Gaylord Speaks

Bat-Chewed

2007-11-30T19:25:00.000+05:30

Here is a picture of Batmans ID.Chewed up like there's no tomorrow.

and here, do i need to say anything about an overexposed pohoto?

The Smoking Mackerel v/s Elda

2007-11-27T01:23:00.000+05:30

The Smoking Mackerel v/s Elda

Well hello there ladies and gents and boys and girls. I had to say all that because you never know the exact nature of the people reading this blog. Here I’ll make a valiant attempt to reveal more of myself (not porn, pervert) figuratively speaking to the outside world which I think knows precious little about the thing that is me.

Characters taking part in this discourse: 1-The Smoking Mackerel (The Smoking Mackerel) 2-Elda

First The Smoking Mackerel shall introduce Elda, who happens to suffer from various disorders of the mind and also verbal diarrhoea besides other unmentionable and undiagnosed aliments. The Smoking Mackerel also likes to refer to people, himself included in the third person. Enough of an introduction already.

Now Elda will introduce The Smoking Mackerel. The Smoking Mackerel happens to be the online alter ego of Elda. He’s everything that Elda wanted and wants to be but never made it due to innumerable reasons. The Smoking Mackerel is smart, articulate and very appealing to many people, at least to more people than Elda. Now it would seem that Elda too has picked up the third person reference trait of The Smoking Mackerel. Elda likes the idea of having an online alter ego as it gives him the freedom to be everything that he wanted to be, even christen himself as he would like to. Here The Smoking Mackerel will interview Elda on a range of topics of general interest. (Questionable, eh?)

The Smoking Mackerel: hi there Elda. How art thee?

Elda: seemingly fine. But I’d like to ask you one thing at the outset. Why would I be conversing with a figment of my imagination? Is it because I found no one in the real world to interview me? Or because no one would want to? Or maybe I’m too complex a person and deem no one but my alter ego to be capable of unravelling the enigma that is me?

The Smoking Mackerel: shut up moron. Enough of you talk. You’re supposed to be addressing all statements to me. You may only address the outside when I tell you to. Fine?

Elda: well all right. Shall we get going then? Shoot the questions at me, actually you, no me. No I’m aiming at myself.

The Smoking Mackerel: damn right you are. To begin with, what is your real name?

Elda: can’t tell you that for reasons of online privacy and piracy. My name happens to be a very unique one. You’d be hard pressed to find even two other people with the exact same name as mine. Very rare and prized possession that is, see?

The Smoking Mackerel: since you happen to be talking to yourself I figured that you might be a little more forthcoming with such details. Anyhow never mind that. It can die under the rug. Tell me what’s your favourite colour and why?

Elda: I like yellow and lime green the most. Primarily because I like lemons and the general citron taste and also because I like to think of myself as some thing fresh, a breath of mountain air in city reeking of the smell of determination.

The Smoking Mackerel: so you lack determination and drive then?

Elda: well in a way, yes. I need to be egged to get something done. Now let me ask you something, are you really a yellow mackerel?

The Smoking Mackerel: why yes I am. Funny how you should be asking me that when it was you who created me and thought up all aspects of my persona and being. Now back to you before you turn this into an interview of me. I gather that you’re a very intense person beneath that cloak of taking life easy. Comment.

Elda: true, I am an intense person inside. I don’t laugh much, don’t smile much, and don’t compliment people all that much, even when it’d be deserved. Actually I’m a very morose person, filled with anger rage and hatred.

The Smoking Mackerel: hatred directed towards whom? Or in your case what?

Elda: hatred for all those persons whose very existence I despise. Those people who think that they have more than me in some way, people who think that they’re better than me. And use this as a vehicle to push me around, literally. And the worst part is that I don’t react enough, actually I don’t react at all. I just swallow everything and then dream up creative ways to punish those who sin against me without forgiving them of their sins. I’m too weak and too much of a chicken at heart to hurt anyone. It’s reached such a stage that I’m willing to get trampled over to avoid hurting other’s feelings.

The Smoking Mackerel: but if but if you loved others so much and value their feelings so much, how come you claim to have few friends? How come you hate albeit secretly, so many people?

Elda: it’s because I’ve found people and their relationships to be too shallow for me. I like to know someone well and I expect that someone to know me well too. Well enough to be able to second guess each others thoughts even. That’s a little too demanding in the age of instant gratification but I’m sure there’ll be that person out there somewhere.

The Smoking Mackerel: now tell me do you believe in god? In the existence of an ultimate being controlling our lives?

Elda: I believe in god but in him being in charge of our lives like a puppeteer? No that’s where I draw the line. I believe that destiny is made by you with help from god. I’m also open to the flip side of spirituality.

