Thalam….one of the main aspects of music
I was looking through my blogs and found that I had decribed different aspects of music like raagam and swaram but I have missed out thalam….donno how…
Anyway….here we go
One of the main ingredients of music is rhythm which is nothing but the thalam. We can listen to variety of songs today from carnatic to rock….in each one of them….the rhythm is very very important…..
The rhythmic beats breathe life into the song and is as important as the raagam or the tune of the song itself.
Also if one notices, it is very easy to detect the missing of rhythm …..one need not be a very intent listener or a very knowledged in music to find this out. Hence this makes the rhythm sometimes more important than small nuances in the raagam.
The rhythm maintains a certain pattern in the song which makes it pleasing to hear.
An interesting thing about the thalam is that the tempo of the rhythm might change but the pattern does not change from the beginning to the end of a single song
Each repeated cycle of a thalam is called an avartan.
For keeping with the rhythm or thalam in the Indian classical music….the main instruments used are thabala for Hindustani, mridangam for carnatic, dolak for nothe Indian folk music and thavil for south Indian folk…
Like the raagam…the thalam also has different families. There are seven such families in the carnatic music system known as suladi saptha thala system.
In Carnatic music each pulse count is called an aksharam or a kriyā, the interval between each being equal, though capable of division into faster matras or svaras, the fundamental unit of time.
The tala is defined by the number and arrangement of aksharams inside an avartanam. There are three sub-patterns of beats into which all talas are divided; laghu, dhrutam and anudhrutam.
- A dhrutam is a pattern of 2 beats. This is notated ‘O’.
- An anudhrutam is a single beat, notated ‘U’.
- A laghu is a pattern with a variable number of beats, 3, 4, 5, 7 or 9, depending upon the type of the tala. It is notated ‘1′. The number of matras in an aksharam is called the nadai or gati. This number can be 3, 4, 5, 7 or 9, and these types are respectively called Tisra, Chatusra, Khanda, Misra and Sankeerna. The default nadai is Chatusram:
| Jati | Aksharams in laghu |
| Tisra | 3 |
| Chatusra | 4 |
| Khanda | 5 |
| Misra | 7 |
| Sankeerna | 9 |
The seven familes are dhruva, matya, rupaka, jhampa, triputa, atta, eka
You can find seven different alankaras each having one of these seven thalams as the rhythm. Not all thalams have compositions. Only some of the thalams are generally used. The most common tala is Chatusra-nadai Chatusra-jaati Triputa tala, also called Adi tala (Adi meaning primordial in Sanskrit).
How to distinguish talas???…find this very elaborate sheet that can help you http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=twJ43Sqpk5xIdlkY6Lk0qpQ&gid=3
The thalam system is as complex and well groomed as the raagam system. There is a lot to understand about it….. I am still at a very basic stage of understanding of thalams…
