raag | madhuvanti { my longings };

Adobe Developer Olympiad: Flex development contest for students in India

I’m happy to announce that Adobe has set up a Flex development contest for students in India. If you’re pursuing a degree in any stream (full-time) from a recognised university, you could spend some time over the next four months building something cool in Flex and walk away with a prize of fifty thousand rupees!

Submissions can be in 3 categories: engineering (components), applications, and ColdFusion integration. Each category has a prize of Rs. 50,000. You can participate individually or as a team of upto 5 members.

Note these important dates in 2007:

1. Send us your proposal by the 10th of January.
2. Send us your prototype by the 31st of January.
3. Send us your complete implementation by the 27th of February.
4. Winners will be announced on the 10th of March.

If you have any questions or issues, check out the students forum.

For latest up-to-date information, visit the Adobe Developer Olympiad page.

Write-up courtesy: Manish Jethani

You wouldnt want to miss the opportunity to watch ghazal maestro Padmashree Hariharan perform live at palace grounds on 17th dec 2006. Accomplished flautist Praveen Godkhindi will be felicitated by the governer of Karnataka on the same day.

For tickets, visit http://www.alaaplive.com or call 91 80 64519707.
Contact Person: Mr Sharath Vatsa.

and one more on the same lines as what manasi prasad has written, this time by euphonical euphemisms.

Sri sent me this link(go to page 18) from a music monthly that gets published from bangalore where young musician manasi prasad talks about introducing new subject themes in carnatic music. I had written about something in the same lines back in 2005 in my blog post Lyrics or Music?. It is extremely heartening to see the newer generation speaking up against the irrational norms based on religion imposed on carnatic music where every experiment is looked upon and quantized against what the trinity did!

A great sign indeed. Me is very happy!

Picked this paragraph from pannpriyan.blogspot.com, a review on my performance at Airtel super singer finals

... Harish came next. He started off well with Uyire Uyire. Again his singing style of adding electric improvisations at end of each line does not suit this song very well. Also he breaks lines (pauses added) at different points and this affects the flow of the song. After he adds the improvisations at the end he looks at the judges and audience -- as if asking for their feedback or approval. This style of singing might be influenced by his interest in ghazals. But it is not enjoyable at all for songs we are already familiar with in a different formal or flow.Shreenivas commented that Harish kind of sang the song in a happy tone. This again I think comes from this ghazal like singing (where even saddest of lines in the ghazal are sung with a smile and with pauses and improvisations!)

I take the critisicm about me not singing well by its stride, but my feeling are with this man who feels improvisations affect the flow of the song. Also he makes an outrageous remark that the saddes ghazal is sang with a smile on the face. I have no words for him. I only pray thatGod blesses him, along with all other folks in the world who cannot appreciate ghazals - The toughest and most sublime manifestation of music - and give them the ear for good music rather than for the stupid mimicry of imitating the original artiste or your guru or any other artiste in the world.

I am going to make an outrageous comment in response to the comment written about ghazals

Life of a person who cannot appreciate ghazals is completely wasted. I categorize them as losers of the first order.

Long live creative musicians , let imitation and the traditional view that promotes imitation die its natural death and let the artistes imagination soar the heights of heavens.

In short - Long live ghazals & the likes of ghazals & ghazal artistes!

There are people, then there is God
There are musicians, then there is Padmashree Hariharan

Respected Hari Ji,

I am convinced that if GOD ever sang, he would sound exactly like you.

Sahasrakodi namaskarams!
Harish - a worshipper of ur music.

... sab ke honthon pe tabassum tha, mere qatl ke baad
jaane kya soch ke rota raha qaatil tanhaa.....

Lakshiya paadhai Unwind - Remix version 0.1. Coming soon. Watch this space.

Warning: The following video contains language and visuals unsuitable for viewing for children. Viewer discretion advised.

About Borat:

Borat is a Kazakh journalist - a charecter created by British comedian Sacha baron cohen for the famous "da ali g show" on HBO. The latest movie Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is proving to be a big box office success. The following video is the trailer of this movie. Fscking hilarious. Enjoy!

The crew - (From L - GNR, Swamy, Gokul, Harish, Padmaja)


Harish - 8th Retake (or was it the 9th)




Gokul - Fixing a groove.

