A Video Tala machine with sruti aligned

[Sam Swaminathan]

One of the biggest problem I face in playing violin is to maintain the talakattu and playing to samam or what ever eduppu of the song that I am playing. I am aware there are quite a few tala meters, including the ones with the tabla sound available in the market. But I still find that difficult to use.

What I am visualising is a tala instrument with a video screen where you can see a hand actually doing the tala...like you will see a vocalist doing it on his thigh or your teacher sitting in front of you keeping the talam with his hand. The instrument I am imagine will only show the hand with the fingers, going thru the motion of lagu and drutham for what ever talam you are playing. There should be the facility to increase or decrease the speed of the tala to suit your playing or singing. Also, you should be able to adjust the sruti, C or B or E or what ever.

Is there some thing in the market like this ?

Could some one throw some light on this?

Best regards and wishes to every one for the Christmas and the New year.

Sam

[msakella]

Dear member, Sam Swaminathan, Yes! A most reliable Electronic-metronome, designed by me and manufactured by one of my disciples, is available here with the measurements 13cm. x 8cm. x 9 cm.in which, in total, 9 Talas, 1.Trisra-rupaka 2.Chaturashra-rupaka 3. Trisra-triputa 4.Adi (medium tempo) 5.Adi (slow-tempo) 6.Khanda-triputa (slow-tempo) 7.Mishra-jhampa (slow-tempo) 8.Khanda-ata (slow-tempo) & 9.Single beat are available with adjustable Shruti of 12 notes and adjustable speed of 95 steps in-between 30 beats per second and 210 beats per second. There are differenent coloured LEDs to indicate the Laghus and Drutas (this is operatable on 110 & 240 Volts and costs $ 30/- packing and postage extra). But no video facility is available in it. But, I don’t encourage you to practice with such a viedo-metronome and become dependent upon that instrument. If you don’t mis-understand me, I say that, had you been trained to play Violin putting Tala in your foot, you would have become able to play Violin even without anybody putting Tala sitting before you. My disciples practice regularly with this Metronome and can also play even without it in the concerts. If you also train yourself like that you don’t need even this Metronome. Wishing you all the best for the Christmas and the New Year, amshrama.

[Nick H]

It's a lovely idea.

An actual instrument would be absurdly expensive to produce.

But a program to run on a laptop (or even home machine) would surely be feasible?

At it's simplest (and still more complex than I would know how to do --- you could just take some video and adjust the playback speed.

But to do something more sophisticated --- One for the Animation wizards, perhaps?

[coolkarni]

Sam
I thought Laya runs in the Blood !
What can one say when close siblings of Illustrious Mridangam Vidwans also have these issues ?
Lesser mortals like me can only Hope for something better in the next Janma !:P
MERRY CHRISTMAS !

[vasanthakokilam]

But to do something more sophisticated --- One for the Animation wizards, perhaps?

Technologically that is the right direction for flexibility ( artisitic objections notwithstanding ). In the past year, doing this type of custom animation has become easy with gaming engines. If you look in youtube, there are examples of quite complex animation work done with such software on regular PCs. I do not have the bandwidth or tools right now to get something going but someone else can try.

[Suji Ram]

What I am visualising is a tala instrument with a video screen where you can see a hand actually doing the tala...like you will see a vocalist doing it on his thigh
Sam

Ah! I did that myself recording my tala on camera and playing. But it does not work always. I tend to focus on the screen and lose my concentration on playing