Tabla Rhythms and Tempo

Tempos are called layas and are used in Indian music performances. Performances usually start out slow and finish fast. There are three layas and they are: vilambit(slow), madhya(middle) and drut(fast). Unlike Western music, these speeds have no set tempo. They are simply guidelines for the tabla player to guide him through the time cycle so he can decide which speed to play in. An essential part of tabla is speeding up or slowing down in proportion to the starting speed. This is done by changing the way the beats are divided in and this method is called layakari. There are many kinds of layakari but we'll only do the basic one, which is barabar layakari. A "matra" is known as one cycle of the repeating cycle of the composition.

Barabar is when a composition is played in the starting speed, then twice as fast, then four times as fast and etc. "Gun" is known as each kind of barabar rhythm and each "gun" has a seperate name. The single speed is known as "EKGUN" which is: "DHA,S" "DHA,S" "TE,S" "TE,S"
S stands for rests in certain tabla notation. It is known as "avagrah" and has the same duration as a bol. Each pair of " " stands for a beat in music.
The next speed is "DUGUN" which is: "DHA,DHA" "TE,TE" "DHA,DHA" "TIN,NA" In DUGUN the speed is doubled from EKGUN and two bols fit in one beat.
The four times speed is CHAUGUN which is: "DHA,DHA,TE,TE" "DHA,DHA,TIN,NA" Here, the composition is four times as fast as EKGUN Finally we have ATHGUN which is:"DHA,DHA,TE,TE,DHA,DHA,TIN,NA" This is eight times as fast as EKGUN and requires a lot of practice. Very few people can actually play at this speed. This is the most basic layakari and it only gets harder from this point for the tabla player.