The Smoking Mackerel: the flip side? Evil? The counter gods?

Elda: not the god of money. I won’t ever make money my god but I like to be in the know of the other side of religion, the dark alleys down which no one dares to pass. I’m talking about Satanism and the like. I am definitely not one of them but I like to know what exactly it is that they do and why. What makes people lose faith in god, what they do after they’ve lost faith, the like?

The Smoking Mackerel: so you’re a spiritual person, eh?

Elda: spiritual not very but yes I believe in a god like I said before. Now lets not bore our (MY) readers with boring talk. Let’s cut the crap and get to the interesting stuff.

The Smoking Mackerel: I ‘m willing to oblige. Have you ever loved a woman?

Elda: is that the juicy stuff? Heck no, not up till now. Never been that connected to anyone yet.

The Smoking Mackerel: from listening to the thoughts in your mind I see that you don’t trust people too easily. Then all of a sudden you trust some people too much and then feel let down when they betray that trust.

Elda: it happens. Maybe it’s because I jump to conclusions too fast. Or maybe it’s because I’m a cold person inside searching for someone to melt my icy heart.

The Smoking Mackerel: changing topics I see. Clever con artist, avoiding answers to difficult questions. Should I be more probing then?

Elda: how can you be more probing? You are me, or am I you? Hard to tell these days.

The Smoking Mackerel: so you’re cold? Elucidate.

Elda: I’ve never found it easy to trust people or to like someone unconditionally. It’s always with strings attached. I’ve forgotten what it feels like to love someone (not romantically) and feel the warmth of the love reciprocated back. I’ve forgotten the value that a casual touch can add to conversation. I’ve become so caught up in defending my personal space that I’ve almost died and become embalmed in it.

The Smoking Mackerel: so you don’t like people invading the territory that you stake claim to as being only yours?

Elda: absolutely. I hate it. And see, there’s the trademark way of asking a simple question in a very roundabout manner. Maybe it’s this that turns people away from me

The Smoking Mackerel: they don’t appreciate your twisted sense of humour. Also I’ve never seen you laughing heartily. Try it someday it’s good for your health.

Elda: it’s kind of hard to do when you don’t find the joke appealing or particularly funny. I’ve been told that I laugh like I’m afraid to laugh. Bang on target.

The Smoking Mackerel: maybe it’s because of your smile or the way you look. Are you really afraid that you’ll look stupid in front of people?

Elda: maybe there is some truth in that statement of yours. I am wary or rather very influenced by what people think of me. Maybe I am afraid of looking stupid in front of people.

The Smoking Mackerel: but you’ve claimed in the past that you’re made of tougher material than that. You claim to rubbish what people think of you. “Forever trust in who you are” you told me.

Elda: that’s what I’d like to believe but I don’t know how much I live by that statement. My whole life seems to revolve around other people and their opinions of me, though that’s not the way I’d want it to be.

The Smoking Mackerel: comment on your looks and the package that you present to people.

Elda: uncombed hair, unshaven most of the week, baggy clothes, abuses galore. Who’d want to be with such a person? Who really like me anyway? Where are those people?

The Smoking Mackerel: whoa there, I’m sure there are plenty of people who’d want to be you.

Elda: there must be. I live like a moron in the public eye. As for my looks, I haven’t been endowed with exceptionally eye catching and retaining looks but I have other skills that I’m proud of. Like my writing and vocabulary. My power of speech and my ability to not die while addressing a large group.

The Smoking Mackerel: and the negatives?

Elda: I melt in front of pretty faced women and chocolates. I’m no good at setting goals, let alone working towards them though I like working under pressure. I’m also argumentative at times and I waste a lot of time thinking about rubbish.

The Smoking Mackerel: things you like doing, besides the usual?

Elda: among the stranger things that I like, I really enjoy sitting in a Bombay local train and letting it take me wherever it’s going while just looking out of the window. I also like writing about women’s issues and listening to someone talk to me. I just love being with myself, alone, among all things.

The Smoking Mackerel: alone huh? Maybe that’s why you came up with the idea of me.

Elda: maybe.

The Smoking Mackerel: moron.

Elda: ok this conversation seems to be breaking down into nothing, so until we’re in a better mood to divulge more about myself it’s adios amigos. Merci for reading.

The Smoking Mackerel: this is my interview and I call the shots here I decide when to end it and how. You can just sit there and be subjected to my whims and fancies. Ok? And no using francias see.

