to move.

Did you know how bad an A/C can freeze a violinist's fingers? The oil on the fingerboard becomes thick and it will feel as though the board is made of glue.

Also after a point it is considerably easier to improvise your own phrases and make spot adjustments near the end than to try and grasp someone else's thought and reproduce it -- just as it is easier to speak spontaneously than to memorize lines, so the vocalist or main artiste again has an advantage. When you realize all this, the genius of an artiste like Lalgudi Jayaraman to be the greatest accompanist ever is an achievement the enormity of which will probably never be praised enough. Now take some time to stop here and think about all this...

Bottom line : A violinist must be the most complete of all musicians in every department...another LGJ all time achievement.

So where to begin? Now I've observed that there are three places where a leg can be moved -- at the toes, at the ankle and on the thigh and some range of motion is also available. Also you have two legs to use and since there is no "sacred tala-anga tradition" for the feet. So I'm currently trying to find a way to render laghus, dhrutams and the other talangas on my legs in a way that each anga gets a unique movement or series of movements. Now if I can succeed at that, it will take the work out of my head and into my legs and give me a similar advantage to the vocalist. I use fine metronome for help -- in the absence of footwork skills if it weren't for that metronome, I might have given up playing the violin forever!

I've found the chapu talas and rupaka tala are easy ones to put. I also have a sequence for Adi tala and am working on laghus in 5 jaathis. I will tell you how far I'm progressing subsequently...
Last edited by SrinathK on 31 May 2013, 21:53, edited 1 time in total.

Nick H
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by Nick H »

SrinathK, I regularly sing the praises of violin accompanists. I am always amazed by what they do, sometimes even in the face of not knowing the song. There are details in your posts that I had never imagined, and it gives a great insight. Thank you :)

vasanthakokilam
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by vasanthakokilam »

VK, I was being somewhat restrictive only because of the subject of the thread, which focusses not only on tala but on the manifestation of it as a practical necessity for musicians when singing and playing.
Yup, got it. I knew I was going off the rails a bit with speculative thinking in an off topic direction ;)

On the topic, as I wrote earlier in this thread, our hands and feet are designed to work together, with synchronized movements. Sometimes when the muscles have to be moved quickly when there is no time for signals to reach the brain, the spinal cord takes over, does the calculation on behalf of the brain and moves the muscle. That is how reflex action works and I suspect some of that is involved when we get tripped up in our thala keeping with the foot when the hands needed to move out of sync with the feet. Disconnecting that coordinated movement so we can independently move them at our will takes repeated practice. That probably rewires the brain. That is probably what muscle memory is. The skeletal muscles do not move by themselves, they need to get signals to move it. Is muscle memory then spinal cord memory?

This leads me to a question ( possibly out of topic ): Those who are excellent at thala keeping with the foot while playing an instrument, do they show any decreased skills when the arms and feet need to move together? If rewiring of the brain/spinal cord is involved in this disassociation, it may show up in other activities. Like, running and catching a ball requires so much coordination between the arms and the legs. Are great violinists poor ball catchers? ;)

Nick H
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by Nick H »

do they show any decreased skills when the arms and feet need to move together?
They might be brain surgeons in their day jobs :lol:

SrinathK
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by SrinathK »

VK, I strongly disagree with the idea that violinists make bad sportsmen. Maybe you should try playing with me sometime ;) :D

Regarding the point of hands and feet moving together, this creates issues when the eduppu is fractional -- 1/4, 2/3, 4/5 etc... Nagaswara vidwans have someone behind them keep putting the tala on a pair of cymbals. Also most amateurs often turn to the audience for help -- kids often have their parents in their first row or someone sitting on stage. It's also possible that if both mridangam and upa-pakkavadyams are playing, one of them will stop and show the tala to the artistes. In a violin duet or an instrumental concert during neraval and swara turns, one always puts the tala for the other (or at least they ought to). So an accompanist is not exactly marooned, but still relying on others does not substitute for one's own lack of laya gnana -- the percussionist will help you to the eduppu and may suggest phrases for your swaras and neravals, but if you can't anticipate the flow of rhythm with their expertise, you can't follow it at all.

But then again be warned -- the audience is not reliable, and occasionally the percussionist might get into the act and forget his promise to render the tala for you -- the strategy won't work if there is only one mridangam and no one else. Besides what will you do for practicing when you don't have your music teacher around to show the tala for you -- the metronome will of course help, but if you start using it as a crutch and not to develop your own laya skill, you will still continue to suffer when you can't carry your metronome around with you. There is a certain kinesthetic sense of rhythm that you can feel only when you put the tala and master the art of counting yourself.

vasanthakokilam
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by vasanthakokilam »

Ha..Ha.. Srinath.. Challenge not accepted ;) I know my limitations in the games I occasionally play which are cricket and tennis,. I do have a mean backhand cross court shot though..alas.. only occasionally it lands in ;)

Seriously, training the brain to not do its normal thing, namely coordinated movement of the hand and leg, or even the two hands has to have some side effects. As with the popular and funny thing one can do with a bunch of kids: tap the top of the head with one hand and rub your tummy in a circular motion with the other hand. Brain, by default, makes it harder to do such 'different' motions and try to sync the two motions. It takes some conscious practice to teach it not to do that. But it is doing it a for a reason and messing with it can have a side effect of some sort. It need not be anything serious. I am curious what experiment we can do to see if there is any decreased level in something else for which the coordinated movement is neede. Now, even those who has severed that auto response can consciously coordinate.. So the experiment will be to somehow distract them ( you in this case ;) ) so they can't consciously focus on re-establishing that coordinated motion whereas a person who has not severed that automatic coordination would do better in that task even when distracted.

