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Lesson 15: Eight Mātrās Cycles in Drut
Lay: Prakar 1
Everything
up to this point was the ground fundamentals on kirtan
and bhajan accompaniment via mridanga
and kartals. You learned how to play nine very
important thekas, along with prakars
associated with them. What’s next?
Throughout
the course, we’ve played everything in a decent tempo, or speed. It is
known as madhya lay, or medium tempo. However, kirtans almost always speed up either gradually, or they
jump from single time to double time. We must play these rhythmic cycles in drut lay, or fast tempo. As the name implies, one would think
that you would play the cycles from Lessons 6 through 14 and play them fast.
This is not the case, however.
If
one were to play kaherva tāla
faster and faster, one would easily get fatigued, because you will either
sacrifice your comfort by trying to maintain a fast speed without messing up,
or you sacrifice the rhythm because you are feeling pain.
-
Therefore, one of the properties of drut lay is that it
loses bols or changes bols,
in order to allow ease of playing. The key to being able to play drut tālas without faltering
or getting excessively carried away with the rhythm is to play these tālas slowly, at first. Playing these tālas slowly will develop clarity in the bols. This way, when a tāla
is being played under drut lay, then it can sound
nice and crisp.
This
lesson examines drut lay of eight mātrā
cycles. Lesson 16 will look at six mātrā
cycles.
Specifically,
the only drut cycles we will look at is kaherva tāla. Drut tintāl is almost never
used in kirtans or bhajans.
Prabhupada tāla is
never played in drut laya. Bhajani tāla at a fast speed
will yield cyclic forms based on drut kaherva.
APPROACHING DRUT LAY TĀLAS
In
doing the previous madhya lay rhythms, the focus was
primarily on getting the rhythmic cycle correct. However, with drut lay cycles, it is important to not only get timing and
accuracy, but also to play in correct tempo. These tālas
are not necessarily meant to be played in madhya lay.
The best approach is to learn how to play them in madhya lay first, then speed it up slowly. That is the best approach to
use for this and the next lesson. The goal is to be able to play these rhythm fast right away at any given time.
DRUT KAHERVA TĀLA PRAKAR 1
|
X |
|
|
|
0 |
|
|
|
|
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
|
dhin |
– |
tā |
Tā |
ti |
– |
dhā |
tā |
This
is the fast version of the kaherva tāla theka we discussed in
lesson 8. This is used most commonly in kirtans, at
the first instance of a change in tempo. Compare the bols
used for drut kaherva tāla and the bols used for kaherva tāla theka. Clearly, there is a lot of difference in technique
and sound.
✇AUDIO CLIP 15: Drut
Kaherva Tāla Prakār 1
The next few prakars in
this series are presented in 15 A, 15 B, and 15 C. Just as diverse as kaherva tāl
was, its drut lay forms will be just as diverse too.
UPDATED: December 20, 2010