Elda (reaches into water, pulls out talking mackerel, takes cigarette from his mouth and suspends him in mid air till his gills are gasping for breath. Then as a token of friendship and to avoid the wrath of PETA dunks him back into the water.

So till next time,

Peace.

Phone Pictures

2007-11-26T16:50:00.000+05:30

Crossing The Vashi Bridge

2007-11-23T17:31:00.001+05:30

What shall we call this one?

2007-11-21T21:01:00.001+05:30

He thought that no one knew him, and he was right.

He knew that relationships were too shallow in the place that he lived in. he didn’t want people to know about him; maybe that’s why he never bared his soul to anyone. Then he started to go nuts, questioning the doctrines of the church, wondering whether there was a god, searching in vain for the ultimate purpose. He felt used and empty like a tube of toothpaste with all of its contents sucked dry.

He wanted someone to listen to him, someone smart and intelligent, he thought he had that someone but then distance came between them, reducing their interactions to the yearly chance meeting.

He felt guilty, but did not know what he was guilty of; he had lost his power of reasoning and began on the journey to insanity with the quixotic irrationalities that his kind loves to ponder. He thought he was smart, but then he began to doubt that too. He lost faith in himself, in his abilities, he couldn’t trust in who he was, he had no idea himself. He never did anyway. He started to explore the occult, the flip side of sensibility, the forbidden fruits, what he had never tasted. He wanted someone to save him, someone to save him from his sin, to exorcise his hell. He’d been searching in vain. Was his heart still alive or had it frozen over many times? How many times, no one knew.

He had forgotten how to love, how to see the good in others, how to appreciate the simple things, how to be happy. He was so entirely consumed with his remorse that he had forgotten all that.

He felt surrounded with fools, one among the rest, one who wanted to be different but never quite knew how. The rebel without a cause, they called him, rocking himself to sleep. How long was this to continue? No one knew, not even him. He knew they kept him in the dark, he knew they were all pretenders but he could never fully realize that.

He kept his secrets to himself, feeling almost like the Stone Age man, without an outlet, a means of communication. In spite of living in the age of communication, he felt so without it. He was not like the others, not like one of the plays. The voices in his head started to drive him over the edge, the edge he could never define.

The Grim Reaper.

What's in today's papers

2007-11-18T13:39:00.000+05:30

In today’s Sunday times I happened to chance upon an article elucidating why international pop and rock acts don’t attract large crowds in Bombay anymore. One Vishal Dadlani who’s the singer and composer for our desi act Pentagram claimed that bands like Iron Maiden and Roger Waters who fail to attract audiences abroad land up on our shores almost like flotsam and draw crowds because our audiences are still stuck in the past. Well Mr. Dadlani, if Iron Maiden goes into that category for you then you’re unceremoniously kicked out of my favorite musicians list pronto. Period.

Who wants to listen to the same hook or riff like a million times in your retarded songs anyway? I’ve heard Voice and Electric by Pentagram and personally I wasn’t too impressed by either but the fact that Pentagram were a desi act drew me to them. Your song construction is repetitive and boring to say the least. No good song consists of once catchy bar played over and over to fill the entire length of the song. Heck even your lyrics are repetitive, all you do is basically say the same thing over and over again like it’s some sort of mystic chant or something.

Maybe that’s why Pentagram are not too big on the international stage yet and maybe that’s why they’ll never be. At least now I hope they never make it any bigger.

If you can say such utter rubbish about a band the size of Iron Maiden, who’ve sold millions of albums compared to your few thousands, well you suck. Big time. Desi rock is getting bigger by the day and I relly hope that some people who respect the dinosaurs of heavy metal make it big internationally. Not you guys. Period

Peace

Interpreting independence and me

2007-11-17T16:23:00.000+05:30

Interpreting independence and me

Most people who know me will vouch for the fact that I’m a chicken inside and outside, actually on the outside I’m a very skinny chicken, not the type that you’d pick in a poultry shop. It just so happened that today I happened to be wondering why this is so and I came to the conclusion that, maybe just, I’m all girly inside. But aren’t we all, after all, we’re all born female (too many “alls” in that sentence). Is masculinity just a cloak beneath which men hide their feelings? And who said boys never cry? Crying is a basic human emotion and why should men be expected to bottle up their feelings inside? I’d say cry if you want to even if you’re a man. It’s far better to cry on the outside than on the inside.

I’ve always found myself wondering what it’s like for a girl, in this world (Madonna)? What is it really?

On one side I find myself calling the world very sexist and being inherently prejudiced against men. Why? I’ll tell you. Men are supposed to go out and earn their own living and stand on their own two feet, no sympathy is shown to the house husband. There’s something wrong with a man changing diapers and depending on his woman for his financial needs while a woman at home is how it’s supposed to be. How many teenage boys can ask their parents for things like clothes and, well “toys” and actually see the deal through? Contrast that with the staggering number of similarly aged young women who actually do that?

