Over the last few months I started practicing one phrase for 40 minutes at a time, and the difference has been so major that I'd honestly say it feels like I only just started practicing for the first time. When you stay on one phrase that long, and do it consecutively, the hand starts to really remember it — it becomes more efficient, and it becomes stronger.
Two other changes in this month's plan: There's a new section for Dhine Taga, plus a Misc section for mukhras and other material.
I also cut each section down to just three phrases. As long as you have a few good phrases for each section, you make a lot more progress than you do spreading yourself across a long list.
The last improvement I've felt is from practicing slow thekhas. It's really improved the quality of my tin and na. It seems like such an obvious thing to work on, but I only started recently, and it's a gamechanger.
Some things in the document are written in shorthand — if you have questions, let me know.
Last month's practice plan had a mistake in it — both bayan sections were left out entirely. I didn't catch it at the time.
A few weeks in, I realized I'd had a genuinely good month. I'd spent far more time on things like dhere dhere than I normally would, and it showed in my playing. When I went back and looked at why, it was obvious: with two sections missing, everything else came around more often. Fewer things in rotation meant more reps on each one.
So this month I did it on purpose. I cut a lot of phrases and kept only the best four for each section of tabla. Many masters practice just three or four compositions per section — that's the principle.
The Tete Practice, August 2026. Print it, keep it next to your tabla, write in it.
It took me 16 years to figure this out. Sixteen. Let me save you over a decade of time. First, let me say — I'm not a super technical guy. Everything here is just my own journey following the sound I like.
Growing up, my dad and I loved these DIY home projects. He's an engineer, and he introduced me to really nice vintage speakers early on. I think he spent his younger years building tape decks and doing projects like this. That's honestly one of my biggest advantages in tabla: I grew up listening to tabla at a really high audio quality. That sound got in my head and I've been following it ever since. So over 16 years of recording, I've made two big discoveries. Neither is that technical once you see it — but both changed everything.
Discovery 1: Phase A lot of tabla players use two mics — recording or on stage — and just assume two mics means better sound. Two problems with that. One, it takes real time to learn to balance two mics properly. Two, and this is the big one: phase cancellation. When the waves from your two mics aren't aligned, they cancel each other out — and instead of adding depth and bass to your sound, you lose a huge amount of it. It's not that technical, it's just improper alignment of the waves. But most tabla players still don't know about it — imagine spending all that time developing your bayan for the bass, only for phase to eliminate it.
Discovery 2: Panels (and why it took me years) This one's recent. Back to the DIY thing — I built my first panels years ago. They were 2 inches thick. About 10 years later we built newer ones, made them look nicer — 4 inches. These were filled with Owens Corning 703 insulation — my dad already knew about it, probably from his engineering background, so he knew exactly what to look up so we could buy it locally and build the panels ourselves. Here's the thing I didn't understand back then: the thicker the panel, the deeper the frequency it absorbs. A thin curtain grabs the highs. The thicker you go, the lower you reach. Those 2-inch and 4-inch panels are really only working from around 1000Hz and up. But if you've ever measured the bayan, it sits around 70Hz. So to actually absorb that, you need the thickest panels you can get — around 12 inches and up. Only then do you get that warm tabla sound. And it's not just the bayan — even though the dayan is the higher-pitched drum, it still needs its lower frequencies to fully articulate. (Photo below — the blue panel on the right is the old 4" one. The wood-framed panel on the left is the new design, 12+ inches thick. Same idea, very different result.)
What's next Now all that's left is to keep learning to mix and master, and to try out all the top mics. It's the same thing I did with camera lenses — everyone knows the top brands, the vintage glass, Zeiss, Leica. I tried them all and ended up loving Leica the most. I'm going to do the same with mics. That's what's coming.
The real point Recording, mixing, mastering — I think this should be treated as its own section of tabla. Like dhere dhere. Like dhene gene. If you're putting your playing online, the audio is part of your riyaz. And yeah — this is a long one. But it's my community and my channel, so... big deal, right?
Two years ago I practiced 25 things a day for 6 minutes each. Now it's 4 things for 40–50 minutes each. That shift changed my sound more than anything — depth over breadth. Fewer things, worked longer, is how the tone actually comes.
This is that plan: 28 days, Terekete focus, four sections a day, with a BPM log built in so speed takes care of itself and you can just chase sound. Everything I'm playing is written out. It's not perfect — it's my working document, and it's yours free.
A few months ago I started doing something in my practice that I genuinely did not enjoy. Every 30 minutes, I'd switch to a different dayan.
