Introducing My TalaVadyam!

sridharrajagopal · Post by **sridharrajagopal** » 27 Sep 2013, 22:15

Dear Rasikas members!

I am very happy to announce that a new app that I've been developing, "My TalaVadyam", is now available for download from the iTunes App Store. With that, you can create and playback carnatic percussion sequences on a "mridangam" on the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. It is not available for Android yet, but I'm looking into it. I hope it will be useful for teachers and students of carnatic percussion, to have something to practice along with, or just to explore it.

You can read more about it here - http://www.upbeatlabs.com/My_TalaVadyam.html

Hope you will try it out, and let me know what you think!

Regards,
Sridhar Rajagopal

VK RAMAN · Post by **VK RAMAN** » 27 Sep 2013, 22:20

Is your app available for windows 8

Nick H · Post by **Nick H** » 27 Sep 2013, 22:33

Android version Pleeeeeese

!

This looks fascinating. Well done indeed!

One little typo quibble: Toggle's the help screen --- is it? No, it toggles the help screen! Watch out for the apostrophe police! lol

sridharrajagopal · Post by **sridharrajagopal** » 27 Sep 2013, 22:58

VKR, no sorry, it is available only on iDevices - iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad.

Nick "the apostrophe police" H - lol - thanks for the catch! I'll clean it up in the next version update (which will extend the functionality a great deal more - almost ready!). Android will have to be a complete rewrite, and at this point, I don't even have an Android device, but I'm investigating it, since that has been an oft-repeated request for Talanome.

Thanks,
Sridhar

VK RAMAN · Post by **VK RAMAN** » 27 Sep 2013, 23:35

I mean Windows phone 820.....

Nick H · Post by **Nick H** » 28 Sep 2013, 00:08

sridharrajagopal wrote:... Android will have to be a complete rewrite, and at this point, I don't even have an Android device, but I'm investigating it, since that has been an oft-repeated request for Talanome.

Oh please do.

Lots of people can't afford an iphone --- and some of us wouldn't want one if we could. Although, I do gather that for audio/music-making stuff the iphone is inherently superior

sridharrajagopal · Post by **sridharrajagopal** » 28 Sep 2013, 00:49

In my initial investigation, I did gather that the latency of button presses for the android vs. the iphone/ipad is quite noticeable - this would affect any "live" play instruments. I'll keep you posted about my android adventures and progress!

sridharrajagopal · Post by **sridharrajagopal** » 28 Sep 2013, 00:51

VK RAMAN wrote:I mean Windows phone 820.....

I see ... It is not currently supported, but I'll definitely keep that in mind!

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 28 Sep 2013, 01:39

>Although, I do gather that for audio/music-making stuff the iphone is inherently superior

Oh yeah, you better believe it.

May be, an older/used iPod touch which is much cheaper is a route one can take.

Sridhar Rajagopal, very well done. I played with it a little bit and it worked great. It is a lot of fun. Thanks.

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 29 Sep 2013, 10:20

Here is a little thing I made with MyTalaVadyam App. Worked pretty well. There are some usability improvements Sridhar can make but we will wait for it, it is is already quite a useful and fun application.

https://soundcloud.com/dabbler126/onecy ... withtalava

Nick H · Post by **Nick H** » 29 Sep 2013, 18:21

What a great sound!

Sridhar, what I'd really like is a Linux version of this! But maybe the phone gives a drumpad-like feel that would not translate to mouse and keyboard. And probably it would be a whole new development

I don't like Soundcloud's "habit" of automatically playing ther next item (probably configurable, but I don't go there very often) but still, the 30 seconds of Vedavalli came as a nice surprise

arunk · Post by **arunk** » 29 Sep 2013, 19:01

Congrats. Excellent idea. I just downloaded it. Will play with it more but I can already tell i will have fun with it

Arun

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 29 Sep 2013, 21:03

Nick: I do not like that soundcloud behavior either and I have not figured out a way to configure it out. If someone knows, please educate.

