chandra

Just a little true story, sort of related to this thread ( may be ). I enquired at our small town local library if they have the Norah Jones DVD. The female librarian who helped me said 'She is what....Jazz? I don't really like Jazz'. I said 'Oh, she is not Jazz. Ask my friends at Organissimo'. Postscript: She watched it later and said 'What are you doing to me. It sounds Jazz to me... I am not into that kind of music...I need catchy and fast music'. Hey, I tried to dispel the myth

I was mad at them for not showing the bottom nine of the 3rd round this morning. I was watching the Golf channel where they were talking about the Masters and CBS was showing some infomerical when some exciting golf was going on. If CBS did not want preempt their infomerical, why can't they give access to Golf Channel to show the game? The Golf channel guys interviewed someone from CBS and that guy gave the annoying reply "Why fix something that ain't broken?'. But the real reason is Hooty.... He just does not care what the golf public wants. He only cares about his old boy's club and the select and exclusive patrons and the value of the tickets they hold. To show even the full 18 holes of the final round, he had to be dragged in kickin' and screamin'.

Yeah, the put on 16 was just unbelievable. I admired Tiger's idea for that shot as he was setting it up, and I was screaming like mad when it worked according to his plan and then when it stopped, I went emotionally the other way and then when it went in, I was screaming my head off. I usually don't get into someone else's golf shot this much, but I got sucked into it given the state of the golf game at that time. Just incredible. Expect the unexpected.....

Understood. I have listened to bits of it before, I will have to get the CD and get into it lot more. Here is another such thing along the same lines, called Jalatharangam ( tuned water bowls). It is intriguing as well.

He is accompanied by another Tabla!! ( just an amusing observation ). This is good stuff and not too many people do this.

I can't go anywhere pretty much... but I could VPN to my work over the internet and from there everything is fine. Before I even sign up for voice service from the cable guys, I have to think hard even if the cost is attractive. I have never had my phone service go out, ever. The cable guys have to learn how to achieve 99.999% up time...

I just called Comcast, my cable internet service provider, and they confirmed they have a nationwide service outage/interruption and they are working on fixing it. My service is very intermittent now.

I have played the copter game a few years back but weaned off this addictive game. I tried it again now and it is as addictive as ever. My best so far today is 4495

Hmmm.. interesting. I could not access the internet for a better part of couple of hours from 7:00 P.M. to 9:00 P.M. And then I could get to Google but not anywhere else. And then after 10 minutes everything cleared up. I thought the problem was with my wireless router and went on a major diagnostic exercise. But in the end I don't think I changed or did anything major....

I guess all the avatars created a subconscious impression that caused me to be momentarrily surprised to see so many white people in this board

If Google data is same as keyhole.com data ( Google bought keyhole ), then here is a relevant excerpt from http://www.keyhole.com "Keyhole continuously updates its database with the average age of imagery ranging from 18 to 24 months. Imagery can vary in age from as new as 2-3 months to as old as 2-3 years. Keyhole is increasingly taking advantage of satellite imagery to update the Keyhole database more aggressively. " BTW, if you have not tried keyhole client, give it a try. They have a 7 day trial. Their flying animation over the satellite imagery is pretty cool and a lot of free entertainment.

What does 'singing behind the beat' mean? The natural stress points in the song lag the beat?

You might have heard about http://maps.google.com. They have now added satellite maps to it ( It is a no frills link at the top right hand corner at maps.google.com ). But the cool thing is, when you are on satellite map page, say your house, and type in a To address, it shows the driving directions overlaid on top of the real satellite map. After you get the overall view of the driving directions, you can zoom in and it keeps the driving directions in tact. The blue line is laid over the actual picture of the roads.. It is wonderful as it takes you through exits and entrances of highways. And the darn thing actually works. ( barring some glitches with some weird address like mine ). Really pretty cool... Give it a try

