Correlating tabla bol recitation and playing
Correlating tabla bol recitation and playing
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In the Indian classical drumming tradition, the different strokes on the tabla are named by spoken syllables (bols) in a case of onomatopoeia. Also referred to as bol-padhant, the recitation of a tabla composition using these vocalic syllables plays an important role in the oral tradition of pedagogy in North Indian classical music. It is also commonly part of tabla solo and classical dance performances, where its presentation sounds quite exaggerated and exquisite, thanks to the amazing capabilities of the human voice.
Given that the compositions are essentially meant to be played on the tabla, and given that tabla bol recitation is not an artform by itself and is generally closely associated with the corresponding playing, we were interested in studying whether the prosodic attributes of the recitation and playing were somehow correlated. In other words, does a tabla player maintain the same kind of expressivity in both the modes. Or, more simply put, if a bol is uttered loudly or at a higher pitch, does it also get played so.
You can find some example audios here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/tqtsctp7uw9yiam/AACCsrAKgxEpYAN6_UHQGvmda?dl=0
Comparing syllable rate, intensity span and F0 span of bol recitation with conversational English speech
The adjacent table offers a simple comparison between the prosodic characteristics of conversational English speech with that of bol recitation (observed in our dataset).
While the intensity range is comparable, the pitch range is slightly higher in bol recitation.
Among the two drums of the tabla, it is only the bass drum on which pitched strokes can be modulated to create an effect of pitch moving up or down.
But more interestingly, the bols of the treble drum (dayan or tabla), whose pitch on the instrument is fixed and cannot be varied, tend to contain more pitch variations during recitation.
And what we did find in our study is that the intensity variations in the recitation were quite well correlated with those of the playing, and the pitch variations also correlated well but, obviously, only in the case of the bass drum strokes.
This likely means that the pitch variations on the treble drum sounds could point to some other structural aspects of the composition -- e.g., phrase boundaries and the like.
Further reading:
Further reading:
Rohit M. A. and P. Rao " Acoustic-Prosodic Features of Tabla Bol Recitation and Correspondence with the Tabla Imitation ", Proc. of Interspeech, Sep 2018, Hyderabad, India. (pdf)
A. D. Patel and J. R. Iversen, “Acoustic and perceptual comparison of speech and drum sounds in the north indian tabla tradition: An empirical study of sound symbolism,” in Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS), 2003.
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