Rendering the more complex nadais

[SrinathK]

Dear rasikas,

Can anyone show me how talas are rendered in khanda, mishra and sankeerna nadais ? I have seen trisram rendered as -- t t ,|| --- for each unit. However in the case of the other nadais I have a doubt over the exact pattern. I'll denote a beat by "t"

For khandam, is it rendered as t , t , , || OR t , , t , || OR || t , t t , || (as in khanda chaapu)

For mishram, which of these are used? t , t , t , t || OR t t , t , t , ||

And for sankeerna nadai t t, t, t, t, || OR t, t, t, t, t || ?

Basically all the chaapu talas contain a beat with 1/2 the duration of the others. Can someone clarify whether the 1/2 beat comes at the beginning or the end w.r.t to nadais? Does that differ from school to school ? (I know 1/2 beat is not a good term, but still...).

To me it essentially looks as though the nadais transform simple talas (simple in the sense of structure) into compound talas -- or talas within talas. Now talas with more complicated angas like guru, plutam and kaakapadam with other nadais would turn that into talas within talas within talas. And when multiple kalais are thrown in, it becomes talas within talas within talas within a tala ( #-o :-ss ... aargh!

[Nick H]

it becomes talas within talas within talas within a tala

and my head was hurting long before that!

As far as I know, and my studentship has been much, much less than yours, your this-way-or-that-way questions are answered by "the same as the chapu talas." ie the smaller unit always comes first, so 5 is 2+3, 7 is 3+4 and 9 is 4+5 (even though it may look like 4+2+3).

But... why should 5 not be ttttt, 7 ttttttt and 9 ttttttttt?

My tentatively suggested answer is because even the greatest laya wizards could easily become lost, and the chapu talam kriyas are used as a convenient way of bookmarking the nadais, whether the composition matches or not.

[SrinathK]

That's because talangas take the counting out of the head and into the hands. Also rendering 5, 7 or 9 downbeats would only be possible in extremely slow tempos.

From my experience the difficulty in ultra slow tempos is the length of the pauses (kaarvais) become too long for the brain to count without hard training and this is why the kalai element was invented in the 1st place.

However changing into a higher nadai at normal tempos involves acceleration to a high tempo. And when that happens trying to count 9 or 12 or 16 units (sollus) in one beat and tracking whether you are at 6/9 or 5/9 or 8/9 from the beat which creates the opposite kind of difficulty.

That's the reason why the average rasika doesn't understand a tani avartanam as well as raga or krithi, they can't count as easily as they can hear. I always think that some explanation of these aspects of rhythm should always feature in concerts.

Above insights were gained from trying to practice the 1st few talaprasthara exercises using all the combinations of 4 5 and 6 units with a metronome.

[msakella]

Better not even to utter about Talaprastara or Metronome as folks prefer to learn music but without this useless Talaprastara or the Metronome. They all prefer only to have money but without its accounts. amsharma