Sunday, March 08, 2009
Life In Technicolour
A friend of mine recently invited to a photo exibition, and so this post i thought i'd post some photos that i had taken. I thought i'd divide this post into two, this post 'Life in Technicolour' which has a small collection of coloured photos and the next 'A Thousand Words' that consists of a black and white set. Have fun and let me know what you think.
Thursday, March 05, 2009
If music be the food …maybe this one is stale
A Nokia advertisement says, ‘Its music that connects us’, truer words have not been spoken. In my life music is everywhere, from the moment I wake till the time I go to sleep, and sometimes even sometimes when I’m asleep. It’s a love affair that started very early life, I still remember the ‘Simon and Garfunkle live in central park’ tape that dad used to listen to when I was a kid. I still have that tape in fact, and still do listen to it. It’s very odd that in the day of CD’s and DVD’s someone would still listen to a tape, but there you have it. There’s a certain charm that you get from listening to a tape, the timeless ‘crackle’ as the tape gets old, the fact that you can’t simply skip to ‘the good bit’ of a song, or listen to songs in a random order. That you have to listen to one entire side before you can even see what’s on the other side.
I was talking to a few friends the other day about music and how much things have changed, even from our teenage years (which wasn’t too long ago I might add, contrary to what some people say!) . Today music is a manufactured product. There was a time when a bunch of guys got together and started playing and that was a band. Today everything is thought and analysed. Record companies putting out audition notices to ‘form’ a new band, where a whole panel will judge primarily how you look, and incidentally if you can sing. No worries if you can’t write a single line of lyric, do you look good, can I sell you. Somewhere along the assembly line that produces these so called musicians, creativity is lost. People prefer sticking to a success formula. This is evident everywhere and is creeping into Hindi mainstream music too case in point Aatif Aslam who sticks to his Minor, Major, Major chord formula in every single song. The point that I’m getting at is that every aspect of the process is controlled by faceless organizations that decide what we should, and should not hear, and thereby restricting the creativity.
I was watching a documentary on TV the other day, called ‘Gods of Guitar’, that each week covers a different band. That week it was Pink Floyd. It’s phenomenal the kind of thought process that was put into a single track. The feel of the song was as important as the song itself. Each track had a different story to tell, a different purpose for its existence. Songs like Echoes (Floyd) or Change of Seasons (Dream Theatre) were more than 25 minutes long, because they needed to be. The song would change the bar count and shift from an 8-8 to a 7 and then back again, just like that. This is why there was so much variety in the album. These days a track is just 3-4 minutes that you need to fill on a CD. It’s the money epidemic! Every form of music that ever stood for something has now been infected. We no longer live in an era that produces superstars, like the Floyds, Dylans, Hendrixs, Knopflers or the Cobains. Instead we have the mediocres, who shine for the moment, a decade down the line will be forgotten. This is true for all sorts of music; No longer does Rap produce stars like Tu Pac Shakur, Biggie Smalls, and Public Enemy. There are exceptions of course and I think Marshall Mathers aka Eminem is one of those. His tracks always have a purpose and a story to tell, and don’t have absurd lyrics like ‘I got (w)ho(r)es in different area codes’. I think that kind of music is simply put, inexcusable. Its sad, I feel cause Rap, Rock, Grunge types of music always stood for something, and to see that mellow down, sell out or just lose focus is... well I just don’t have the words.
Hindi music is, well something that I was never too fond of anyway, for the mere fact that most of the music that came out when we were kids was, for lack of a better word crap. The songs from my mom’s era are still pretty damn good, and I still do listen to Kishore and Rafi, fairly regularly. The songs that came out in the middle were pretty terrible, and if they weren’t they were copies. Off late there has been a change of sorts and it’s been getting better. The filmy music is still crap but artists like the talented Rabbi Shergill seem to be changing that. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of talented singers out there, it’s just the money virus again.
