Hello. In this episode we'll be looking at Tabla Touch and in particular its MIDI capabilities.
Now you may be someone who doesn't know what midi is and if that is the case
i'm going to do a very brief summary of what midi enables a musician to achieve,
but there are many videos online where you can find out more about midi in depth - but midi is
actually an acronym it's four letters m-i-d-i and it stands for musical instrument digital interface
and it is exactly that. It's an interface between a musical instrument be it a Tabla Touch
or a keyboard and another device - an electronic device be it a laptop or a sound module.
And in order to connect the two together you'll need a midi cable and there are many types of midi
cables in the market but the one that Tabla Touch uses is this type of midi cable i'll hold it up to
the camera so you can see it closely and so Tabla Touch has this type of midi socket in it and i've
used the lead like this it's already connected and now the Tabla Touch can speak to the computer.
Now why does it need to do that? Well there are three main reasons for why
midi is so useful in Tabla Touch.. Firstly, I can access sounds that are in the computer as well as
sounds that are in Tabla Touch that's the first thing. Secondly I can use the midi interface to
create tabla score. So if i have a score writing software like dorico for example and I'm a
composer, I could use Tabla Touch - I could play patterns using my very bad or very good technique
and then create a tabla score for someone to play. Thirdly the other advantage of midi is that if you
are an owner of a Tabla Touch, with the aid of a midi cable you can update your firmware online. So
as we are constantly developing Tabla Touch and upgrading the firmware, updates will
become available and then by connecting it to your laptop and of course the internet we can
update your firmware. So let's have a look at the musical side of midi and see what's available with
Tabla Touch and Logic - which i've loaded up in my laptop. Many people describe the tabla as 'the
world's most expressive drum'. Personally, I think that's going a bit too far, but anyway
nevertheless it is a very expressive drum and it has a whole range of tones which are produced
by striking the drum in different positions but also striking them in different ways so i'm just
going to demonstrate now some of those sounds and how they're produced. If i strike the drum
on the edge of the drum head whilst holding my third finger down it produces this sound
and if i strike it in the same position but don't put my third finger down produces that sound.
Then there are closed sounds.
There's also another sound closer to the black spot with my third finger down.
On the bigger drum there is the iconic sound of the tabla which is that glissando
and then closed sounds so when i for example play this sound, the computer - via midi - will receive
it as a note D. This is a C, this is a C# and so on. So I'm going to play it now and you'll see
the notes come up on the screen - but I just want to explain what i've got here at the moment so,
in Logic, I've set up two tracks and two instrument-sets, and on the first track i've set up a drum
kit. Now we all know that a drum kit is made up of lots of individual drums like a a bass drum
a snare drum a hi-hat a tom etc etc and what i've done is I've assigned each one of these tabla
notes to a particular drum in the drum kit. So for example when i play on the edge of the table the
computer will receive it as a note D and I have assigned that note D to for example a snare drum.
So if I play now - i'm going to turn the volume of my tabla off so you're not going to hear the
actual tabla touch itself - we're just going to hear the sounds coming out of the laptop and on
this keyboard here you'll see the notes appearing so I'm just going to arm it and you'll hear
So what i'm going to do i'm going to set up a little loop and record this.
I'll put it into record.
Okay and now i'm going to go to the next sound which is a Slap Electric Bass Guitar
and on that i'm just going to play along on the spot here and just make up something. Here we go..
So, that is not going to be a number one hit I can tell you now, but i'm going to carry on and i'm
going to turn now the audio of the tabla up so I can play along that with a tabla sound. So let me
turn the audio up here. I'm going to unarm it here and I can then combine tabla with the drum kit
and the bass guitar from the computer - and the tabla sound is coming out of the Tabla Touch.
NOTE: To record the Tabla Touch audio into Logic, you will need an audio interface.
There you are - so anyway that was a very simple demonstration of
what's available with midi and if you're somebody who is into midi i'm sure you can
create much better music than i've just done now! But it's just an example of what you can do with
Tabla Touch and all the nuances and gestures that the tabla instrument has, translated into
a midi environment - which i'm sure you'll agree with me is a very exciting arena of creativity!