I need to find the right experiment to test this hypothesis! ;)

Nick H
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by Nick H »

VK, I think you need to rethink what is "normal" for the brain. Is it normal for it to move the legs, rhythmically, moving you forwards, keeping balance, swinging the opposing arms slightly? According to your post, I suspect that you would say yes. So ask you mum how long it took you to learn how to do this momentously difficult thing called walking!

All these things are learned and practised. The only thing is that, perhaps it is hard to add more such practices to those that have become set in the neural processes, as we grow older.

One piece of data for you: even after my very elementary mridangam learning, I found the tummy/head thing easier :). By the way, what your describe is level one of this test. Level two is to change from rubbing/patting to patting/rubbing without faltering. That is much harder!

The art of the violinist is a nightmare of co-ordination. I'm told that the relationship of bowing/fingering/sounds is much more complex than with plucking or strumming instruments, and that the bowing has a sort of rhythm all of its own, which is not related to the tala. SrikanthK: I am vaguely remembering what a student told me a decade or more ago, can you clarify?

SrinathK
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by SrinathK »

Dear Nick H, I am not a guitarist or a vainika so I cannot speak for those two instruments. But as a violinist I am new to the concept of tone production and it was only after hearing many videos of great virtuosos playing (and a lot on youtube) on the best instruments across many genres of music that I became aware I that I had no idea about tone production or much about bowing technique at all -- tone production is given great emphasis in other forms of music, but in Carnatic music in general it is not given that much attention with only the musicians at the top giving that necessary attention to it.

Bowing is an extremely complex subject. The bow generally follows the lyrics and therefore has it's own patterns to follow apart from the tala itself. As before the difficulties happen when the eduppu is fractional which requires independence of the hands from the feet and it is also difficult when doing special bow strokes like the sautille, spiccato or staccato. Natural instinct tries to synchronize movements of all the body parts simply because it is the easiest and least energy consuming way to do it -- that's the brain's job, make difficult things easier by any means. Therefore in the matter of laya and violin practice, instinct, deliberate practice is the only real way to go further.

Unfortunately for me I have not seen my violin in weeks now and only get a couple of days in a month when I can visit home and spend some time with it, which is useless. (As to why it remains home, it's because of my job. Here no one appreciates Indian classical music and as I have to put up with shared accommodation, practice is ruled out for the near future :(). Thankfully it only requires about 2-3 weeks before I can play in form again...but in the last few years I have not been able to get a long uninterrupted stretch of time where I can maintain my form enough to concentrate more on music. As a result I have hardly had any opportunity to implement what's in my head, but there will probably be more time available later on.

It might be pathetic on the practice front, but the time off has given me an opportunity to introspect, work on the long neglected laya and tala aspects and to find better ways to practice and experience music at a deeper level. Right now on the laya front I'm trying to find out how to render the basic talas and I have come up with sequences for Chaturashra jathi laghu & dhrutam this week and I'm only working on adi tala and misra and khanda chaapus for the moment. Laya exercises are still being rendered with the hands and the metronome only...

@VK, it's not harder as you grow older, an adult's brain is more skilled than a child's. However, when a 3 year old becomes a 5 year old, the 2 year difference is not a big issue. But for an adult it's like, "OMG! 2 long years!". But it is painfully true that when you realize your old technique was very faulty & even destructive, you have to go all the way back to scratch and start all over. Therefore, I'd strongly say that children and any serious music aspirant should be fully trained in all aspects of music right from the very beginning -- whether they choose to become performing artistes in the long run is irrelevant. Even for producing a generation of great rasikas, we have to ensure they are properly exposed to music. Now I don't want to get into the topic of how serious most parents or students are about aiming for great music -- that's for another story. Anyway, back to the metronome I go...

vasanthakokilam
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by vasanthakokilam »

I think you need to rethink what is "normal" for the brain. Is it normal for it to move the legs, rhythmically, moving you forwards, keeping balance, swinging the opposing arms slightly? According to your post, I suspect that you would say yes. So ask you mum how long it took you to learn how to do this momentously difficult thing called walking!