http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/lifes...ack=1&cset=true A New Day CDs, DVD celebrate the life and music of Billie Holiday By Rashod D. Ollison Sun Pop Music Critic Originally published April 4, 2005 We all know the lady sang the blues. And by numerous accounts, Billie Holiday lived them, too: raped as a girl, a prostitute by age 14, an addict most of her adult life. If we are to believe her many biographers, the artist, to paraphrase author Zora Neale Hurston, seemed to believe that nature had given her a "lowdown dirty deal" and her "feelings were all hurt about it." So all of that pain, all of that bitterness and sorrow dammed up in Holiday's soul came through whenever she stepped before a microphone to sing. A profound sense of longing crystallized in her voice. Billie Holiday was a tragic beauty, a victim. So the legend goes. But there was much more to the woman born Eleanora Fagan, more complexities to the legend whose image (unsmiling face, a gardenia pinned to her hair) graces T-shirts and postcards today. The best way to get to know Lady Day - the mythical genius who was raised in the Fells Point section of Baltimore - is to listen closely to her music. In stores tomorrow, two days away from what would have been the singer's 90th birthday, is perhaps the most expansive retrospective of the singer's work. The Ultimate Collection is a beautifully packaged, multimedia set with 42 songs that cover the artist's 20-year recording career with various record labels. In addition to two CDs of nicely remastered music, there's a DVD featuring film clips from the 1930s and '40s, and TV performances from the '50s. The DVD also includes a timeline and several audio interviews, including a revelatory one Mike Wallace conducted with Holiday in 1956. "My whole mission on the Billie set was to elevate her as a great artist, not a victim," says producer Toby Byron, whose company, Multiprises, oversaw the release of The Ultimate Collection. "I'm so tired of that. The reason she lives on is because the music is so great, not because she was a drug addict. Her whole musicality reflects America: the good and the bad, for better or worse." Personal chaos During her lifetime and certainly after her death in 1959, Holiday's genius was largely obscured by personal chaos. In the '40s, her arrests for heroin and opium possession drew big headlines in mainstream papers, while her recordings at the time received little serious critical attention. In 1956, Holiday published Lady Sings the Blues, a mostly fabricated autobiography that did little to change her self-destructive image. Sixteen years later in 1972, Diana Ross garnered an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of the gifted artist in the movie named after the book. The film, a hit that introduced a new generation to Holiday's music, misconstrued the artist's life even more and further perpetuated the many myths about her. Farah Jasmine Griffin, professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University, wrote a probing analysis of Holiday's legend in the 2001 book If You Can't Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday. "A lot of those myths about Billie Holiday are longstanding myths about black women, period," Griffin says. "Those myths are that black women artists are not smart, that their emotions rule over intellect, that they only sing from their heart, that they're not skilled musicians. There would be no Norah Jones if there was no Billie Holiday. Second only to Louis Armstrong, she had the most profound influence on American popular music." Hers was a small, coronet-like voice with a limited range. But with it, Holiday revolutionized pop and jazz singing forever. She was the first popular vocalist to benefit from the advance technology of the microphone, which enabled her to perfect her hushed, quiet tone. She sang behind the beat, a technique later picked up by Frank Sinatra, who adored Holiday. She suspended time with her innate improvisational talent, a skill that influenced Miles Davis' moody style on the trumpet. "Her sense of rhythm was dead on," says author and music critic Ashley Kahn, who wrote the liner notes for The Ultimate Collection. "Part of the reason why she sounds so modern is that so many singers still use her techniques to convey emotion and intimacy." Master sensualist Not only a heart-tugging interpreter of vulnerable, down-in-the-dumps blues, Holiday was a master sensualist. One only needs to skip to Track 3 on Disc 2 of The Ultimate Collection and listen as the singer spins aural silk out of "You're My Thrill." Recorded in 1949 at the peak of Holiday's artistry, a few years before her voice hardened from her years of rough living, the ballad boasts an ebbing, fluttering string arrangement, and the legend's hypnotic voice floats above it all. Although Holiday wrestled with drug abuse and no-good men, she conveyed much more than despair in her music. She could be flirty ("Them There Eyes" and "What a Little Moonlight Can Do") and wise ("Detour Ahead" and "I'm a Fool to Want You"). Contrary to some of the myths, Holiday's life was quite extraordinary: A black woman born into crippling poverty in Philadelphia on April 7, 1915, she rose to international fame as a vocalist, forever revolutionizing the art of singing along the way. "She had a beautiful life relative to what people went through then," Kahn says. "A lot of brothers and sisters went through hell and didn't sign a contract to sing about it on stage at Carnegie Hall." Holiday was uptown and down-home. She was self-indulgent and had a long line of lovers: male and female, black and white. She cussed; she drank gin. She smoked cigarettes and cooked soul food for friends. Baked pigs' feet and red beans and rice were her specialties. Beyond such classics as "Strange Fruit" and "God Bless the Child," perhaps her two best-known recordings, beyond the tales (twisted and true) of reckless living, Holiday was a trailblazer. Elements of her style, musical and otherwise, endure. You see her elegantly understated fashion sense in the way Sade dresses: the simple lines, the slick ponytail, the hoop earrings. You hear echoes of her phrasing in the music of Erykah Badu, Norah Jones, Macy Gray, Amos Lee. An individualist "She really created her own thing as an artist," says Byron, who also produced the 1992 Cable Ace Award-winning documentary Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday. "All you have to do is listen to her music through the '30s and the '50s and you see the arc of her life." Kahn says, "The really great performers know how to reach into their lives and translate the peaks and valleys, the joys and pains. But there is still a sense of performance there, some mystery. Nobody did that better than Billie Holiday."

