Last night I was trying to make Raaga understand the relationship among Taala, Jaathi and Nadai. I found that the following analogy helped her a bit –
Taala is like a ruler (scale), it is a general term that defines rhythm, speed and time cycle.
Jaathi is like the centimeter lines on the ruler, they define the number of beats in a Laghu, similar to the number of centimeters in a ruler. A small ruler could have 10 centimeters and long one could have 50 centimeters. However, the possible Jaathis are only 3, 4, 5, 7 and 9.
Finally, the Nadai is like the number of subdivisions within each centimeter (10 millimeters). However, possible Nadais are 3, 4, 5, 7 and 9.
So, now if I say Chathusra Jaathi Thriputa Taalam (Chathusra Nadai), it means it is a ruler that is 32 counts long. It has 8 beats, each beat made up of 4 counts.
The jury is out on whether she understood the relationship or she will stop coming to me for learning music concepts! LOL!
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