Music

I have played the Indian tabla for several decades, and routinely perform with well known world musicians like Catherine Groom, Hibiki Ichikawa, and Hidé Takemoto.

Hidé Takemoto and I run a music-art project called Fingers HQ. The goal of Fingers HQ is to highlight the intricate finger action on the tabla and the guitar. It is this finger action that releases sound one hears as music.

Tabla and Physics

The unique construction of the tabla and the vibrational properties of its loaded membrane have important consequences for microscale device physics. They offer a unique solution to a long-standing problem in polymer-based micromechanical systems, where the quality of resonance of a vibrating microscale polymer membrane is known to be low. Together with my colleagues, Mr Matthew Smith and Mr Mateo Cervantes, we highlight this problem and our solution inspired by the tabla. Our article can be read on page 52 of the Selwyn College Calendar 2022-2023.

A less known story of how the tabla inspired scientific thought in the 1920s, as well as what the tabla sounds and speaks like, can be listened to in one of my public talks in Cambridge at the link below.