If you've been playing for any length of time, you know the feeling — you sit down at a tabla you haven't touched in a while, and the first 20 minutes are negotiation. Your hand is finding the diameter. Your fingers are recalibrating to where the sur sits, how much pressure the skin needs, where na lives. By the time it feels right, you've been at it for half an hour.
So switching every 30 minutes meant I was *constantly* in that uncomfortable warm-up zone. It was frustrating.
Then something shifted. The warm-up window started shrinking. 25 minutes. 20. Then 15. Now I can sit down at any dayan in my collection and be at close to full playing capacity within 10 to 15 minutes.
Two things came out of this that I didn't expect.
First — I'm always ready for accompaniment. Someone needs a tabla player at a specific pitch on short notice? I've been on that dayan recently. It's tuned, it's in shape, my hand remembers it. There's no "let me practice for a few days first."
Second, and maybe more important — it forced me into a more compact technique. When you only play one dayan, you build habits specific to that drum. Switching constantly strips that away. What's left is technique that works *anywhere*, on *any* size, at *any* pitch.
**And here's the piece of gold I want to share.**
Through this rotation practice, I discovered something that's changed everything: **the pinky.** I started letting my pinky rest lightly on the outside rim of the dayan, and it turns out that small contact does two enormous things — it gives my hand a stable anchor for grip, and it instantly tells me the size of the tabla I'm on. The rim is the reference point. My hand reads it through the pinky and adapts before I've even played a bol.
Once I noticed this, I started watching footage more closely, and you can see it in some of the greats — the pinky doing quiet work on the rim, providing grip and reference. Not all masters do it, but enough of them do that it's worth paying attention to. It's not decorative. It's structural.
This single adjustment is a huge part of why my warm-up time dropped from 30 minutes to 10.
It's still uncomfortable. The 20-minute mark always tempts me to stay on one dayan. But that discomfort is exactly where the growth lives.
If you want to try it: set a timer, rotate through whatever dayans you have, let the pinky find the rim, and commit for a week.
After months of testing one- and two-mic setups, this is the placement that's been the most consistent for me.
A quick note: this is an experimental mic position. I went looking for it because traditional micing—just a center mic a few inches away—wouldn't let me get a full bayan and a soothing dayan at the same time. It was always one or the other. This placement solves that.
One mic (I use a DPA 2011c). It sits roughly 5–8 inches above the bayan, angled about 25–30° down toward the rim of the dayan, which is about 7–8 inches from the capsule.
Why this spot works: Close to the bayan keeps the low end full—and that proximity is what gives you a full bayan sound even on phone speakers
The distance to the dayan pulls out the harshness and keeps it soothing It's far enough off the heads that you can play with your full weight, not holding back I tried two mics too. It sounded good, but never as natural as a single source—and honestly I was just tired of running into all the little headaches that come with two mics. One mic is more forgiving and easier to live with.
Because it's so easy to record this way with any of my dayan's, I capture my playing and then listen back during the day while I'm working on other things. It's effectively doubled the time I spend focused on my practice every day—I'm absorbing my own playing even when I'm not at the instrument.
The photo shows the setup for right-handed players. I'm left-handed, so I mirrored the image to show it the standard right-handed way—if you're left-handed like me, just flip it. Try it and let me know how it sounds!
TexasTabla
September Practice Plan
This month's focus is Dhene Gene and Dhati Gene.
Over the last few months I started practicing one phrase for 40 minutes at a time, and the difference has been so major that I'd honestly say it feels like I only just started practicing for the first time. When you stay on one phrase that long, and do it consecutively, the hand starts to really remember it — it becomes more efficient, and it becomes stronger.
Two other changes in this month's plan:
There's a new section for Dhine Taga, plus a Misc section for mukhras and other material.
I also cut each section down to just three phrases. As long as you have a few good phrases for each section, you make a lot more progress than you do spreading yourself across a long list.
The last improvement I've felt is from practicing slow thekhas. It's really improved the quality of my tin and na. It seems like such an obvious thing to work on, but I only started recently, and it's a gamechanger.
Some things in the document are written in shorthand — if you have questions, let me know.
Free download: drive.google.com/file/d/15cerIyEdU2C7IwLlZMEwFniTE…
3 weeks ago | [YT] | 19
View 1 reply
TexasTabla
Last month's practice plan had a mistake in it — both bayan sections were left out entirely. I didn't catch it at the time.