All these things are learned and practiced. The only thing is that, perhaps it is hard to add more such practices to those that have become set in the neural processes, as we grow older
I readily agree that there may not be much to my hypothesis. The proof is in the pudding of course, so I need to come up with a good experiment to test it. Be that as it may, you may be combining 'developmental processes' with 'conscious learning' into one 'learning' whereas I view them separately. It is in the genes that humans 'learn' to walk after so many months where as a calf does that on day 1. That is all part of the development due to gene expression. Part of that gene expression is the synchronous movement of the hands and legs. ( I am not 100% sure about this, so someone who know more about this can correct me ).

The distinction between 'innate' vs 'learned' is much clearer in the case of opposable thumbs ( the ability of the thumb to touch the other fingers of the same hand pulp-side ). That is part of the genetic expression that is so unique to primates. One of the earliest things that a baby does is to exercise that feature. I call that 'innate'.

Putting that innateness to use for specific tasks, namely the precise use of a tool or writing with a pen or holding the bow of a violin, or the specific finger position in flute playing etc., is definitely a learned activity.

Back to the synchronous movement of the hands and legs, that basic default mechanism is innate until we consciously mess with it through deliberate training. That is what I think. It is a soft expression by the genes since it is not that difficult to change that default behavior as you mentioned.

Having said all this, one aspect of your point is well taken. There is a lot of learning going on by us on top of all those expressions by the genes and so this 'messing' with the default is all part of that and so it may not be a big deal. I grant you that.

vasanthakokilam
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by vasanthakokilam »

While I was writing all this, there was a background thought going: Mahavishnu probably has done an experiment along these lines! I am sure he will pitch in if there is some material on this.

When I searched for it, I found one that is related to this topic and contains a curious result, that is well known to researchers in this field for quite a long time.
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.100 ... _16#page-1

Here is the gist:
When the hand and foot ( of the same side ) are moved based on an external trigger, the hand moves fractionally first and then the foot. The difference is exaclty what one would expect because the foot is farther away from the hand. But if we initiate that synchronous movement ourselves, the foot starts to move first. These are all really small differences, probably not noticeable and immaterial for practical purposes, but nonetheless interesting that such a difference exists.

On a lighter note, If we associate foot with 'flight' and hand with 'fight', I guess we are built to fight when we hear an external danger signal, whereas if we figure danger ourselves, the instinct is to flee :)

mahavishnu
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by mahavishnu »

Interesting discussion. Thanks VK, Nick H and Srinath for sustaining this thread. I can add to/clarify a few things based on what we know about the brain and timing.

1) Is there one timing system or many? There was a belief that we all have universal timing circuits in the brain that are general purpose structures. So training this system would produce individuals who can be good at multiple timing skills (As diverse as playing the piano and timing a stroke in cricket). But recent results have shown that people with a superior ability of tapping to a metronome (a discontinuous movement like striking a piano key) are not very very good at drawing circles to a metronome (a continuous movement like bow movements while playing the violin). In our own research, we have shown that the process of error correction and trajectory formation works differently for both kinds of movements. http://sensorimotor.mcmaster.ca/wordpre ... br2009.pdf

So, in a nutshell, people are much better at timing discontinuous or "percussive" movements, than they are with bowing actions. There are many mechanical and neural reasons for this, that we have identified in the abovementioned paper.

2) Are these timing systems distributed and if so are they effector specific (is there a hand timer vs leg timer): Yes, and no. There are central timing circuits in the cerebellum, but the way these timing circuits talk to the motor periphery arm vs leg is influenced by a huge time-delay (as VK noted in the last post with the paper by my colleagues in Quebec). Also, larger effectors (those with more inertia) have slower preferred frequencies, so controlling them is harder, purely from a mechanical standpoint. Although there are multiple timing circuits in other parts of the brain, it is unclear as to how they influence simple event timing. The other regions tend to become more involved when the task gets harder (for e.g if you have people do a timing task and count backwards in 7s), then we see the more complex timing regions of the brain get recruited. If a person were to damage to these brain timing regions (from a stroke/lesion), our research has shown that coordination between the affected part of the body improves when coupled with a non-affected region. Please see: http://sensorimotor.mcmaster.ca/wordpre ... lawing.pdf
So if you are having trouble keeping time with your feet, try to teach the old dog a new trick by tightly coupling its movement with the hand/finger.

3) Why is it so hard to bring two limbs together? The brain prefers symmetry in most things. Lateralization began in evolution rather late and much of our brain's specialized hemispheric functions and even language development were the result of breaking this symmetry. So, the two limbs prefer to do the same thing at the same time and at roughly the same point in space (trajectory). So if you try to draw a C with your left hand and a U with your right, you will get huge amounts of interference. Unless you were unfortunate enough to have a callosotomy in which case you have a split-brain and your two hemispheres do not talk to each other. This is a bit like patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time.

Every musician will have to overcome this constraint somewhat to produce good music. In fact once a specialized skill is learned it is very hard to learn another new skill. Which is why I am blown away by demonstrations of Dwitala Avadhana, as shown in this video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7gkcQW-mY8 by K Gayatri, by a disciple of Suguna Purushothaman. Here she does, Tisra Jampai Tisra nadai in one hand and Kanda Triputa chatusra nadai in the other (the total count of the ragas is the same = 36). This was at her performance in a recent concert in Toronto that I reviewed in a thread. http://www.rasikas.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=21247

I am told that Lalgudi can do this with four different talas in four different limbs! It takes that kind of training to be a laya giant like Lalgudi. If there were any one musician whom I wish I could study and do complex brain imaging on, it would be LGJ. I would seek a special grant from the NIH just to study his brain!

