Cajón Alert!

Greetings,
Here are a couple videos I shot of a pair of my guru-bhais (brother students) in my apartment in Pune:
Umesh Warbhuwan on cajón and Bhargav Garde on tabla. Both are longtime students of Taalyogi Pandit Suresh Talwalkar.

Umesh is an astonishing cajón player, oozing technique and tasty tabla stylings....check it: Here's the Jhaptal:



I'll wait while you go change your pants.

So.... they're working with divisions of 9-4-7 (9+4+7=20, cuts across the tala beautifully)

Try reciting throughout the whole video (including the final composition!):
TakitaTakitaDhikita Takadimi TakitaTakadimi

Bonus if you can keep Jhaptal on your hands as well ;) *see bottom of post for tala

GROOVY! and that final chakradar! *fans self*

Bhargav is an amazing tabla player... balance, speed, tone (though the camera is not getting the bayan very well, trust me, it's sweet)

Here's the 2nd vid: Tisrajati Tintal (Tisrajati=triplets, though Umesh moves into Chatusra [4s] at the end)



I should have warned you to wait to change your pants until after this video...sorry. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Bhargav is in a purely accompaniment role here, but it's NOT EASY. Keep tala, and you'll see why... Umesh is driving to the takiTA of the triplet from 2:34-3:24. :O

The rela (starting at 3:35 until 6:24) is phrases of 7 & 5: TakadimiTakita TakaTakita with some tasty tihais.

Nice goppucha yati (reduction) at 5:58...

aaaaand at 6:25 we hop up to chatusra nadai (4 or 8 subdivisions of the beat) for another blistering rela.

I cannot stress it enough: there are 2 reasons these guys play the way they do:
1. Good taalim (training) from Pt. Suresh Talwalkar
2. Insane amounts of practice.

These guys live at the Gurukul (school) with many other tabla and pakhawaj players, take 2 classes a day with Sureshji, practice in between classes--alone and in groups, and are massive nerds (nerds is a term of endearment in my book, fyi)

Phew!

I gotta go do laundry.

ciao for now!

(btw... both Umesh and Bhargav are on Facebook)

Sureshji working with Umesh (yes, he plays djembe too), pakhawaj wizard Omkar Dalvi (who also plays cajon),  Aashay Kulkarni (a smokin' tabla player, here on calabash) and Kulkarni Milind Vasudeo on harmonium.
I have video of the concert they were rehearsing for, editing, & will release soon...go... buy more pants...

*Jhaptal:
Divisions: 2-3-2-3

Theka:
Dhi Na
Dhi Dhi na
Thi na
Dhi Dhi na

Tala:
Clap-pinky
Clap-pinky-ring
Wave-pinky
Clap-pinky-ring

Class at Suresh Talwalkar's Taalyogi Ashram in Pune

DhigenaDhigenaDhatige

This is a composition I learned recently from Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri, and it's lovely, groovy and very fun to play. The strokes aren't terribly complicated (then again, I'm not playing it terribly fast) but the shapes are very interesting. The theme is a reduction (aka Gopuccha Yati) 9-8-6-3 DgTnkn and it features lots of sur strokes and very active baya. Great practice, as the naDhi combinations are tricky to nail accurately at speed, lots of off-beats (1/8 & 1/4 beat), and the variations are exquisite: phrases of 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4 and 3 all make an appearance; a series where sam* is hidden; compound variations with internal tihais...a real goldmine of rhythmic tools! The tihai...well, the tihai is a mind-bender to be sure ;)

About the recording:
Another exotic location! I spent 2 dreamy weeks at the Banff Centre in Alberta Canada, rehearsing and creating with my band Autorickshaw and a 5-piece brass band before going on tour. Each musician at the Banff Centre gets their own rehearsal space, in my case, a small hut. I took a portable recording solution (laptop, small USB interface and 1 microphone) to test it out for my upcoming trip to India, and I recorded this one morning to see what the setup produced, quality-wise.

My music hut in the mountains

I didn't really intend this for the blog...I was noodling a bit before playing the composition, and it didn't cut the mustard, hence the abrupt beginning. I recycled one of George Koller's dilruba tracks for the lehara.

