Though the Tabla is a fairly well known drum, many Western percussionists choose not to explore the drum’s extraordinary abilities. This is usually because a good Tabla set is hard to find, expensive, and difficult to learn. Unfortunately, this means that there are a large number of drummers who are neither familiar with the musical ability of the Tabla nor the potential of their drumming. Try to develop a new understanding of the place of percussion in music. Watch these skilled Tabla players use their drums to create complex beats while controlling the song’s melodies, and try to incorporate this new style into your drumming.

This video shows someone experimenting with the many sounds that a Tabla can make. Try to close your eyes and think about which parts of the song sound like they are coming from a drum and which do not. You will soon realize the potential of the Tabla as an instrument outside of percussion.

This is a short clip of one of the most famous Tabla masters, Zakir Hussain, playing at a concert with a backup Tabla and an Indian string instrument that i am not familiar with. Listen to how the different sounds that a Tabla can make are used to keep a steady beat for the other musicians and dictate part of the melody of the song. Zakir Hussain does this easily while adding his own personalized touch to the song.

The video below is of Zakir Hussain when he was much younger. This one also shows the Tabla master playing the drum beat and melody simultaneously by using the variety of sounds that the Tabla is able to make. In this duo, the string instrument, which i am again not familiar with, is playing a steady, repeated melody. Hussain steals the show my performing an incredible solo while modifying the simple melody offered by the string musician.

Watch this one too

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxtn1twhC34

This is a fantastic clip which is unfortunately too long to load onto the blog as a video. I would highly recommend watching at least the first five minutes of this video because the sitar player (Rupinder Panesar) and tabla player (Danju Sahai) work very well together at creating a melody. Try to notice how the deep bass tones and the high tones from the tabla are built into the melody of the song.

This is an unrelated clip from my senior year of highschool, my friends and i played this song in front of the whole school. I'm batman on the bass guitar.

The Tabla is often found accompanied by a Sitar. After three of my friends got back from spending six months in India, they were hoping to introduce the music they had learned overseas. These were taken at a coffee shop in Connecticut last summer.

John Hartmann playing his Sitar. As you can see, the sitar is a large string instrument with many strings. It is often found being played with a Tabla and in Classical Indian music.


Below, you can see Ian's Sitar has been temporarily replaced with a Ukulele. This is a much smaller string instrument, and is not typically played with any Indian instruments.




Jon Hartmann on Sitar, Ian Engelberger on Sitar and Ukulele, Zack Stein on Tabla

This is a video of Radiohead performing "15 Steps" at the All Points West music festival August 9, 2009. Listen to how the drums shape the melody of the song, especially in the beginning. This is a good example of this drumming style being adapted into Western rock music.

These are photos of percussion master John Marshall with his Tabla. These photos give a better view of what the Tabla looks like and how you play them. As you can see in all three pictures, John’s wrist is resting over the larger drum. As you are watching the videos, notice the deep sound that comes from sliding this wrist across the drumhead.
Look below at the different layers of the drumhead, especially the Syahi (black spot), which is one of the main reasons the Tabla is able to produce such melodic, clean-sounding tones.
In the first and third picture, try to notice the wooden pegs that the leather straps secure to the body of the smaller, wooden drum. Moving these pegs tunes the drum.

the most helpful website i used for my tabla research paper was by far
http://chandrakantha.com/tablasite/

this is a great site to find all sorts of information about the tabla

This is a video that i found on www.youtube.com of a Tabla player in concert. Listen carefully for the notes that the Tabla plays and the way that they fit into the song, especially around 43 seconds in.

Although the audio and video of this clip do not match up, this is an incredible performance. This Tabla solo is one of the better example i have seen of a drum creating a melody. Notice how 2:20 minutes in, he uses one hand to keep the melody going while he rests his other hand. Seconds after, he taps on the side of the drum and the pitch of the song gets higher. When he tunes the tabla, there is a much more noticeable change to the song than while tuning a drum in Western music, because the tabla is creating the foundation of the melody and beat.

This video is a fun example of the tabla being played next to other instruments. Try to see if you can recognize how the tabla is influencing the song compared to how another drum might.

This is more footage from the above concert.

TABLA