In any case, you better give me credit for that Vedavalli experience

. It was my attempt to make lemonade out of that Soundcloud lemon. I edited out a few seconds of silence at the end of the mridangam file and made all the intervening files private so Vedavalli came next. I am glad you bumped into it and had a pleasant experience. It will be a good exercise to further edit the tempo, sruthi etc. so it looks like Smt. Vedavalli is taking back the song after the tani!!

Back to the app, the iPad interface is even better and more useful. it is not just an iPhone app on the iPad.
The bass sound coming out of the app is a bit better than what this recording shows. I played it on one iOS device and recorded it on another, there was some loss.

Sridhar, can you list what people get in the paid version other than removing ads, if any? Exporting as a music file and apple loop ( for garageband ) will be very useful in the paid version.

The app shows the basic sollus tha, Dhi, Thom, Num, Ki, Ta, Ka Na, Chap and dhim and some two simultaneous stroke combinations like Dhin+Thom and some sollu sequences. That is great already. Can one of you provide the mapping for the most commonly used other mridangam sollus to the above. It will be useful for CM sollu neophytes like me. For example, in 'tha dheem gi na thom', how do you represent dheem with the basic 7 sollus? How about 'Ri'? Is 'Gi' and 'Ki' the same? "tha ka dhi mi tha ka ju nu'. what is 'mi' and 'ju' etc. A cheat sheet for such things will be useful.

sridharrajagopal · Post by **sridharrajagopal** » 30 Sep 2013, 10:06

Thanks for the kind words everyone!

vasanthakokilam, nice Korvai, and thanks for sharing the link - you made my day!

Btw, have you tried the sharing features of My TalaVadyam? If you would like, you can share your creation with the My TalaVadyam community - currently, it is somewhat low tech - Exporting to My TalaVadyam Community sends an email to upbeatlabs. I can then upload to the website, so users can import it easily.

Great suggestion regarding exporting music file and apple loop - I'll add it to the list of enhancements in the future! Currently, the difference between the free version and the in-app purchase is that you can get rid of advertisements (which has the added benefit of the screen expanding to fill up the space occupied by the ad banner). Secondly, the free version supports sequences of length up to 150 aksharas, while the paid version doesn't have any limits. 150 is plenty to get started.

As for sollus mapping to sounds, different schools have different sollus for the same expressions. In your example, "Tha Dheem Gi Na Thom" will be played as Tha Dheem Ka Num Thom - Dheem is actually a basic sollu, a vibrational tone version of Dhi. My TalaVadyam does not have the Dheem sound currently, however. I would say the closest approximation would be Chap+Thom. ThaDhiGiNaThom would be Ki Ta Dhi Num Thom, so you see, there is no one-on-one correspondence of sounds, but rather, a translation of the entire phrase. AFAIK, Ri, Gi, Mi etc don't stand on their own, but as part of the phrase, which will translate to a set of sounds.

Version 2 of My TalaVadyam (currently under development) has the following changes:

1) Ability to save a (sub)sequence as a phrase (sollu sequence). Currently, there are 14 such phrases pre-loaded. With this change, you can create as many phrases as you like, and also have the ability to assign phrases of your choice to the phrase buttons (in the new version, there are 16 phrase buttons for the iPad - that means you can assign 16 of your phrases for immediate playing). With this change, and the ability to share, a cheat sheet of phrases would be a natural outcome!

2) "Live" mode has mridangam heads that you can play, for a more fun, realistic experience.

Hope you will all like it. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

Regards,
Sridhar

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 30 Sep 2013, 22:27

Very good Sridhar. I will share that korvai as per your instruction. Your app made me revisit and spend some quality time with the excellent thread on Korvai construction spearheaded Sri. Mannarkoil Balaji : http://www.rasikas.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2359
This Korvai is from Balaji. As he says in the therad, the pUrvanga is his creation based on the Aasu of Thyagaraja as embedded in Manavyala starting 5 sollus. ( see, now I can pretend and talk as if I know this stuff

)
Your app and that thread is a great combination, reinforcing each other. Before your app, I could only learn the stuff and listen to the corresponding audio etc. but now I can actually make those Korvais myself ( either copy it or create my own ) and have it played back to me right away. Just awesome.