Nick, interesting question about how to deal with rhythms in walking and other movements governed by pattern generators. I will add my two pence, perhaps in a different post.

SrinathK
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by SrinathK »

Dear mahavishnu, as usual the technique to independently separate the motion of the limbs is once again deliberate practice. Actually every cell in our body has it's own memory. Bone cells rebuild themselves when stressed along a certain direction, muscle cells grow and transform based on what exercise you do. Nerves in the brain and nervous system rewire themselves when new activities are learnt and practiced -- once the hardware is fully ready, it becomes much easier to do. In the case of dwi tala avadhanas -- one has to think a few times like this (a simple example is Adi & Rupakam (6 counts), same nadai), "Ok. First beat -- left hand & right hand, downbeat. Second beat. Left hand little finger, right hand dhrutam wave. Third beat. Left hand, ring finger, right hand, downbeat... and so on.

Piece by Piece. In the beginning stage one should not both focus on tempo or kalapramanam or even the exact intervals between the talangas. Say yesterday I was trying to sync Misra Chapu between hand and foot. Since it goes like 0.5+1+1+1 I had some trouble in that 0.5+1 part as the time interval was uneven. So I did this. I first simply put 1+1+1+1, focusing only on the synchronization of hand and foot movement and nothing else -- exact intervals and kalapramana shuddham can be focussed later -- first it's important to memorize the order of movements. When I had sufficiently memorized the movements, I turned on the metronome and then put 3+2+2 on the meter with accents on beats 1,2,4 & 6 and all others silent. Set the tempo to 100 bpm and I had my misra chaapu. This time it was quite easy and I got it right. It will take a few days more before I can totally do that without thinking.

So here's how to do it. Take out a pen and paper and write down all the beats of one hand and below that write down the beats of the other hand. First only the movements between the hands have to be synchronized -- one beat at a time. Then 2 beats, then 3, and eventually the whole cycle and then several cycles. I will demonstrate below for rupakam - adi combo (Left - rupakam, right - adi). Adi tala is on top, rupakam is at the bottom

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 5 - 6 7 - 8 9 - 10 -11-12 13 - 14- 15 - 16 17 -18- 19-20 21-22-23 - 24
D - L - R - M | D - W | D - W || D - L - R - M | D - W | D - W || D - L - R - M | D - W - D - W || (3 cycles = 8x3 = 24) (Right Hand)
D - W | D - L - R - M || D - W | D - L - R - M || D - W | D - L - R - M || D - W | D - L - R - M || (4 cycles = 6x4 = 24 ) (Left Hand)

D = Downbeat, W= Wave (This is Drutam). L = Little Finger, R = Ring Finger, M = Middle Finger and so on. D-L-R-M is chaturashra jaathi laghu. Think of this as a 24 beat cycle instead of either rupakam or adi. Take a special note of these areas -- the 1st beat is identical. When the left hand has finished dhrutam (1st 2 beats) the right hand is still on the little finger and the next movement is downbeat on the left and ring finger on the right. Also the beats 7-15 are identical for both hands. On the 16th beat, the right hand goes on to turn upside down while the left starts counting the ring finger -- this is again found on beat number 22. Also beat 21 is identical for both hands. Again beat 5-6 & 23-24 involve the same combination of movements These are some important "landmarks" -- if you forget where you are, these landmarks will guide you.

A word about the human brain -- the human brain is only interested in maximizing efficiency and minimizing input -- it will memorize these movements so that it does not have to spend precious processing power to think and analyse about what it has to do. Activities which have become habitual require much less mental energy to maintain whereas activities that have yet to be established as a habit require a great deal of energy to override existing patterns and set up new ones. This is the reason why people find it difficult to follow new year's resolutions. It requires more energy and like exercise, it is like resistance training for the brain. It takes up to about 45-60 days before the activity is so deeply engrained it becomes embedded in habit & routine. Hence a disciplined routine every single day, fighting against the brain's tendency to quit is the surest way to build up habits.

Also one has to take necessary breaks of 10 min every hour. This should be complemented by good sleep, good food and relaxing meditation -- the key to exercise is recovery. It is during the recovery period that bones, muscles and the neural networks are rebuilt so that they become stronger than before -- the mind also gets a chance to refresh. The motto for greatness is : "Love the pain. Seek stress and then de-stress at the end of each activity. Once accustomed to a certain level of stress, aim a little higher, rest a little deeper."

Now about the dwi tala avadhana I could also do that showing 1-2-3-4-5-6 for rupakam and 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 for adi but this one is easier to understand. Later on we can bother about different nadais -- for that you have to count each and every note. A trisra nadai adi will be 8x3 = 24 notes per cycle @ 3 counts a beat and a chaturashra rupakam is 6x4 = 24 notes so they will sync in one cycle itself. That is more complex and we'll see that in later posts.

