Daily Care
Use this guide for the routine maintenance you perform after every playing session and the periodic checks you run weekly and monthly. These habits keep tuning stable, extend head life, and let you catch developing problems before they become expensive repairs. This guide does not cover climate-related storage — see the Climate and Storage guide for humidity, temperature, and travel protection.
Step 1: Clean the Playing Surface Immediately After Playing
Wipe both heads within a few minutes of finishing. Use a dry, soft cloth — cotton or microfiber — and stroke from the center of the syahi outward toward the rim in straight lines. Center-to-rim strokes push dust and sweat residue away from the syahi edge, where buildup most affects tone. Circular wiping tends to push particles under the syahi lip, which accelerates edge separation over time.
Do not use water, cleaning solutions, or any damp cloth on the playing surface. The head absorbs moisture rapidly, and even a small amount of water changes the skin's tension and drying rate unevenly. Wet cleaning is the fastest way to introduce tuning instability that persists for days. The syahi is especially sensitive — moisture softens the iron-paste compound and can cause micro-cracking as it dries. If something is stuck to the surface that dry wiping will not remove, leave it and mention it during your next tone check. Scraping or wet-cleaning a stuck spot risks more damage than the spot itself causes.
Step 2: Let the Drums Breathe Before Covering
After wiping, leave the drums uncovered in open air for five to ten minutes. During a playing session, body heat and hand moisture raise the temperature and humidity at the head surface. Sealing the drums into a case immediately traps that moisture against the skin, which softens the head and encourages mold in humid climates.
Set the drums on a stable surface with the heads facing up and let ambient air equalize the moisture. This brief pause is especially important after long sessions or performances under stage lighting, where heat buildup is higher than normal. Once the heads feel cool and dry to a light touch on the maidan, they are ready to case.
Step 3: Inspect the Syahi
Look at the syahi surface under good light — hold the dayan at rim level and look across the syahi surface so cracks and edge lifts cast shadows. You are checking for three conditions: surface cracking (fine lines across the paste), edge lifting (the syahi pulling away from the surrounding skin), and dull patches (areas where the normally smooth surface has become rough or powdery).
Fine surface cracks are cosmetic on their own but indicate aging — the syahi is drying and becoming brittle. Monitor these across weeks. Edge lifting is more serious: it changes the vibration pattern of the head and typically produces a buzz on na or tin strokes. If you see lifting, do not attempt to press it back down or apply adhesive — this almost always worsens the problem. Note it and check whether it affects tone in the next step. For significant lift, see the Fixing Syahi Buzz guide.
Step 4: Run a Tone Integrity Check
Play a single na on the dayan and listen for a clean, ringing tone. Play tin and confirm it sustains. Play ge on the bayan and check for smooth resonance without rattle. Compare what you hear to your memory of yesterday's tone. You are not tuning — you are screening for change.
If na sounds duller today than yesterday with no tuning change, something shifted: a gatta may have slipped, the head may have absorbed moisture, or syahi lift may have progressed. If ge buzzes where it did not before, check for loose objects near the drums first (a common false alarm), then inspect the bayan head. This daily comparison takes thirty seconds and catches problems at the stage where they are easy to address. Waiting until a problem is obvious means it has been degrading your sound for days or weeks before you noticed.
Step 5: Check Straps and Gattas
Run your hand along the full length of the tasma on both drums. Feel for fraying, rough spots, or sections where the strap has become stiff and inflexible. A healthy strap feels supple and consistent along its length. Stiff or brittle sections concentrate stress and are the most likely failure points.
Check each gatta by pressing it gently sideways. It should hold its position firmly under light pressure. If a gatta slides or rocks with minimal force, it has lost grip on the strap — mark it for repositioning during your next tuning session. A slipping gatta is not an emergency, but left uncorrected it allows tension to redistribute unevenly, which compounds into a tuning problem within a few sessions. See the Strap Tightening guide if multiple gattas are slipping.
Step 6: Follow the Weekly and Monthly Cadence
Not every check needs to happen daily. Organize your care into three tiers.
After every session: wipe the heads, let the tabla breathe, and listen for tone changes. This takes two to three minutes.
Weekly: inspect the syahi under angled light, check all gatta positions, and feel the full strap path for damage. Run a full rim-tap check (8 to 12 points) even if you are not planning to tune — this catches slow drift before it accumulates into a problem that requires retensioning. This adds five minutes once per week.
Monthly: clean the shells with a dry cloth, check the case interior for moisture or mold, and inspect the bottom ring and shell lip for cracks or chips. If you use a humidity monitor, compare the month's readings to identify seasonal trends that might require changes to your storage approach. See the Climate and Storage guide for target ranges.
Step 7: Know What Not to Do
Certain common-sense interventions actually damage tabla. Do not apply oil, wax, or any coating to the heads — the skin breathes and any sealant changes its vibrational properties permanently. Do not place the tabla near direct heat sources (radiators, space heaters, sunny windows) to "dry them out" — rapid drying cracks both the skin and the syahi. Do not stack the drums face-to-face or place weight on the heads during storage — sustained pressure deforms the maidan.
Do not attempt to repair syahi cracks, lifting, or surface damage yourself. The syahi compound and its application technique are specialized skills. Home repairs (superglue, epoxy, re-coating with commercial adhesives) invariably change the head's tone and usually make the problem worse. If the syahi needs repair, see the Getting Expert Help guide.