Examples of Lay in Performance

Listen the to the following samples. Do you hear a clear tempo? Can you identify different divisions of the matra (beat)? Where do you tap your foot, if at all?

Vocal with Tabla (Bhimsen Joshi)

Sarod with Tabla (Ali Akbar Khan–Mahapurush Misra)

Sitar with Tabla (Ravi Shankar–Alla Rakha)

(music sources)

Introduction to Lay

When I first started listening to classical Indian music, I often felt lost rhythmically: Where exactly is the beat? And how are these unusual patterns and divisions connected to the beat?

Although I didn’t know it at the time, I was having problems with lay.

Lay literally means "rhythm", but the term has a number of more specific meanings in the context of classical music.

The two most common meanings are:

• Lay as tempo
• Lay as a subdivision of the matra (beat)

While lay can be challenging for new students and listeners, it is also where we find some of the most fascinating and exciting aspects of classical tabla.

A good sense of lay takes time to develop, and requires that you first learn to follow the tal. But you can start to become familiar with some of the issues and terms related to lay which will help you going forward.

In this section, we will look mostly at lay as tempo. In the next section, we will look more closely at lay as a subdivision of the matra, knows as layakari.

Lay as Tempo: Three General Lays

One meaning of lay refers to tempo. There are three general lays that students and listeners should be familiar with:

• Vilambit – विलम्बित (slow)
• Madhya – मध्य (medium)
• Drut – द्रुत (fast)

You will hear these terms used alone, or together with lay, as in "madhya lay".

There is also ati-vilambit – अतिविलम्बित (very slow), and ati-drut – अतिद्रुत (very fast). Both of these general speeds are common, and you will sometimes hear their proper names. But often they are simply called vilambit and drut. You might also hear combinations such as madhya vilambit ("medium-slow"), etc.

Lay and Beats per Minute

The three general lays (vilambit, madhya, and drut) do not correspond to any specific tempos in terms of beats per minute (BPM). They are general tempos which include a wide range of BPM.

Also, the tempos of the three lays will differ depending on the style or genre of music. The main difference you should know about is between instrumental and khyal vocal tempos: instrumental lays are generally higher than those of vocal.

Below are some approximate BPM for the three lays in each genre as given by Clayton (2000):

For a comparison of vocal and instrumental tempos, listen again to the first two examples from above. Both of these are called vilambit, but their BPMs differ greatly:

Vocal Vilambit Lay (around 30 BPM)

Instrumental Vilambit Lay (around 75 BPM)

Lay and the Perception of Rhythm

Tempo can strongly affect how we hear the rhythm in the music.

At very slow tempos, such as khyal vocal, the BPM is commonly 30 or below. At such slow speeds, it is difficult to feel the beat. And so the matra is usually divided into 2 or 4 even pulses, depending on what is being performed.

So at 30 BPM, we might hear the beat as being 60 or 120 BPM. For the vocal clip above, I tap my foot at double speed, around 60 BPM.

Below is a sample in ektal ati-vilambit (12 matra-cycle, very slow) with a BPM of around 10. This is very slow; there is only one cycle of ektal here, but it lasts for more than one minute!

At this tempo, the matras of ektal are divided into 4 pulses. So the rhythm that we hear is around 40 BPM, though it is not always strongly felt (it helps if you already know the vilambit ektal theka). After a few moments of solo violin, the tabla will start on the 1 at around 00:09.

Violin with Tabla (N. Rajam–Chhotelal Misra) – One Cycle of Ektal Ati-Vilambit

Learning to follow vilambit ektal takes some practice. But it is a good example of how the rhythm is transformed at very slow tempos.

Compare that with the sitar-tabla sample we heard above, performed in tintal ati-drut lay (16 matras, very fast) at around 480 BPM. Here the opposite happens. Instead of adding pulses to the matra, we group them together; 16 matras now sounds like 4.

Sitar with Tabla (Ravi Shankar–Alla Rakha) – Tintal Ati-Drut

Lay as a Subdivision of the Matra

Another common use of the term lay refers to particular subdivisions of the matra (beat). This includes terms such as barabar lay (even divisions of 2, 4, 8, etc.) and ara lay (odd divisions of 3, 6, 12, etc.).

These and other terms for subdividing the matra are both a part of lay, and part of the related layakari, which we look at in more detail in the next section.

References