Getting Inspired by Carnatic Rhythms

Strudel (via its predecessor TidalCycles) is partly inspired by another system called the Bol Processor, which was originally created to notate North Indian, Hindustani music of the tabla drums. That’s why Strudel likes to make you think in terms of rhythmic cycles which are prevalent in Indian music.

Algorithmic music has a particularly strong connection to South Indian, Carnatic music traditions, which feature intricate rhythms featuring geometric patterns and numberical transformations.

Here’s an example from Manjunath B C and his son Skanda. It’s incredibly fast, but lets try to understand it!

This is in the Konnakol tradition, where performers perform vocal rhythms using groups of syllables mostly related to the sounds of the mridangam drum. It goes fast, but they start with:

Tha - Thakadimi
Tha - Tha - Thakadimi
Tha - Tha - Tha - Thakadimi
Tarikita Tarikita

In the above the dashes (like ‘-’) stand for a gap, so for example Tha - Tha - has a count of four. Notice the repetition of ‘Tha’ increasing from 1 to 3 over the first three lines.

They then repeat the same structure, but with the Tha replaced with Dhi, Thom and finally Nam:

Dhi - Takadimi
Dhi - Dhi . Takadimi
Dhi - Dhi - Dhi - Takadimi
Tarikita Tarikita

Thom - Takadimi
Thom - Thom - Takadimi
Thom - Thom - Thom - Takadimi
Tarikita Tarikita

Nam - Takadimi
Nam - Nam - Takadimi
Nam - Nam - Nam - Takadimi
Tarikita Tarikita

From there, they recite all the same syllables, but in different orders creating different patterns. For example, if we notate the above structure in terms of the number of repetitions: 123, then 321 would be:

Tha - Tha - Tha - Thakadimi
Tha - Tha - Thakadimi
Tha - Thakadimi
Tarikita Tarikita

So from these two possibilities …

   Tha  Dhi  Thom  Nam
1. 123  123  123  123
2. 321  321  321  321

… there are a lot more possibilities that Manjunath and Skanda explore in their video:

3. 123 321 123 321
4. 321 123 321 123
5. 222 222 222 222
6. 111 222 333 123
7. 333 222 111 321

Special thanks to B C Manjunath for sharing and explaining this pattern to me.

The above rhythm is a bit difficult to express in strudel! But here is an attempt:

// "Konnakol exercise by Somashekar Jois via B C Manjunath and Skanda Manjunath" @by alex
// https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alJ_st3PkBk
samples('github:yaxu/mrid/main');

setcps(0.7)

let rhythm = (counts, drum) => 
s_cat(counts.stepBind(count => s_cat(drum.s_extend(count), 
                                     "dhi thom thom dhi")),
      "tha tha:1 ka tha tha tha:1 ka tha"
     ).sound()

$: s_cat(
  rhythm("1 2 3", "tha -"),
  rhythm("1 2 3", "dhi -"),
  rhythm("1 2 3", "thom -"),
  rhythm("1 2 3", "nam -"),
).steps(8);

click: sound("hh*2").bank("RolandTR808")

You might find it easier to open this in the main strudel editor.

If you click or clap along with the ‘hh’ (high hat) sound you should start to feel the rhythm move around, creating the feeling of syncopation when ‘off-beats’ are created. You could also try clapping using the gestures of the traditional eight-beat ‘Adi Tala’ cycle.

You can try the different variations of the rhythm by editing the code in lines numbered 14-17 above, for example to try variation 7 (333 222 111 321), you would change the code to:

    rhythm("3 3 3", "tha -"),
    rhythm("2 2 2", "dhi -"),
    rhythm("1 1 1", "thom -"),
    rhythm("3 2 1", "nam -"),

Resources

If you’re curious to find out more, here’s a blog post article with more strudel examples. Be sure to check the videos and links at the bottom!