IntellectualMusician.com

Just when you thought it was safe to return to the fretboard nasty Uncle Richie adds another finger and brain twisting section to the hell that is the Exercise of Doom. Continue reading »

In the two main forms of Indian classical music, improvisation plays a very significant role. In the South Indian variety of classical music, Manodharma comes into the main foray much later into the concert, within a span of 3-4 hours. Continue reading »

Exercise of Doom Part 1The exercise of Doom as I christened this 15 years ago. Is a way of practicing major scale fingerings. Continue reading »

These bits of advice that I’ve heard or read over the years have earned their weight in gold…. Continue reading »

“Sound {Naada} is the treasure of happiness for the happy, the distraction of those who suffer, the winner of the hearts of healers, the first messenger of the God of Love. It is the clever and easily obtained ‘beloved’ of passionate women. May it ever, ever, be honored. It is the fifth approach to the eternal wisdom, “the veda.” Continue reading »

I am making an attempt to go into the intricacies of the traditional and aesthetic aspects of Indian classical music and to give a detailed picture of the universal sound known as “Naada.” “Sound” plays a very important role in human life especially in expressions. It is well expressed by the famous French researcher of Indian classical music, the great Alain Danielou in his book, “A study of Indian classical music,” thus: Continue reading »

I’m very proud to introduce one of our newest authors Jagan Ramamoorthy

Jagan Ramamoorthy is a very senior Indian classical musician, Graduated from CalArts in May 2004, with an MFA degree in world music performance. He has been teaching many String musicians in the colleges/ institutions listed below:-
a) California Institute of the Arts– Valencia, CA
Also taught a special String Workshop for Grad and Undergrad students plus Cello faculties, in Spring 2007. His classroom included about 20 Students who were specializing in Western classical Violin, Viola or Cello. Apart from this, three Cello students have been specially training under him in his rare style of Violin, known as the Gaayaki Ang, or trying to emulate the human voice through the violin. All of these students are brilliant Artists and are on full or big scholarships at CalArts.
b) Sangeet School of world music, where he trains many students, including the Director: Paul Livingstone, who is an ace Sitar & Guitar player.
c) Durfee foundation– he was awarded the Durfee Master Musician fellowship for 2006-2007, in which he is training an apprentice in my style.

He has also taught a special visiting class for over sixty students in Ethnomusicology department headed by Prof Ric Alviso at the California state university, at Northridge (CSUN). This class was a grand success when almost 65 students attended a two hour class.
Jagan says : “Since my specialty is about trying to emulate the human voice through the instrument”–may it be Violin, Cello, Viola, Guitar or Sitar/Flute–I have been training many advanced students in this rare style pioneered by Dr. N. Rajam, world renowned violin virtuosi, in the North Indian Khyaal style of music”.

Almost all of my students here in Los angeles–those of who are advanced are concert musicians of most of the western classical genre and few of them are or Indian origin but settled here in the US for a long time.

I have uploaded about Seventy videos onto the http://gaayakiang.magnify.net website for now, for everybody to pick up as much as is possible through this medium, with a lot of limitations about “Lighting, Backgrounds, plus proper technology help for Video recordings” of this special type of Violin style.

Please join in and ask me directly through email, about any video or lesson I am writing about. welcome, namaste

jagan ramamoorthy

Since we would be dealing with the theme of originals and reproductions in arts, I must state clearly that this topic of mine is an attempt to decipher the hidden links between Indian classical music, western classical music, and the ancient Indian science and art of Naadi-Astrology. Continue reading »

And I’m talking really old here, kids. I just found it, and I can’t believe they’ve been online since February, 2006 and I never heard about it. Continue reading »

In this installment we’ll explore the playing of chords on the bass. While this stretches a bit beyond ‘basic’ I think is is an often unexplored area for new bassists. It is another tool for creating interesting basslines and is particularly useful in situations such as a trio (or 4 piece with a singer who’s not playing another instrument) where the bass may need to occupy more space. Use of chords on bass crosses many genres as well, including jazz, classical and rock. Some bands and players to check out for chordal bass work would be Rush, Primus, Stu Hamm, and John Patitucci (especially his “Heart of the Bass” cd.). My band Strange Land also employs this technique.
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Effortless Mastery by Kenny Werner addresses an often-neglected area of musical study: your mental well-being as a musician and as a person. Namely, Werner focuses on the ego and how it often keeps us from becoming the masterful musicians we can be. Continue reading »

Here is an exercise I use with the pupils at a performing arts school.

This is about developing the students aural skills and their internal awareness of pitch and intervals through vocal improvisation. Use the following as a guide that you can adapt suitably for your own group of students. Continue reading »

Hey, in this lesson we’re going to be looking at some lead guitar funk style! The idea here is to accompany the rhythm section and your fellow guitar player with some well chosen melodic, single note lines that compliment the overall feel and groove of the song. This technique, commonly called “popping” Continue reading »

In my last article I talked about how triads can be used to construct more interesting solos. If you take this whole concept one step further you can begin to really incorporate these ideas and shapes in new ways.that will allow you to scale the fret board, somewhat escaping the idea of scales, or combining the knowledge you have of scales with the shapes and melodic sounds of these triads. Continue reading »

In part 2 we’ll take a look at another common pattern for rock or blues/walking bass and some examples for putting it to use.
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In this section I ask some of the best what they look for in a player, to give you some idea on what is expected of you as a bassist. Some helpful hints to help you nail that next gig. Continue reading »

“What is it like to be a Working Musician?” Welcome back to part 2 “What is it like?” Well,…it can be like anything in life. Some days it’s just a job. Other days.. a pretty cool experience, but always interesting. The one thing you must get use to is the up and the down, the yin and the yang of life. What does that mean? As I’ve said in the past, learning by example can sometimes be the best way. Here’s my tale. Continue reading »

Listening to music calms me right down, especially if my mind is troubled. Music provides a means for aligning the mind with a language that it knows inherently much less needs to learn about technically in order to appreciate it. No matter the effect that music exerts, no matter the type of music, its purpose lies in its power to communicate. Continue reading »

As far as rock guitar lead is concerned, it is the scale of all scales, the mother lode so to speak, the scale used early and often by such lead guitar greats as Jimmy Page, Edward Van Halen, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Slash, and Neal Schon, to name a few. If indeed a rock n’ roll encyclopedia exists specifically for rock lead guitar (and who knows, there might be one floating out on the web somewhere), this scale would and should appear on the top, right up front. Continue reading »

Hi and a big welcome to everyone out there in guitar cyberspace. As this is my first contribution to the site I thought we would begin by taking a look at how to harmonize the Major Scale, This will then help us to determine various chord types and their association within Major keys. Over the coming months I will endeavour to address many guitar related subjects. If you have any suggestions or items that you would like to see included here then please feel free to send me an E-mail. Have fun and I’ll see you next time! Continue reading »

Music is the key behind children learning the Alphabet. Melody and phrasing enable the learning in bite sizes of the entire alphabet. Continue reading »

One of the best things a sax player can do to improve the overall command of their instrument is play with rock or blues bands. This is because most rock or blues bands are basically guitar-driven, and most guitar players like to play in keys like E, A, and C Continue reading »

George Van Eps first coined the phrase “lap piano” as a way to describe his style of guitar playing. I think I would have to agree with this methodology. In this lesson we’ll discuss an approach to the instrument that will make your harmonic playing more melodic, and your melody playing more harmonic. -This is a good one so check it out! Continue reading »

So we are wrapping up our second month of existence here at Intellectual Musician, and I thought I’d just report back on some of the good things that have been happening here. Continue reading »