The portable setup doesn't capture the baya as well as I'd like, but I think that's a combination of the room (tiny, soundproof), the mic, and the almost total lack of humidity in Banff, which is at an elevation of 1,463 m (4,800 ft) in the Rocky Mountains. I have never, ever had such a hard time keeping my drums in tune, but the beauty of the surroundings offset that a bit. :)

My music hut, from slightly farther away...

I performed a short (52 Kaidas-style) tabla solo in concert while we were at the Banff Centre, and I'm waiting to get a copy from them. If it's passable, I'll post it.

*Sam=the first beat of the rhythmic cycle, aka the downbeat.

DhageTete GheGheTete

This edition of 52 kaidas features an apparently simple* tintal kaida from the Lucknow gharana. Actually, more like 2 kaidas, with a strong family resemblance. Lucknow twins, perhaps? I think of them as parent and child, but either one works.



DhageTeteGheGheTete KeTaGheGhe Terekite / DhageTeteGheGheTete KeTaGheGhe NaNaGhene

and, starting at 3:13:

KeTaGheGheTerekite / KeTaGheGheNaNaGhene

The 2nd one I learned a long time ago in a workshop with Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri, and the first one I've kind of pieced together from listening and practicing. More on that later...

I say apparently simple because the strokes are not complicated, and appear very straightforwardly square at first glance. In fact, the 2nd chapter, KeTaGheGheTerekite...doesn't even have any combination strokes at all until the tihai: everything is individual RH or LH strokes. Should be easy, right? Beginner composition, right? HA! Very tricky, and uniquely so, in my repertoire anyway.

Ever try to brush your teeth with your left hand? (flip of you're a southpaw) Ouch. A friend of mine studied with the Kodo Drummers on Sado Island in Japan for a year, and the first thing they did when he arrived was forbid him from using his right hand for anything....chopsticks? LH. Brush up the teeth? LH. Throw/catch? LH. Write, cook, clean, you name it?....LH. This was to try to break the RH's dominance, and make his drum strokes more balanced. (It worked, by the way....he's practically ambidextrous at this point).

In this kaida, the bass drum leads the way, and it is a fantastic way to develop baya prowess, stamina, speed, strength and control. [<- things tabla players dream about]

The LH conundrum aside, and despite the 'simple' strokes, the kaida is very lush and fertile, with lots of possibilities for improvisation. The elements that make up the theme are very small and compact, and fit together like puzzle pieces...including the fact that some pieces don't fit together at all, so you have to spend time with it to learn the ins-and-outs. As usual, I feel like I could practice this every day for a year, and still have farther to go....but then my already glacial pace of posting would completely grind to a halt!

As mentioned, I've never had a formal class on DGTTGGTTKTGGTRKT. I have a practice exercise based on it, and I've heard Swapanji play it a number of times, so I have worked on it over the years, developing a few of my own variations, and trying to lift as many off recordings as possible. The fit with KTGGTRKT is so obvious that I glom them together into a big extendo-super-kaida!

Couple things to note:

I have heard Farukhabad Gharana versions of both of these kaidas with one important difference: it seems that Farukhabad plays the Ta on gab/sihai, while Lucknow plays the Ta on sur. It makes a HUGE difference, not only in the character of the composition, but in the variations that can be made. I like both, but am partial to sur, as you might have noticed. ;)

In fact, there are probably dozens of versions of this composition, possibly from different Gharanas, with slightly different strokes (Dhene NaNaGhene instead of GheGheNaNaGhene for example)...feel free to share if you have any! and feel free to chime in if you have history or stories.

Another interesting point to note is that KTGGTRKT follows an unusual form for a kaida: rather than the usual binary Bhari-Khali form where the same phrase is played twice with Bhari and Khali falling over the 2 phrases, this one is a four-parter:

Bhari-Bhari-Khali-Bhari or Open-Open-Closed-Open

Similar to Tintal theka, n'est-ce pas? Usually I see this type of form with relas, especially when the phrases are very short, but not usually with kaidas. The variations follow the form Bh-Bh-Kh-Bh form for the most part, but there are 2 regularly proportioned ones in there, one directly from Swapanji, and one of mine.

What else....let's see: I recorded this twice, because my baya was tuned waaay too low the first time (it was raining) and it just didn't translate into the recording (still...slap on those headphones people!) PLUS the C# drum didn't agree with my usual mics or mic'ing technique for some mysterious reason, so I rented a nice AKG 414 for a month. :D

I plan on upping the posting pace while I have this mic, so stay tuned.

