Something I composed last Sunday. Done entirely on FL Studio on my comp, and damn I need to buy a keyboard soon! It is really tough to put together such music note-by-note, layer by layer…

Tranquility

Made with a piano base and a flute overlay, this song plays on the soft moods of a tranquil seashore and more piano layers before moving into a bit of classical flute towards the end.

Listen

Download mp3

Vaishnava Janato

Something I recorded a long time ago, when I was at L. Tanpura and Pad recorded on FL, voice arranged and noise-filtered on Adobe Audition. A simple rendition (not a great one, I admit) of the lovely Vaishnava Janato.

Listen

Download mp3

(5 votes, average: 4.8 out of 5)

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Just crossed a thousand page-views. Yay! Not thousand visitors mind you :) But a happy moment nevertheless.

yearn, for a minute of touch, a rare heart that cared
a contact of a jiffy, a lifetime shared;

a kiss, and time took its happy detour
a caress, with all gentleness i could pour;

but what if time took this all away
left me, the shriveled leaves of the autumn

what if love is far, fate holding its sway
at the altar of compromise, at my secret vault’s bottom;

will the sweetness still remain
will my embrace still be the same?

(2 votes, average: 2 out of 5)

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Ok, so those of you who know what a big music nut I am would not be surprised at this the title of this post. Was searching for some free software and links that would make my laptop my personal Karaoke machine. And I found…

Free Software:

Karafun Karaoke Player

VanBasco’s Karaoke Player

Karafun has a colorful, Winamp like interface, supports all popular Karaoke formats and has Key/Tempo changing features. VanBasco’s Player goes a step further and displays the various instrument tracks and enables individual muting/playing and also has a Keyboard display that plays the songs in real time! Real cool feature for understanding the song arrangement.

Free Karaoke Tracks:

Karaoke tracks come in various formats (.kar, .wav, .mp3, .mid, .cdg). .kar files are karaoke files playable by the above listed software and include lyrics (that are time-indexed to play with the song). The other formats that come with lyrics are .cdg (CD+G, cd plus graphics) and .mid (MIDI files, that are actually the encoded notes and not actual instrument sounds, and hence need a good MIDI player to give good output. Most of the Karaoke Players nowadays are good enough.) Some of the .mid are sound-only files, so beware.

The best link I’ve found so far for free karaoke tracks is

VanBasco’s MIDI Search

This link works wonders for English tracks of all genres. For Hindi tracks I am yet to crack a similar engine. But till then use this online bubble-drop Karaoke interface to croon your way to glory.

Geetnet Online Karaoke

Enjoy!

(2 votes, average: 3.5 out of 5)

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Bassein (n.): The vestige of a soap that is too large to be thrown away but too small to be held while washing oneself without leaving rogue soap bits sticking all over the body. Basseins are also known to inexpicably coagulate over time to form a whole new soap.

(2 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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My website has been a colossal undertaking, with me being a one-man team, add to that a demanding marketing job. Lot of thought has gone into each small element of the whole site, but it still remains one of my best lessons in branding and consumer understanding that I have experienced to date.

Given that I have been light-years away from coding and the like, I wanted something that would enable me to put up a website with minimal programming but maximum functionality.

In this write-up, I walk you through the step-wise thought process that went into getting to where this site is today.

First was the purpose of the site itself. As is true for any brand, it has to have a purpose to exist, and should be built, armed and positioned to work towards that purpose. I started off with two of my basic passions that would form the main pages: writing and music; and one of my hobbies, photography. The question now was whether I would write humor, as that is more readable and enjoyable and hence would give me repeat readers, or would I write about my own life, as that would be for my own future reference. Then the question of what technology to use, what would form the interface, how would I get ‘trials’, how would I get repeat readers, how will I get the word to spread etc etc.

Hey! wait a minute…

Too much chaos inside the cranium. Let me restart, and this time actually use some of the thinking that I am supposed to be good at.