A few weeks in, I realized I'd had a genuinely good month. I'd spent far more time on things like dhere dhere than I normally would, and it showed in my playing. When I went back and looked at why, it was obvious: with two sections missing, everything else came around more often. Fewer things in rotation meant more reps on each one.
So this month I did it on purpose. I cut a lot of phrases and kept only the best four for each section of tabla. Many masters practice just three or four compositions per section — that's the principle.
The Tete Practice, August 2026. Print it, keep it next to your tabla, write in it.
Download: drive.google.com/file/d/1ojyOKPpTv5o3R_P7FEhwPjNkn…
If it helps your playing, leave a review — it means a lot and helps other players find this work.
Trustpilot: www.trustpilot.com/evaluate/tablaevolution.com
Google: g.page/r/Cd5Da9BuME0_EBM/review
— Prashant
1 month ago | [YT] | 17
View 4 replies
TexasTabla
Following the Sound
It took me 16 years to figure this out. Sixteen. Let me save you over a decade of time.
First, let me say — I'm not a super technical guy. Everything here is just my own journey following the sound I like.
Growing up, my dad and I loved these DIY home projects. He's an engineer, and he introduced me to really nice vintage speakers early on. I think he spent his younger years building tape decks and doing projects like this. That's honestly one of my biggest advantages in tabla: I grew up listening to tabla at a really high audio quality. That sound got in my head and I've been following it ever since.
So over 16 years of recording, I've made two big discoveries. Neither is that technical once you see it — but both changed everything.
Discovery 1: Phase
A lot of tabla players use two mics — recording or on stage — and just assume two mics means better sound. Two problems with that. One, it takes real time to learn to balance two mics properly. Two, and this is the big one: phase cancellation. When the waves from your two mics aren't aligned, they cancel each other out — and instead of adding depth and bass to your sound, you lose a huge amount of it. It's not that technical, it's just improper alignment of the waves. But most tabla players still don't know about it — imagine spending all that time developing your bayan for the bass, only for phase to eliminate it.
Discovery 2: Panels (and why it took me years)
This one's recent. Back to the DIY thing — I built my first panels years ago. They were 2 inches thick. About 10 years later we built newer ones, made them look nicer — 4 inches. These were filled with Owens Corning 703 insulation — my dad already knew about it, probably from his engineering background, so he knew exactly what to look up so we could buy it locally and build the panels ourselves.
Here's the thing I didn't understand back then: the thicker the panel, the deeper the frequency it absorbs. A thin curtain grabs the highs. The thicker you go, the lower you reach. Those 2-inch and 4-inch panels are really only working from around 1000Hz and up. But if you've ever measured the bayan, it sits around 70Hz. So to actually absorb that, you need the thickest panels you can get — around 12 inches and up. Only then do you get that warm tabla sound. And it's not just the bayan — even though the dayan is the higher-pitched drum, it still needs its lower frequencies to fully articulate.
(Photo below — the blue panel on the right is the old 4" one. The wood-framed panel on the left is the new design, 12+ inches thick. Same idea, very different result.)
What's next
Now all that's left is to keep learning to mix and master, and to try out all the top mics. It's the same thing I did with camera lenses — everyone knows the top brands, the vintage glass, Zeiss, Leica. I tried them all and ended up loving Leica the most. I'm going to do the same with mics. That's what's coming.
The real point
Recording, mixing, mastering — I think this should be treated as its own section of tabla. Like dhere dhere. Like dhene gene. If you're putting your playing online, the audio is part of your riyaz.
And yeah — this is a long one. But it's my community and my channel, so... big deal, right?
2 months ago | [YT] | 8
View 3 replies
TexasTabla
Free tabla practice plan — my actual July riyaz.
Two years ago I practiced 25 things a day for 6 minutes each. Now it's 4 things for 40–50 minutes each. That shift changed my sound more than anything — depth over breadth. Fewer things, worked longer, is how the tone actually comes.
This is that plan: 28 days, Terekete focus, four sections a day, with a BPM log built in so speed takes care of itself and you can just chase sound. Everything I'm playing is written out. It's not perfect — it's my working document, and it's yours free.
Grab it here 👇
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScKalhcJmn0I3aZoR…
2 months ago | [YT] | 25
View 6 replies
TexasTabla
A few months ago I started doing something in my practice that I genuinely did not enjoy. Every 30 minutes, I'd switch to a different dayan.
If you've been playing for any length of time, you know the feeling — you sit down at a tabla you haven't touched in a while, and the first 20 minutes are negotiation. Your hand is finding the diameter. Your fingers are recalibrating to where the sur sits, how much pressure the skin needs, where na lives. By the time it feels right, you've been at it for half an hour.