If you like, you can refer to the above link in your app help page, so even non-mridangists can get a lot out of the app. If not on the client side, post it on the server side ( and possibly pull the link to the client ). It is just a suggestion, I will leave it to you to decide if it is prudent.

BTW, what was the level of effort and degree of difficulty of this app? Looking for a qualitative characterization just out of curiosity. I assume your challenges were/are in visualizing and laying out the user interface, especially on the iPhone with its limited screen real estate. Are the sounds being synthesized or pre-recorded? They sound pretty good.

I did not realize the complexity of translating even the commonly heard sollus to the basic Mridangam sounds. I would not have guessed that ThaDhiGiNaThom maps to Ki Ta Dhi Num Thom!. So the Dhi does not even map to the basic sound Dhi?
As a suggestion, you can have a preset for ThaDhiGiNaThom.

You asked for suggestions. The major difficulty I had was in editing a whole sequence in the middle. I knew how to delete and add at the end and also delete anywhere but inserting in the middle is something I missed.May be it is there. Let me know. Without this, if I make a mistake, then I had to redo the whole thing or delete one sollu at a time till I reach the edit point, fix it and then reenter the stuff. And, copy and paste will be incredibly useful for Korvai construction. Copy, paste and editing will be the typical work flow. The standard iOS thing will work for all three along with a backspace to delete the sollu to the left of the cursor.

The upcoming custom preset should definitely help.

Actually, what will be even more useful ( which you can consider for subsequent releases ) is to have the basic pattern as a preset, add it to the work area and then edit that in place. This way I can have ThaDhiGiNaThom as a preset. add it to the current sequence under construction and then edit it to ThaDhi,GiNaThom for the second repetition and Tha,Dhi,GiNaThom for the third repetition.

All the best!

Nick H · Post by **Nick H** » 30 Sep 2013, 22:42

Literally, different strokes for different folks!

)

Some schools are more consistent too. In my dabbling, apart from basic-lesson strokes, there can be different names for strokes. The play should sound good; the konnokol should sound good.

Remembering writing down lessons, my favourite written "presets" were those building blocks like dikutharikitataka and, of course, 5 kinds of TDGNT (you can easily guess what that is!) That way you don't have to edit.

sridharrajagopal · Post by **sridharrajagopal** » 01 Oct 2013, 02:07

Thanks for the link to the thread - I've added it to my help page as a reference.

As for level of effort and degree of difficulty, I would have to say a relatively very high degree of effort and difficulty. The obvious pieces, the layout and visualization, especially in optimizing it for each individual display type (3.5 inch iPhone, 4 inch iPhone, iPad), and trying to cram in a lot of pieces but still trying to keep the interface logical and useable, was not even the toughest thing, though it did take a lot of time and effort. My TalaVadyam uses Core Data and a sqlite database, and Core Audio for low latency high response sound. The sequences are importable/exportable, so there were things to worry about regarding layout, format, and upgradeability. The sound samples are actual mridangam sounds - so getting good quality mridangam sounds was imperative. Tying them together seamlessly required several tricks. I also investigated allowing for textual input/output, so the format that is there currently will eventually support that, which will make data entry and editing that much easier. A lot of these are in the back end, and so not visible to the end user. I had also spent time in making the phrases extensible (which is why I was able to do version 2 in relatively short time). Of course, another non-technical complexity was researching all of the complexities of mridamgam sounds and sollus and their construction, and translating that to technical requirements!

Hope that helps!

Coming to editing, yes, unfortunately, the current editing only allows for deleting a note - you cannot add something in the middle. That is definitely something I will work on refining in future upgrades. Version 2, with its ability to save more phrases, will allow you to build smaller building blocks and use them in larger compositions, so that will definitely make your life a whole lot easier.

Regards,
Sridhar

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 01 Oct 2013, 04:10

Thanks for the info Sridhar. Sounds quite impressive.

BTW, I tried to share the sequence but the email to mytalavadyam@upbeatlabs.com bounced. Please check

sridharrajagopal · Post by **sridharrajagopal** » 01 Oct 2013, 05:31

Oopsie daisy! Sorry about that! Please try again now - it should work.

