Updates

Recently I have been following few other blogs which I have added it to my Blogroll on the right.

Kumars Planet is by Kumar, who is a Sound Engineer-Musician residing in Bangalore. He posts interesting musical quizzes on his blog, mostly on tamil film music. He also does some interesting remixes and recreates the orchestration of existing songs.

7 Swara is by Emjay. He mostly writes posts on Ilaiyaraaja and his music. Interesting to read.

I started a new blog sometime back to post my favorite interludes in songs. Will try to keep it alive by posting frequently. They are also linked to on the right side under the heading "song bgms that i like".

I have also added my twitter updates on the right hand side of my blog under the heading "what I am doing". You can find my updates there or on twitter.

Regarding the Remix contest by ARR, I submitted my entry earlier this week. The deadline was extended till 15th of this month. They don't display the entries uploaded because of copyright issues that might arise in the competition. Also the Intellectual Property Rights of all submitted entries rests with Nokia. So, right now I am not posting my remix entries on my blog. But may be after the competition I might post it.

Remix Contest by A R Rahman

Nokia along with A R Rahman has announced a remix contest at remixrahmansada.com. Participants are invited to remix a couple of songs from Rahman's forthcoming movie Ada. The voice track samples are available at the site and you can do your own remix and submit them. The winner will get to do the full remix in A R Rahman's studio. The deadline is May 31. More information available at the above site.

Thanks to Suresh for informing me about this contest. I am planning to participate in it.

Also refer http://rahmaniac.wordpress.com/2008/04/29/remix-in-your-own-style-rahmans-ada/

Online Radio Stations

I recently discovered some online radio stations that play non-stop music (mostly western) over the internet. The one I am currently listening is AOL Radio. There are different stations for different genres of music like Jazz, Western Classical, Country, Rock, Hip-Hop, Pop, Dance, World Music, etc. And under each category, there are various sub-categories. My current favorites are Jazz (Martini Lounge, Romantic Jazz), Western Classical and Country. Each station plays non-stop music without any audio advertisements. Since it is a radio station, you cannot choose the song you want or fast-forward songs. The songs are being played in different stations and you can tune in to the station you want. It is like the WorldSpace Radio online. It doesn't have any indian classical music stations, but it covers a wide variety of different genres.

I checked my internet usage logs and found that listening to about 1 hour of music will take up 45 to 50 MB of your bandwidth.

Let me know if you are aware of other good free online radio stations.

RiyazStudio - for Tanpura and Tabla accompaniment

I recently tried out the RiyazStudio software, which is a nice little software for Tanpura and Tabla accompaniment. If you are practicing indian classical music at home and would like some accompaniment in tanpura and tabla, then this would be a right fit for you. You can vary the pitch, the tuning, the taal and the tempo. Here is the link to the website:

http://www.riyazstudio.com/

RiyazStudio combines tanpura and tabla machines in a responsive and easy-to-use PC-based practice environment for North Indian classical music. RiyazStudio uses real tabla loops - 150 of them - in contrast to often mechanical sounding tabla machines that set individual tabla bols at rigidly set intervals. Whatever pitch you sing or play at you'll have a choice of different tabla tunings in the main talas. You can even adjust the tabla style without changing speed.

Overall I like this software and am planning to buy it. It costs close to $40. You can get a free temporary license and use it for 30 days before actually deciding to buying it. Some of the features would be disabled in the free temporary license. And if you actually buy it during the trial period of 30 days, you get a $5 discount. I don't sing, but I am planning to use it in some of my compositions.

According to their FAQ, they seem to support only Windows PC. So if you have a Mac, I am not sure if their suggested workaround would work.


Update (Sep 11, 2008): It seems if we want to use these samples in our recordings, then the license doesn't permit it. Here is an extract from their license agreement:

This license agreement grants permission to use the supplied sound samples for practice purposes. Distribution or broadcast of these sound samples or recordings derived from them is not granted by this license; contact us at support@riyazstudio.com if you wish do this.

Telex Pandians Theme Music

Telex Pandians is the name of a cricket team in our office. I had composed a small theme music for this team, the theme being "Terror". This was used as the background music for their flash based website. Here is the piece, let me know your feedback.

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The Rap was sung by my colleague, Naveen.