13.1.13

Sunday ka Funda

Just because I felt like it...

14 comments:

  1. FV, Thanks for the music. Nice two-chord song (G#minor/Fmajor) in G#Dorian scale (Had to learn it immediately :) ).

    Seems like a modern rendition of a tradition/religious song. Love such mixing of the old and new. I wish the carnatic crowd in chennai wasn't quite so anal about "purity of style" as they currently are, and not actively discourage such new directions. Replace the name of the deity and the lyrics could well be a devotional carnatic song by Thyagaraja. Religion may suck but it does create great art.

    -Al

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  2. FV, typo in post (that should be G#minor and Bmajor (not F major)....don't want to lead people astray. :-)

    -Al

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  3. Al:

    How could I not take cognisance of such a comment? I may not be trained, so am grateful for such knowledge. Thank you.

    This is a modern rendition without losing the essence. Carnatic music as well as Hindustani proponents do hold on to purity, and with good reason. Such new experiments are possible because they are grounded in that purity of style. You can't experiment in a vacuum.

    {Replace the name of the deity and the lyrics could well be a devotional carnatic song by Thyagaraja. Religion may suck but it does create great art.}

    So true. In fact, I listen to MS & Balamurali for the pure joy of the sound.

    As regards religion and art, I think some of us just pay obeisance to the music, the iconography, the calligraphy. All else is maya...

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  4. FV, "All else is maya..."

    :-) Indeed. And thank you muchly for such lovely new music (to me). I grudgingly agree with you about maintaining purity of style in hindustani and carnatic music. Though I think rewriting classical compositions in a modern idiom could attract younger people to appreciate such classical forms of music (not to mention the endless lovely possibilites of mixing western/modern instruments and orchestration to create new and interesting sounds).

    I had the privilege of listening to such music live when I was a kid..weddings started playing tamil movie music in later years. I recall listening to Sheikh Chinna Maulana play the Nadhaswaram at weddings and functions as a kid -- hauntingly awesome. Pity the maestro is gone now, though I do have some of his vinyl. I like the songs of MS and Balamuralikrishna too.

    Also, it wrongly wrote it was G# Dorian minor but the Natural Minor (G# A# B C# D# E F# G#) -- misread my fretboard as I was transcribing...had to play it back to realize my mistake. Here is an interesting factoid you might appreciate...once you know the scale a tune is in, you can figure what the chords are in the song by pick the alternate notes in the scale. So in this case, the chords that are likely to work are

    G# B D# (G# minor)
    B D# F# (B major)

    (other chords you can determine if you write out every other note in the scale starting from any note)

    C# E G# (C#minor)
    F# A# C# (F# Major)

    we know a chord is minor because the interval between the first and second note of the chord, like C#-E above has three half-steps between C# and E (C#-D, D-D#, D#-E) and major if the interval between the first and second note is 4 half steps (F# to A# in the above F#major chord for example).

    you could also try every other note in the scale to play chords that could work with the scale to create your own melodies/songs.

    As you can see this is all hours of endless fun...makes years of solitude fly by in a flash for me :-)

    Here is one of my favourite quotes on music (amusingly this brilliant statement is made by Mary, an airheaded groupie tagging along with various rock bands).

    “Information is not knowledge.
    Knowledge is not wisdom.
    Wisdom is not truth.
    Truth is not beauty.
    Beauty is not love.
    Love is not music.
    Music is THE BEST.”
    ― Frank Zappa

    It is from the song "Packard Goose"

    http://www.metrolyrics.com/packard-goose-lyrics-frank-zappa.html

    -Al

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  5. Fv,

    Here's a lovely live version of Packard Goose from 1988

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQHMVKleiN0

    -Al

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  6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLKIdrTw0-Q


    I prefer the original. Arif is a pukka rockstar but I cannot stand meesha shafi. Has a nasally voice and seems to yell her songs (to my ear) yet has the balls to say that no other female Pakistani singer can compare to her! Pata nahi log itnay arrogant kaise ho jatay hain.

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  7. Thanks, Meriam. Except for the female vocals and slightly better production, this is another nice version of that song.
    -Al

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  8. Al:

    Shubha Mudgal has managed to strike a balance between classical and modern and so did Nusrath Fateh Ali Khan (watch/listen to his amazing jugalbandis with western artistes).

    Thanks for the details of scales. I am a novice, but it might help when I try to create ringtones!

    I made the error of giving up a musical training that I had barely started, and I chose the harmonium with the sole purpose of it being an accompaniment to what I believed was one of my goals - to sing. I tried the keyboards, but gave up. I think it's time to start tinkering again.

    Btw, I love the nadaswaram. It has a very bass sound, if given a good slap!

    I am big on Zappa.

    Thanks for the links, but my connection is too slow...it will have to wait.

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  9. Meriam:

    I had heard the original long ago, but quite liked the new version too.

    Have not heard enough of Meesha, or her arrogance! But, that aside, sometimes that nasally sound can be quite charming...especially if it has that 'sniff-I-want-soup' feel to it...

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  10. Hi FV, Great to hear you are thinking of taking up the keyboard again. :-) Hope you get a load of thrills (and hours of practise before getting there!). I am still an amateur, but I figure I would like to be a musician when I retire in a few decades....seems like long enough time to get competent (I hope!). Maybe a couple of decades is sufficient to create a new genre of techno-carnatic-hindustani-funk-hop tunes and have a dedicated following of artifically hip (I mean, aluminium), partially deaf followers (could make up for lack of competence)...one can always hope.

    -Al

    PS: double-yay for Frank Zappa and his quirky genius!

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  11. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mRuqfhiEl0


    Music is spiritual. The music business is not
    - Van Morrison

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  12. Hitesh:

    Music is spiritual. The music business is not
    - Van Morrison


    Appreciate the quote, but without the business, not many would have access to the music. How many of us go to the villages to listen to folk music? Of course, extreme commercialisation pushes bad music, too.

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  13. Al:

    Get on with it...I'd really want to get a break as a singer :)

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  14. FV,

    Excellent! Will start networking to get the rest of the band together and report back. :)

    -Al

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