For a tougher challenge, after you have memorized this movement, switch hands -- Right Hand Rupakam and Left hand Adi. This forces your brain out of instinctive mode and forces it to think deliberately again. Over a period of time this forces your mind muscles into a higher level of thinking all together so it can adapt to this new level of mental stress -- in the long run, even if a spontaneous dwi tala avadhana is thrown at you, your mind will barely flinch.

A tip : First practice the same tala in one hand, then the other, then both hands. Then hand and foot. Then you can try different talas in different hands. Right now I'm working on misra chapu in both hand and foot. The key to mastering talanga on the foot as per my system is that each talanga has a different set of movements that cannot be confused with the movements of any other talanga so there should not be any confusion over where one is in the cycle.

So for misra chapu, I see that my toes have 3 levels of motion. Flex inward, neutral & flex outward. So the 1-2---3---4--- cycle goes like. Beat 1 = Tap the right foot while Toe flexes inward. Beat 2 = Tap the right foot with the toe neutral, Beat 3 = Tap the foot with toes flexing outward, Beat 4 = Tap with Toes neutral. Repeat. As the 1st two beats spell out a different pattern from the 3rd and 4th beats, it is not possible to get confused between beat 2 and 4. As such misra chapu is a simple tala that can be remembered even if you simply tap your foot -- but these complex motions are the key to muscle memory.

So the misra chapu dvi tala avadhana will be like this :

Hand : W | W, | D, | D, ||
Foot : I | N, | O, | N, || where I = Toes inward, N = Toes neutral, O = Toes outward. Now do that with the metronome. Eventually take the hand out of the picture and tap only with the foot. After 2 days, mute the speakers and practice -- see if your kalapramana is steady even without the metronome. Then practice once again with it.

More on this later. As I continue to work deeper into this I will keep posting in this thread...

Nick H
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by Nick H »

Mahavishnu, I wish I could digest the academic writing, but my brain finds it harder than keeping talam :$

Tapping versus bowing: I often find it easier to keep talam with flowing movements of the hand, rather than taps. Perhaps I am counting the period of time allotted to the beat, rather than its moment of time. Perhaps I should have attempted violin instead of mridangam.

vasanthakokilam
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by vasanthakokilam »

Thanks very much Mahavishnu and Srinath. Lots of good information. Srinath, I think I am following your method, especially your idea of getting the hang of the sequence right and then the interval.

The difference between keeping thalam to music (reactive triggering) vs keeping thalam oneself( self induced triggering ) are quite fascinating.

Mahavishnu, in this paper: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11963277

Can you translate this to English and add some commentary, especially the bold part?

"...In the first case, results are explained by a simultaneous triggering of motor commands. In contrast, self-initiated and auditorily paced movements are assumed to be controlled in terms of their afferent consequences, as provided by tactile-kinesthetic information..."

Speaking of timing, I find it very hard to tap the foot to one speed and simultaneously tap the hand at double the speed. The limb that I am not focussing on either stops or it catches up automatically to the speed of the other. But I can easily do another very related thing. Tap the hand at a reasonably fast speed and every 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th etc. beat tap the foot synchronously. Not a problem. The 2nd beat synchronization is a bit difficult and error prone but with 3, 4, 5 etc. not a problem. In one sense, this is also tapping the two at different speeds. The problem is when changing the speed once it got going. That is when the other limb gives up or synchronizes.

Talking of continuous motion beat keeping, I was quite pleasantly surprised to learn accidentally that I can do it and do it reasonably well. That is also when I figured out that Eduppu is not as big a deal if I focus on hitting the following beat right. Eduppu fixes itself. In circular beat keeping, the eduppu can theoretically be so fine grained. One can position it in the 2 Pi radians ( 360 degrees ) of space available. But I do not know if, in my circular beat keeping, the speed of my hand motion is constant or there is acceleration for the first half and deceleration in the second half. It is probably the latter. That is all the more reason that eduppu as a fixed point before or after the beat is not so meaningful in circular beat keeping.

One fun thing to try is to increase the radius of the circle as you are keeping the beat. It is amazing how quickly one can adjust the speed of the hand motion so we will complete the circle on the beat. Ramesh, it will be interesting to know what is going on there. May be there are some investigative results, if not it may be worthwhile finding out.

SrinathK
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by SrinathK »

Dear mahavishnu, I think it will be more useful for me to study Sri Lalgudi's methods than his brain ;) Brain mapping might help you find out your patient's neural networks, but what I want is to GROW some laya related neural networks in MY brain. ;)

He surely would have been an extremely meticulous and devoted researcher and would have known way more than all we can talk here. In case of putting talas on both feet or all 4 limbs (add the mouth and your head if you dare for 6 !!), I'd have to go back and revise my ideas to keep a tala confined to one foot only :). But that won't be enough. Such a feat cannot be repeated unless the talas have indeed gone that deep into one's mind that one can never lose one's way, foot movements or no foot movements. Anyway as an update I managed to successfully put my rupakam in GNB's Aaragimpave including most of Pazhani Subramania Pillai's tani. And my misra chaapu did work for Amba Kamaakshi.

