We want to be able to rekindle your interest and help you discover some of the method and grammar of Carnatic music. This app is a feeble attempt to introduce Carnatic music in a gentle way in a style presumably we all can understand. Details specific to a particular tāḷas is provided when necessary. Many of us have grown up in India, where we were exposed to Indian classical music in one form or another. '1' denotes sama and is shown through a red colored time tick and has an audible click different from the other annotation clicks. Each annotation has an audible click to track the progression of the tāḷa. In each of the video examples below, the waveform (top panel) and the log spectrogram (bottom panel) show the tāḷa annotations. Along with the audible clicks to represent the beats of the tala, we also provide a visualization that shows the structure of the tāḷa and marks the progression through the cycles. On this page, we provide several annotated audio examples for different tāḷas, using compositions with different eḍupu. The aṅgas define the visual gestures used to show the progression through the tāḷa. An avartana is also divided into possibly unequal sections called aṅga, which define the structure of the tāḷa. However, the compositions can also start after (or before) the cycle starts, and this offset of the start of the composition relative to the sama is called eḍupu, and is often measured in akṣaras. Most carnatic compositions are set to a specific tāḷa and begin on the sama. The first akṣara pulse of an āvartana is called the sama. The sub-beat structure (which decides the number of akṣaras contained per beat) is called naḍe. The akṣaras are grouped into longer time units called beats, which are visually displayed through hand gestures. An āvartana of a tāḷa is divided into basic time units called akṣaras.

It consists of fixed length time cycles called āvartana. Tāḷa is the rhythmic framework in Carnatic music and provides a broad structure for rendition and repetition of melodic and rhythmic phrases, motives and improvisations.

Carnatic music lessons video