Idol Competitions!

Yeah....lots of Idol competitions these days at office :) One for our buildings, one for department...may be in the days to come.. a Company Idol! Great fun atmosphere in all them :) We have audience polls, judges opinions etc :)...but the good part is that the judges go easy on the contestants and not like the reality shows on TRP hungry TV channels :) We have loads of support and encouragement.



Couldn't participate in the first event, but played our own composition 'Search' at the prize distribution event...Tuning Folk was incomplete without our lead singer Srinath of course :) But me and Sarang managed the vocals somehow. Himesh played the bass. Sarang on vocals/rhythm Guitar and me on vocals and lead.

Today there was a department wide Idol competition...almost 50 contestants totally and as one can expect, more than half were singers....So I thought no point in singing as there are way better singers than me there.....I played an instrumental version of Muqabla song by A R Rahman! Had a drum machine in the processor, then added some whistles and distortion effects to the Guitar to make the whole song less boring/monotonous...Will try to upload the song into the blog.

Btw I also called up some of my friends for the votes he he :) And one of the judges was Sai, my batch mate/room mate from training days!

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.

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 :)

First Class

That was the photo of the small teaching studio. Had my first class and it was about the posture, right hand and left hand basics. As expected, I needed some adjustments to my right hand and left hand positioning. Will be putting them in the coming posts. I was very happy with the class as all my doubts regarding my posture & fingering were answered and corrections were identified. It is a bit difficult to change the techniques that we might have built up during the course of time. But nevertheless, I have started working on the new posture and looks like I am coping with it soon.

The correct right and left hand techniques are very important in the long term. Not only one can attain good speed and economic movement but it also helps in reducing the chances of getting Repetitive Stress Injuries (RSI). Musicians and people working on Computers are vulnerable to it. Visit the following page from the blog of my friend Dr Gopichand for some useful info on RSI.

http://drgopichand.blogspot.com/2007/11/repititive-stress-injuries.html