Nick H · Post by **Nick H** » 01 Oct 2013, 12:41

I suppose there's no chance of a Linux version? It doesn't have to be free!

sridharrajagopal · Post by **sridharrajagopal** » 02 Oct 2013, 03:21

Hi Nick!

At this point, I would prioritize an Android version over Linux, and I think that would satisfy you, yeah? I like the concept of personal mobile computing, on a small device you can carry around with you.

My TalaVadyam took me several months to make, even with a decent knowledge of iOS, with moments of despair if it would ever work as I expected!

Since I'm brand new to Android, it will take some time to get there, but I would really like to do it!

I'm sorry that in the meantime you are left waiting.

I'll try to be quick, I promise!

Regards,
Sridhar

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 02 Oct 2013, 06:54

Nick, I think you should get a used ( and inexpensive ) iPod touch. Sridhar requires only iOS 4.3 or later, that goes quite a ways back.

Nick H · Post by **Nick H** » 02 Oct 2013, 13:50

Whilst the suggestion is appreciated, I have never owned or used Apple equipment. There is a considerable element of soul selling to Google in using Android, but, at least I have broken free of Microsoft, and I don't intend now to get even the thinnest of bonds with Apple. I also lack the interest/desire to diversify in computer/phone technology.

Sridhar, I appreciate your work, I look forward to an Android version, even if I have to struggle with a small phone, but even if I never get to play with it, I still think it is great stuff

sridharrajagopal · Post by **sridharrajagopal** » 03 Oct 2013, 05:01

Thanks Nick!

In case you or anyone else is contemplating getting your feet wet in Apple technology, I would recommend getting at least an iPhone 4 or iPhone 4 equivalent of iPod Touch. iPhone 3GS works ok, but does struggle a bit with its weaker processor when running more modern applications. I've tried to keep it at iOS 4.3 to be more egalitarian, but am finding it harder as I add new functionality! iPhone 3GS is "supposed" to run iOS 6 fine, but I remember when I had to upgrade my iPhone 3G to iOS 4, it essentially bricked it - the performance was so horrible! iPhone 3GS was way better in terms of hardware specs, but I think iPhone 4 is an order of magnitude better.

Btw, I noticed a bug with My TalaVadyam v1 in importing from the community - I had forgotten to assign the mytalvadyam:// URL scheme to the app, so it will complain about the unknown URL scheme. I've fixed it (a one-line change, literally!) in v2 , and hopefully that will be out soon!

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 09 Oct 2013, 04:59

The fun continues. I wanted to see how a mridangam pattern can influence and inspire the melody. Very much a dabbler at heart and that too only a dabbler and not possessing any improvisational skills, I thought I will put myself as the subject of some fun. This is essentially to try the reverse of what Balaji taught us. He said that he can take a pattern from a composition and weave a korvai out of it. Here, I am taking a basic mridangam pattern and weave an extemporaneous melody out of it.

This is the basic 8 beat pattern with a simple structure: Speed doubling every 2 beats for a total of 4 speeds.
https://soundcloud.com/dabbler126/mridangampattern

Then I played whatever came natural to me that seem to fit that pattern.
https://soundcloud.com/dabbler126/playingwithmridangam

Given that this is a single shot recording and totally un-composed, there were a few mismatches but the mridangist kept going and dragged me to the beat sooner or later

(Soundcloud will automatically play the second one if you started with the first one... and keep going to other files in my account! )

sridharrajagopal · Post by **sridharrajagopal** » 09 Oct 2013, 08:50

Very nicely done, vasanthakokilam!

Version 2 is in the queue, awaiting approval from the Apple Gods before it is available. I have, in the meantime, used it to transcribe a piece with 256 akshara Mora, 64 Akshara Korvai and 48 Akshara Theermanam from Sri Umayalpuram Sivaraman's Mridanga Cintamanih. With Version 2, it was fairly easy to transcribe the entire piece, by creating smaller phrases and saving them, and using them in the larger composition. When it is available on iTunes, I'll create another video to show how to easy transcribe a piece to My TalaVadyam.

In the meantime, I created a YouTube video (mainly to capture the audio played by the app using Reflector - it mirrors the whole iPad, audio and video, which can be captured in a movie - pretty cool app!) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GadLxbp ... e=youtu.be - hope you like it!

