Don’t miss a beat!

Don’t miss a beat!

It was a Thursday evening and I was on my weekly Skype call with my music teacher from Mysore, India. Since our last class,I had practiced the krithi I learned pretty well and I was excited to share my singing with her. As I went through reciting my krithi, my teacher didn’t seem that impressed. At the end she told me my singing and thala were not in sync.

Thala also known as metronome in the music world or beat/rhythm in common language. To learn Carnatic singing is a hard task in itself but making sure it follows the predetermined thala is whole another story. It’s a framework under which the song has to be performed, a time stamp for every phrase, note and verse. 

So I asked my teacher naively why is it so important for my singing to follow the “thala”? She patiently explained metronome keeps you from running fast, or dragging at certain places or getting caught up in the composition itself. It’s like having a guru with you at all times. 

As a runner, I realized music and running are very similar like chocolate and peanut butter. 

Many people much like myself have a love hate relationship with the metronome, similar  to running. We love the runner’s high but dreading to step out in the cold or brutal heat. I have learned to love the early morning runs in the peak of summer and bundle up with many layers to face the sub zero temperatures in the cold.

You see, “Laya” and “Thala” are two sides of a coin in Carnatic music. Laya is something that’s innate, that is within you. Thala is something external, which can be taught. Much like every runner has their own unique stride or style of running, but the “pace” or speed at which we run can be learnt or taught.

In my next class, I recited my song perfectly and my guru recognized that I was comfortable at a certain speed of metronome and she suddenly changed it. I wasn’t happy at all and I complained I can’t sync with it and she smiled and told me “ it’s your job to sync with it and not the other way around!”.

Again, if you are running at a certain pace comfortably, your coach will switch it up a bit to move you out of comfort zone or if we are self coaching it’s our job to shake us out of our own comfort zone. Now, it’s our job as runners to sync up with the new pace or goal we set for ourselves!

As I move along in my music journey, my teacher reminds me metronome builds mental endurance and metronome is essentially discipline.

It hit me then, in running, the weekly mileage builds our endurance and the habit of consistently running few days a week or every day comes down to discipline similar to keeping my composition in line with the thala. 

As I learned to sing different styles of compositions, my teacher taught me when the space between the 2 beats is more, I have more time to add details, embellishments. Where as when the space between 2 beats is rather short there are no room add details or gamakha, it will loose its clarity if you try to force them.

Again in running during our easy runs we pay attention to details around us, the scenery, the scent in the air, our breath or the music we are listening to. As we move into our strides or interval runs, there is no time to pay attention to those details, if we do the quality of our strides suffer. Sometimes the hills in my runs remind me of ascending scale and descending on the way down, different routes or terrain of different ragas!  

And at times your mind can be as quiet as the space between the notes! That’s why both running and music can be therapeutic. 

In music, as we progress it’s our goal to be one with the metronome, the beat or the rhythm. Keeping time is what we practice so we don’t need to worry about the math of counting the beats and it becomes a second nature.

In running, we try to be one with our movement, the breath and to make it as effortless as possible, as if “we are born to run”! As we practice, we know our pace without even looking at our devices, by how we feel.

I realized both in music and on my runs, first and foremost I am a time keeper. Much like our runs and life in general, music is not about perfection. It’s knowing what that moment needs, sometimes you need to ramp up and sometimes you need to slow down to match the clock of your metronome.. tik tik tik.

Both in music and in running, all we are trying to do is not to miss a beat, isn’t it !!

Now, I do hope as I progress in my singing I can keep track of the count in the metronome (thala), keep the composition (ktrithi) in a particular scale (raga) and pay attention to details (gamakha) seemingly effortlessly! 

Oh I didn’t even get to talk about Swaravali and manodharma, well may be next time.