One of my students asked me to write something on how to start practice every day, and for general bayan/bol clarity practice. Luckily, both of these can be tied together into one basic sequence of exercises.
This is not the end-all, be-all morning practice for every student; naturally, the practice one does has to be personalized for your own particular needs, and furthermore it evolves over the years in which you learn. That being said, the exercises below are always valuable to play regardless of a Tabla player's skill level. The difficulty of each exercise can be increased with speed/power/duration of exercise, et cetera, so there is always something to be gained by playing these patterns.
So let's take a look:
Exercise 1 should begin at a slow pace, around 45 beats per minute or thereabouts. You should first focus on the sound of the individual drums, particularly the resonance of the Na and Tin syllables. The pace of the right hand will not change for the duration of the exercise, which is a good thing as students rarely (if ever) practice Tintal bols at a slow speed and then later struggle to do this well. After the speed has been established, one by one we will add bayan strokes within each matra. The goal should be to reach sankirna jati, or a total of nine beats on the left hand for every matra of Tintal, but beginners can start by trying to achieve four bayan strokes per matra. Not that kat should be played in place of ghe during the khali portion of the cycle.
For the subsequent exercises the speed can be increased to a medium-fast tempo depending on the ability of the student. Exercise 2 implements a swift low-high modulation on the bayan, a technique which I call gamak due to its similarity to the vocal technique of the same name. Vishal ji used to call this "pulling." This is probably the most physically demanding of these exercises assuming that one plays it at a challenging speed.
Exercises 3 and 4 are basically the same, alternating low and high notes on the bayan throughout the bhari notes of tintal. Note that if you end on a high note before khali, the bayan resumes on a low note, and vice versa. The student should make an effort to exert a lot of pressure on the high notes to get a significant change in pitch. I find that this exercise in particular drives students crazy!
Exercises 5 and 6 train you in dynamic bayan playing. Each alternating stroke should stand out in volume rather than pitch. Use the impact of the wrist to provide this effect.
Finally, for exercise 7 we start at our highest possible pitch on beat 14 of Tintal and gradually let the pitch drop until the final bayan stroke on beat 9. For convenience I have started the bols from beat 14 so that the exercise is easier to visualize.
Throughout these exercises, the student should take care that they are alternating their bayan fingers. They should also take care to listen carefully to their sound production and slow down if necessary to play clear bols on the dayan. Exercises do no good if we use them to reinforce sloppy technique!
Practicing each of these exercises for a mere 5 minutes will mean more than half an hour of combined Bayan and Tintal practice every day. In Delhi I could practice Tintal for an hour easily every morning without even the aid of this carefully developed sequence, but of course I used to practice 6-8 hours there. So the length of practice can be scaled down to suit the time frame that a student has to play. And of course there is much more to practicing Tintal, or developing good bayan technique, than these seven exercises but I think this is a great way for anyone to get started.
I hope this lesson proves helpful! Please feel free to post follow-up questions below or let me know what you think of these exercises. I will try to post a video of me playing the exercises in sequence soon. In the meantime, if you have any other requests for online lessons please let me know.
-Chaz