How I improved my sense of rhythm: Part 4

I had begun to write a book in my fourth year at BITS-Pilani. It was for two of my closest friends. Both were musicians. Both were vocalists. One of them, though, was terrible at rhythm. I was teaching one of them how to play the drums. Since she already had a knack for rhythm I wasn’t really worried about her. It was primarily for the other one that I was writing the book — a rhythm manual of sorts. I didn’t want a poor grasp of rhythm to be a barrier in his musical journey.

We don’t have compulsory attendance in BITS-Pilani so I had plenty of time to plan and write. Nonetheless, like many things you enthusiastically start in college, I abandoned this project prematurely in a few weeks. I was hit by typhoid and left the book unfinished at about 40 pages of content. Funnily enough, I still have the manuscript of that book with me. It’s all handwritten and there are even some diagrams that I had drawn to explain rhythmic concepts.

My way of explaining time signatures was to draw a circular pie and show that if it’s a 3-beat pattern then you’d cut 3 equal slices of the pie to complete one cycle (or pie or, I can’t resist — idli) of the pattern and if it’s 5-beat then you cut 5 equal slices. Once you cut the slices, you count them one by one till they’re all done, after which you cut slices from a new pie for the next cycle. The best part of the pie analogy is that theoretically, you can divide a pie into any number of slices you want and still count all of them to complete one cycle, just like time. Putting this into words makes it look like overkill. I had the best intentions though, and I wanted my explanation to be easy to digest (pun intended).

Now, with this online rhythm series, describing the path I’ve taken to be able to better internalise the rhythms I encounter, I don’t think I need to finish that book; at least until my friend is done applying all that’s included here. It’s not as comprehensive as a manual but should suffice for now. I hope you’re reading this, friend kept in anonymity!

For those who have valiantly persisted through the other 3 parts (1, 2, 3): if you’ve grasped all of it, you are quite adept at thinking rhythmically already. If you haven’t, I can relate. I’ve struggled through a lot of this myself.

First, a quick refresher.

Gati is the number of subdivisions used in a beat. It outlines a linear rhythm for the phrases you use.

Jati is the masquerading gati that confuses you into thinking that the gati has changed, but all that has happened is that a contrasting rhythmic cycle has been added over the old one to create a polyrhythm. The jati creates an illusion that is dispelled when you listen to the polyrhythm as a whole.

Continuing where I left off in the last part, to talk about yati, I should talk about tala. I’ve already talked about tala in the context of Hindustani music, where it is a cyclic measure of time characterised by specific accents. In Karnatik music, the tala shares the same philosophy but in addition, is inextricably linked to the hand actions that accompany it. For example, the most commonly used tala, the 8-beat adi tala, is accompanied by 1 clap, 3 finger counts (little, ring and middle fingers), 1 clap, 1 wave, 1 clap and finally 1 wave. The wave is not at the audience. It’s a simple reversal of the palm.

This is where I conveniently bring in the pie analogy. One cycle of the tala is a pie, figuratively speaking. We divide the adi tala pie into 8 equal slices. The first slice is the most important as it represents the strongest beat in the tala. We call this slice the sam. We’re already accustomed to this feeling of a strong beat when listening to music. The 1st beat in a group of 4 in most songs is the strongest and we relate easily to the power that it holds.

An important concept to keep in mind about tala is that all phrases must resolve on the strongest beat (or sam). A large part of Indian rhythm performance is about creating tension by not resolving on the sam, meandering through the tala and finally driving powerfully to resolution on the sam. To get an idea for how this feels, think about when the perfect note enters at the perfect moment in one of your favourite songs; and also think about when a song deflates your expectations by not using the note you expect at a powerful moment — climax and anticlimax.

We don’t need to go into much more detail about tala here. We can even simplify the tala we use for reference. Instead of adi tala, let’s use the 3-beat tala from the end of Part 3: 1 clap and 2 finger counts (little finger and ring finger). If I’m not mistaken, this is called Sudha tala. Using chaturashra gati (4 subdivisions in a beat), we’d end up with 12 subdivisions in one cycle of this tala. That’s 12 equal slices of the pie.

Confused about whether to divide the pie into 3 or 12 slices? Well, it depends on the situation. If you only want to look at the beats, then it’s 3. If you want to subdivide into chaturashra gati, then it’s 12. In a similar vein, if you want to use mishra gati (7 subdivisions in a beat), you’d divide into 21 slices. The number of slices depends on context.

Now, it’s about time I talk about yati.

