Tabla speed made simple by Sulekh Ruparell

In this video, Sulekh Ruparell (Creator of Tabla Works), has demonstrated the parallel Tabla concepts of General and Relative speed. You can follow his blog at He has also created a tabla course in 10 simple lessons for beginners that can be downloaded at . The first lesson is absolutely free. General speed or ’Laya’ in Tabla is where a note or composition is played either played Vilambit (slow), Madya (medium) or Drut (fast). Relative speed is where the underlying beat remains the same but the number of Bol (notes) played against each beat is varied. So for example, if we played 3 notes within the space of a single beat, we would be playing at relatively triple the underlying tempo. This concept of relative speed is sometimes referred to as ’Layakari’.