And one other thing : Don't try chaapu talas + other talas combination right away. Save it for the end. As chapu talas run on 1/2 beats, that half beat in those talas will put the beats of the chaapu tala 1/2 beat out of sync with the beats of the other tala in the 1st cycle and it will only come back in sync in the next cycle, and you'd need to put the beat of one tala in the gap of another. Before attempting that, try singing swaras at 1 note / beat in Misra chaapu or khanda chaapu and you will quickly see this (Raga Gowla - Sri Mahaganapati) :

P |, M |, G|, M ||, | R, |G, |M, || R |, S |, N |, S||, , , | N, | S , | R, || (See the effect?)

mahavishnu
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by mahavishnu »

In the first case, results are explained by a simultaneous triggering of motor commands. In contrast, self-initiated and auditorily paced movements are assumed to be controlled in terms of their afferent consequences, as provided by tactile-kinesthetic information..."
VK: here is a simpler way of saying the same thing.
So, when you react to a stimulus hand and foot movements are initiated by the brain at the same time. Given the finitely larger delay in the command reaching the foot there is a 50ms lead that the hand has with the foot. However if there is a self-initiated/paced movement where the subject is told to synchronize the movements, then it must be that the movements were planned so the motor command to the foot precedes the hand by about 50ms so the two movements appear synchronized. Thus the brain must be planning these movements in terms of the sensory consequence/tactile feedback that comes from sounding synchronized rather than initiating the movements at the same time.

You can imagine how complicated this can be when you use multiple effectors all with varying time delays!
One fun thing to try is to increase the radius of the circle as you are keeping the beat. It is amazing how quickly one can adjust the speed of the hand motion so we will complete the circle on the beat. Ramesh, it will be interesting to know what is going on there. May be there are some investigative results, if not it may be worthwhile finding out.
Colleagues of mine at Purdue have tried to perturb the motion of the hand during circling/cyclic movements. They find that it is harder to recover from a perturbation in bowing (to get back on time) than it is when you perturb a percussive movement that tends to be more ballistic. So, my guess is that increasing the amplitude of the circling movement would be more difficult to adapt to.
Mahavishnu, I wish I could digest the academic writing, but my brain finds it harder than keeping talam :$
Nick, The converse is true in my case. A lot of academic writing is also denser than it should be :-@ As I have said before, my academic pursuits emerged from my utter ineptitude at the most basic level of musicianship.

Srinath: Yes, my job is to understand how the brain works. Being a practicing musician is much harder and I will leave that to those with much greater talent like yourself :D

vasanthakokilam
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by vasanthakokilam »

Mahavishnu, Thanks. I understand it better now. Very interesting how the brain plans that timing. Thx.

vpsm
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Joined: 29 Sep 2015, 00:24

Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by vpsm »

Hi everyone,

I just joined this forum because I am quite interested in this topic and found the forum participants' posts quite interesting. This is a topic I am currently trying to tackle as well, although in the context of Hindustani music. I came across the AMS Easy Methods and had already been doing certain exercises similar to those, although the addition of the left hand was new and I do feel that it helps in stabilizing rhythm.

Anyway, just wanted to try to revive this thread and see what people found useful to make progress on this problem. I've been trying mental exercises to try to feel the tala on my hand (mentally) and also visualize playing the instrument (again, mentally) at the same time. Not sure how useful it will be but will update it as well. In the meantime, continuing with the exercises prescribed in AMS Easy Methods.

SrinathK
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by SrinathK »

I use my feet and a visualization technique I'm working on for the talas -- with our hands full, we have to rely on our feet only for all the tala angas. Now it's obvious that the feet are by no means anywhere near as flexible as the hands. This gives the hands a fundamental advantage over feet -- those kriya gestures for each tala anga allow you to take the counting out of the head and into the hands. -- a very important advantage to the vocalist. Not unlike math memory, where it feels as though your HANDS and the tip of your pencil is somehow WAY smarter than your brain. I assume you are already familiar with the talangas. So here's how the hands keep count.

1) laghu (beat + finger counts),
2) dhrutam (beat + wave),
3) guru (depending on which version of it you follow, it could be the beat + closed fist moving on an imaginary hexagon or the slight difference between the laghu (sounded) and the patitam (unsounded)
4) Plutam (changing the main position of your hand makes it oh so easy, basically almost the same as 3 laghus in 3 different positions)
5) Kakapadam (Same as above - only 4 different positions)

Now the foot cannot do ANY of these, at best it can keep tapping up and down which itself is quite a challenge when you are sitting in that cramped posture. Hence there is a need for a visualization scheme that differentiates every beat of a talanga. You IMAGINE (and imagine is the word here) your foot as a lever that can assume certain positions in your mind (it does not go beyond the natural movement of the toes and the ankles). It goes on the logic that when you visualize strongly, it creates a slight muscle tension in that direction and that is enough to differentiate one beat of the foot from another.