And on the flip side you see rape and other such crimes against women all over the place. Even in the villages, women are brutally suppressed and their voices are gagged to prevent them from being heard. Even with men, there are double standards, you see many worshipping their mothers and sisters, vowing to protect them from all harm, and yet the very same men go out into the streets and letch at the first P.Y.T that they see. Even music seems to have a prejudice against women. How many female guitarists do you know? And why are so many songs dedicated to the women in the songwriter’s life and nothing to men? Am I just deaf and blind or what?

A woman can use the “pleading eyes” look on anyone except other women and get away with murder but how many women will actually go weak in the knees and bend to a guy who happens to be endowed with good looks? Men are expected to be tough by default and anyone who happens to defy the stereotype is frowned upon and seen as an outcast, someone who’s good for nothing. But women who are almost like men (barring eunuchs) are treated, well like women.

On Sunday, I happened to read a very thought provoking article in the Times about how chivalry is not dead and how women still appreciate small gestures like doors being held open. Well this is supposed to be the age of gender equality right? Women on par with men? Whatever happened to all that? Or are women just into getting the best of both worlds, equality and empathy? I’d appreciate if some woman could answer that, some woman actually.

Now coming back to me, I’d say I’ve always had a soft corner for women and their issues. Sometimes I wonder when you’re a man, the whole world is your urinal but if you’re a woman, well you know, I need not get into the gory details. I used to and still do read women’s magazines , not the types that glorify women as sex objects but the ones that deal with their issues in a sensitive manner, for instance Me that goes out with the Sunday issue of DNA. It’s generally believed that women are more contemplative and calculated in their thought process and decision making, well I’m contemplative but not very calculated. Does that make me girly and weak? Now why this association of women being weak? I know a number of women, old and young who are by no means weak but on the contrary are headstrong, assertive and independent.

Is offering your seat in a bus to a woman really warranted? Don’t men work as long as women? Don’t they tire as well? Are we all not human beings longing for some respite after a hard day’s work? Is it being a gentleman really a mark of class?

Another of my pet peeves has to be how society at large expects you (men at least) to maintain a certain decorum whilst in the company of the fairer sex. What I mean is that your words have to be measured and all gentlemanly, no eff’s and bee’s within earshot of a woman. And no backslapping and getting all pally with a woman, they respect their personal space, well so do I. And if you behave in such a controlled manner most of the time, there is going to be a situation and occasion when you’ll eventually have to explode and let go. It’s not that I don’t behave myself in front of a woman but it’s just that I find it hard to do it, most of the time. And it’s pretty obvious when a guy talks to a woman’s chest and not her face, well there are people with brains out there too.

Just as and endnote, how come we’ve got Spiderman, batman and superman, not to mention He-man but just a handful of female superheroes, cat woman for instance? And how do you expect these women to go about their business of saving the world in their underwear? Gees girls, put on some clothes if you really want to restore order to the world.

Disclaimer

This article has not been written because I’m in love or something emotional like that. When I fall in love I’ll let you know. This is just meant to break new ground in my writing and to break the monotony of writing about myself and the people around me, the true test of a writer is to pen what affects society at large and not just himself and his little world, that’s easy.(see the “his” there. That’s sexist again!). And if you happen to be a woman reading this, this is not meant to be an analytical deconstruction of the female species; I’m not very good at that, thank you.

And girls, come one, leave little fishy here a comment or two, pretty please?

Here are lyrics to ponder over:

Im not a girl, not yet a woman-Britney Spears I used to think I had the answers to everything Mm but now I know That life doesnt always go my way. yeah Feels like Im caught in the middle Thats when I realize Im not a girl Not yet a woman All I need is time A moment that is mine While Im in between Im not a girl There is no need to protect me Its time that i Learned to face up to this on my own Ive seen so much more than you know now So dont tell me to shut my eyes Im not a girl Not yet a woman All I need is time A moment that is mine While Im in between Im not a girl But if you look at me closely You will see it in my eyes This girl will always find her way Im not a girl Im not a girl dont tell me what to believe Not yet a woman Im just tryin to find the woman in me, yeah All I need is time Whoa, all I need is time... A moment that is mine ... thats mine While Im in between Im not a girl Not yet a woman Not now All I need is time A moment that is mine While Im in between Im not a girl Ooooh, not yet a woman

Say sorry to my alter ego

2007-11-17T16:14:00.000+05:30

Now I’ll go back to doing what I do best, chronicling the life and times of none other than, me. Egoistic self centered pig you call him. Looks even more like a geek now with his dumb braces and even dumber eye wear. Well eldrich never cared much for your opinion anyway, so you can keep it for yourself and let it die somewhere. Turn around and look down, now there’s a good place to start. Nice how much fun you can have referring to yourself in the third person, eh?

