Module 5: Tala fundamentals · Lesson 1

Counting time

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Rhythm that goes round in cycles

A Tala is a repeating cycle of beats. Think of a clock whose hand goes round and round: each time it reaches the start, the pattern begins again. A song is set in one tala, and the singer, the drummer and the audience all sense where they are in the cycle.

The words you need

• Akshara : one beat, the basic counting unit. A tala is described by how many aksharas it has.
• Avarta : one full trip round the cycle, from its first beat until the beat just before it begins again.
• Sama : the first beat of each cycle. It is the main landing point, and many phrases are built to end exactly there.
• Laya : the tempo, or the steady pulse underneath. Different laya means different speed.
• Kala : a speed *level*. In the first kala each akshara gets one count; in the second, twice as many notes are fitted into the same beat, and so on. The terms vilamba (slow), madhyama (medium) and druta (fast) describe the usual three speeds.

An example: Adi tala

The most common tala is Adi tala , which has eight aksharas. When it is counted aloud, it goes round like this:

1 2 3 4 | 5 6 | 7 8 | and then back to 1.

The vertical bars show where the cycle is split into sections (angas , covered in the next lesson). Every eight beats the music passes through the first beat again.

What stays fixed in a song

In a typical song the tala does not change: the same cycle of eight beats continues from the first line to the last. What can change is the speed, and what the singer and drummer do within the cycle.

Why it matters

Knowing where the first beat is allows you to hear the structure of the music. A piece may begin before or after the first beat (see the lesson on Eduppu ), and the melody tends to come home at the end of the cycle, so tracking the cycle lets you feel it.