Regards,
Sridhar

sridharrajagopal · Post by **sridharrajagopal** » 14 Oct 2013, 12:27

Hi,

My TalaVadyam v2.0 is finally available on the iTunes App Store! Couldn't have asked for a more perfect day - Vidyarambam/Vijayadasami!

Hope it helps with your Carnatic Percussion practice and development!

Highlights of version 2.0:
* Live play features playable drum heads
* Ability to save sequences as common phrases
* Ability to reassign common phrase associated with a button
The above two enable easy transcription of lesson plans and korvais

Happy playing!
Sridhar

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 14 Oct 2013, 23:50

Oh my, that is a significant update. The 'playable drumheads' on both sides of the mridangam is awesome and it is a lot of fun. I will check out the other features as well.

BTW, just a wild idea, not sure how much of this is practical or even intended by Apple. Apple has this game controller API for external game controllers ( joystick, D pad etc. like the console games ). It will be good if you can hook up something like that, a physical playing surface which then feeds into your app to play the sounds. May be such a thing is already possible with the existing interfaces using the camera connection kit.. Thinking of the final state where we have a mridangam like external object which you play like a mridangam but the sounds are generated by your app..

Anyway, that is a bit out there, so let me get back to using what you have already implemented!!

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 20 Oct 2013, 02:34

Misra chapu has always been my Achilles heel though I know some people who are comfortable with it naturally. Sridhar's My Talavadyam app has been great to play around with various rhythms and I decided to set up a funky and folksy pattern based on misra chapu ( or misra nadai ) and face it head on by playing to it, going with the flow. In case you are curious how it turned out, here is the link. Nothing earth shattering but I am a bit pleased that I could keep up with the misra nadai beat while playing extemporaneously ( though I may have stepped on to some misram on the melody side as well!.)

https://soundcloud.com/dabbler127/sivar ... achapufolk

uday_shankar · Post by **uday_shankar** » 20 Oct 2013, 03:17

Shabaash vk. You should do this more often

. That is a funky beat for sure. I could not hear the previous sound track for some reason.

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 20 Oct 2013, 03:38

Thanks Uday!

There seems to be some issues with soundcloud. It does not play in a different tab, but if you left click on it to play on the same page, or right click and play on a different window or copy link location and paste it on a different tab, all those seems to work.

sridharrajagopal · Post by **sridharrajagopal** » 29 Oct 2013, 02:21

Shabaash indeed!! I'd been on vacation, and then out of commission for a days with a cold and fever, so I'm just now slowly getting back into things. You should do this more often!

I've updated with website, adding a link to your SoundCloud pieces to the upbeatlabs.com MyTalaVadyam_Sequences page ( http://upbeatlabs.com/My_TalaVadyam_Sequences.html), if that is alright with you! I'm sure more people will enjoy hearing them! Let me know if you have bandwidth limitations or otherwise want them to be private - I'll remove the links if so. Shabaash!

Regards,
Sridhar

sridharrajagopal · Post by **sridharrajagopal** » 04 Nov 2013, 00:42

I've finally created a demo video, which I've posted here - http://youtu.be/qSGPt3PiqhM - which shows how to easily transcribe your sequences and lesson plans to My TalaVadyam.

Hope you like it!
Sridhar

venravi · Post by **venravi** » 08 Nov 2013, 22:31

Dear Sridhar,

Is it possible to tune the talavadyam pitch so that we can sequence it for the singers' sruti.

Ravi

sridharrajagopal · Post by **sridharrajagopal** » 09 Nov 2013, 00:13

Dear Ravi,

It is not currently possible to adjust the shruti, unfortunately. I hope to add that to a future version.

Regards,
Sridhar

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 09 Nov 2013, 01:21

Sridhar: I just watched your demo. It is very useful. Good job. Thanks.

What sruthi does it currently produce? 1 kattai (C)?
If we want to adjust the sruthi before you implement it in the app, we can record it and adjust the sruthi in Audacity. Just to get by if a need arises, but having it in the app will be great.

sridharrajagopal · Post by **sridharrajagopal** » 28 Feb 2020, 02:34

Hello folks!