Now back to the more conventional Queens English. Today was my twentieth birthday so that’s twenty years of depleting the world’s oxygen supply and giving nothing but hogwash back. That’s me, d-oh. Uh huh, I like typing out gobbledygook and meaningless expressions that make little sense in the written context but are very effective when spoken. Today by some miracle of god, I awoke, half asleep, moved towards that infernal ringing phone, quietened it, tucked it under my pillow and put it, and myself back to sleep all at ten past five in the morning. Then my alter ego awoke and deemed that more sleep would be detrimental to the day and so I had no option but to rise from the bed and away to the first mass of the day it was.

Enough of the boring details already (I picked that up from someone, eh!). Now the juicy bits, I fixed my self some breakfast and had to trudge through a couple of sandwiches with some fromage, actually a lot of fromage. Just look at the cheek of that moron, including French words at will when half of his readers won’t understand it. He’s a moron right? A moron with typical moron glasses who talks rubbish and writes such long sentences that no one but his regular readers can understand. Well eldrich still does not give a damn about what either you or his alter ego think about him. He’s happy doing what he wants. Eldrich likes metal and no one is going to tell him to stop listening to it.

Just like that moron again, randomly changing topics when you just got interested in something finally. Dumb blog this, don’t wanna read this. Just hop on to something more interesting and readable will you? Can’t believe that you actually read that and now you’re reading this! What sort of a moron are you anyway? And you call that guy a moron? Well smarty-pants, seems likes the joke’s on you now. Ha ha ha, and eldrich has had the last laugh yet again.

No one will tell eldrich to cut his hair or that it looks like it’s coming out of his ears. No one tells me that, no one. You want me to cut my hair, tell eldrich’s alter ego in a more dignified manner, like you would approach the topic while conveying it to a lady, yes eldrich like sensitive handling of issues. And he’s not as convoluted as you make him out to be, he just likes penguins. It’s a different world out there peepuls.

And today I happened to conceal the fact that I was officially a year older from someone, someone whose knowledge of this fact I deemed unacceptable. Like all decisions that I take in haste, I’ve come to regret this too. I don’t know but I’ve come to dislike this person quite a bit labeling him/her and ass licker. What he (eldrich) meant by that was that this person likes to suck up to the teachers and those in authority and once even betrayed one of our own (or so eldrich thinks he has heard). I don’t like Judases anymore than anyone else and hence I tread with caution here. (Notice the dumb switching between the third and first person here, eldrico is dumb indeed). Also eldrich just happens to hate those who claim to have a lot of cash at their disposal, a deep guttural hate that stems from the darkest corners of eldrico’s mind, where no one has been and no one will eve go and live to tell the tale. Not that they’ll even understand it, morons (see, now eldrich is obsessed with a new word, bird brain). The beautiful people he’s christened them, it all depends on the size of your steeple huh? Don’t read further, you’ll kill the poor loser with guilt.

Peace folks, till I can think straight and pen something more coherent and readable.

Peace again.

Alter ego signing out.

End of transmission.

Sending all human specimens back to earth, shipment rejected.

P.S To avoid multiple posts, I’ll add a couple of pictures here that I took from the train today, on my way back from college. In one of them you can see a little black crow perched upon the railway power lines. Now from what Mr. .K has told me, you’d be dead if you came in contact with a DC line. Well if that’s true, what saved the crow from the prophesized death? I know for a fact that the little critter didn’t die because I saw him fly away quite content, into the azure sky, unburdened by the physics of what he’d just done.

The Introduction

2006-12-12T13:46:00.000+05:30

Taking a cue from BR man I too have decided to share my knowledge concerning music and its appreciation and in particular playing the piano. Through my short life thus far I’ve encountered numerous instruments none of which I’ve mastered to a mentionable degree with the exception of the piano.

Among other instruments that I’ve dabbled with, notable ones include the bugle, the trumpet, the bagpipe and the flute, yes the good old Indian flute. Most of these instruments have a limited musical range with respect to the notes that they can produce. Here’s a little bit about each-

The trumpet is the one thing that comes to mind when you thing British Bands and stuff like marching bands. It’s generally used and perceived as a “happy” instrument due to the high pitched nature of its tone. As with most lung powered instruments the amplitude or loudness it produces depends on the player. On your average trumpet 12 noted that is half the chromatic scale is possible. A trumpet works on the principle of the resonance and sanding waves produced by the oscillations of air in a column of varying length. The variation of length is the means of getting different notes out of the instrument.

