Tabla Tarang

Tabla Tarang is a melody instrument in Indian music, which consists of 10 to 16 tuned drums that are constructed in a semicircle around the musician.

These drums are calculated in Dayan, high drum of the tabla pair, and are tuned to the individual notes of the scale of the raga used. The instrument is played with the fingers of both hands. As opposed to Tabla is just a stop, that is a sound per drum used. For longer-lasting tones vortex must be played. Tarang means " waves " and refers to the typical melodic structure.

The Tabla Tarang is rarely played, because the cast is time consuming and the possibilities of musical expression are limited in comparison to other Indian melody instruments. The deepest drum has a head diameter of 16 centimeters, the highest of 11 centimeters. The range is two octaves. For the rhythmic accompaniment of a tabla is used.

The earliest knowledge of the young Instruments Maharashtra comes from the late 19th century. At this time is the famous singer Vishnu Digambar Paluskar (1872-1931) have been tuned by Tablas his students singing lessons. One of the students was Vishnudas Shirali, a singer and multi-instrumentalist. He accompanied the ballet from 1930 by Uday Shankar ( 1900-1977 ), the pioneer of modern Indian dance. Shirali led the Tabla Tarang in the orchestra, of which he later became. Uday Shankar gave the instrument the rank of a solo instrument and made it known to a wider audience. Other dance company took over the Tabla Tarang in their orchestras. After Europe, the drums came through a tour of the Indian dancer Menaka 1934 until 1936.

The best known player was Kamalesh Maitra (1928-2005), who was involved in the orchestra of Uday Shankar and made known the instrument from the 1950s in the West. He was the only musician to ever developed ragas in full on the Tabla Tarang. Previously solos were played by more than a quarter of an hour.

Successor of Shirali as a conductor was the Vichitra Vina player and music teacher Lalmani Misra (1924-1979), who played, among others, Tabla Tarang. The most famous tabla player from Kolkata, Jnan Prakash Ghosh (1912-1997) also played Tabla Tarang.

A similar semicircle -positioned musical instrument that is not one of the membranophones, but to the idiophones is the Jal tarang. It consists of differently sized, water-filled porcelain bowl.