Whenever i play na/ta i find that my ring finger which is resting to the shahi, starts to sweat a bit. And when i pull the finger away from the tabla i find it is black. I have been applying a fair amount of powder to my tabla head and am afraid that i might damage something if i put too much in. How can i keep the finger from sweating?
I don't think there's much you can do to keep your hadns from sweating when you play. I have the same problem, and I have to use a lot of talc to keep the gab from smearing like you describe. Using a lot of talc has not damaged my drums beyond muting it a little due to the powder collecting underneath the kinar, but that can be taken care of rather easily. In my opinion though, sweat will do more harm than talc in the long run, so you might as well use what you need to keep your hands dry. I generally just pour talc onto the drums these days, and try to keep it from getting underneath the kinar when I can.
If you have sweat that runs down your arms get wrist/sweat bands from a sporting store. (If you can push them back to your arms that is the best type. Keep a hand towel in your gear.
More tips:
Wash your hands thoroughly before you play dry them and give them a chance to dry, it's important to play with clean hands anyway.
Pour powder out on the right side of your Dayan and you can touch your ring finger to it frequently , in fact get into the habit as regular procedure, put your powder on the right, touch it with your right hand fingers , touch your right hand to the baya where your wrist touches. This is the way most use powder , don't put powder directly on the drum and don't cake your hands.
Try not to practice in muggy , humid areas if possible
Rohit (May 04, 2003 04:02 p.m.):
whenever i play na/ta i find that my ring finger which is resting to the shahi, starts to sweat a bit. And when i pull the finger away from the tabla i find it is black. I have been applying a fair amount of powder to my tabla head and am afraid that i might damage something if i put too much in. How can i keep the finger from sweating?
I had a bad habit of resting the ring finger on the shiyahi. Then I had that black patch, and I was warned that the acoustically optimal placing would be not the shiyahi itself, but the border between it and the sur. If I want to be really precise, the upper 3 mms of the fingertip touches the black part, the lower 3 mms contacts the skin of sur. Since that time I have no problem. I hope this helps. And yes, put the powder on your fingers (and left heel), not on the drum. Otherwise, above a certain speed, the moisture will dry in the air :-))
first-off, Thanks to everyone for the advice. The problem is that my arm isn't sweating, it's the actual finger, and after i lift arm off it becomes black, so i put more powder on the drums(which i now found i out i should not be doing) and the spot where my finger was becomes white, also the tiny fragments the siyahi was made of disappear and it becomes one piece.
Just one small tip. . .Some talc when combined with a bit of sweat tends to turn into dough because of its chemical content and ultimately glues to the head itself.
I use 'atheletes foot' talc which cover the seat pores and slows down the sweating process and it does no harm to the heads. In fact it is very smooth.
Rohit (May 05, 2003 06:49 p.m.):
first-off, Thanks to everyone for the advice. The problem is that my arm isn't sweating, it's the actual finger, and after i lift arm off it becomes black, so i put more powder on the drums(which i now found i out i should not be doing) and the spot where my finger was becomes white, also the tiny fragments the siyahi was made of disappear and it becomes one piece.
We understood what you meant. That happens to my drums too, and I'm sure it happens to anyone when their ring finger starts to sweat. Some people have more trouble than others, but I think that as long as your finger sweats, you should add powder until you don't damage the drum. Try doing what others suggested and instead of applying talc directly onto the drum (like I do, and it's probably a bad habit) just pour some out onto a piece of paper or something next to your drum and then just press your ring and pinky fingers into it when they start to sweat. (The problem is that you have to trade between sweat damage and talc damage, but in my experience sweat does more damage than talc.)
I am surprised that noboby came up with the solution. It's easy!
It studied Tabla 20 years ago in Benares where it is VERY hot and now I also live in Trinidad, which is also a hot country. And I inherited from my father extreme hand-sweating.
For practice purposes there are 2 solutions!
1. Use a small fan which gives just enough wind to cool your hands and place it in front of your Tablas. The amount of talc you have you use is almost neglectable.
2. Place a thin peace of cloth over your Tablas. If its thin enough it hardly muffles the sound! Works fine!
For life performances the only solution is the fan or enough talc.
By the way: Its easy to clean the sihai if its covered with to much sweat & powder. First use very fine sand paper and sand off the most of it. When you reach the black take a very small amount of ghee or any other organic fat and apply it lightly to surface. It becames pitch-black again. Then take a glass ball (letter weight) and polish the surface in fast for&back motion with good power while spinning the Tablas slowly around. Gets like new!
I spent many hours in workshops of Tabla makers in Benares watching them doing it. That's how I learned it!