1. Who? (A.K.A “Who’s your daddy!?”)

Who am I putting up this website for? If it is for myself, it will be a chronicle of my own life, my experiences, my views, but more importantly, for my own reference. If it is for the world at large, then humor would be a clear winner, or interesting, intelligent articles like this one :D

Given the fact that I don’t want to be pleasing every click-happy lost soul in the web world, nor do I want it to be a one person online existence, I decide my target group (TG) has to be a mix of both, hence defining my content to be a mix of humor and biographical entries.

2. Content (A.K.A “Yeh andar ki baat hai”)

Content is the king, it is rightly said. Good content will pull in the crowd, no matter what. Given my prolific laziness, I have to think about how much content to have before I launch so that I can drudge along as readers digest my sarcasm. Enter a timely inspiration from Douglas Adams, and I land a wonderful way to link my memories to places in Singapore with funny laughable instances, and Marvinisms are born. But then again, how many would be interested in whatever is going on in my life? So I try to nicely intersperse boring long articles between oodles of satire (like this frickin’ huge article, for example).

Along with that is the format, the look of the blog and the photoblog (Wordpress and Pixelpost templates tweaked to look the same), carefully selected pictures, the library sidebar to bring some color and halo some pseud intelligence into the blog, recent posts and comments positioned perfectly for clickability, and we are set to go!

3. The Launch (A.K.A “Uncle, yeh Reply-All aur Reply mein koi farak to nahi hai na?!”)

No rocket science this. Since there isn’t specific marketing budget to speak of, I do a blanket ping to everyone on Orkut/Gmail/Wherever. The real trick lies in actually participating in the blogosphere, discussing, agreeing to rants, joining in flames etc. Will do all that as and when I find interesting enough blogs, and with near to 1000 page visits in 2 weeks (not even counting first 2 days of launch), I’m not doing too bad even for now, methinks.

4. The Critical Connect (A.K.A “The Big F**k up” A.K.A “O! bhenc***!”)

All the while, spending weeks with PHP, MySql, testing on my own laptop with Reactor, beta testing the links and the traffic on the host, I was praising my favorite Firefox and its many webmaster plugins, that enabled quick debugging. It wasn’t until the day after launch, when I looked at the stats, that the shit hit the fan.

Mozilla Firefox: 35.4% Internet Explorer: 63.2% Others: 1.4%

I frantically opened the IE link (which must’ve been really surprised to have ever been used) and logged onto http://harishnarayanan.com and horrors! it wasn’t even close to what I intended it to be. My Microsoft-hugging majority is yet to come out of its technological Neolithic era and has thus banished my beautiful site to Jpeg obscurity. Gaaaa!

Think like your TG. To the very last stupid moronic detail.

(4 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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Andana (n.): The kind of person that sits in the first row of every presentation, repeats with a vengeance every phenomenally boring sentence spoken by the speaker, and nods his head so vigorously as if he/she wants it to fall off.

The Andana is also the first to clap, and the first to laugh deliriously at the boring presenter’s pathetic attempts at powerpoint humor.

Garfotia (n.): The overwhelming urge to wring someone’s neck whilst hearing him/her say “aligning with a multifunctional team”.

Octopress (vb.): The act of pressing the remote control button harder as if thats gonna make it work.

Travtorpetrid (n.): The queasy recurring doubt in a foreign country that you have somehow inexplicably misplaced your passport. Is usually followed by a frantic nonsensical search through all bags except the one that has the passport.

Burpalogicate (vb.): To self-rationalise with a Coke Light (Zero Calories) after a meal of paneer makhanwala and a naan dripping in more vegetable fat.

Totoficate (vb.): To nod at the band playing at the local pub as if the song makes a lot of musical sense, whilst critically analysing the music genre with equally uninformed friends.

Tanjong Pagar (n.): The mystical elf-like creature that is rumored to clandestinely replace used styrofoam cups in office pantries.

Bishan (n.): The sudden realisation that life is nothing but interconnected excel sheets linked by vlookups.