So switching every 30 minutes meant I was *constantly* in that uncomfortable warm-up zone. It was frustrating.
Then something shifted. The warm-up window started shrinking. 25 minutes. 20. Then 15. Now I can sit down at any dayan in my collection and be at close to full playing capacity within 10 to 15 minutes.
Two things came out of this that I didn't expect.
First — I'm always ready for accompaniment. Someone needs a tabla player at a specific pitch on short notice? I've been on that dayan recently. It's tuned, it's in shape, my hand remembers it. There's no "let me practice for a few days first."
Second, and maybe more important — it forced me into a more compact technique. When you only play one dayan, you build habits specific to that drum. Switching constantly strips that away. What's left is technique that works *anywhere*, on *any* size, at *any* pitch.
**And here's the piece of gold I want to share.**
Through this rotation practice, I discovered something that's changed everything: **the pinky.** I started letting my pinky rest lightly on the outside rim of the dayan, and it turns out that small contact does two enormous things — it gives my hand a stable anchor for grip, and it instantly tells me the size of the tabla I'm on. The rim is the reference point. My hand reads it through the pinky and adapts before I've even played a bol.
Once I noticed this, I started watching footage more closely, and you can see it in some of the greats — the pinky doing quiet work on the rim, providing grip and reference. Not all masters do it, but enough of them do that it's worth paying attention to. It's not decorative. It's structural.
This single adjustment is a huge part of why my warm-up time dropped from 30 minutes to 10.
It's still uncomfortable. The 20-minute mark always tempts me to stay on one dayan. But that discomfort is exactly where the growth lives.
If you want to try it: set a timer, rotate through whatever dayans you have, let the pinky find the rim, and commit for a week.
2 months ago | [YT] | 22
View 10 replies
TexasTabla
After months of testing one- and two-mic setups, this is the placement that's been the most consistent for me.
A quick note: this is an experimental mic position. I went looking for it because traditional micing—just a center mic a few inches away—wouldn't let me get a full bayan and a soothing dayan at the same time. It was always one or the other. This placement solves that.
One mic (I use a DPA 2011c). It sits roughly 5–8 inches above the bayan, angled about 25–30° down toward the rim of the dayan, which is about 7–8 inches from the capsule.
Why this spot works:
Close to the bayan keeps the low end full—and that proximity is what gives you a full bayan sound even on phone speakers
The distance to the dayan pulls out the harshness and keeps it soothing
It's far enough off the heads that you can play with your full weight, not holding back
I tried two mics too. It sounded good, but never as natural as a single source—and honestly I was just tired of running into all the little headaches that come with two mics. One mic is more forgiving and easier to live with.
Because it's so easy to record this way with any of my dayan's, I capture my playing and then listen back during the day while I'm working on other things. It's effectively doubled the time I spend focused on my practice every day—I'm absorbing my own playing even when I'm not at the instrument.
The photo shows the setup for right-handed players. I'm left-handed, so I mirrored the image to show it the standard right-handed way—if you're left-handed like me, just flip it.
Try it and let me know how it sounds!
3 months ago | [YT] | 26
View 0 replies
TexasTabla
Dhene Gene Night (Live) — Fix Your Least Favorite Bol 😅🥁
Tonight we’re opening the dusty folder: DHENE GENE (plus Na Na Gene / Dhati Gene).
We’ll make it clear, even, and actually musical
⏰ 8:30pm CST
8 months ago | [YT] | 15
View 1 reply
TexasTabla
🧪🥁 Variation Lab (Live) — New Phrases
Tabla could use an infusion of new energy.
Tonight we’re mixing bol families to create fresh, practice‑ready phrases — live.
⏰ 7:45pm CST
Come hang & steal the method.
8 months ago | [YT] | 4
View 0 replies
TexasTabla
🥁 LIVE Tonight — Strong Hands Session
⏰ 10pm CST (45–60 min)
Tonight’s focus: Terekete + Dhere Dhere
Exercises to really take both Terekete and Dhere Dhere to the next level.
See you tonight 🥁
8 months ago | [YT] | 7
View 1 reply
TexasTabla
🥁 LIVE Tonight — Discord Clip Review
⏰ 9:00pm CST (about 1–2 hours)
Tonight I’ll be reacting to clips from our Discord #share-your-playing channel and giving quick, practical feedback. See you all there!
8 months ago | [YT] | 8
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