I am still testing the scheme I have in my mind and it has worked on every tala I have tried -- in theory, it can handle even talas with guru, plutam and kakapadam like the simhanandana and even double talas (one on each foot), though that is still a while off. I will share it when I have tested it to my satisfaction.

In AMS methods, the use of the other hand is actually a masterstroke. You train both left and right sides of the brain and body to keep the rhythm and the skill will come in real handy when you tackle 2 talas, one on each hand.

vpsm
Posts: 2
Joined: 29 Sep 2015, 00:24

Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by vpsm »

Hi SrinathK,

Thanks for the detailed and interesting reply. I had tried doing something similar recently but I didn't spend much time on it. My main problem was that I couldn't really do much with the foot while standing other than tap (I play the saxophone and most of it is done while standing). However, after reading your post, I though I'd go back and give this approach another shot, especially since it's a lot easier to keep the beat using the feet.

I'm still struggling with developing distinct foot movements for all the talangas that are easy to visualize. Currently, I'm just doing basic up/down/left/right movements and that seems to be getting ingrained well (haven't tried it while playing the instrument yet).

Can you elaborate how you map the various talangas to the foot movements as an example?

uday_shankar
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Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 08:37

Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by uday_shankar »

I've been practising the chitravenu held upright while I sit on a chair. This has led to an ease in keeping tala with feet, and I've evolved an ad-hoc scheme, by no means systematic to keep various taalas with the feet. I basically make it up as I go along. I don't have a Carnatic/Hindustani divide in my head, nor even a clear laghu drutam divide( for example, I treat Adi taala 2 kalai as 4 sets of 4 major beats, apart from subdivisions like nadai which are held in the head). Also, there are two feet and some toe movement available...

So the distinct "states" available to me are:
1) Feet - 2 states (left foot and right foot)
2) Foot position - 2 states (up and down)
2) Big toe - 2 states (bent and straight)
3) RIght foot position in a quadrant - 2 or 4 states

The following short video clip shows an excerpt from a performance that somebody cut and paste for a website and facebook page.. they took the footage that shows the camera focusing on foot movement ... as is clear, the taala here is a slow version of mishra chappu (they call that something in Hindustani, don't know the name, although I am supposed to be playing Hindustani music !!!)...

https://www.facebook.com/RareAndStrange ... 496431947/

They cut and paste it from the following youtube video in case anyone is interested :):

https://youtu.be/iealVYOKmss

There's a lot of things to coordinate for chitravenu... the flute pitch audio-visually, the strings strictly by feel, etc.... so it is convenient of the feet can keep the tala independently without thinking...

Sachi_R
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by Sachi_R »

Great, Uday.

I know another musician who has a unique way to keep beats. I saw that Prince Rama Varma has a very articulate right big toe which vigorously keeps the tala!

SrinathK
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Joined: 13 Jan 2013, 16:10

Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by SrinathK »

As a violinist, not having my hands free or anyone to put the tala for me, was the biggest problem I ever faced. I'd say my lack of laya skill stopped me from exploring manodharma and hurt my confidence in the past.

But no longer. I now have the answer I was seeking for many years. The last time I wrote about this, I was still testing. Now it's ready.

The main benefit and purpose of kriya angas is really this - they take the counting out of your head and into your body parts. This way, the mind is free to concentrate on the music and there is nearly no doubt as to where you are in the tala at any given time.

Now the toes are less flexible than the fingers, so I couldn't count on my toes - I tried bending them, but there was no chance. That's when I observed that if you visualize and feel yourself doing a particular movement strongly, even if you don't actually move that part, you will create a tension in the corresponding muscle and a millimeter of movement, this small amount of movement and tension is enough to distinguish two foot beats from each other. Imagine you're lifting huge load using your arms, feel it - your biceps will tense up even with no arm movement.

The arms can move at the fingers, the wrist, the elbow and the shoulder and all talangas use the combo of these 4 to create the sequence for each tala.

The legs also have 4 levels of movement - one the toes, one at the ankle, one at the knee and one at the hip. Visualizing a movement strongly at any one of these spots without actually moving a body part creates a noticeable difference in muscle tension changing the feel of each foot tap, allowing you to count if you have a sequence. But the legs are far less flexible, so their movements are far simpler.

So accordingly, I have created a visualization of the movements (my own kriya system) that was good enough for me to render all the talas, in all jaathis, all the talangas, with no ambiguity, and on one leg only, so I can do two simultaneous talas on two legs (and in theory up to 4 simultaneous talas if I use my hands as well). These movements are all mental, the actual physical movement is just a mild regular foot tap (and even that is not needed after a while). This means I can play without hindrance.

This worked really easily for the regular talas. Later on I also extended it to guru, plutam and kakapadam. To make it easier for these more complicated angas, I eventually added some colors to the visualized movements.

Muscle memory figures out the sequence in no time. So I no longer have to burden my head counting "1,2,3,4..."

