School of Rock.............. not Exactly rock ;o)

Today let us 3xpl0r3 the world of music.

I will give basics of music theory. this is not a complete guide, but just what my understanding is. For better results you should always consider consulting a professional teacher.

There are huge number of documents on the internet telling you why you need to approcah a teacher to learn music. One of the main reasons is that, it takes lot of effort to unlearn the bad habits and wrong learning that you learn ;o)

enough of scaring you all.

When learning music in the western style, the musical notes are named with the English Alphabet "c d e f g a b C"

as you must have already observed this is an octave.. eight notes.. .. these english notes are also equivalent to "sa re ga ma pa dha ni SA"

c = sa
d = re
e = ga
f = ma
g = pa
a = dha
b = ni
C = SA

If you observe there are two "c" notes one at the begining and one at the end... the first one is in small letters and the last one is in Capitals. This capitalization specifies that the note comes in the next octave.

Usually with written style using "sa re ga ma" a dot is used to represent higher octave or a lower octave.. we can not show it here... .. also as we are learning the western style, lets assume that capitalization is what we will use.

Ok, now that we know the notes in theory, lets play them... if you have a key board, here is the diagram of notes. For you to play it easily, i have placed black dots on the keys that you need to press, do it in a sequence starting from "c"
if you play guitar, then a simpler version of "c d e f g a b C" would be. If you are new to reading Tabulature, please check this link to know more.

e-----------------5-7-8--
b---------5-6-8----------
g---5-7-------------------
d--------------------------
a--------------------------
E-------------------------

now that we know the notes, lets see how the notes are defined.

Every note comes after a full step ( dont worry, you will know what a full step is in a while). A full step is also called a "Whole step".

For any given note there are two post and pre notes called "sharp" and "flat" respectively. they are denoted by "#" and "b".

so a full representation of notes will be

cb-----c-----c#-----d-----d#-----e-----f-----f#-----g-----g#-----a-----a#-----b-----C
---------------db-----------eb-----------------gb-----------ab------------bb

from this diagram you can read as ( c# = db .. Csharp = D flat etc...)
practically C# is equivalent to Db etc....

If you have observed above, there are no sharp's for two notes... "b" and "e" you can memorize this fact ;o) . Also there is an intermediate note between the rest of the notes. these are "half steps"


For people who have seen a musical keyboard and wondered, why some of the black keys are missing... those are the Sharp notes.... and for B and E the black keys will be missing :o)


so our scale can be converted in to a formula called

c---------------d-------------e-------------f--------------g------------a------------b-----------C
--------W------------W-----------H--------------W----------W------------W---------H

WWHWWWH
This formula is for a scale named C-Major. When you apply this formula on the notes starting from any place, you will be playing C-Major played in the key of the first note that you have started with.

so our first scale will be C-Major in the key of c (Please correct me if iam going wroong anywhere ;o) )

let us experiment a bit.... lets do it in the key of d

-----------d-----------e-------------f#------------g------------a-------------b------------C#-----------D
----------------W------------W------------H-----------W-----------W------------W------------H

now our C-Major played in the key of D becomes. "d e f# g a b C# D"

if you will play these notes and listen to them, you will understand what iam telling.... also you can form this scale with any key and experiment and you will listen to the same "sa re ga ma" ( this line was told keeping beginners in mind.. so no flames for this line ;o) )

here is the Keyboard layout for these notes,

and these are the tabs

e--------------5-7-9-10---
b------5-7-8---------------
g---7-----------------------
d----------------------------
a----------------------------
E---------------------------

In the next session i will give more formulas, and some more tips and tricks ;o)

Disclaimer: This content is not totally mine, Its just what i have learnt all these years.

Feel free to circulate the material.. And please correct me if there are any errors... Syntactical or Semantical :)

Zindaki........ ka.. Safar....Hai Suhana (Part 1)

July of 2006 with lot of aspirations grads from primere institutes across india came to tri star electronics company to work with latest technologies. As with every fresh grad, each of us were worried what lied ahead. Most of them being software guys coming to an electronics firm were confused if they would be able to survive.

After a week of cultural training where we were trained culturally. Culturally i meant, from techies to apes... by making us wear Suits and Ties.. teaching the way of the mongolian tribes where tri star was from. telling us why we should respect them. We were also thought a tribal song, that is the official song for tri star in their native language.


The Apes were ready, we were headed to a resort AKA forest with trees and rides and other usual stuff where we can play and let them know of our behaviour ( ;) ) It was fun all day playing and jumping from here and there.

Then there was ususal technical training for a month, went in a typical classroom style. All the usual stuff happened... persuading the trainer to leave the class early... mocking students in the class... i was called the Garbage Collector ;). We used to pay Solitare and Space Invadors as they were the only games on the Systems :( , management wanting to remove the games from PC's, Students.. sorry newly hired employees rebelling to that idea....it was fun for a month... once the technical training was over...we were put to mini projects

Mini project was good. Good i say in a past tense because most of the people who changed their project from their mini project to something else have felt the same... some one said the work was good.. some said the team was good... but the past is irreversible... and so is present... Well after the mini project we were ranked and placed according to our "wishes" or so they said in some cases.

In the next part ..... Crocodile Festival...