Yo chu kang (vb.): To make really weird faces while posing for photographs, and to also assume that they obviously look funny.

(Today’s Ganesh Chaturti. And I say this again, Bombay rocks!)

(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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First it was the synthesizer that changed the rules of the game. It made possible sampling and converting any sound and any instrument, thus enabling the sound of any instrument, even human voice to be played on a keyboard type interface.

Then we moved on to turn-tables, virtual mp3 turntables, loop machines, Studio emulators and personal sound factories. All this was a gradual progression, organic steps in music composition technology.

Until now.

The interface of generating music is moving from notes, layers, loops, samples and channels to something much more complex, intuitive and interactive. What if music was made visual, and the pattern of composition, itself as beautiful visually as aurally?

Here I present two of such next-gen devices that I have come across. Watch and be amazed. The first, and the more recent one, is called Tenori-on. This is, according to the makers Yamaha Inc,

“a unique 16 x 16 LED button matrix performance instrument with a stunning visual display. The TENORI-ON 16 x 16 LED button matrix is simultaneously a performance input controller and display. By operating and interacting with the LED buttons and the light they produce you gain access to the TENORI-ON’s numerous performance capabilities.”

The next one is a more colorful, more glamorous, and more rich sounding contraption called the Reactable.

Positioned as the “Musical Instrument with a tangible musical interface”, it provides a musical universe that is limited only by one’s creativity.

The Tenori-on, to make a simple observation, is much more user friendly, compact and musically inclined. What I mean by that is, since it is based on patterns and set to a 16 beat grid, it naturally aligns to a 4-beat rhythm and hence, sounds musical more easily. My money is on Yamaha making a lot more dough than the geek-dudes playing with the Reactable. Time will tell.

(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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First day of work (of the first job ever!) I land in the new office, clothes crisply ironed, nails clipped, shoes polished to a shine. Smartly dressed (albeit my light paunch spoiling the picture, but anyways) and attired with an attitude. I get introduced to my boss (Asian-American, Brand Manager), my superboss (Kiwi, Associate Marketing Director) and am already pretty impressed with the smart people around. Then I go on to meet the uber-efficient admin in-charge of the office, the ever-helpful JiaJia (Singaporean).

And this is when all the fun begins.

Me: Hello JiaJia. Nice to meet you. Please show me around the office, and help me set up my desk.
JJ: Hello Harrissh. Let me get your name right, I have to mail back India about your arrival. So you are Harrissh Nawa.. Nawana.. Nawaya… Nawayaa..Nawayananana…Norain…
Me: (Panicking) Just call me Harish, JiaJia. That’s like Harry, you know, with a ’sh’ at the end.
JJ: Aah. Ok OK.

One should hear the Chinese speak in Singapore. This variant of English is called ‘Singlish’ (just the way we have a Bambaiya English). JJ is one of the well-spoken Singaporeans I have met. But usually what gives it away is ‘Yaaeeesss la! caaan’.  Anything remotely related to yes is ‘can’ and anything else is ‘cannot’. Pretty logical, and pretty binary, I must say. Also representative of the simple minded straight-forwardness of most people.

The ‘caaaan’ beats most hindustani classical singers in raag and tal. I am reminded of Russel Peters and ‘Theitee four feeftee’ when i went to Chinatown. This is a fun place, I have to give it that. Small but fun. Just like the people :)

Will write about the coolest Singaporean I met, later.

(2 votes, average: 3.5 out of 5)

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Novena (n.): The number of times you promised yourself that you would definitely go to the gym / definitely wake up early / definitely maintain a regular exercise regime / definitely keep in touch with old friends. Is usually a humungous number, used interchangeably with infinity and the erstwhile ‘hajjaar‘.

(Just struck me, today is 9/11! Hmm… whatever.)

p.s: Day after tomorrow will be a bonus issue of Marvinisms! But only if I land more than 10 comments in these two days :)

So… Write up!

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