Hey, hey!! Now that is really crossing the yellow line

Any service that uses the Windows Janus DRM, tracks usage of all tracks (streams, downloads, transfers). This usage is then passed back to the record labels, distributors, ASCAP, BMI, etc. Not sure where it goes from there, but I do know that it's tracked on usage per track. Does DRM allow tracking usage at the 'consumer' level both at the downloading device like the computer as well as portable devices where the songs are moved to? For a subscription based service like Napster, usage tracking needs to be at that level. ( assuming payments to the artists is based on end user usage ).

A question out of idle curiosity... If you are on Napster, how do you get paid with their subscription business model? If the info is sharable, of course. Not the actual amount but the model. Do you get a share of the subscription amount for as long as the person who downloaded your tracks keeps paying the monthly subscription fee?

I am too unfamiliar with the 'Che' affair to form any opinion or my own judgement but it was good to see a little bit of diverse reactions emerging after the initial almost homogenous reactions to him leaving. Beyond that, hope the following is not completely off topic, That sounds great and very practical. ( BTW, which song? ). I will contemplate this some more. I would like to add this which I just recently heard "Show mercy, mercy being love with forgiveness". How does this fit in with what JSngry wrote. Compatible, add-on, antithetical? Chandra

I thought I will provide a link where you and others interested can check out some of the south indian classical music. http://www.musicindiaonline.com/ This is a searchable site with a huge collection of music. Recording quality is not great but they give you album info for you to pursue further if you like. Now you need to know something before you can search and play songs. Let me start you off here... 1) In the top there are three boxes to enter search terms. Under Category box pull down menu : select Carnatic Instrumental Under In pull down menu : select album In the search box, enter together and hit search. Once results show up, scroll down all the way, 7th cut from the bottom is a Sax piece by Kadri Gopalnath ( with flute by another artist ). If you click on the song name, it will open up a player and play it there. 2) For some examples of 'hard to precisely nail down microtones', try these two. Category: Carnatic Instrumental In: album Search box: Dream Journey Third cut is 'Alai Paayuthe' in a raga called 'Kanada'. When I learnt it, it was a struggle to get the soul of the raga right since it only comes through when a particular note is executed with a microtonal variation which oscillates over a small range. My teacher can only demonstrate it but it is hard to write it down, so one has to just practice until you get it right. Second cut is also an interesting raga called 'Kaapi'. Just for info, though Kadri Gopalnath is an accomplished musician with depth, on these recordings it comes out as a bit on the lighter side. But I thought given the saxaphone as the bridge, this may be easy to relate to. 3) Now for a little bit on the heavier side which also emphasises the concert performance structure, try this search. Category: Carnatic Instrumental In: All search box: Ragam Thanam Pallavi "Ragam Thanam Pallavi" refers to a particular format of presentation of the material and this is largely improvisational. Initial section is only melodic improvisation, the second section the rhythmic section joins and the third section is the rhythmic solo. This can all be set in different ragas and rhythms. And beware, these pieces tend to be long. ( if you are tired of listening to stuff without rhythm, you can fast forward to get to the middle section ) I thought I will point you to these two in the search result. Look for these two in the results a) Artist : Krishnan T N & Kumari Vijikrishnan Ragam : Sankarabharanam Thalam : Aadi Instrument : Violin - This raga uses notes from the major scale ( as in all white keys starting from C ) without much use for microtones, so you can get a feel for what makes the indian music sound different ( which comes from the ornamentation and oscillation of the notes ) even without the usage of microtone intervals. b) Ragam, Thanam & Pallavi Artist : Ramani N Ragam : Kambhoji Composer : Ramani N - Towards the end of the second section, there is a mixture of ragas... This site is heavily hyperlinked. So once you get started you can start clicking away. e.g at raga names to get all the songs in that raga etc. I am curious to hear your impressions...