Hope you all got a chance to listen to our new song - "Lakshiya Paadhai". If you dint, listen to it here. If this song or the words bring any difference in your life, please help "Sri Rakum School for the Blind" in any way you can. You can contact the school directly by visiting their webpage or email rakumrakum@yahoo.com .

Click here to view the lyrics of the song in tamil.
Click here to view the english transalation of the song.

Sri Rakum School Web Site : http://www.rakum.org

Thanks
agam - Harish / Swamy /Ganesh

Hi all,

I know its been a long time since I blogged. I was busy, with so much happening in my professional and personal life. Life has been generally good and the last couple of months have been very action packed and exciting. I will write about all that in the following posts. But I am very excited to announce the release of a new song from the our stable. This song is a collaborative effort between Harish, Ganesh & Swamy. We call this collaboration "agam - the inner self". As akam , we will be producing songs in tamil, each with a theme attached to it.Here is the first of the many songs yet to come from the agam stable - Lakshiya Paadhai.

The tune of this song evolved in the beginning of 2005 when Ramya came to jam with myself and Ganesh at our apartment. Ganesh was playing around with a few grooves that he had created. I started humming a tune on top of the groove and there you go! All of us liked it. The tempo was peppy, the sound was very rockish yet had the indian classical music flavour which is one of our strengths. Ramya wrote some hindi lyrics on the fly and we recorded a scratch track of the song with the lyrics. No interludes, no mixing, no mastering. Days passed by and Ramya had to leave the country to do her MBA, Me & Ganesh got busy with work and a few other compositions. That was also the time we started working with swamy on Ammu & Thaaimayin geetham. We played this tune to swamy one day and within 2 days , Swamy came back with a full tamil vesrion of the song. We just read through the lyrics and we were convinced beyond doubt that the emotion of the song couldnt be captured better with any other lyrics other that what swamy had written. But it is already 2006 and we havent done much to the song musically after the scratch that we had created. In the meanwhile, we recorded for Hope - the song for supporting the Can Conquer Cancer initiative.

One of the most critical defining factors of our songs has been the studio which we work. After working at The Music Mint - with Gokul as our engineer, we couldnt think about working anywhere else. Like I always say, everything has its own time, We readied the interludes for the song and it was almost production ready. But that was also the time when The Music Mint got really busy with many of their in-house productions. Also during the same time, Gokul did a brief stint with Radio Mirchi. As a result he was also keeping very busy. Another 2 months pass by, We iterated and reiterated on the interludes, modes and the general feel of the song. Finally we got everything in place and we were ready to go production for this song at The Music Mint.

We recorded in 5 sessions for a total of 20 hours, with Gokul adding his usual surprice twists and turns to the track we gave him. the third session, the song had taken a definitive shape and we were all happy with it. But we did realize that there was something missing! Enter paddu (Padmaja Swetha) . She added her mellifluous voice to the harmony of the song, minimalistic but spellbinding! Session 5 had Kashyap, Sohini & Shyam come in for the mixing and mastering. with Kashyap giving some invaluable guitarist's views on to the track the song got a few shades brighter (He had also played the acoustic guitar for the song :)). At 9:30PM, we had the final mix - What a great feeling it was!! This song took almost 2 years in the making and we all are very happy with the outcome.

This song is written on the theme - self motivation and Swamy wrote this one as an inspirational song for the children of Sri Rakum School of Blind . Check out the song here, and do let us know your valuable feedback.



Credits:

Lead Vocals : Harish Sivaramakrishnan
Backing Vocals: Padmaja Swetha
Music: Harish Sivaramakrishnan / Ganesh Ram
Lyrics: Swaminathan Seetharaman
Arranged by : Harish Sivaramakrishnan / Ganesh Ram
All percussions, Keyboards, Lead & Bass guitars: Ganesh Ram
Additional Programming: Gokul Abhishek
Acoustic Guitars : Aditya Kasyap.
Lead Violin: Harish Sivaramakrishnan
Studio: The Music Mint, Bangalore
Sound design, mixing and mastering: Gokul Abhishek.

Produced by: Agam - the inner self (Harish / Swamy / Ganesh)

With this post, once again I am back to active blogging.
See you all soon.

Thanks
Harish