The end result is something that is as easy as putting tala with your hands. Now-a-days I follow entire concerts on my feet, with no issues.

I was thinking for a long time to post it step by step up here, but I've been searching for the right words. I don't expect anyone to get what I just said up here. Since it's a visualization + kinesthetic thing, I don't think I can clearly explain it on a forum site. This is the basic principle, but I haven't told you the exact movements (next post I will give a very simple example).

It sounds complicated, but it really isn't. In person though, it's quite easy to grasp.

SrinathK
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by SrinathK »

Ok, so theory aside, let me get to lesson #1, the way I do it.

First, imagine and feel a very very flexible set of feet, that can flex to absurd levels. Now I am right footed, so I am going to use my right foot for all the examples.

1) Anudhrutam - Toes neutral. Do a simple foot tap.
2) Dhrutam - For the first foot tap, feel the toes flexing inward (to your sole). For the second, feel them flexing out.

Don't physically bend your toes. Just foot tap. But as you do, visualize strongly enough the toes flexing (exaggerate it far beyond what your physical body can do), feel the movement and the sensations and the muscle tension mentally as if your toes were really flexing hard. Your will power will instigate a small tension in your toe muscles. If you want to, allow your toes to move by a millimeter in each direction to really feel that distinct tension (if your toes have been perfectly still, just initiating the slightest sliver of movement will be felt dramatically)

3) Tisra jaati laghu - Since no one's toes are so individually flexible, we're not going to count on our toes. We are going to do something different.

First beat - Toes inward,
Second - Toes neutral / center
Third - Toes outward

The key here is not the visualization - as you can see a strong visualization needs your total attention which you cannot afford on stage. It's that small stroke of tension it creates for your muscle memory to remember. After sometime, the visualization will be so automatic it becomes a mere afterthought while playing. Your muscles know what the next movement is, you vaguely tense a bit, move 1 mm in a direction and you'll know exactly which beat you are on.

You can very well do this with your hands too. It's very easy, and give the audience the impression that you aren't putting the tala at all.

4) Roopaka (3 beat)
First beat - Toes center
Second beat - Toes Inward
Third beat - Toes outward

This imitates the way the hands do it and distinguishes it from tisra laghu.

So far I have covered only the movement of the toes.

Two weeks of practice will make the process second nature to the muscle memory. Use a metronome and practice from slow to fast speeds (up to 130 bpm). So good is human muscle memory that the slightest mental nod can recall the entire memory of the movement - and that's all we need to count. It's like riding a bicycle with no hands on the bars, once memorized, the body can balance itself easily.

uday_shankar
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by uday_shankar »

SrinathK wrote: 17 Jun 2018, 16:10Don't physically bend your toes. Just foot tap. But as you do, visualize strongly enough the toes flexing (exaggerate it far beyond what your physical body can do), feel the movement and the sensations and the muscle tension mentally as if your toes were really flexing hard. Your will power will instigate a small tension in your toe muscles.
That's really cool and original.

I've found that apart from having to keep automatic track of taala angas, there's the problem of a good, steady, meter/beat when playing "amorphous" instruments like the flute. I found it so much easier to maintain a good beat on a plucked string instrument like chitravina than the flute. Of course, chitravina has that amorphousness in the pitch front. Chitravenu is amorphous is every respect, but that's an ongoing story..

SrinathK
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Joined: 13 Jan 2013, 16:10

Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by SrinathK »

There was a good software called Fine metronome (the website is gone now, but I think I still have the installation files)- you can input a custom beat pattern into the editor that will duplicate the exact tala pattern, even up to 4 or 8 kalais (the older version was even more capable at this).

So on to lesson # 2 (request anyone interested to follow -- this will take a while before I'm done and I promise you that what I've come up with is a true game changer). Again using the right foot,

1) tisra chApu - 1 1/2 beats. Just a simple foot tap to a tt, tt, tt, tt, pattern

2) chatushra chApu - foot tap to a t,tt | t,tt | t,tt |... . Visualize and feel as if the toes flexing inward on the 1st beat, which will distinguish it.

Again, do not actually try flexing your toes, it's not needed, you do not have the flexibility of your fingers and pretty soon you'll experience a nasty cramp in your foot. It's all in the will, the feel and tension.

Now for some 'notation'. The inward flex of the toes, I will now denote as "I" and the toes outward as "O". Toes neutral as "N".

3) khanDa chApu - I, NN, | I, NN, |...

4) mishra chApu - NN, I, O, | NN, I, O |...

5) sankeerNa chApu - NN, I, N, O, | NN, I, N, O |

You might find it's actually easier to render chApu talas on the feet than the hands after this.

Lesson 3 will come after a while - it's more complicated, because now you'll need your ankle as well. In the meantime, practice!

girish_a
Posts: 427
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Re: Techniques to keep Taala for instrumentalists

Post by girish_a »

Great to see this thread come back to life. I was thinking about "bumping" it up. Great insights from Srinath and Uday. Thanks a lot. Will try the visualization technique recommended by Srinath first. Hope to post how I find it.

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