9/29/10 - It's Wednesday, you know what that means...

I think I'm just going to make Wednesdays South Indian days, because of all of the cool stuff I always learn in that class, at least for this semester.

Remember the 8-beat cycle? Aditala? That's what it's called. It goes:
X   X   X   X   X   -   X   -   :||

That's basic tala. We learned three more today.

Roopaka tala, which in South Indian music is a three beat cycle (in the North, it's 7 beats):
X   X   -   :||

Mishranadai tala, which is three and a half beats (no, not seven)
- -    X   X   :||

And Khanda tala, which is 5 beats:
X   -   X   X   -   :||

We did some crazy stuff with that, but I don't really want to transcribe it because my head would hurt and so would yours, and I have to get to a concert in half an hour.

So instead I'll put up some videos, if I can learn how to embed something...

This first one is of a dude named Suresh, and he plays the Ghatam, which is basically a clay pot. It's way cooler than it sounds. See if you can hear the tihai.



The next one is a little ensemble consisting of violins, tandura, morsing (jaw harp), and mrudangam, the drum thing. A couple things to note: the violins are tuned tonic/fifth/tonic/fifth, or in this case D#/A#/d#/a#. The morsing player is singing the drummer solfege while plucking the little thing. It's silly.



And this last example of South Indian music (for today, don't worry) is mrudangam and kanjira, the tambourine thing. The player bends the pitch by applying tension to the head with his fingers, just like a tabla player would with the heel of his hand.

The man behind the mrudangam player is keeping tala.

I also really dig the guy drinking.



And now, my favorite North Indian video: Zakir Hussain on tabla, and Ustad Hari Prasad Chaurasia on bansuri. My favorite part is the last fifteen minutes, approximately.



Enjoy!

M