Saturday, January 12, 2013

Sitar & Tabla demos

Greetings!

My friend Chris Hale and I spent an afternoon recording short promotional/demo videos, and here they are:





more stuff soon.
tata!
E

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Kaida in Rupak Tal

Greetings!
Happy New Year, and I hope everyone has a stellar 2013!

Here's a quick Kaida in Rupak Tal (7 beat rhythm cycle) to ring in the new year:



So, couple things about this:

Theme
Dha-kiteDhete Dhagena Dha-
KreDhetete KiteDhete Dhagena DhageDhinnagena

I learned this from Pandit Suresh Talwalkar in Pune, on my 2nd study trip, the 'mostly Rupak' trip (as opposed to the 'mostly Jhaptal' trip).

It's a 4-parter, taking 2 cycles of Rupak once you hit double speed.

Very good practice: accenting the Ki and Kre strokes means lots of attention on the baya hand.

The math is awesome: phrases of 11 and 17

The tihai has an 11 microbeat gap, which is played, rather than just left silent:
Dha ge ge ge Di ge ge ge Ta ke ne

Rupak theka is Tin Tin Na Dhin Na Dhin Na , and can also be played 'rin-tin-tin-where's-my-din-din'

I want to post more to this blog, but it's a bit of a production to do an album-level recording every time I want to post...hiring an accompanist, mastering et cetera (esp since the blog really doesn't generate $$ at all) so, I'm going to try a more lo-fi audio-visual approach with backing tracks and/or electric mandolin as accompaniment. I'm still working on new tracks for my album, and will post those as they come up, and I still have to  finish the videos from the Jhaptal Solo in August (omg :P) but hopefully I can generate more posts this way.

Tata!