Talk about Takadimi

Musicians across cultures have varying opinions on the concepts of beats, meters, and how to count them.  This can range from a gong keeping the rhythm steady or an internal pulse that every musician is expected to count out in their head.  Counting is an essential part of becoming a skilled and reputable musician in our western society today!

However, “counting” may not be the best term for it because many systems from other cultures don’t use numbers at all. In the early 1990’s three men (Richard Hoffman, William Pelto, and John W. White) came together determined to create the most well rounded rhythmic system.  Their plan was to compile thousands of years worth of organizational systems and borrow and cut ideas where needed to create the a system that could be used both by children and college students. After years of research they came up with the “Takadimi System”. Before they even began to formulate their new system Hoffman, Pelto, and White came up with 6 points that they believed to be absolutely essential for their system to work properly.  Their criteria are as follows:

1. It should lead to accuracy and musicality in performance,

both studies and sight-read, including the ability to

recognize and perform musical gesture.

2. It should require and reflect an understanding of rhythmic

structure, recognition of metric and rhythmic interaction,

and an awareness of precise contextual location of beats and

attack points.

3. It should facilitate aural recognition and identification of

rhythmic patterns and metric divisions.

4. It should provide a precise and consistent language for the

discussion of temporal phenomena. There should be no need

to create new terms or separate categories for performance,

transcription, or analytical work.

5. It should address rhythmic issues presented by musics

outside the realm of traditional tonal literature such as

asymmetric meters, modulation of meter or tempo, complex

syncopations, complex tuplet groupings, and passages that

combine these in novel and challenging ways.

6. Like pitch solfège, it should be a system that is easily

applied and adapts to broad applications, and it should be a

tool for life-long use.

To come up with these six points they looked back at older systems such as the Hungarian Kodaly Method and the 19th Century French Time-Names system.  From there they began to formulate the Takadimi system.

The Takadimi system is comprised of many syllables that are used for a specific place in each beat.  In simple meter, the attack on the beat is called ‘ta’ and an attack on the second half of the beat is always called ‘di.’ When the beat is divided further into fourths, it would be pronounced ‘ta ka di mi.’ They used and expanded version of these syllables to accommodate for the more complex compound meters which is “Ta-Va-Ki-Di-Da-Ma”.  In these meters, as in simple meter, the attack on the beat is called ‘ta.’ The first division into thirds is pronounced ‘ta ki da.’ The subdivision into sixths is pronounced ‘ta va ki di da ma.’  

This is an example used for third graders, which shows the age versatility of this system. Both Brian and Hannah can recall students having problems counting rhythm not because they don’t understand it, but because they lose track of the numbers. The takadimi system seems to lend itself well to young children who do not want to depend on numbers!a

As you can see the syllables Ta and Di are used where we would use 1 and 2.  Va, Ki, Da, Ma, and sometimes Ti are used to as subdivisions within the beat. The pictures below were created by the founders of the system to help explain how it works.

It is easy to see the similarities in how we count music to this system.  We are obviously far more comfortable with simply counting “1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and” rather than “Ta Ka Di Mi Ta Ka Di Mi”, however, there seem to be some innate benefits to each system.  For example, I can’t figure out an easy way to keep track of the which beat I am on when using Takadimi while it is hard to lose track of it when you are saying the numbers out loud on the beat as we typically do.  A common problem we run into while using numbers to keep the beat steady is saying the entire number in one beat.  If the rhythm is faster it can become very hard to say “three”, that is why many people choose to say “tee” rather than three.  Both systems are viable and used by many people and cultures.  Once again it becomes clear that there is not one right way; often times, familiarity and comfort play a role in what system we chose to use.

Brian: Writing
Hannah: Media and editing