Friday, May 2, 2008

Dhol Experiment

IF
* You play tabla reasonably well
* You have a dhol handy - preferably one with a Plastic/Synthetic Skin on the Bass side.

Experiment:
* Put some Atta on the Bass Side - you'll have to experiment with quantity of Atta vs resulting tonal quality.

* try playing with your hands - Phakawaj style
* If you know Khuley Bol - Perfect ! if not .. check out some videos on youtube and pretend ! :)
* also pls try playing some basic thekas - tintal , kaherva , rupak , dadra etc.


The thing is - I KNOW that it will sound good .. but am unable experiment for myself due to no-dhol-at-home syndrome.
About a year ago, I had to play dholki for one of my sister's wedding functions - It sounded horrible. I put a fistful of atta on the bass side, and the moisture sort of crept in and caused the skin to loosen, wrinkle up and sound like a wet blanket when hit.
I then cleaned off the Atta, wiped the skin thoroughly and waited 10 mins for it to dry. Once it was back to normal, I put a tiny bit of atta back on it. (the circle was about as big as the tip of my thumb - yep that's it .. very small.) Worked great !


So kindly try it out, and post some videos :)

Thank you.

1 comment:

Angad Singh said...

i tried the same thing on a bongo..it sounded awesome!