Hello, i am a flamenco guitarist. I have been having some wrist problems of late from overplaying and am looking into learning another instrument. I have always thought about learning the tabla and think that it would sound nice with flamenco.
Is that tabla an instrument that causes a lot of repetitive strain injuries? carpal tunnel?
Anything can cuase carpel tunnel that uses your wrists, But as someone else has said, i had tendonitis from guitar and tabla at first, but somehting happened and one cured the tendonitis from the other, and all is well in my hands/arms. Maybe you should look into maybe playing the guitar in a different position, guitar shouldnt be cuasing you injury unless your playing it in a bad position or you are too tense. Im really no doctor though.
I was learning classical guitar once and all was going well when bad luck struck. I damaged a nail on the ring finger of the right hand. Had to stop playing. Luckily, I found tabla but. . .a few years before, I had fallen off my bike and damaged my wrist on the left hand(I believe no bone was broken) but now I have a lump on top of my wrist(right opposite where I put the pressure for the bayan) and from time to time I feel some strain there. They(docs) will operate to remove the lump and I just hope that feel of strain will forever ago away. If the worse comes to the worse, I won't mind playing tabla with one hand. . . .hope I will never have to come to such extreme!!!
I suppose when you play guitar the wrist problem is located on your left hand. For playing tabla it is the right hand that suffers the most. Actually I am a bassplayer and since I started with tabla the strenght in my right fingers became more stronger. My bassplaying improved also.
Do you know the CD 'Curandero' featuring Miguel Espinoza (flamenco guitar) and Ty Burhoe (tabla)? When you hear it you think tabla was made for playing Flamenco. A perfect combination.
Playing tabla in a actual flamenco group is much different than Curandero stuff(I know from my own experience). In Curandero the tabla player is following the guitarist. He is not a strict time-keeper in many cases. Tabla fits nicely if you're playing tangos. In a nutshell: In my opinion tabla fits well if the song has a lot of melody, that you're able to follow. As a strict time- keeper (in flamenco music) very often tabla doesn't work as well as you expect. You have to experiment with it. Try different things. The mood of the song may sometimes require the sound of tabla.
There are also many technical aspects that you will confront, when playing fusion. To play what Zakir plays in Shakti, when following the accents and the music you have to have a very solid right hand technic to play tetetete phrases and mark accents with dhas or kats. Any comments?
i am leaning now to play flamenco beats on tabla. while i am not formaly trained i have been playing tabla for several years now.
what i have found so far is that the tabla is perfect as you can recreate the hand claps which set the tempo on the dayan and play the accents on the bayan to match the guitarist.
but i have just started this and i see lots to learn, and getting a grip on the 3 beat thing has been. . .different.
There was a south american tabla player I think his name is Nanos Vas Concello but he played his own style.Pretty good though.
And then there's Paco de lucia that always uses tabla
http://www.zambra.com/tienda/fichas/i/600/00558.php
http://www.artistdirect.com/store/artist/album/0,,74356,00.html
