Laya

Laya (लय) is the speed of the beat, and on the tabla it is the job. The voice, the flute and the sarangi all move around the beat. The tabla is what they measure against.

Come here once the bols on Basics are clean and you know Teentaal from Taals. A tabla that drifts is a floor that drifts under everyone else, so laya is practised against a click. The beat stays where it is, and you decide how many bols to fit into each one.

Try it

1. Press Set the tempo to 60 BPM in the grid below, or type 60 in the practice bar.
2. Turn the practice-bar metronome on. Each click is one beat.
3. Play Na with the right hand on every click for a minute, saying it as you play. Keep it even: same finger, same spot on the rim, same tone.

Three speeds

Teachers name three speeds of laya, and they are relative: vilambit is slow for the piece you are playing, drut is fast for it.

Try it

1. Set 50 BPM. Play Na on every click. Listen to it ring and keep the finger in exactly the same place each time.
2. Set 80 BPM. Same again. The ring is cut shorter by the next stroke.
3. Set 120 BPM. Same again. If the tone starts to change from stroke to stroke, drop 10 BPM.

The theka, faster

Tabla players do this to the theka itself. Play the basic pattern as it is, then twice as fast, then four times as fast, and arrive together on sam. The old Indian names for these are thah (one to a beat), dugun (two), tigun (three) and chaugun (four). Practising a phrase this way is called layakari.

Below, the phrase is the first group of Teentaal, Dha Dhin Dhin Dha. Every row lasts the same four beats. Only the number of bols changes. Under each bol is the drum it is played on: R is the dayan, L is the bayan, and LR is both together.

Try it

1. Press ▶ on Thah. Recite it with the sound, then play it: one bol to each click.
2. Press ▶ on Dugun. The click has not changed. Two bols now share it.
3. Press ▶ on Chaugun. Four bols to a click. Notice that the group still ends on the same beat as in thah.
4. Now play each row yourself, with the click and without the sound.

When the bass drops out

The third group of Teentaal is the khali, the “empty” wave: Dha Tin Tin Ta. The closed Tin and Ta take the place of the open Dhin and Dha, so only the opening Dha has any bayan in it. (Some teachers play even that on the dayan alone and say Na.) Play it the same three ways and notice how little your left hand does. That is the sound of the cycle turning over.

Three to a beat

Tigun fits three bols into a beat, so a three-bol group fits into one click. It rolls where two and four march. The group here is Dha Tin Na, three beats long. In tigun it comes round three times, and the Dha, with its bass, opens every beat. The bayan sounds once to a click, steady under the roll.

Try it

1. Play Thah and play along: Dha on beat 1, Tin on beat 2, Na on beat 3.
2. Press ▶ on Tigun. The whole group now fits inside one beat, and it comes round three times.
3. Count it out loud as “1-tri-pe-let, 2-tri-pe-let, 3-tri-pe-let”, with the bass of Dha on each number.

On the tabla

1. Speak before you play. Tabla is taught by reciting the bols. Say each row in time first. If you cannot recite it at the speed, your hands will not play it.
2. Double the bols, not the beat. From thah to dugun the click must not speed up. The bols double. If the click feels as though it has sped up, you rushed the beat.
3. Land on sam. A laya exercise has to finish where it started. If a row ends off the beat, slow it down until it ends on the beat, then speed up. The usual way to finish is a tihai, a short group played three times so that the last bol lands on sam.
4. Right hand first. When chaugun breaks down, take the left hand away and play only the dayan part. The speed is in the right-hand fingers, and the bayan joins once they are even.

Laya and taal

A taal is the cycle of beats (sixteen, ten, eight, six…). Laya is how fast you go round it. The same taal can be played slowly or fast, and the tabla is the one that decides.

Teentaal has sixteen beats in four groups, and Dha Dhin Dhin Dha is the first. Play the whole sixteen-bol theka at twice the speed and it takes eight clicks, so it comes round twice in a lap of the clicks. Nothing about the cycle changed, and sam still falls every sixteen clicks. The theka simply ran twice inside it. That is the classic layakari. Read the whole theka on Taals, or see the Rhythm room's Cycles.

Ten minutes

Add 5 BPM only when three passes in a row are clean and both drums land together. If a row falls apart, go back one tempo, not one row.