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If you are guitarist, you should have heard about Les Paul, the man who invented the electric guitar and multi-track recoding. What you probably don't know is that the man was an incredible guitarist as well. Check out this vintage footage. Its awesome except when the camera points to the woman.



Lot of guitar manufacturers have Les Paul edition of their guitars. You will find Gibson's Les Paul edition guitars here. With two awesome inventions under his belt the man lived till the age of 94 and died yesterday of Pneumonia.

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It is not very often that I am impressed by the beauty of stores in India. Most of them are just shelves filled with items for sale and that's about it. So when I stepped into Furtados to check out the new musical instruments store in town, I was blown away by the beauty of the store more than anything else. Without any further words, here are the pictures.

The guitar section:

They have brands like Taylor, Greg Bennett, ESP, Fender, Paul Reed Smith and Ibanez

The Percussion instruments:

Pearl, Mapex, Chancellor, Zildjian are some of the percussion brands available.

Mostly classical Instruments:

Keyboards:

And at last the Pianos. They have 3 Grand Pianos.

They also sell books related to music, accessories like Metronomes, plectrums etc. The store is so beautiful, it should be listed in one of those must visit places for tourists in Bangalore. Its worth visiting even if you do not play any instruments. Maybe this store will make you feel like picking up an instrument even if you don't feel like it.

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The easiest way to attract attention and dissipate information is by making it attractive. Its seen that people enjoy presentations that are full of numbers better when there is a background music, and with Fat Boy Slim's "Right here right now" as music this presentation tells you what you need to know about things today's technology. Enjoy!

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I ain't no big rap fan but this one has nice music and animation. Enjoy!

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By Jiljith C.P

Pink Floyd's "High Hopes", I personally feel, is the best music video I have ever seen. It represents the lyrics well enough to affect our sympathy and reach into our souls. Infact, it outdoes the lyrics in its presentation

It is rich in imagery - guitars floating in rivulets and apples 'running' out onto the road. The images have interpretations which reach out to multiple levels. Tall suited men (on stilts) with cases have distanced themselves from the common folk. Men in the present day continue to carry busts of great men; and it is a burden. Men carry heavy bells past the rage (symbolic of fire?) of modern civilisation; and continue to carry them at dusk. The wheel of time continues its journey, albeit carried on by mankind [halfway through the video]. Modern age mocks the architecture of society without realising that it sees this far because it stands on their shoulders: clowns on the pathway in front of a grand staid home.

A man filled with remorse looks over the heath (his past has been painful); a remorse built on the soul-lessness of the modernity; a modernity which has been interpreted by many a modern man in a wrong sense. And how does a man release his sorrow? Certainly not through tears; it is not manly to cry, it never was. Tears do not beget action, and without action a man fails to find expression in his being. So, instead, he decides to let the 'balloons' out; which move out, into the country roads, through the corridors, past cathedrals, over the bridges... His remorse is not his anymore, his sorrow has now become a part of all mankind - the table-tennis players find their ball bigger than before - it is not possible that one man hold to himself all pain; and there is no need either - all mankind shares a common soul.

A group of youngsters (boys and girls - was this intentional?) release their balloons symbolising the possiblity of a harmonious and joyous victory but only if we work together in love (which itself speaks for friendship) through seeming machinations of social order which respects and delivers to each gender its place.

There is a need for release, yes, but not through ecstacy or loss of memory resulting in instantaneous liberation, which is premature and we are forced to (as mentioned in the song) 'sleepwalk back again'. Though, there is need for action, strict action, as the little boy does: He throws his baby-bear out of the window - it has become too big for him; not the other way around. In this age, if you don't outgrow your toys, they'll outgrow you.

And it ends with one of the most memorable electric-guitar solos of all time - albeit the slide. There is no match here for Gilmour's guitaring - no predeccessor, no imitator. He has explained his theory through music. His music embodies the remorse of the man sitting on the car, yet has all the hope of the one who releases the balloons: this is the genius of Gilmour - he does not let his idea percolate to bland emotion, nor condescend to the whims of hope. He appeals not only to the heart, but also the soul. He is a guitarist for men: he brings hope into a life filled with "high hopes" - which is the intention of this song.

It is sad that Gilmour's guitaring has waned in popularity with the 'imitator' crowd of the electric guitar growing in numbers. They find his guitaring simple - they convince themselves that they've succesfully played through his tunes; though I have never heard anybody play it the way Gilmour plays: but nobody cares for depth - who has the time?

