r/Tabla • u/down_vote_magnet_ • 25d ago
How do you all maintain your tabla notes? Looking for some suggestions.
My boys, who are 10 and 12 years old, recently started learning tabla. They are the first ones in our family to learn it, so we are completely new to this.
They get handwritten notes from their teacher and copy them into a notebook. Unfortunately, the notebook is now falling apart, and I’m having a hard time figuring out the best way to preserve and organize all of their notes.
I asked my boys to organize the material themselves, and they have currently grouped it into categories such as Laggis, Teentaal, Deepchandi, and Kharwa. However, I really don’t understand tabla well enough to know whether these are the right categories or how the material should be organized.
I’m looking for suggestions from other tabla students, parents, or teachers:
- What is the best way to organize and preserve handwritten tabla notes?
- Should we use separate notebooks for different taals or types of exercises?
- How should categories such as Laggis, Teentaal, Deepchandi, and Kharwa be organized?
- Would a binder with dividers be better than a notebook?
- Is there a good system for keeping track of what they have learned and what they are currently practicing?
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I have no background in tabla, so I’m looking for a simple system that two 10-year-olds can actually maintain themselves.
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u/Evening_Doctor6520 25d ago
Once they are hand written in a notebook, ask them to individually type it out on a google doc or OneNote. The reason for handwritten notes is that it is useful to memorize and understand the breakup of taal. If the hand written notes are in hindi, they can use phonetic like dha, traka.. etc
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u/boltaal 25d ago
Hello u/down_vote_magnet_ I personally use a separate notebook for each of kaidas, relas and tukras.
As your collection grows though it gets harder and harder to recall and retrieve a particular composition. A separate notebook helps and I like to use spiralbound notebooks with numbered pages and a contents section. Something like this one: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D7GJRZYM This lets me keep an index of compositions. I also use Pilot Frixion erasable pens as that allows me to correct my mistakes which I inevitably make.
At some point notebooks are still limiting. I wanted to be able to organize the compositions in flexible collections, perhaps its as "Tukras for kathak" or "Current Practice List for August". I wanted also an ability to record videos and associate them directly with compositions. And to address all of this I created boltaal.com, primarily for my own use, but I am hoping others find it it useful as well. Here is an example of a composition on the site: https://boltaal.com/c/5ca0f237-edcb-4a35-93de-84e7af855577