July 2008 Homework

Having spent most of my life playing instruments—first piano, then bass—and harboring a musician’s enthusiasm for music’s many forms, the unsettling reactions I had in my first encounters with Indian music were surprising. It wasn’t the exoticism—I’ve encountered non-Western music I’ve appreciated deeply—it was its undeniable sophistication.

Konnakol, the art of vocal percussion as found in Carnatic (or South Indian) music, was particularly alluring. You may have encountered something like it on fusion guitarist John McLaughlin’s recordings with his band Shakti, or on one of Jonas Hellborg’s recent recordings with Indian musicians. It sounds like nothing else: Hit up YouTube for some amazing examples, or bassplayer.tv to hear Hellborg tear it up during his clinic at Bass Player LIVE! ’07. My fascination turned into study after getting to know bassist Kai Eckhardt and subbing for him with his band Garaj Mahal. Like McLaughlin, Garaj Mahal uses Konnakol in a Western context, occasionally incorporating it into its compositions directly. Konnakol is an excellent means of interpreting and understanding rhythms, and its flexibility makes it particularly suitable for deciphering odd meters or subdivisions. While I’m abundantly unqualified to dissect Indian rhythm in great detail, I’ll relate some aspects of Konnakol that have proved helpful to me.

Konnakol assigns set groups of syllables to rhythmic phrases. Though Carnatic musicians don’t think of these phrases with regard to Western music notation, they can be easily adapted. Ex. 1 shows this system applied to the subdivision of a single beat in 4/4 time. In bars 1–4 we see that a 1:1 subdivision (quarter-note) equals ta, a 2:1 subdivision (two eighth-notes) is ta ka, a 3:1 subdivision (an eighth-note triplet) is ta ki ta, and a 4:1 subdivision (four 16th-notes) is ta ka di mi. The 5:1 subdivision in bar 5 shows two syllabic possibilities. The first, ta ka ta ki ta, takes the 2:1 ta ka and combines it with the 3:1 ta ki ta. The result sounds like a five-note group with accents on the first and third notes (in other words, a 2-3 subdivision of five). The second possibility, ta di ki na thom (the thom is pronounced like “dome”) is another basic syllabic unit, one that does not subdivide the five.

By dividing rhythms into discrete units of subdivision, each of which is comfortably sing-able, Konnakol helps make understanding rhythm an organic, musical process. Take bar 7, for example: The 7:1 ratio can be subdivided in several ways. The two listed take our four-note unit, ta ka di mi, and combine it with the three-note unit, ta ki ta. Either can come first; notice how changing the basic units within a larger rhythmic context shifts the accents around.

The rhythmic units listed in Ex. 1 don’t have to be applied to the note durations listed. For now, think of each unit as connoting a specific group of notes of any duration, so long as they are the same. So, ta ki ta doesn’t have to be an eighth-note triplet as in bar 3; it could be 16th-notes, quarter-notes, whatever. In Ex. 2 I’ve applied ta ki ta to 16th-notes in 4/4, accenting the beginning of each group of three. Notice the immediate three-over-four feel that develops, and that the ta ki ta cycle doesn’t start on the first beat of a bar again until three bars have gone by.

So, what’s the assignment? First, check out Carnatic music, especially the work of T. H. Subash Chandran, who is like the Jaco of Konnakol. Also, work with a metronome to begin digesting some of the concepts above. Set the metronome to a steady slow beat and sing the rhythms to yourself, clapping on each beat. While Ex. 1 shows a single subdivided beat in each bar, try to fill the bar by subdividing each beat. Don’t accelerate the tempo until you’ve completely internalized the phrase. In a future column I’ll explore even more applications of this beautiful art.