Nice, simple lyrics for a change. Enjoy.
Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten…
‘Unwritten’ by Natasha Bedingfield. Read the rest of the song here.
Michael Jackson. What a genius, what a voice, what a career. I am not particularly fond of pop music (of the Boyband-girlband variety) but this man is something else. He has been an inspiration in composition, voice, performance, and sheer creativity. And he turns 50 today. A tribute is due.
From the time of the famous Jackson 5, who were the biggest names in Motown in their early teens, Michael was something special. I remember the first time I saw his video when he was about 8 years old: in complete control of the stage, and more importantly, of his voice, and the crowd as well. Such energy, and the voice too powerful to ignore. A voice that overpowers the wonderful accompanying instruments and voices of his brothers. He was the star, clearly.
Quincy Jones and ‘Off the Wall’ happened, followed by ‘Thriller‘. My oh my. What an album. Multi-platinum, multi million selling, multi-Grammy winning and whatnot. Every song is a fricking lesson in song arrangement, voice modulation, instrumentation, bass lines and clarity. And then the ‘Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever‘ TV special happened where he first performed his Moonwalk. And the rest was not just history; it was Michael fever everywhere. And then, to follow it up with Bad, Dangerous and HIStory. How much great music one has to have within himself to come up with albums like that.
I have a lot of personal favorites: Lyrics arrangement and Van Halen’s guitar in Beat it; the rhythm pattern in Jam (the first English song I ever heard); powerful chorus in the live version of The Way You Make Me Feel; beatboxing in Stranger in Moscow; Liberian Girl, Invincible, Bad, Billie Jean, Earth Song, They don’t really care about us; and I’m not even talking about any of the videos. Just the bleddy songs. Unbelieveable!
Almost all his songs are genius material; hence no point listing all of them. He is a true legend, in the sense that he has been the material of public paranoia many times over; has been inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (twice); 13 Grammy awards, 13 number one singles, 750 million albums sold worldwide; the Moonwalk, the Crotch Grab all becoming parts of the repertoire of many budding dancers world over.
Sheer Musical Genius.
But there’s one thing I would like to say to Michael.
Stop whatever the fuck you are doing. Sleeping with children, dangling your baby from your balcony, painting your face, drafting skin from your ass onto your chin; Stop all that for fuck’s sake.
And get back to making your music. That’s your only emancipation. That’ll save you from yourself.
[Pic courtesy: Yahoo.]
One of the reasons I love fingerstyle guitar. One of the reasons I think genius can actually make an instrument come to life in a way that mere talent struggles to imagine. One of the reasons I discovered Chet Atkins and one of the reasons I own a TE thumb-pick even though I can’t even play basic chords on the guitar.
Discover Tommy Emmanuel. I present two videos here. Angelina, recorded from a Korean TV station, and Somewhere over the rainbow, again a live recording.
Angelina: Notice just one thing. How much he is in love with the instrument, how he caresses it, how he enjoys his song. The mix of melody, chords and harmonics are second to none.
Somewhere over the rainbow: Beautiful harmonics, speed and incredible life in a song played on just one instrument.
Yes, there are many fingerstyle guitarists who are really good. Many classical guitarists who are also brilliant. But this is the first of the geniuses that I discovered, so the first I will write about. Read more about him here. And yes, go listen to the rest of his videos on Youtube.
It’s been a year in Singapore. One very eventful, enriching, happening year where I learnt a lot, made many friends and most importantly, opened my mind in ways more than one.
More of all that later. Just recalled the musical events that I was fortunate enough to catch in the past year:
Kailash Kher: Live in Concert. What a voice, and what an attitude. “People ask me why I do not have extras and dancers in my concerts. I’m here for my music, I just want my music to do the talking. And that will get me my fans and admirers.” Touche!
Dream Theatre: The doyens of Progressive Metal. With the best drummer in the world (No one handles double bass better than Portnoy) and one of the best guitarist (Petrucci) and bassist (Myung), this band that has its genesis in Berklee College of Music is an experience, live. (I hate the lead singer though. Sounds like the bastard child of a tom-cat and a banshee. Anyhew.)
Mandolin U Srinivas: Boy oh boy! The god of Carnatic Mandolin was here. And he was divine. Period. The ragams are a part of him now, they run in his veins. And his fingers do more than his bidding, to say the least. Never heard Carnatic ragams jump out and tease my ears as I did that evening.