The bugle is rather like a trumpet where the air column has a fixed length in which to vibrate. The notes that are produced by a bugle are rather discreet and hard to distinguish as it is player dependent. What you do with a bugle is essentially pinch your lips together and blow the blowing causing oscillations which are amplified in the tube of the bugle. This amplification is rather useful and is used in places where the sound is required to travel a great distance. The tone of a bugle is distinctive and can be very irritating especially when you’re asleep. That’s why it’s used to wake people up.

The bagpipe is a Scottish wind-reed instrument that can produce seven notes. It works on a principle similar to that of a trumpet except that here the variations in vibrating length are produced by closing or opening holes on what is called a “chanter” by some. This same principle is employed in a flute with the difference being that a bagpipe produces a continuous note even when you stop blowing unlike a flute. The name “bag” derives from the fact that there’s an air filled bag which plugs into a number of holes, 5 to be exact. Three holes are connected to drone pipes which produce a continuous droning sound. The “drone” note can be varied by inverting or plugging out one or all of the drone pipes. It is possible to play the instrument with all the drones off. The fourth pipe serves as an input through which air is blown into the bag which inflates and drives a narrow stream of air into the stick like part that’s held in the hand. This has holes which can be “played” to produce different sounds. The three drone pipes are mounted across the left shoulder with the stick in the two hands.

The piano is a commonly used western musical instrument that’s normally played two handed. A normal piano (not an electronic keyboard) will have 8 octaves and be something like 2 meters in length. The sound of a piano is produced by hammers that strike strings which are under tension. It is possible to produce different notes by varying the tension in the strings. The hammers respond to the key presses, by the way.

The word octave that I used in the previous paragraph refers to a full set of notes or physically a set of seven white keys and five black keys. If you look closely at the layout of a keyboard you’ll see a regular pattern of keys repeated. Actually it’s repeated eight times forming the eight octaves.

The set starts with the two black keys and the three white keys on either side of them and the one in between. It continues to include the next 3 black keys and the four that surround then. The black keys are a level higher than the white keys in accordance with the fact that they denote sharps or flats (something I’ll come to later). Most performance pianos are called grand pianos though some time ago that was used to refer strictly to pianos that had horizontally mounted strings( most living room ones have the strings vertical to save space). The average grand piano though strictly manually operated can be found in electric varieties that reduce the stress on your fingers when you play. Let me tell you that from experience playing an electric one is a lot easier on your fingers compared to a manual one which you literally have to beat to hear.

About an electronic keyboard (it’s called by THAT name, please don’t call it a Casio, they make stupid keyboards) –

It’s just a slice of the actual piano that’s electronically driven and produces sound through speakers (in most cases). It’s a fairly good place to start and one of the most commonly used ones. For beginners a standard Casio model will suffice heck even I still have my first five octave Casio keyboard though I’ve now moved up to a Korg.

Other piano types exist like the ones used in churches called the reed or pipe organ. This is very similar in appearance to a regular piano but differs in the way the sound is produced.

That’s enough of a started. More later when I’ll dispense knowledge on playing scales and reading sheet music.

The Chromatic Scale

2006-12-11T18:40:00.000+05:30

The chromatic scale is the scale that contains all twelve pitches of the Western tempered scale.

All the other scales in traditional Western music are subsets of this scale. Each pitch is separated from its upper and lower neighbors by the interval of one half step, or semitone. In tonal and other music this scale finds little use outside of decorative runs up or down as it has no harmonic direction and is considered cliched. The term 'chromatic' is understood by musicians to refer to music which includes tones which are not members of the prevailing scale, and also as a word descriptive of those individually non-diatonic tones.

Music Theory

2006-12-11T18:34:00.000+05:30

Melody

A Melody is a series of pitches sounding in succession. In Western music, the notes of a melody are typically created with respect to scales or modes. The rhythm of a melody is often based on the inflections of language or the physical rhythms of dance. It is typically divided into phrases within a larger overarching structure.