The one genre of music that seems to be immune to this virus is Trance/Club music. It’s a genre that never listened to much, primarily because I didn’t understand it. It all sounded the same to me. But now that is not the case. Each track is different, and creates a different mood. The good thing is that the creativity is still alive in this genre. I was watching a DJ Tiesto concert a while back. And he invited a Violin player on stage, and recorded a segment live, and then mixed it live on stage, while jamming (if you can call it that) with the violin player, all LIVE! To watch someone create music then and there in front of you is a phenomenal feeling that I cannot describe. It’s still about the music, hope the other genres follow suit.
This blog has completely gone off on a different tangent. I wanted to talk about how music affects us, in terms of the lifestyle that we have, and the company we keep etc. guess that will have to wait till later.
I was talking to a few friends the other day about music and how much things have changed, even from our teenage years (which wasn’t too long ago I might add, contrary to what some people say!) . Today music is a manufactured product. There was a time when a bunch of guys got together and started playing and that was a band. Today everything is thought and analysed. Record companies putting out audition notices to ‘form’ a new band, where a whole panel will judge primarily how you look, and incidentally if you can sing. No worries if you can’t write a single line of lyric, do you look good, can I sell you. Somewhere along the assembly line that produces these so called musicians, creativity is lost. People prefer sticking to a success formula. This is evident everywhere and is creeping into Hindi mainstream music too case in point Aatif Aslam who sticks to his Minor, Major, Major chord formula in every single song. The point that I’m getting at is that every aspect of the process is controlled by faceless organizations that decide what we should, and should not hear, and thereby restricting the creativity.
I was watching a documentary on TV the other day, called ‘Gods of Guitar’, that each week covers a different band. That week it was Pink Floyd. It’s phenomenal the kind of thought process that was put into a single track. The feel of the song was as important as the song itself. Each track had a different story to tell, a different purpose for its existence. Songs like Echoes (Floyd) or Change of Seasons (Dream Theatre) were more than 25 minutes long, because they needed to be. The song would change the bar count and shift from an 8-8 to a 7 and then back again, just like that. This is why there was so much variety in the album. These days a track is just 3-4 minutes that you need to fill on a CD. It’s the money epidemic! Every form of music that ever stood for something has now been infected. We no longer live in an era that produces superstars, like the Floyds, Dylans, Hendrixs, Knopflers or the Cobains. Instead we have the mediocres, who shine for the moment, a decade down the line will be forgotten. This is true for all sorts of music; No longer does Rap produce stars like Tu Pac Shakur, Biggie Smalls, and Public Enemy. There are exceptions of course and I think Marshall Mathers aka Eminem is one of those. His tracks always have a purpose and a story to tell, and don’t have absurd lyrics like ‘I got (w)ho(r)es in different area codes’. I think that kind of music is simply put, inexcusable. Its sad, I feel cause Rap, Rock, Grunge types of music always stood for something, and to see that mellow down, sell out or just lose focus is... well I just don’t have the words.
Hindi music is, well something that I was never too fond of anyway, for the mere fact that most of the music that came out when we were kids was, for lack of a better word crap. The songs from my mom’s era are still pretty damn good, and I still do listen to Kishore and Rafi, fairly regularly. The songs that came out in the middle were pretty terrible, and if they weren’t they were copies. Off late there has been a change of sorts and it’s been getting better. The filmy music is still crap but artists like the talented Rabbi Shergill seem to be changing that. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of talented singers out there, it’s just the money virus again.
The one genre of music that seems to be immune to this virus is Trance/Club music. It’s a genre that never listened to much, primarily because I didn’t understand it. It all sounded the same to me. But now that is not the case. Each track is different, and creates a different mood. The good thing is that the creativity is still alive in this genre. I was watching a DJ Tiesto concert a while back. And he invited a Violin player on stage, and recorded a segment live, and then mixed it live on stage, while jamming (if you can call it that) with the violin player, all LIVE! To watch someone create music then and there in front of you is a phenomenal feeling that I cannot describe. It’s still about the music, hope the other genres follow suit.
This blog has completely gone off on a different tangent. I wanted to talk about how music affects us, in terms of the lifestyle that we have, and the company we keep etc. guess that will have to wait till later.
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