Trouble in Guitarland

Was practicing "Samaja Vara Gamana" which is in Ragam HindOLam using the cheat sheet, and Jr. asked me

"How can anyone sing in that hollow voice to match your guitar?"

It did seem strange that when spanning two octaves, the lower octave below the one I had chosen as reference "C" was a too low!

Then the nerd in me went on a web surfing spree (followed by a lot of practicing) and found that:

a. most folks misquote the Center "C" in the keyboard to be 240Hz.

b. Actually the center "A" or "A4" as it called is at 440Hz exactly (round number). The Center "C" or the "C" key between A4 and A3(which is at 220Hz) is at 261.6 Hz and not at 240 Hz.

c. Guitar folks deliberately moved everything on the notation up by an octave! Apparently this was done to facilitate the notations (on western sheet music) to appear in the middle lines on the music sheets.. Now that is a bummer, and wish I had paid more attention to fixing the base scale.

d. No harm done. Now that I have been practicing the notes for the lower octave, just have to reset everything in my head and go up one.

Based on that, the advice for other guitar players trying to figure out Carnatic notes to play songs or "swaram RIF's" (that is what we are calling it in our house) is to practice in the "green" color coded octave on the cheat sheet.

The Hindolam reference example is here..
Hindolam is S G2 M1 D1 N2 S S N2 D1 M1 G2 S

If you are trying to play the song, play the S G2 M1 on the green and the D1 N2 on the Orange and your 4 to 7 year old's will be impressed!

If you are not interested in guitar playing, what I wrote may not make sense.. but if you do, you might be happy that the mixup was cleared up.

Better late than never!

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Trying to make a birthday gift..

Was practicing a song on the guitar to play to San as a birthday gift. My trusted aid for this kind of secret activity is Jr.

However the little one cannot stand having anyone else in front of the video camera these days...

My grandma used to complain that her singing came to an end after I was born! Used to think maybe there was a curse on me and that is why any attempt to sing seriously would stop after a year max!

Now, I say the same thing that my grandma used to say. You can see for yourself what I possibly did to grandmas music sessions based on what the little one is doing to me.

Did you see how she sang "should I off your plug.. should I off your plug.." to the same tune?

So much for all that practice.

Sangeetha heard it and said "nice.. still needs more polishing"!

We will keep the polishing going till next year.

Kids, what can we tell you?!

ps. A akka gets the credit for playing this on Piano..figured out the notes from her piano playing and used my cheat sheet.

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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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