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From: vallath@ucbcad.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.music.classical,net.nlang.india
Subject: Tala, or metre, in Indian music
Message-ID: <219@ucbcad.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 3-May-85 14:01:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbcad.219
Posted: Fri May  3 14:01:40 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 6-May-85 00:16:53 EDT
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Organization: UC Berkeley CAD Group, Berkeley, CA
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Xref: watmath net.music.classical:1095 net.nlang.india:368

This article is in response to the request for information
about tala, or rhythm, in Indian music.
Raga or "mode", tala or metre, and bhava or emotion are
the three elements in Indian music.

As in the case of raga, tala ideas have parallelisms in 
North Indian (Hindusthani) music and South Indian (Karnatak)
music.  There are both metred and unmetred kinds of music.
The unmetred variety serves to focus atention on the raga,
and sometimes in a performance, a rhythm slowly creeps in
until a full metre is established.  The unmetred "free rhythm"
part is called alap or alapana.

The length of the metre can be three, six, seven, eight, fourteen
etc. beats long.  This is frequently subdivided into smaller
units, and into main beats and subsidiary beats.  The most
important beat in N. Indian music is beat 1.  All important
musical phrases as well as the final composition end on beat 1.  

In Karnatak music, beat one is still an ending beat, but more
for important sections and the whole piece than for all
important phrases.  What is important is the beginning point
of important phrases and sections, or eduppu, which may fall
anywhere within the tala cycle, but remains the same in a
piece when the metre remains the same.  (The metre may, in
certain kinds of compositions, vary from section to section
of a piece.)  During improvisation, all important in Indian music,
the musician must keep track of the metre and all the
important points in the rhythmic cycle and use them
appropriately.

Techniques for increasing the speed of a piece vary form
North to South.  While a gradual increase in tempo is very 
common in the North, changes in speed are achieved in the
South by doubling, trebling,  halving etc.; i.e. by changing
the rhythmic density by integral ratios. 

The musician can keep track of where he is in the tala cycle 
with the help of the drum which is always present in metred
sections.  The type of drum used varies depending on the 
instrument or type of music it accompanies.  Drumming is a 
highly complex art, and drummers beat out bewildering patterns
on their drums; they use the different areas of the drum to
get sounds of different timbres, though the drum(s) is (are)
tuned to the "tonic" or highly consonant intervals thereof.
There are drumming compositions frequently based on taking
a basic kind of pattern within a certain metre and modifying
it by degrees until the final pattern is totally different
from the beginning.  Mrdangam players of South India are very
skilled at this, and usually have a section all to themselves
in music concerts.
If you know of classical types of Indian music composed
with western-type harmony ideas, I would be grateful if 
you would direct me to recordings.  Non-Ravi-Shankar stuff
would be interesting, since his name is too often heard
in this context. 

Vallath Nandakumar, Dept. of EE, UC Berkeley.
ucbesvax.vallath@berkeley.arpa, ucbvax!ucbesvax!vallath