Che: Thanks for starting this thread, I have learnt a lot. It took me a couple of hours to get through this thread, visting all the links and listening to some of the music etc. I have learnt a bit of Carnatic ( south indian ) flute but I am more an avid listner than a perfomer. I am very interested in listening to the various efforts at fusion with Jazz. First a recommendation: http://www.guitarprasanna.com/mainindex.html Prasanna is trained in both south indian classical music and Jazz. I don't know how good a Jazz musician he is but his straight indian recordings show that he is very well accomplished. He has done some interesting fusion projects as well. The thread on Rudresh Mahanthappa is the most enlightening. I listened to Kannada.mpg and the_preserver.mp3 at his web site http://rudreshm.tripod.com/cgi-bin/index.html . It sounds great but to my ear I don't hear much Indian classical music or like any fusion music!! It sounds like Jazz but I do hear something different. If they have indeed incorporated any Indian ragas, they have accomplished something very interesting. Many jazz-indian fusion music is not that terribly interesting to me since they sound Indian to some extent but without its depth and I get distracted with variouos things going on. I always thought that there should be another way to borrow ideas and may be these guys are doing just that. I will have to listen to them some more. Che, I read with interest that to you Indian music sounds 'simple'. As AfricaBrass wrote, the music itself is not simple but I can see why it may sound simple to some. My guess is that the lack of harmony might sound that way to ears that are used to music with harmony. ( Interestingly, it is the opposite for me... The chords in a Piano solo, for example, prevents me to appreciate the melody since that is what my ears look out for. If someone just sings the melodic line with chords played on other instruments, then when I go back and listen to the Piano solo, I enjoy it a lot better ). Also, regarding the 'trance' like feeling you get, there are certain ragas that do induce that. Also in North Indian classical music, during the intial stages of a song, it is really slooooowwwww with just the melodic line and that can be trancy!! ( the sympathetic strings of Sitar adds to that feeling even when the music is dynamic ). Give some south indian music a try, especially the song portion of it after the initial improvisational sections, you may find that a bit more dynamic. I read the sample pages of the Derek Bailey book on Amazon. It is written in a scholarly style. I get what he writes ( though I didn't learn the music that way ) but I wonder what kind of an overall impression that some one new to the indian classical music will leave with. Most perfomers don't think along those lines and definitely most experienced listeners don't process the music that way. But the problem is, how does one describe the music to someone who is not familiar with it!! Given that difficult task, Derek Bailey's work sounds like a worthwhile read. Chandra

My point was about the words 'there is an agreement by the negotiators to drop that language'. Does it not mean that they changed the language and it is a fresh agreement with the negotiators? You don't have to make it personal. We are having a legitimate and civil discussion, try to keep it at that level ( which you have done for the most part ). I am not offended at all, but just surprised that you are increasing the heat for no good reason.

Silly? May be so, ( and I would rather you not belittle it that way ) but it is borne out of the prior history with how baseball has dealt it. I am even surprised that you defend them to this extent, given that history. They have been brought to this current state, kicking and screaming. It is their turn to go out of their way to convince people like me that there are no suspicious clauses or loopholes. This is not consistent with this... "The agreement still needs to be ratified by the players, but there is an agreement by the negotiators to drop that language," Michael Weiner, general counsel for the players union, told the New York Times. No one told Mr. Weiner about this, I guess. To me it is. It is a question of credibility. I grant you that the % of positive tests is going to drop. Given this, why not toughen up the penalties since it is going to affect only such a minute fraction of players. That would be good PR, wouldn't it? I also grant you that using the disabled list seems a bit of a stretch ( but only a bit ). But why leave that loophole in there?

