South Indian Rhythm is composed of beats and fractional beats in much the same way as is Western Rhythm. The way that they are arranged and grouped differs and, of course, so does the descriptive language.
One thing to know about carnatic rhythm at the start is that, in any one composition, the tempo is always constant. There is no slowing or speeding in the performance of the piece: watch as the artists 'puts tala' (counts the beats by hand movements)—it will be done with metronome-like consistency! Were you to read this without having heard the music you might think that this would create flavourless music; not at all! Carnatic music is very exciting, very funky, very Jazz-like and full of rhythmic variation and syncopation.
Lets begin with the language of the basic components
To take the most common tala, Adi Tala. Adi tala is a cycle of eight beats. Normally each beat will consist of four pulses. Because there is a spoken language of carnatic rhythm, we could say that Adi tala consists of 8 x 4 = 32 words. The words shown in Bold occur on the beat.
| Ta Ka Di Mi | Ta Ka Ju No | Ta Ka Di Mi | Ta Ka Ju No |
| Ta Ka Di Mi | Ta Ka Ju No | Ta Ka Di Mi | Ta Ka Ju No |
If you recite this, keeping time by clapping, you will be doing your first tala exercise. If you keep your clapping at the same speed, but double the speed of reciting you will see that we still have eight beats, but now 64 words.
| Ta Ka Di Mi Ta Ka Ju No | Ta Ka Di Mi Ta Ka Ju No | Ta Ka Di Mi Ta Ka Ju No | Ta Ka Di Mi Ta Ka Ju No |
| Ta Ka Di Mi Ta Ka Ju No | Ta Ka Di Mi Ta Ka Ju No | Ta Ka Di Mi Ta Ka Ju No | Ta Ka Di Mi Ta Ka Ju No |
Thus you will be discovering second speed. You can see how doubling again (Third Speed) would give 128 words, but still eight beats. Want to double it again? How fast can you move your tongue? (Hint: make your first speed nice and slow)
Begin again at First Speed. This time halve the number of word. Halving it again gives just one word per beat.
Try as many different speeds according to this method as you can, concentrating on keeping the clapping at the same tempo
Try to speak clearly even at the higher speeds: this is vocal percussion, if it is not percussive it won't do! (Hint: emphasize the first word of each set of four, TaKaDiMi TaKaJuNo.)