Ardha Matre (Half/Off Beat)

Punjabi Theka or Sitarkhani is a variation in Teen tala which is a 16 (matre) beat tala with 4,4,4,4 division. Or so I learnt! I looked at its theka. Unbelievable!

It is infact the off beat variation that I tried a few days ago. Instaed hitting 3r and 4th beats in the division, a single stroke on the tabla in between these beats creats an enjoyable variation.
Now I know this is called a Punjabi theaka!
My experinence is that this variation is not appropriate for entire performance. However is a good thing to try as a variation for improvisation.

My grand father used to tell me, "That Mrudanga player uses a lot of Ardha Matre Pettu (Off beat strokes), that confuses singer!". I have known where singers and drummers had tussel over off beat strokes... good thing to stay away from.

~rAGU

The Origin of Spices!

{I bet I got the spelling right| (This is what I am going to use instead of fulstop today)}
Some words inspire me to write| I usually write the heading first and then think about it| Thus origin of my thoughts is in some word or phrase, most of the time| Anyway, it is a nice way to start thinking about something|

If you have a difficulty in thinking, pick a word and start thinking about everything it relates to| Do you remember that essay on cow/coconut tree? Oh ya.. a gal(!) was supposed write an essay on coconut tree| She did not find anything interesting to write| So she started, "A cow was tied to a coconut tree" then wrote an essay on Cow! Something like that|

Writing some nonsense and giving it an unrelated heading is a modern art| Like all the modern arts, you can do anything and then call it an abstraction| Thus this type of writing with no central theme with an unrelated heading is new form of art| I call this , "Cardinal Context Contrast"| Cardinal in a sense that there is no order or central idea in writing| Context Contrast is brought by the heading that sets a context and the body that contrasts the context set by the heading|

I wish you a great day on Mahathma's jayanti| He did not die from bullets but from our own bullshits| Yours too|

~rAGU

Tabla Thoughts

My roomy Manju and I tried some unpolished recording. Laptop mic was not a great choice but that was the best we had. We have no intentions of passing the blame on the mic. If anything can improve it is our song and do not forget to notice that we are at least a kilometer away from the drone (Shruti C#).

TareGaLa Naadinali Poem

Taregala nadinali gaali beesideyante.

Dadra Taal Tabla

Dadra taala attempt. (Intro by Manjunath Ankathatti)

[Our apologies for not being able to record nice smell of the Samabar that was being cooked by Channakeshava]

~rAGU

ACK: Thanks to Deepa for tips on embeding audio to blog. (http://beta-templatetesting.blogspot.com/2006/12/to-include-audio-clip-in-your-posts.html)