Pitch

Musical sounds are composed of pitch, duration, and timbre. Pitch is determined by the sound's frequency of vibration, such as the note A which at modern concert pitch is defined to be 440 Hz. Tuning is the process of assigning pitches to notes. The difference in pitch between two notes is called an interval. The most basic interval is the octave; a note and another note with twice its frequency form an octave, and if the pitch with frequency 440 Hz is A, then the pitches with frequency 880 Hz, 1760 Hz as well as 220 Hz, 110 Hz, and 55 Hz are also A's. Notes can be arranged into different scales and modes. In western music theory, the octave is divided into 12 notes, each called a half-step or semitone. Patterns of half and whole steps (2 half steps, or a tone) make up a scale in that octave. The scales most commonly encountered are the major, the harmonic minor, the melodic minor, and the natural minor.

In music written using the system of major-minor tonality, the key of a piece determines the scale used. Transposing a piece from C major to D major will make all the notes two semitones higher. Even in modern equal temperament, changing the key can change the feel of a piece of music, because it changes the relationship of the composition's pitches to the pitch range of the instruments on which the piece is being performed. This often affects the music's timbre, as well as having technical implications for the performers. However, changing the key in which a piece is performed may go unrecognized by the listener, since changing the key does not change the relationship of the individual pitches to each other. Therefore, different keys are often considered equivalent and a matter of choice on the part of performers. This is especially true for popular and folk songs.

Rhythm

Rhythm is the arrangement of sounds in time. Meter animates time in regular pulse groupings, called measures or bars. The time signature or meter signature specifies how many beats are in a measure, and which value of written note is counted and felt as a single beat. Through increased stress and attack (and subtle variations in duration), particular tones may be accented. There are conventions in most musical traditions for a regular and hierarchical accentuation of beats to reinforce the meter. Syncopated rhythms are rhythms that accent unexpected parts of the beat. Playing simultaneous rhythms in more than one time signature is called polymeter. See also polyrhythm.

In recent years, rhythm and meter have become an important area of research among music scholars. Recent work in these areas includes books by Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, Jonathan Kramer, Christopher Hasty, William Rothstein, and Joel Lester.

Harmony

Harmony occurs when two or more pitches are sounded simultaneously, although harmony can be implied when pitches are sounded successively rather than simultaneously (as in arpeggiation). Two simultaneous pitches form a diad. Three or more pitches sounded simultaneously are called chords, though the term is often used to indicate a particular organization of pitches, such as the triad, rather than just any three or more pitches.

According to Wikipedia

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The modern piano

Types

Modern pianos come in two basic configurations and several sizes: the grand piano and the upright piano.

Grand pianos have the frame and strings placed horizontally, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. This makes the grand piano a large instrument, for which the ideal setting is a spacious room with high ceilings for proper resonance. There are several sizes of grand piano. Manufacturers and models vary, but a rough generalisation distinguishes the "concert grand", (between about 2.2 m to 3 m long) from the "boudoir grand" (about 1.7 m to 2.2 m) and the smaller "baby grand" (which may be shorter than it is wide). All else being equal, longer pianos have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. This is partly because the strings will be tuned closer to equal temperament in relation to the standard pitch with less stretching (See: Piano tuning). Full-size grands are usually used for public concerts, whereas baby grands are often chosen for domestic use where space and cost are considerations.

Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are placed vertically, extending in both directions from the keyboard and hammers. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, rather than upward against gravity as in a grand piano; however, the very best upright pianos now approach the level of grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness. However, one feature of the grand piano action always makes it superior to the vertical piano. All grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the key remains depressed. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than they could on a vertical piano. The action design of a vertical prevents it from having a repetition lever. Because of this, piano manufacturers claim that a skilled piano player can play as many as 14 trill notes per second on grands but only seven on uprights. For recent advances, see Innovations in the piano.

In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, a kind of piano which "plays itself" from a piano roll without the need for a pianist. Also in the 19th century, toy pianos began to be manufactured.

A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is simply a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way.

Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with current technology, it remains difficult to duplicate a crucial aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal (see below) is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to a beautiful piano tone, in many experts' estimation digital pianos still do not compete with the best acoustic pianos in tone quality. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software.

Keyboard

For the arrangement of the keys on a piano keyboard, see Musical keyboard. This arrangement was inherited from the harpsichord without change, with the trivial exception of the colour scheme (white for notes in the C major scale and black for other notes) which became standard for pianos in the late 18th century.

Almost every modern piano has 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions. The most notable example of an extended range can be found on Bösendorfer pianos, one model which extends the normal range downwards to F0, with one other model going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight octave range. Sometimes, these extra keys are hidden under a small hinged lid, which can be flipped down to cover the keys and avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard; on others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white). The extra keys are added primarily for increased resonance from the associated strings; that is, they vibrate sympathetically with other strings whenever the damper pedal is depressed and thus give a fuller tone. Only a very small number of works composed for piano actually use these notes. More recently, the Stuart and Sons company has also manufactured extended-range pianos. On their instruments, the range is extended both down the bass to F0 and up the treble to F8 for a full eight octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance.

