Sur

One of the challenges when learning kirtan is learning how to match to the tabla. This is particularly true if you learn by watching keys rather than learn by the Sa-Re-Ga-Ma-Pa method. I was very fortunate in learning how to write out shabads from Bhai Gurcharan Singh Ji (Singapore), and reviewing over and over how the beats of teentaal match shabads. As he wrote them out, I was starting to understand how the beats of the shabad match to the beats of the tabla. Before that I had no conceptualization of what the tabla was doing, and thus no concept of where I made errors in the rhythm of the shabad. Where it didn't match I didn't understand. Now the opposite is true, where there are times I understand the skill of the tabla player may be limited in the taals they know how to play, or not knowing where to start the shabad, or playing too slow or too fast. I figured that part out when I started to learn the tabla myself. Counting out beats really does help, and if you don't have an itabla app or person to play tabla, you can get someone to count them out for you. The start of the taal (beat 1) or the sum, doesn't necessarily equate to the start of the shabad. Some shabads, the shabad may start off at beat 9 in teentaal or beat 5 in kehrwa for example. It is helpful to know how many beats your shabad is. You can figure this out by listening and counting this out. Let's say you are listening to the line Mere Lalan Ki Soba. Listen to the whole line and count out how many beats it was. Listen again to make sure it matches. Commonly shabads are usually 6 beats (Dadra), 8 (Kehrwa), or 16 (Teentaal). Less commonly they are 12 beats (Iktaal), and even less common for other taals like 15, 7, 10 etc. It is helpful to then figure out where the shabad's beat actually starts. The tabla player learns to recognize this by the way the shabad sounds. Over time you will figure this out, there is an emphasis note on where the tabla starts. Watch some youtube kirtan videos where the kirtan player starts and listen for when the tabla begins. Once you know how to count beats and know where it starts, it becomes a lot easier to figure out errors in where you are not matching the tabla. It is even more helpful to write out all the sur/notes and then match it up to figure out where your error is. 

Here's an example of one of the shabads Bhai Sahib taught us.

This is an example of a shabad by Bhai Avtar Singh Ji, who sings in classical raag, copied from his own book of shabads which have been verbally passed on through the generations from the times of our Guru Jis, except it is annotated with extra notations about how to play on the rabab, and notes about the taals and how many beats to play etc. In fact, I have an entire binder full of shabads and their notations which I have kept in plastic sleeves to preserve them. People often ask to see these shabads so they can understand how they are recorded. I think it is helpful to share these. There are some shabads I learned just by sound and didn't write the notations, they are simply memorized but a lot are recorded like this or recorded as a written shabad where I have marked an X for the sum of the shabad to know which taal it was played in and where it starts.