South Indian Music
One of the main differences between the development of Western and South-Indian music until the turn of this century is that Western music consisted mostly of harmony, melody and rhythm, with an emphasis on the first two. South-Indian music has developed largely in the last two fields, focusing on microtonality in combination with rhythmic complexity: harmony is a virtually non-existant phenomenon in Indian classical music. Over the last centuries different methods have been refined in order to achieve the level of musicianship required to perform the pieces composed for the classical musician. Improvisation is a common element in indian music, permeated with restrictions and regulations, demanding high skill to combine everything into an intelligent addendum to the composition. The basics of the rhythm theory are astonishingly simple, the results infinitely complex. I will summarize some basic terminology.-TALA : The tala is the rhythmcycle. Any amount of quarter notes can result in a form, ranging from very common 8 beat talas (two bars of 4/4) up to highly obscure talas, that may take minutes to complete the cycle.
-GATHI (Quantification) : Every quarter note can be filled with any # of units. We rarely see more than triplets and sixteens in most Western music, in Indian music septuplets and higher quantifications are used commonly. In order to succesfully subdivide and manipulate these notes there are practical exercises to do, e.g: - establish a tala # and a gathi #, then add them up. You now have a rhythm cycle, complete with bar #, amount of quarter notes and # units per quarter note. See how many combination are possible and play or sing them. Example: TALA 6 (6/4 bar) GATHI 3 (triplets) results in 18 units. Possible subdivisions, 9+9 8+10 7+11 6+12 etc. In order to enhance the student's ability to transform theory into practice, a special solfege sytem has been formalised:
SHOLL KATHU (Vocalisation): This techniques can be described as "solfege, entirely designed for rhythm". Every quantification has its own name and position%2
