TED Talks

i have a tendency to keep telling the same people about TED Talks. and so i always start with - did i ever tell you about TED? so i'm going to stop this practice - by writing a post on www.ted.com. Ted Talks is an online resource for talks/presentations by people who participate in the annual TED conference. their catch phrase is - Ideas Worth Spreading and their method is by getting people worth listening-to to talk.

it all began with Larry Lessig talking about creativity in these times in an awesomely creative way.



another talk on creativity and education - this one is positively hilarious.

Majora Carter speaks on Environmental Activism - and her story is truly amazing, and so is she.



i have seen really amazing stuff on TED - a wonderfully inspired view of the world. my recommendation is - click on this, register, sign up for weekly updates and - i promise that sooner than later you will find your own favourite 10 talks that appeal specifically to your interests.

i watched the following talk recently - the most beautiful statistics i've seen - presenting an amazing picture of the world the world we live in.

happy watching :)

Taal Refresher

I seem to have lost ability to connect taals with their names. It's been quite a few years since I gave exams in which I effortlessly mugged up n taals, complete with their bol. Anyway, it's past time that those days are back, so I'm writing this refresher that I hope will clear things up for good.

When I got back to music, the first composition I learnt was in tivraa tal which has a cycle of 7 beats. To my mind, 7 is a really odd number. How can you possibly cycle repetitively in rounds of 7 without yielding to the temptation of adding just one beat!

तिवरा ताल
धा धिं ता तिट कत गदि गन
ताली दो तीन ताली दो ताली दो

It didn't simplify matters to realise that the taal with seven beats that I was previously familiar was called roopak.

रूपक ताल

तिं तिं ना धिं ना धिं ना

खाली दो तीन ताली दो ताली दो

The second source of immense confusion has been the fact that ek taal and chau taal have the same number of beats in a cycle - 12. The number 12 is not really a problem, except that I can never which is which.

एक ताल

धिं धिं धागे तिरकट तू ना कत ता धागे तिरकट धिं न

ताली दो खाली दो ताली दो खाली दो ताली दो ताली दो

चौ ताल

धा धा दिं ता किट धा दिं ता तिट कत गदि गन

ताली दो तीन चार ताली दो तीन चार ताली दो ताली

It turns out that if you surgically remove the second dhin taa from chau taal, you actually get sool taal which has 10 beats. Like so ...

सूल ताल

धा धा दिं ता किट धा तिट कट गदि गन

ताली दो तीन चार ताली दो खाली दो तीन

Btw, jhaptal is also 10 beats, but it is very easy to identify and pretty common too.

And then, there is dhamaar with its 14 beats. The compositions/the style with which this taal is played are also known as dhamaar. The lyrics of these compositions usually descrive the charm and beauty involved in the raas. I do keep practicing keeping these odd beats in my head - but it is never enough somehow.

धमार

क धि ट धि ट धा - ग दिं के दी न ता -

ताली दो तीन चार पाँच ताली दो खाली दो तीन ताली दो तीन चार

Just for the sake of completeness (?), two simple taals are daadra with 6 beats and teen tal with 16. You could look these up at http://www.swarganga.org/taalabase.php or http://www.chandrakantha.com/tala_taal.

To moderate or not to moderate

A friend had left a comment and I had totally omitted to sign in and check if there were any comments to moderate. I had setup an alert so that I respond immediately to any new comments but it turns out that I get an alert only After I approve the comment. The irony is that the reason for setting-up comment moderation was essentially to moderate my (own!) tendency to react too quickly without pausing to reflect.

Apologies!