Two more Guitar cheat sheets

Two more notation sheets for playing some complete Ragas on the Guitar. One set is relatively easy and the other one needs more practice.







Again, if you have suggestions / corrections do let me know. This is all I have from the self made teaching aids. Will go back to regular posts on life's little trivia tomorrow.

On a separate off topic note...we finally got both the kids the H1N1 vaccine today! It cost us 50 bucks in copay to do it, but it was better than waiting in a long long line. Reminded me of the special darshan pass for Thirupathi Balaji! More on that tomorrow...



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Guitar Notation from Western to Carnatic (South Indian Classical) Music

For most of you who have visted our place, it is no secret that Daddy Narayanan plays electric guitar.

The rest of you know now.

Should say upfront that I am no expert and do this for the fun of it and have kept this one hobby to myself and very rarely play in front of anyone else other than Jr. and the little one.

Have been looking for a simple graphical cheat sheet to help people who are taught guitar on the western notation (or with Guitar tabs!) to translate Carnatic notation and have not found anything that you can print and hang on the wall as a quick start guide of sorts.

My teacher Paul is amazing because he reads my mind. He almost knows what I am thinking when I play, and figures out from my body language what makes me happy and what bothers me while playing.

After my long absence from the guitar studio with the accident, the physiotherapist suggested that the guitar lessons could start as it would be a good motivator for me to keep going back to physio. Their logic was "if you see your guitar playing improve and get easier over time, you will realize the work we do here" and they were right on!

Paul has been doing "guitar rehab" last couple of weeks. Was telling him that over the last two months, have been listening to more South Indian Classical music and less of 70's rock as the accident makes one moody and there is a lot of solace in listening to what you are used to as a child. He asked me to play something (anything) and I showed him "Raghuvamsa Sudha" and he said "okay, that was great, but why look frustrated?" and I told him that it would be nice to know what note is what on the fretboard instead of having to figure out note by note!

He smiled a big smile and gave me a cheat sheet for the entire fretboard and taught me each note. It was like giving my little one "high fructose corn syrup"! It was like the mystery of the fretboard revealed in one shot. Almost like God made himself visible to me on that green piece of paper!

Decided to make him proud by doing this sheet to convert to Carnatic notation and as an added bonus, included the octave information as a color code.




The Guitar is an amazing instrument. The fingerboard has multiple individual locations that give you the same note in the same octave! Isn't that a nice curve ball?

Hopefully this cheat sheet is reasonably accurate and will help beginner guitar players who are not new to Carnatic notation play classical (or Tamil film) songs!





ps. If you find this useful or you are going to post this somewhere, please do link back to this post.

pps. If there are any mistakes, do point them out and let me know. It will be much appreciated and will update this.




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Prayer

The little one was feeling a little off tonight before going to bed..

San said "un kanne patturukkum.." (your eyes need to be warded off).

So she decided to do a little "drishti" thing. For non South Indians, this is a thing that parents teach you to ward off evil spirits and eyes by doing an "aarti" for the little kids. Think this helps the parents convince themselves that they have done something to cover the unknown more than it really helps the kids. (Persian friends tell me that they do something similar by burning incense and saying "insallah" three times).

Before she did this San told the kids "please pray to god to make sure you listen to parents, do well in school, not fall sick and be healthy, etc. " a

and the little one closes her eyes and goes "Ummachi, please make sure Daddy does not get any more big boo boos."

That was the sum total of her prayer. Now we have to do a Drishti for the Drishti. The little one knows how to get me all teary eyed.

Kids, what can we tell you?


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Emotions

Have been watching and listening to old vintage music videos recently, thanks to some tube-hopping? on Youtube!

While listening to some DD documentary on GNB, Balamurali Krishna mentioned Salaamat Ali and that took me to this..




part 2 is here..




Thanks to the person who uploaded this. The music is just divine and his "lecture demonstration" in the first video just speaks volume of his mastery over subject matter.

Have seen Salamat Ali perform on Doordarshan when in school and remember it. Never knew there were videos of him performing when he was this young.

Listening to this in the dark with headphones on, simultaneously brings a range of emotions up.. butterflies in my stomach, an intense urge to just go hug that guy and cry, memories of things long lost, questions like "why did you leave me?".. even without necessarily understanding the words or their meanings.

There is so much love and longing in the way he sings it!

If only DD and All India Radio took their old archives and put them on youtube.. that will be heaven!

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Audio tapes to MP3

An old box full of audiotapes has been dusted out.

They contain precious recordings from 1977 to 1994..

Including the only tape of my childhood voice singing a few lines of "kandar Shasti kavasam", my grandpa reciting Vishnu Sahasranamam for me the day before I first left for the US of A, my grandma singing me my favorite Carnatic songs, audio of a concert where I got to sit on the stage (as Mic boy) and enjoy Lalgudi Jayaraman and his kids perform, etc. etc.

Most of the tapes seem to be deteriorating and I might have one chance to transfer them to digital format before they self destruct!

so the question is..

If any of you who read this blog in the US have converted Audio tapes to MP3, is there a product out there that you would recommend? (some kind of tape recorder that outputs MP3? or connects to your laptop through USB? and then you can import it into itunes?)

Please do let me know.

Life has been busy with work, ice cream, physiotherapy, listening to music, voting, enjoying time with the wife and kids, not particularly in any order..

Lots to write, but it has to wait. Until Friday...


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Excelling at your job

Physiotherapists know what they are doing! Can personally attest to it.

They measured my strength again today and my right hand was able to exert 45 lbs. It was 25-30 two weeks ago. I have to get to 80 to match my left hand and technically it should be close to 100 (me being right handed and all).

The hot wax works...




why, I do not know.. but it works and that is all that matters!




Get to lift some weights?! (which Jr. can do effortlessly, but I have to spend a lot of effort on), in this case 2 lbs (less than a kilogram)..




On second thought, am really proud of all the improvement.. from 1 lb to 2 lbs in one week!

Like the therapist says "One step at a time!" They sure know what they are doing and how to get you to make incremental progress.



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Architectural Detail - photoblog

Architectural Detail, was the topic for this weeks assignment..

Pressed for time (euphemism for I was too lazy to go outside), decided to focus on things in our house and grabbed this shot of our Chandelier..




Was actually happy with the result.

ps. On a totally unrelated topic, can anyone point me to videos of Ilayaraja playing an acoustic guitar? Would really appreciate it!