Then the greater imitators with their 'technical' and 'accurate' music - which is more a cadence of the classical idea - bring their own egos into play and call for more imitators; then imitators will need their fans and soon the purpose is lost: nothing is conveyed, there is no overflowing of the soul, Music is not art anymore.

PS: After all these years, I feel I have finally done justice to this video. This is modern art in a true sense: art changes but never idea.

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God, Homeopathy, Psychics, astrology - all scientifically unproven is challenged by Tim Minchin in this song called "If you open your mind too much, your brain will fall out". This one is really worth watching. Enjoy!

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Rock Music has come a long way in India, especially local rock bands getting recognition. There was a time once when the bands in local concerts played hit songs of other western rock bands like Floyd and Deep Purple to draw crowd. If they played original compositions no one really cared. It just wasn't rocky enough. I remember being at June Rock Out in Chennai about 7 years back when the lead from Moksha complained about this attitude of the crowd. How things have changed since then! With the onset of youtube and easy distribution of music on the net, Indian rock bands are beginning to gain popularity (atleast within India). Here are videos of some of the notable ones.

1) Band: Avial (a dish from kerala featuring coconut, ham and other veggies) - Song: Nada Nada
This rock band is not even English! Its a mallu rock band singing in malayalam. I am not really sure what the song means but the music is really rocking and the music video is pretty neat as well. Visit Avial's myspace page at http://myspace.com/avialmusic






2) Band: MotherJane Album: Maktub Song: Chasing the sun
Motherjane is one of the oldest local rock bands that I have heard. I have seen them playing covers for touring western bands and they sound pretty decent. Lyrics in English. Visit motherjane at their website




3) Agnee (Agni) - Mrityunjaya - Tandav
Called Indian Vedic Rock, the music is heavily influenced by Indian classical music with religious influence. Has lyrics in English and Sanskrit.



4) Brahmavidya: Primordial I by Rudra
This would also come under Indian vedic rock with religious influence. There is no music video but the song deserves credit. Lyrics in English and Sanskrit.





Find a big list of Indian Rock Bands here.

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Google vs MSN vs Yahoo, if you ask this question, its not an easy question to answer. But now we don't have to. Here is a rap battle which will decide who will win. If you want to influence the result - click here. Winner to be announced on 27th of October 2008, vote now. I did.

Here is a sample. Enjoy. 

 

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I like listening to Bollywood music and with less scraping from the west these days we have some really cool Indian artists. (Bollywood music is very very rare- mostly listen to Pop and Rock from the West)

I've looked up a few sites that have Radio/music streaming online and I'm going to write one my favorite.

in.com is a network 18 venture. Currently in beta, this portal offers you music, videos, games, a cool search tool, and mail. They say "Give us your name and we'll give you a short @in.com email address." So I did and now we have topicbean@in.com. The mail service gives you 10GB mailbox, linked messages to track the thread easily, mail scheduler to post pone your mail etc etc.


I am going off tangent here (as always). The mail service of in.com is good - lets move on to their music offering. They have the Artist of the week, Podcast, News and Record Labels.

The Artist of the week is Shankar Mahadevan, they have his songs in many languages and the streaming is really really quick. I don't have the fastest internet connection, but in spite of that the song started immediately and had amazing sound quality.

I listened to the Movies you should see podcast and listened to Trivia about The Green Mile. This isn't my favorite podcast of all times but was interesting (polite way of saying - NOT GOOD AT ALL). But all that they were saying was pretty clear.

Moving swiftly on to the News - This page took a long long time to load framed another site which was all garbled and i couldn't read a thing and couldn't see a think either. Was a terrible terrible experience.

Finally I looked at the record labels and there were tons of music which I really enjoyed. They had Tips, Venus, T-Series, Times Music. I listened to Independent artists - End Song from the album Blue Bugyal by Summit Attempt. It was relaxing to listen to such music after a long day and enjoyed every minute of it. I was so impressed by the music that I had to admire the musician and I posted a comment and read the following disclaimer -

"Don't post rude or nasty comments. Ethnic slurs, personal insults and abuses are rather uncool. Criticise, but know where to draw the line. No point putting in personal details or links, we won't publish them. Try and write in English and please stick to the point! "

This was great to see. Finally a site which will sieve through the garbled rubbish before posting it online. I stand impressed by In.com

Something you should definitely check out.

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