The tabla is the most popular drum instrument used in the music of north India. It is a rhythm instrument and accompanies vocal forms like khayal and ghazal, and instruments like the sitar and sarod. It is also a popular accompaniment to dance forms like Kathak.

Traditionally played only as an accompaniment, the tabla has recently gained status and acquired the position of a solo instrument. It is capable of producing a wide range of sound modulations.
The term tabla is derived from tabl, a kind of Arabian drum where ‘ta’ means tala, ‘b’ means bol and ‘l’ means laya.

Performance
The banya or the left side of the tabla produces a rounder and heavier sound, while the danya or the right side has a high-pitched sound quality. Before a vocal or instrumental performance, the danya is tuned to the tanpura.

A large number of tonal effects called bols can be produced on the tabla, depending on the part of the instrument struck, the way of striking it and the duration of sound produced. These bols are called the alphabets of the tabla. There are ten bols of which seven are played on the danya and three on the banya.

Bols on the danya are - Ta, Na, Tun, Tee, The, Tee, Re.
Bols on the banya are - Ghe, Ga, Ke or Kat.
These basic bols are combined to produce many more bols. For example when Ta, Tee and Tin of the danya and Ghe of the banya are struck together, they produce dha, dhee, dhin.
These bols are employed in playing many talas like teentala, rupak tala, jhaptala, ektala, kaharwa and pancham sawari.
There are a variety of subtle and graceful patterns of playing the tabla which depend on the mastery of the player, the gharana he belongs to, and his personal preference. Usually a tabla performance begins with the peshkar. It is the first and the simplest expression used to introduce the tala. The qaida is played next in which the musician plays the tabla in changing tempi. The gat follows, and is speedy in movement. It usually runs over many tala cycles. The relas forms the finale and is played at a very fast tempo.

Maestros

There are many ways a tabla can be played. Six main styles have been identified. They are Delhi, Ajrara and Punjab from the Paschim Baj and Benaras, Farukabad and Lucknow from the Purab Baj.

Ahmed Jan Thirakawa, Anokhey Lal, Kanthe Maharaj, Santaprasad, Keramutallah Khan, Chatur Lal, Shankar Ghosh, Kanai Dutta, Mahapurush Mitra, and Latif Ahmed Khan are some of the most important contributors towards the development of the tabla.

Alla Rakha and his son Zakir Hussain are the most popular exponents of the tabla in contemporary times. Today the tabla has achieved international recognition largely due to the efforts of Zakir Hussain.

Kinara
Kinara or chanti is a ring of leather about 2 cm wide. It is pasted around the sur or middle circular membrane and is stitched firmly to a leather braid called the gajra. Adjusting its elasticity varies the pitch of the sound produced.

Gajra
A leather braid stitched to the sur or the middle membrane, it is also used for fine-tuning the instrument. Striking the gajra upwards lowers the pitch and downwards, increases it.

Sur
A circular piece of leather forming the middle membrane held by the kinara, a ring of leather. It affects the pitch of the sound produced.

Syahi
A tar-like black paste made of iron dust. It is applied to the centre of the drums to improve its sound quality.

Bayan
The bayan is the left drum of the tabla, and considered male. It is made of clay or copper. It is narrow at the bottom and wide at the top. The bayan is about 6-9 inches tall and about 9-10 inches wide.

Dayan
The dayan is the right drum of the tabla, considered female or madeen. It is made of wood, usually black sheesham. Sometimes neem, mango, khadir and kathal wood is also used. It is broader at the base and narrower at the top, and is about 9-11 inches tall and 5-6 inches wide.

Basics of Your flute, how the flute makes a sound shaping the air-jet making the first sound Breathing, How music is written down Reading music holding the flute Fingering diagrams.

In Playing the flute, you will find the note B The note A The note G. also, The slur
The notes C, F along with the note B Flat (A sharp), Centreing the flute, the note F sharp or G flat, Tonguing, The note E, Thane, The notes D, to D.  Then you proceed on to some help with the lower notes, The notes - lower C sharp and lower E flat, and More tone improvement.

Then The note C sharp, G sharp, A recap on tone quality the second register
The notes E , F (second register), The notes F sharp, G , G sharp(second register), Harmonics, Staccato Dynamics, The notes A#, b,c,c SHARP (second register), d, d sharp AND e (third register).

This is followed by these chapters. Going on where to go from here unfamiliar rhythms, Vibrato, Some special effects, Musical terms, Fingering chart, Supplement of guitar and piano accompaniments at the end of text..

The bansuri flute holds a important position in India. It is popular all over India and is known by many names like bansuri, murali, vanshi, venu and khuzhal.

It is a wind instrument and due to its antiquity, boasts of many varieties. The two main ones are the horizontal and the vertical flute. The horizontal flute is perhaps the only instrument used in all categories of music, folk, classical, popular and devotional, because of the wide range of sounds it produces. It is recognised both as a solo and accompanying instrument to musical forms like bhajan and tillana. The vertical flute is not used in classical music, and is popular only as a folk instrument in north India.

Bansuri is derived from the Hindi words bans which means ‘bamboo’ and sur which means ‘melody’.
Performance.

The opening of the flute is rested on the lower lip to blow through it. The thumbs hold the flute in a horizontal position while three fingers of the left hand, and four of the right hand manipulate the sound produced by opening or closing the playing holes (Sur - These are the six or seven playing holes along the length of a flute) .

A wide range of notes can be produced from these six or seven holes. The player blows into the mouth hole, thus causing the column of air inside the tube to vibrate. The lowest octave of the scale is produced by altering the effective length of the tube by covering the holes with the fingers. The next octave of the scale is produced in the same way but with increased wind pressure, and the third octave is produced in a more complicated way by ’cross fingerings’. The first octave is thick and deep, the second octave is smooth and clear, and the third bright and penetrating. The player can modulate the sound by only partially opening the available holes with his fingers.

On the horizontal flute, the shrutis and the gamakas can be obtained by complicated finger techniques, adjustments of the blowing pressure, and slight changes in the angles of the flute on the lip. Long flutes have a rich, deep and mellow tone whereas on the short flutes the tone is high pitched.

Maestros
T.R. Mahalingam, Pannalal Ghosh, Hari Prasad Chaurasia, Mahalingam Ramaswamy Iyer, the Sikil Sisters, and Ramani and Shashank Subramaniam are some of the exponents of this instrument..