Almost forgot: there are 2 other compositions in this recording!

Things open up with a Chakradar that is based on one I learned from Swapanji. I did a bol-swap to make it pertinent to the kaidas in focus (with apologies to Swapanji). In other words, I adored the calculation, and adapted it to fit the theme of this post. It features one of my very favourite rhythmic devices: the reduction (aka Gopuccha Yati in Karnatic music).

KTGGTRKTD-

TRKTD-

KTD-

TD-

...

The recording closes with a Farukhabad Gharana Gat (Gat=fixed composition, usually very rich in varied stroke combinations) that I learned from Pandit Anindo Chatterjee. I don't have any history on this one (composer etc) but it has lots of open tabla strokes (din, dheneghene, dhenenanaghene etc to contrast with the total lack of those strokes elsewhere in the post), and a very nice very compact tihai.

Deepest respect and thanks to my friend Prosad, who played sitar on the recording. Check his stuff out here. And here and here.

Finally, in what is rapidly becoming a 52Kaidas tradition, I have a music recommendation.

I think my dear friend Memsaab absolutely nailed it when she intro'd him on her fabtastic blog, and I'm stealing it: meet Tamilian Renaissance Man Wilbur Sargunaraj.

Put it this way: I smiled so much the first week I had his album that my face hurt. And that was before I dug into his 38-and-counting youtube videos, his eye-popping website and started following him on Facebook, where he's super-humanly hyper-actively engaging with his fans on a daily basis.

Ahem...I give you the newly adopted theme song for 52 Kaidas: Blog Song



Chicken 65 is also mouth and eye watering-ly fantastic, and Melanin Man is another fav, albeit on the more serious side. You know what?....the whole album is good. Buy it from Bandcamp and all the $$ goes directly to him.

Love Marriage is the big 400,000+ hit breakout youtube viral video.

I think that's all....I hope you enjoy.

Tata!

*as if anything in tabla is 'simple'. Who am I kidding?? ;)

Dhatreke Dhigena Dhigena Dhagena

Third post, so, in my best Dennis Hopper voice...Tisrafy, Man!

Tintal (16 beats), tisra nadai



Tabla never ceases to humble me. This composition is deceptive: the strokes aren't particularly hard, but the groupings are tricky...lots of 5s and 7s going on, along with Gopuccha Yati (rhythmic reductions) and other goodness.

Tonally, it's a treat...lots of sur strokes, which I love, combined with growling baya. Well, my baya growls, though it should probably purr. Ah, practice, how I need thee.

There's a bit of a trompe-l'oreille* off the top...working on the 7+5 conundrum got me into a kind of chalan thing, and I thought I'd include it.

Speaking of which...I guess this is a kaida, though it has a bit of a chalan vibe going on too...

I learned this in a workshop with Swapan Chaudhuri in Toronto in 2007. After the workshop was over, he played a tabla solo that completely blew everyone's minds. I was fortunate enough to occupy the sound-guy chair...ever so stressful, but he and Ramesh (Misra-sarangi) sounded fantastic.

I have to say that the mandolin lehara** took almost as long to get together as the tabla part did. I'm never really satisfied with my recordings either (he says, several mixes later) I'd love to record in a large reverberant space, but my apartment is small and dry, so canned 'verb will have to do.

* Trompe L'oreille, from the french expression Trompe L'oeil (fool the eye)   L'oreille means ear...

** The lehara is a direct transcription from the iLehra iPhone/iPod application. Darbari Kanada, in case anyone's interested.

If you are a tabla player, and have an iPhone/iPod touch, this is app is
Totally. Amazing. Best $15 you'll ever spend. Go...GO NOW!:
iLehra

There's also an iTanpura (cool, also used on these recordings) and (cringe) and iTablaPro app, which will apparently "blow your mind with his virtuoso tabla playing"...riiight. Of course, I'm as guilty on the lehera front, so I'll shush now. Seriously though, the iTablaPro app will be very useful for instrumental/vocal/dance practice. Great apps all around, and kudos to the developer.

PS I have a big contemporary piece to learn for a concert on Feb 7th (rehearsals approach), so I'm not sure if I can get another solo together in a week...we'll see.