My skepticism went up another level today. I heard that what they agreed to has another loophole. When a person is injured and not playing, they can't be tested. At one level, it sounded reasonable but then on second thought 'Hmmm.. there is a nice escape route, get on the injured reserve until body sheds the drug'.. And then, here is a story today about Bonds. Bonds Fears He May Miss Entire 2005 Season.. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor..._nm/nl_bonds_dc ""I'm just going to try to rehab myself back to, I don't know, hopefully next season, hopefully middle of the season, I don't know," Bonds told reporters at the Giants' spring training camp in Scottsdale, Arizona on Tuesday" May be there are legitimate reasons for him to say this, but the little bit of consipiracy theorist in me suggests that he may never come back...

I have expressed my scepticism about baseball players union agreeing to meaningful drug testing and deterrent methods.I gave some ground to Dan since he was fairly aggressive in his opinion that this may actually work. But look at this story today... And we all believed just last week that the suspension was mandatory... I should have stuck with my scepticism...Now I am even more so. ( What other player friendly terms are in there? ) http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...nm/mlb_drugs_dc Loophole in Drugs Policy to Be Closed, Says Selig RALEIGH, N.C. (Reuters) - Major League Baseball and the players union have agreed to close a loophole in their new drugs policy that would have allowed for players to be fined rather than suspended for steroid use, commissioner Bud Selig said The loophole had angered U.S. congressmen during a highly publicized hearing on steroid use. "The language in the contract is back to where I thought it was in the beginning," Selig told reporters on Sunday. "A player will be suspended after the first positive test and that's it. There are no longer any 'ands' or 'ifs' or 'ors.' They're all gone." The move will still need to be approved by every Major League club's union representative. "The agreement still needs to be ratified by the players, but there is an agreement by the negotiators to drop that language," Michael Weiner, general counsel for the players union, told the New York Times. A U.S. congressional panel held hearings last week to examine baseball's drug testing and disciplinary program. Retired player, Jose Canseco, who testified at the hearing, said in a controversial book published earlier this year that he witnessed several players using steroids during his playing days.

This was floating around a year back and I was rofl because just the previous day, at a greek restraunt the waiter gave us a spoon out of his pocket!! ----- A timeless lesson on how consultants can make a difference for an organization. Last week, we took some friends out to a new restaurant. After a while, we noticed that the waiter who took our order carried a spoon in his shirt pocket. It seemed a little strange, but I ignored it. However, when the busboy brought out water and utensils, I noticed he also had a spoon in his shirt pocket. Then I looked around the room and saw that all the staff had spoons in their pockets. When the waiter came back to serve our soup I asked, "Why the spoon?" "Well," he explained, "the restaurant's owners hired Andersen Consulting, experts in efficiency, in order to revamp all our processes. After several months of statistical analysis, they concluded that the spoon was the most frequently dropped utensil. This represents a drop frequency of approximately 3 spoons per table per hour. If our personnel is prepared to deal with that contingency, we can reduce the number of trips back to the kitchen and save 15 man-hours per shift." As luck would have it, I dropped my spoon and he was able to replace it immediately with his spare spoon. "I'll get another spoon next time I go to the kitchen instead of making an extra trip to get it right now." I was rather impressed. Later I noticed that there was a very thin string hanging out of the waiter's fly. Looking around, I noticed that all the waiters had the same string hanging from their flies. My curiosity got the better of me and before he walked off, I asked the waiter, "Excuse me, but can you tell me why you have that string right there?" "Oh, certainly!" he answered, lowering his voice. "Not everyone is as observant as you. That consulting firm I mentioned also found out that we can save time in the restroom." "How so?" "See," he continued, "by tying this string to the tip of you know what, we can pull it out over the urinal without touching it and that way eliminate the need to wash the hands, shortening the time spent in the restroom by 76.39 percent." "But, after you get it out, how do you put it back?", I inquired. "Well," he whispered, lowering his voice even further, "I don't know about the others, but I use the spoon."