Tangos & Tabla

Flamenco Guitar and Tabla. Sarang on Tabla and me on the Guitar. This is from our practice sessions for an event at office. The Guitar is not that audible, but the Tabla is very gud. I was playing a Tangos which I heard in Juan Martin's Flamenco Lessons album.



Tangos is a rhythmic form in Flamenco(Spanish music). Tangos is a simpler rhythm, but there are many more forms of Flamenco rhythms which are much complex, some based on 12 beats like Bulerias, Solea etc. I am sure they sound great with a Tabla. Will try out more with Sarang.

Fender Stratocaster!

This is a pretty late update...a month late! My birthday gift from my wife is a Fender Stratocaster!! :) Well it wasn't a surprise on the birthday, coz I knew it a bit ahead. But it surely was a sweet surprise when I first knew that she was planning for it.



Fender Stratocasters are the most popular and the most copied style of electric Guitars. There are lots of versions in the Stratocaster family. The one I got is a Highway One Stratocaster. This is the starting level in the American made strats. This model is priced in between the Made in Mexico and American Standard models. This has 70s style headstock, bigger frets, alnico pickups, nitro cellulose finish, mapel neck...

The best part is the pickups and the tones. Even though I knew and heard lots of times, the feel I got when I played it is amazing! I played around all the 5 switch positions on and on. From the bluesy feel to the typical crunchy strat sound, each switch position offers a lot that you can experiment. Will record some stuff soon and post it.

Some updates

Woah...just realized it has been too long since I stopped posting....My wedding, setting up new home in Bangalore, work as usual.....Lot of things put me busy...Once u stop for sometime, it is really hard to come back on track!...anyway finally I came out of that and decided to post..There were some things that happened on the music front after I am back to India. I didn't practice much as I wanted to...Have to put more hours into practice from now on. Some of the things which happened over the last few months:-

IODC Idol - The offshore Development Centre Idol. ha ha..On the lines of Indian Idol huh? :) Audience polls, Judges opinions...It had music, dance, mimicry, acting everything...there were prelims and then the finals...Played 'Aap ki Dua' with karthick for the prelims. Then came up with a medley for the finals. A medley of Mahaganapathim (Carnatic), Mundinam parthene (Tamil movie song), When you say nothing at all, a small Flamenco solo leading to Chura Liya (Hindi movie song) and ended with the song from Rock On - Na na na na na...Managed runners up in that! Nice fun. Like in Engg, we came up with this at the nick of the time. 1 day before the finals.
Me & Karthick here in red..before the finals...haven't got a pic of us playing :(



DISCO - a decade of partnership with our client...Managed to get some 5 mins slot there. Played 'But it rained' along with Sarang. Then we tried a fusion between Flamenco and Tabla! I played a Tangos piece and Sarang gave amazing Tabla to that.
This too was composed on Sunday, when the event was on Monday! But this time, I goofed up a bit in the solo. I couldnt hear the tabla properly and missed some beat and Sarang somehow managed, but any trained ear can make out that I goofed up there :D! Anyway the Convention Center was awesome and our CEO and the director from client company were there too.

@Convention Center


Band - Regular meetings on weekends. Jamming the compositions with Srinath, adding a few...In fact very slow progress, but fun for sure. So finally 2010 is the year we r playing live with Srinath and Sarang. Hope to post more updates on this in the coming days..

Jamming at my apt...



Excited for 2010 :)

Chamber Orchestra

Attended the Chamber Orchestra by BSM on Saturday after my class. It featured Reinmar Seidler, a Cellist along with the BSM Chamber Orchestra. There was also a Junior Orchestra of the School which started the program. There were also some unaccompanied pieces by the Cellist. I cannot appreciate much as I'm still a novice in Classical Music. But I enjoyed the evening, even though I was sitting alone.

However, there were a few unwanted moments, when the power system had some problems and one piece had to to be stopped in between and was started again. The lights got switched off for a few seconds and thud noises from the speaker when the power went off and on. I didn't expect these things, but anyway the music was good and I hope the Chamber Orchestra wont get such embarrassing moments again.