Pedals

Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player's knee instead of pedals.) The three pedals that have become more or less standard on the modern piano are the following.

The damper pedal (also called the sustaining pedal or loud pedal) is often simply called "the pedal", since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. Every string on the piano, except the top two octaves, is equipped with a damper, which is a padded device that prevents the string from vibrating. The damper is raised off the string whenever the key for that note is pressed. When the damper pedal is pressed, all the dampers on the piano are lifted at once, so that every string can vibrate. This serves two purposes. First, it assists the pianist in producing a legato (playing smoothly connected notes) in passages where no fingering is available to make this otherwise possible. Second, raising the damper pedal causes all the strings to vibrate sympathetically with whichever notes are being played, which greatly enriches the piano's tone.

Sensitive pedaling is one of the techniques a pianist must master, since piano music from Chopin onwards tends to benefit from extensive use of the sustaining pedal, both as a means of achieving a singing tone and as an aid to legato. In contrast, the sustaining pedal was used only sparingly by the composers of the 18th century, including Haydn, Mozart and in early works by Beethoven; in that era, pedalling was considered primarily as a special coloristic effect.

The soft pedal or "una corda" pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. On a grand piano, this pedal shifts the whole action including the keyboard slightly to the right, so that hammers that normally strike all three of the strings for a note strike only two of them. This softens the note and modifies its tone quality. For notation of the soft pedal in printed music, see Italian musical terms.

The soft pedal was invented by Cristofori and thus appeared on the very earliest pianos. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the soft pedal was more effective than today, since pianos were manufactured with only two strings per note, just one string per note would be therefore struck — this is the origin of the name "una corda", Italian for "one string". In modern pianos, there are three strings per hammer and are spaced too closely to permit a true "una corda" effect — if shifted far enough to strike just one string on one note, the hammers would hit the string of the next note.

On many upright pianos, the soft pedal operates a mechanism which moves the hammers' resting position closer to the strings. Since the hammers have less distance to travel this reduces the speed at which they hit the strings, and hence the volume is reduced, but this does not change tone quality in the way the "una corda" pedal does on a grand piano.

Digital pianos often use this pedal to alter the sound to that of another instrument such as the organ, guitar, or harmonica. Pitch bends, leslie speaker on/off, vibrato modulation, etc. increase the already-great versatility of such instruments.

The sostenuto pedal or "middle pedal" keeps raised any damper that was raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player's hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations. The sostenuto pedal was the last of the three pedals to be added to the standard piano, and to this day, many pianos are not equipped with a sostenuto pedal. (Almost all modern grand pianos have a sostenuto pedal, while most upright pianos do not.) A number of twentieth-century works specifically call for the use of this pedal, for example Olivier Messiaen's Catalogue d'oiseaux. This pedal is often unused in modern music.

Many uprights and baby grands have a bass sustain in place of the sostenuto pedal, which lifts all the dampers in the bass. It works like the damper pedal, but only affects the lowest notes.

Some upright pianos have a practice pedal or celeste pedal in place of the sostenuto. This pedal, which can usually be locked in place by depressing it and pushing it to one side, drops a strip of felt between the hammers and the strings so that all the notes are greatly muted — a handy feature for those who wish to practice in domestic surroundings without disturbing the neighbours. The practice pedal is rarely used in performance.

The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, uses the middle pedal as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key.

See also: Pedal piano

The Piano Guitar Difference

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The main technical difference between the guitar and piano lies in the different functions that are carried out by the hands on each of the two instruments. This is the difference that has the most important implications during the "creative phase".

The hand position when playing the guitar

In the guitar, one hand -the left one, in the case of right-handed musicians- selects the note that must be played, whereas the other -the right one- is the one that actually plays it. This fact has the effect, for example, of making it impossible to accompany a falseta (that is, a melody that is found between sections of accompaniment). rhythmically with chords.

This is not the case for the piano, in which both hands carry out a similar function, even though, as a result of the fact that the more acute register tends to be reserved for the melody, the right hand is usually responsible for the melodic part and the right one executes the accompaniment.

Thus, playing a falseta while doubling the melody, that is, playing it with both hands at the same time, is possible on the piano. Likewise, it is also possible to play the melody of the falseta with the right hand while we accompany it, both harmonically and rhythmically, with the left one. Therefore, the existence of a distinctive technique will give rise to a distinctive sound.

The Start

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All gret journeys start with a single step.

Here I plan to settle scores with people who I'm too chicken to beat up in real life.

Galore