It has been a very very long time, but I finally got the chance the do an update to My TalaVadyam! Version 3.0.1 was recently released. It has been updated to the latest version of iOS (iOS 13), but still supports devices all the way back to iOS 9. I've also completely revamped the Sequence Editor - you no longer have to struggle with correcting mistakes by starting from scratch. The Sequence Editor can be double tapped to increase its size for ease of use. It also support drag-and-drop reorganizing of notes & phrases, an insert mode allowing you to insert notes/phrases in the middle, and a delete mode where you can multi-select and delete notes/phrases. And the notes, phrases and silences are color coded, making the organization and readability better.

There have also been performance improvements and battery optimization (a big deal), and utilizing the bigger UI screens of newer phones/iPads. There is also swipe through help that will auto update when new content becomes available - useful to navigate the features of My TalaVadyam. Sequence content will also auto update when more content becomes available.

This update was done in conjunction with updates to Talanome and Talanome Lite, to mark the 9th anniversary of when Talanome was first released (My TalaVadyam was released about 2.5 years later).

Hope you like the updates!

Thanks,
Sridhar

sridharrajagopal · Post by **sridharrajagopal** » 28 Feb 2020, 02:36

vasanthakokilam wrote: ↑09 Nov 2013, 01:21 Sridhar: I just watched your demo. It is very useful. Good job. Thanks.

What sruthi does it currently produce? 1 kattai (C)?
If we want to adjust the sruthi before you implement it in the app, we can record it and adjust the sruthi in Audacity. Just to get by if a need arises, but having it in the app will be great.

Sorry, just seeing this. I don't recall the Shruti off the top of my head - I had replied to someone elsewhere, I'll update this thread when I find the information!

Thanks,
Sridhar

Ranganayaki · Post by **Ranganayaki** » 28 Feb 2020, 05:43

Wow, that’s from 2013! I’ll hazard a guess if you don’t mind and say it sounds like a D. Someone correct me if I’m wrong - @SrinathK May be?

I used this video:
https://youtu.be/qSGPt3PiqhM

ganesh_mourthy · Post by **ganesh_mourthy** » 01 Mar 2020, 08:11

hello sridhar

Is there any way to update it ? or should I just uninstall and reinstall it?

Thank you

ganesh mourthy

sridharrajagopal · Post by **sridharrajagopal** » 06 Nov 2021, 10:05

Hello everyone!

I just wanted to let everyone know that I released some major updates to My TalaVadyam recently - version 4.0.0, and then a follow-on 4.0.1 with minor updates and fixes.

Main changes are that it is now possible to fine-tune the pitch . True to the instrument, valanthalai and edanthalai sounds can be adjusted separately. While the valanthalai can be adjusted to requisite pitch (choose kattai first, and then fine-tune), the left-side's bass can also be adjusted up or down. The two-sides' volume levels can also be adjusted independently - if you want to emphasize the tha's and thom's, for example.

There is a new Playback view - apart from the tempo and pitch/level adjustments, it also includes a Tala/Sequence visualizer. It renders the specified tala, and also shows tala and sequence progress as the sequence is being played. The tala gets animated and a progress bar shows the sequence progress. The visualizer also shows the Tala count, or the sequence phrase being played (double-tap visualizer to change).

The tala can be specified in the default settings, and can overridden for individual saved sequences that you load. So when you load a given sequence with a specified tala, the tala will automatically switch to that. Talas are specified using a comma-separated string notation - Adi Talam is 4,2,2 and Rupaka Talam is 2,4 , for example.

Improved Sequence transcription that takes into account the Tala and 1st, 2nd, 3rd speed playing, so the Mridangam sequence gets rendered for the specified Tala and playing speed - this is utilized in displaying the mridangam phrase being played at any time.

The latest videos in this playlist - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... hZAupea2lH - show the previews of some of the features.

I hope you like the changes, and I look forward to your questions and comments.

Best Regards,
Sridhar

Nick H · Post by **Nick H** » 06 Nov 2021, 17:18

It's a pity it's not available for Android.

As you have not done so, I'm guessing that it is not a simple job to make an Android version.