Tala Keeper: The Metronome App
A maestro reads music off a sheet of paper for the first time and begins his performance. Within a few moments, he plays the piece as though he’s known it all his life. Meanwhile, a beginner attempts the same piece for the first time, but it takes him days of drudgery and practice to even get it right.
So what makes the maestro more adept at playing new music than the beginner? In part, it’s an internal sense of music that he’s developed over many years of practice.
Internalizing Musical Time
When we learn to play a new instrument or sing, one of the most basic things that can go wrong (and it usually does!) is timing. Any professional musician’s repertoire of skills will include a mind trained for precision in tempo and rhythm.
Fortunately for beginners, physical training aids can help speed up the process of internalizing musical time.
For instance, mechanical metronomes have long been used to keep track of time patterns in music. A metronome is a clock-like device that helps musicians maintain a steady tempo by producing a regular ticking sound, and it’s more than just an auditory aid. The movement of the metronome’s needle also lets the musician process time visually.
Chris Brody, a professional classical musician, while explaining why orchestras need a conductor, talks about how visual cues help maintain the right tempo:
…A lot of pieces are written in a complicated enough texture or rhythm that the musicians cannot necessarily hear what the beat is all the time, and need some visual help to stay together (this is especially true of very slow music, and of a lot of twentieth-century music).
Mechanical metronomes, however, are regarded as quaint relics today. Their more advanced electronic counterparts are far more common and most electronic metronomes can only highlight beats. There’s usually no way to ‘see’ the passing of time between two strictly-timed ticks.
There are other arguments for and against using any kind of metronome, but for now it is the easiest way for musicians to track time.
A Better Time-Keeping Paradigm
Let’s look at a more specific scenario.
Cut to the traditional training grounds of South India’s classical Carnatic music and the same problem of time plagues the newly initiated. Keeping time is usually done with patterns of hand gestures called ‘tala’ (i,e., using the outstretched palm to clap, wave and count time). And getting the rhythm right is an uphill battle. It can take many years for a student to become proficient in synchronization.
A metronome can come in handy here, but Indian classical masters often dismiss it as being too rigid. So the sense of rhythmic time has no objective reference that the student can use.
This notion that metronomes are not flexible enough for certain kinds of music is a bit drastic. I believe that the right metronome can help students internalize musical time faster and better if they learn the proper techniques to use it.
Many teachers recommend that students don’t practice with a metronome because of its “robotic” quality or because Carnatic music demands “flexible time”. I couldn’t reconcile this recommendation with the fact that many masters whose sense of layam (musical time) I admire have practiced using a metronome.
In my own experience with personal Veena practice as well as in group situations, I’ve noticed that the difference between effective and counterproductive practice with a metronome is a subtle mental shift, which might explain the polarized views about metronomes.
To enhance the experience of training with a metronome, I created an iOS app and a web browser simulation called Tala Keeper.
The Tala Keeper solves two problems:
- It animates patterns to help musicians visualize musical time.
- It recreates specific time patterns for complex beats — something a regular metronome can’t handle.
And it’s built to be programmed. If Carnatic music is not your cup of tea, you can program this versatile app to create your own complex cross rhythms for any kind of music.
(The Tala Keeper is a paid iOS app. If you want to try it out before you buy it, there is a free version called ‘Tala Keeper Basic’. And as mentioned, it also has a web simulation that anyone can use.)
The Tala Keeper and Jazz: Thoughts by Woody Shaw III
Picture a studio in New York city — a scene far removed from the musical arangetrams (public performances) of South India — where Woody Louis Armstrong Shaw III plays the drums and creates his own brand of jazz.
The son of the legendary jazz trumpeteer Woody Shaw II, he takes on the roles of a jazz percussionist, musical scholar, curator, writer, producer and more in his lifelong exploration of music.
Of the Tala Keeper, he speculates:
… [It] looks like a great tool for contemporary musicians, especially modern drummers. The ability to superimpose various meters, control tempo, tone, and volume could be a great training device for drummers looking to broaden their rhythmic vocabulary.
Interestingly, he also understands its utility from the perspective of very different musicians who live half a world away:
Musicians interested in the Carnatic tala system could be especially privileged to use this application as it will likely help strengthen their improvisational sensibilities, while assisting with hearing and eventually expressing their musical (rhythmic and melodic) ideas in a whole new way.
Music is a wonderfully human creation. It was never meant to be flawless, but it is an art form that challenges people to master it. And the Tala Keeper is a small step in the right direction.
Srikumar is a senior architect at Imaginea, a group company of Pramati Technologies.
He suggests that the app be used as a friend, not a master and writes about how musicians and singers can use the Tala Keeper best in his series of blog posts titled ‘How to Practice Carnatic Music with a Metronome’.
Image credits:
- A row of mechanical metronomes. Photo by Alan Levine.
- The metronome tolls for you. Photo by Anokarina.
- Tala Keeper app. Image by Srikumar Subramanian.
- Woody Shaw II in 1979. Photo by Brian McMillen.
