In tabla, practice is not an exercise; it is a relationship. The word sadhana suggests a path, a disciplined attention over time. Riyaz suggests daily effort — a craft, not a performance. Together they describe the way a tabla player grows: by returning to the instrument with patience, focus, and humility.
What follows is a thoughtful approach to practice that respects tradition without becoming rigid. It is meant for students who want depth, not simply speed.
The Purpose of Practice
Practice has three aims, and the order matters. Clarity of sound and timing must come first. Control of dynamics, articulation, and endurance follows. Expression comes last, as a natural result rather than a forced display. Many players chase expression before clarity. The reverse is more reliable.
This ordering is not arbitrary. It reflects a pedagogical logic that runs through most gharana traditions, even when those traditions differ on nearly everything else. Clarity — the ability to produce a clean, ringing na, a full tun, a precise tin — is the ground on which everything else is built. Without it, dynamics become noise and expression becomes affectation. A student who attempts to play with feeling before the bols ring true is, in a sense, decorating a structure that has not yet been made sound.
The tension here deserves acknowledgment. Expression is what draws most students to the instrument in the first place. The layered interplay of a skilled soloist, the way a tihai lands with both surprise and inevitability — these are the moments that inspire. To be told that expression must wait, that months or years of clean repetition must come first, can feel like being asked to ignore the very thing that made the tabla compelling. Yet this is precisely the discipline that sadhana demands. The paradox resolves itself over time: clarity, pursued long enough, becomes its own form of expression. A perfectly articulated theka at a slow tempo carries a dignity that no amount of speed can manufacture.
The Daily Rhythm
A mature practice routine feels simple on the surface. It is not about novelty; it is about consistency. A balanced rhythm often includes quiet theka to settle the sense of tala, focused bol articulation to clean the tone, one form such as kaida or rela explored slowly and then at tempo, a short composition to reinforce memory and cadence, and a few minutes of listening to keep the ear informed by the tradition. These elements do not need equal time. The point is to keep the foundation alive every day.
Depth Over Variety
Students often feel guilty for practicing the same kaida for weeks. Far from a weakness, this is the method. In tabla, depth reveals detail that speed obscures. Return to a single theme across multiple sessions, focusing on articulation one day, timing the next, phrasing after that, and dynamics thereafter. You will discover that the theme grows with you. This is the essence of riyaz.
How does this discovery actually feel? In the first days with a new kaida, the hands are occupied with mechanics — fingering, sequence, the basic shape of each bol. The player's attention is consumed by what comes next. But as the days accumulate and the sequence becomes automatic, something shifts. The hands begin to find the spaces between the bols. Micro-variations in pressure emerge. The relationship between the dayan and bayan starts to feel less like two separate tasks and more like a single voice with two registers. A phrase that felt stiff on day three begins to breathe on day ten. By the third week, the kaida is no longer something you are playing; it is something you are inside of, hearing from within its own structure.
The tradition resists the urge to move quickly from one composition to the next for exactly this reason. Each kaida, each rela, each tukda contains more information than a few sessions can extract. The measure is not whether you can play it correctly, but whether you have heard everything it has to say.
The Role of Silence
Silence is not empty time; it is where timing is tested. When you pause, your internal tala reveals itself. Short deliberate silences — even within a kaida — make your time feel confident rather than rushed. Learning to respect silence is one of the fastest ways to sound more mature.
Silence in tabla is not merely dramatic; it is structural. In solo performance, a pause before the sam of a tihai creates anticipation precisely because the listener's internal count continues through the silence. The emptiness is not absence — it is charged with the weight of the approaching resolution. In accompaniment, silence serves a different function: it gives the soloist room, and it signals a command of the rhythmic cycle so secure that the player does not need to fill every beat to prove it.
In riyaz, deliberate silence teaches something that continuous playing cannot. When you stop mid-phrase and allow the tala to continue unplayed, you confront the accuracy of your internal pulse without the support of your own sound. This is uncomfortable, and that discomfort is the point. The player who can hold silence for a full avart and re-enter precisely on sam has internalized the cycle in a way that no amount of continuous playing can guarantee. Silence, practiced intentionally, becomes a form of technical training as rigorous as any bol exercise.
Listening as a Daily Discipline
Listening is often treated as optional. In reality, it is part of practice. It shapes taste, phrasing, and tempo. A player who listens regularly absorbs the tradition's pacing and articulation in a way that no mechanical click can teach. Choose one recording each week and listen with a question in mind: how does the soloist build from slow to fast, where do the compositions appear, and how does the soloist return to theka after dense phrases? Listening with a question sharpens the ear and clarifies the mind.
Practice Without Performance Anxiety
Many students practice as if being judged, even alone. This creates tension and shallow learning. True sadhana is private and forgiving. It allows mistakes to be informative rather than humiliating. One small change helps: practice at a volume that feels intimate. It invites attention without the pressure of performance.
Speed, too, becomes a source of anxiety. Students often push tempo before the material is ready, driven by an internal standard borrowed from recordings of master players. But the tempo at which a seasoned soloist performs a kaida is the result of decades of preparation — it is an endpoint, not a starting point. Practicing at a tempo that allows full awareness of each bol, even if that tempo feels embarrassingly slow, is not a concession. It is a strategy. Slow practice builds the neural pathways that fast practice merely tests. The patience to remain at a comfortable speed until the material genuinely asks to move faster is one of the least glamorous and most consequential skills in riyaz.
Measuring Progress Without Obsession
Progress in tabla is not linear. Some weeks feel effortless; others feel stalled. The skill is to measure progress by consistency rather than speed. A simple log can help: what felt clear today, what felt unstable, and what will you return to tomorrow? A few sentences can reveal long-term growth that daily frustration cannot see.
Working With a Teacher
The guru-shishya relationship is not merely instructional. It is a transmission of taste and discipline. A good teacher will not only correct you, but also prevent you from practicing in a way that creates bad habits. Bring one prepared composition and one honest question about your weaknesses. This invites guidance that is both musical and practical.
A related question surfaces as students mature: when does riyaz become truly self-directed? In the early years, a teacher's role is prescriptive — what to practice, how long, at what tempo. But as a student develops, the relationship tends to shift. The teacher becomes less a source of assignments and more a mirror, reflecting back what the student cannot yet hear in their own playing. The transition is gradual and rarely announced. A student who begins to identify their own weaknesses, who arrives at a lesson not just with a prepared piece but with a specific question about phrasing or dynamics, is already moving toward independence. The teacher's task then becomes subtler: to confirm, to redirect, and occasionally to challenge an assumption the student did not know they held. The arc from receiving instruction to seeking refinement is itself a marker of sadhana.
The Long View
A serious tabla player practices for decades. The best among them are not the ones who have always practiced the most; they are the ones who have practiced the most consistently. Sadhana is not a sprint; it is a quiet, dignified companionship with the instrument.
A deep study of sadhana eventually changes how you hear ordinary time. Cycles become narratives, and riyaz begins to feel less like a count and more like a character. Accordingly, seasoned players say that practice reshapes the ear before it reshapes the hand. The goal is not to memorize daily practice for its own sake, but to cultivate a sense of time that can carry both restraint and joy (Clayton, 2000; Gottlieb, 1993).