Yati describes how phrase length changes through time, using expansion, contraction, neither or both. If we consider TaKiTa to be the phrase, we can expand each syllable by 1 subdivision to get Ta-Ki-Ta-. We can expand this again into Ta — Ki — Ta — or further into Ta — -Ki — -Ta — -. In the last case, each syllable lasts 4 subdivisions. We can fit this last expansion into one whole Sudha tala pie using all its 12 slices. Each syllable would be worth 4 slices.

Now what would happen if we joined TaKiTa with its 3 expansions in ascending sequence? The resulting phrase would be 30 subdivisions long: TaKiTaTa-Ki-Ta-Ta — Ki — Ta — Ta — -Ki — -Ta — -. Such phrases always give me the feeling that time is continuously being dilated. Everything seems slower. It’s a beautiful trip!

Using this phrase without any context doesn’t create the same effect as when it’s used with a tala. In Sudha tala, we only have 12 slices in one pie. This 30-subdivision phrase needs almost 3 pies (30 of 36 slices). If we fill in the first 6 slices of the 1st pie with something like a filler phrase and begin our main phrase on the 7th slice then we’ll neatly finish all 36 slices and be able to resolve on the first beat of the next cycle, as intended. Along the way, the phrase would be interacting with the accents of the tala to create an uneven passage through time. Remember though, these are just words. Please listen to a mridangist or other percussion player demonstrating this in practice to experience it in its entirety.

The constantly expanding phrase you’ve just seen is an example of strotovaha yati, like a stream opening up into the mouth of a river. I like to think of it as a pyramidal structure.

There are 5 other types. The 3 noteworthy ones are:

1. gopuccha yati, where the phrase constantly contracts like the slow double stroke roll on a snare drum that accelerates steadily into an energetic drum roll, similar to the shape of a cow’s tail (you might laugh but just think about it). This is like an inverted pyramid.
2. mrdanga yati, that expands and then contracts like the barrel-form of a mridangam.
3. damaru yati, where the phrase contracts first before expanding, a reference to a damaru, another percussion instrument. The shape is that of an hourglass.

You can readily recognise something like a gopuccha yati in EDM or dance music, where the beats are slow and more spaced out initially, then keep doubling in speed till they’re pounding frenetically and finally release into the main hook or chorus or more noticeably, the bass drop.

Each kind of yati alters the notion of time as we experience it, by slowing down or speeding up the same phrase to distort our feel for the underlying pulse. When variations of the same phrase are incrementally sped up or slowed down, we’re drawn into the vortex of the yati before being launched onto the sam of the resolving cycle. It’s like sitting in a car that suddenly accelerates or decelerates before reaching a constant speed again. Using the pie analogy one last time, this is like cutting slices with steadily increasing or decreasing sizes but still managing to finish an exact whole number of pies in the end.

Gati, jati and yati continue to teach me how I can warp the sense of time itself as perceived by the listener. Listening — to polyrhythms, lengthening or shrinking phrases, or even linear rhythms — doesn’t just affect us at an auditory level. Music reaches into us and affects bodily processes and reactions so primally that we can’t help but swim with its current and empty ourselves into the ocean of sound. Changing the perception of time alters our entire experience of living while we’re listening.

There is just one more thing to mention before I wrap this series up (at least for now): the internal metronome. A metronome is a device (or nowadays, an app) that emits steady click sounds at a certain tempo, say at 60 beats per minute, so that you have a guide through time to help you never miss or misplace a beat. The internal metronome is a metaphor for our ability to consistently maintain tempo. As is obvious, this needs to be very highly developed when it comes to music, which is essentially a directed experience of time.

When I started out in music, my internal metronome was practically defunct. I couldn’t maintain tempo unless I had someone constantly giving me cues. In time, I began keeping tempo with an external metronome. Whether I was using the second hand of a clock or a digital metronome, my ability to maintain time grew steadily. It started to rapidly improve once I started practicing polyrhythms. I think this is because I had to internalise the timing of all the odd accents of the jati in relation to the gati. For this, I needed to differentiate very fine durations of time and discern relationships between these small durations. These skills, in turn, improve your sense of linear tempo.

The more I have practiced rhythmic concepts that distort the sense of time, the better my sense of time becomes. The gist of this, I feel, applies to music in general; and perhaps even to other skills. The more distractions you have to overcome around you — the more still you end up becoming and the more skilled you become. You don’t ignore your environment. Instead, with awareness, you stop reacting to it and your own skill shines through as conscious choice.

To quote the Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh,

Enlightenment for a wave in the ocean is the moment the wave realises that it is water.

And on that note, see you in the next post!

Namaste.

Around Sound turns my personal experiences with music, both as a musician and as a listener, into stories.

Check out the other parts of How I improved my sense of rhythm: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 by clicking on the links.