I've learnt some new terms used in Classical Music - The Orchestras, The Conductor, The Concert Master etc. There was a program sheet once I entered the Auditorium. It had a list of all the music that they were to play. The Conductor was informing the audience about the music briefly before the music starts. Also the Cellist told a bit about his instrument, how different it is from the normal Cellos etc. People are clapping only once the complete piece ends :) Unlike the usual Rock Concerts where the audience never stops shouting!

Coming back to the Orchestra Terms - a duet is performed by 2, trio represented by 3 quartet by 4 ....Normally more than 4 would be known as an ensemble. Chamber Orchestra is an ensemble with about 30 or so musicians. A Philharmonic is bigger and a Symphony Orchestra is even bigger consisting more than 100 or so.

A Conductor is the one who gives directions, cues, tempo etc to the players. The baton in his hand will be used to give the beat too - like 3/4, 4/4 etc. There are different baton directions that he follows to denote the beat. The following Wiki link gives the different notations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conducting

The Concert Master is like a leader in the 1st Violin section in the orchestra. This Chamber Orchestra had 2 Violin Sections and the Concert Master is seated first. Any solo Violin piece is played by him.

So these are some of the Orchestra related terminology that I came to know from my teacher and the internet. Will be posting more as I come across any. Also came to know that not many Orchestral pieces are written with Guitar as the main solo instrument. Sad to know that but anyway Guitar had mostly been a solo instrument. There might be a Guitar Concert in this month (by my teacher). I'm looking forward to that.

Flamenco Guitar

This was one of the videos which really got me interested in learning Flamenco. Flamenco is a music genre that originated in Andalusia, Spain. It is in 3 forms: Cante - the song, Baile - the dance, and Toque - the Guitar. It is believed that Gypsies brought the Flamenco style from India! There is a strong resemblance with our ragas, and also with the hand movements in Indian dance.

Source: Flamenco-World

Coming to the Toque , the guitar playing - Flamenco Guitar is one of the most challenging Guitar techniques. Played entirely with fingers, like Classical, it has many advanced techniques like the Rasgueado, Alzapua, Golpe etc. The video above shows Grisha Goryachev playing the composition Con Garbo y Salero by Sabicas from the album Flamenco on Fire.

Flamenco to most of us in this part of the world, is may be a Desperado OST, Bailamos, Latino songs etc ... But Flamenco is not that. They might be using some similar playing techniques but that has got nothing to do with the Rhythmic structures in Flamenco or the art of Flamenco as such.
Check out the following link from a very informative Flamenco site - very nice one :-) What Flamenco is not?

Flamenco is gaining some popularity here. But anyway I didn't find any Flamenco Teachers here in Bangalore. So, I started Classical Guitar lessons as it will surely help in the similar finger-picking style of playing. Anybody who wants to learn Flamenco, but does not find any teacher can surely try learning Classical Guitar to start with. Who knows I might end up learning from...may be someone in Spain later in life?? :-) Well I don't think this happening anytime soon. For now I got this book El Arte Flamenco de la Guitarra by Juan Martin from a friend in US.

Waitlist to Enrollment

I've been to the BSM (Bangalore School of Music) the other day for enrollment. That was my 4th visit. Waitlist to enrollment took long time...We need to submit a form with our details initially and then they would assign us to some faculty. But as the number of prospective students keeps growing day-by-day, I came to know that there is a huge waiting list for Guitar almost running into hundreds! Blame it on the film-stars and rock-stars for popularizing Guitar?

Just for the information - I submitted my form in Feb and got the admission now in June. I visited a couple of times in between to check if any slots were available. Since I'm working, I said I would be able to come only on weekends and that caused a bit more delay. The School is in RT Nagar and to go from Electronics City to RT Nagar after office is something which is next to impossible on a weekday. So finally I got my slots on Saturdays, starting from tomorrow. It is a one-hour class and 4 classes per month. And there are different courses which we can register to - Group/Individual. I've registered to Individual Course since I am not an absolute beginner to Guitar. But I'm a beginner in reading music notation.

The Guitar method at BSM is only Western Classical. We need to have the Classical Guitar (Nylon-Stringed) for it. And reading notation is taught. Learning to read the music notation and playing along would be something new and tough for me. All these days I am used to play with tabs or listening by the ear. More on the Notation and Classical Guitar once I start the classes.

Website of The Bangalore School of Music - www.thebsm.org