Mathematics, Tabla and the Arts

Spring break is here and I finally have ample time to practice my tabla. In the absence of a regular schedule and a teacher, I rely on online videos to improve my skills. Following my YouTube recommendations, I came across this talk given by Manjul Bhargava to a group of school children in Bangalore. Not many of you may know that Dr. Bhargava is not only the 2014 Fields Medal winner, but he is also an accomplished tabla player who has studied under one of the greatest tabla player of our times – Zakir Hussain.

I thought I should post this on my blog for it is certainly the kind of talk that I would have cherished as a kid attending it. Also, I really liked the way he simplified and explained a reasonably difficult concept to his audience. I am sure it would have made a lot of minds curious about the topic:

If you found this interesting, you can find a nice tutorial on it with the title Mathematics for Poets and Drummers by Dr. Rachel Hall (also has an extended version that I haven’t been through yet). Also if this talk inspired you to pick up tabla, I found this very useful series of videos on a YouTube channel by Tej Singh for beginning and intermediate tabla players.

2 thoughts on “Mathematics, Tabla and the Arts”

  1. I am Tabala player and I am about to register for Phd as I am professor in Computer Engineering and want to contribute to tabala players community.

    I want to prepare a research work to generate tabala notes using AI and Machine Learning.

    Its not using some prerecorded boles and play them but kayda tihai taal prakar will be generated by system using NLP
    for eg. I want system should make variations of kayada using boles Ti te Dhina Ge na Dha tina ta and provide the first sample machine will generate other variations for the tabala player and update it in knowledge base it can generate using Jhpataal teental etc…

    Using a GUI, will ask which taal – say teen Taal, then it will ask key words – I will say Dha Ta Na Tir kit etc. The system will either generate or will ask for sample run of first kayda in text form and then system generate variations.

    Prashant

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