Shubha Mudgal: Whatay voice! And this wasn’t even her belting out raags. Just plain old Surdas and Meera Bhajans. But splendidly delectable, every one of her songs.
Harini: A regular concert, nothing too impressive. But good, nevertheless.
Hyderabad Brothers: Enna tavam (Kapi) still gives me goosebumps.
We Will Rock You: Have already written about this mother of all concerts here. ‘Nuf said :)
(2 votes, average: 3 out of 5)
Loading …Poignancy. As the name says; moving, emotional, a feeling that reverberates a sadness, a plea, almost.
Composed 2 weeks ago. Comments welcome.
Download here.
(3 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5) Loading …
What an evening, and whatay performance. I caught the last Singapore show of We Will Rock You (also known as WWRY), a musical by Queen and Ben Elton, based on Queen songs. Just one word to describe the experience: mind-blowing (no, it’s not two words. It one hyphenated word).
The storyline, the cast, the history are all wiki-able. But the experience was beyond any live performance I’ve seen in perfection, fidelity, energy and the heavenly music. I am a huge fan of Queen, and this was a dynamite package that left me begging for more.
Brilliant performances by the live band, with almost all of Queen’s hits, and I couldn’t care less about the slightly below par story-line. The grand finale with ‘We will rock you’ and ‘Bohemian Rhapsody‘ performed as an encore played a fitting end to a tribute to one of the best rock bands ever.
Thank God I walked into the ticket counter at Orchard and bought the ticket on a last minute impulse. It’s been 2 days and my pod is still looping Queen songs :D
(And in case you are wondering, Galileo Figaro and Scaramoush are words from Bohemian Rhapsody and the names of lead characters in WWRY).
Music lovers all over the world, lend me your ear. For just this post, I mean. I had a tough time locating good freeware for the pod, and now that I have a set of good open source software/ freeware, I share with you, thus reducing some of your googling time.
ipodlinux. Linux for the iPod. Already completely ported for the first 4 generations of pods, expected soon for 5.5, Classic, iTouch et al.
Features: Linux ported to the pod, File explorer (Podzilla), Themes, Applications, Games, Emulators, and yes of course, Media Player for your music and videos. Online support.
Saywha?: Make your older Nano models play videos. Too bored? try a game of Chess or lets say, Doom on the pod. Or maybe use the Metronome for your guitar practice. It’s open source, so a thousand applications continuously being developed.
Rockbox. The open source jukebox for the ipod. Available for 1st through 5.5th generation iPod, iPod Mini and 1st generation iPod Nano (not the Shuffle, 2nd/3rd gen Nano, Classic or Touch), and a variety of non-Apple music players as well.
Features: An awesome media player (includes gain level, next track info, incredibly loud output, detailed equalizer), access songs stored through iTunes in the pod database, Themes, Applications, Games. Copy-paste music into the pod (without iTunes) and play music from directory directly. Again, open-source, hence a never-ending resource of applications being developed.
Saywha?: No more conversion of your mp3s. Copy and play. Quite an intuitive interface and the sound quality, according to me, easily gives the iPod OS a run for its money. And add to that many other apps and games. I’m currently using it, and am thoroughly impressed.
Yamipod / Floola. Freeware replacements for iTunes (which is also freeware, I know). Run a lot faster. Look the same, behave the same, (I’m inclined to believe Yamipod and Floola are different brands or versions of the same product. Dunno for sure) and make updating, syncing and loading the pod a breeze.
Features: Copy music to and from the ipod. Update artwork, lyrics and pretty much do everything one would do with iTunes on a day-to-day basis.
Saywha?: No installation required. Standalone software. Very light freeware that does what it says. Easy extraction of music from the pod.
Will keep you updated as I discover more such wonderful programs.
(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5) Loading …Cleopatra Stratan is the name. Must be three years old. Or maybe four. Sings with an amazing clarity in lyrics and notes. Dunno if its a good recording studio and a father who’s a marketing genius, or a little girl who loves to sing and can pull of such songs. Any which way, I enjoyed the song. So will you.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading …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) Loading …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 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
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.
Enjoy!
(2 votes, average: 3.5 out of 5) Loading …
"Each one of us is nothing but a collection of memories. It is up to us to give those memories enough meaning that we don't feel a life wasted when we, or for that matter, others, look back at us."