Here’s a diagram of the montuno rhythm in green showing the clave in red for the chord changes

Heres a diagram that shows the clave in the red tao sign and tumbao in orange.

Basically part of the tumbao on the 2+ will play a D, on the first 4, it will anticipate the E major chord by playing an E and the second 4 it will anticipate the A minor chord by playing an A.

Here’s all three parts together, the montuno in green, the clave in red and the tumbao in see-through orange!

Go dancing

That’s right you internalize the beat while you dance.  Pretty much all music can be associated to a dance. Folks still dance to reggae and salsa. Modern jazz and classical are danceable but most folks haven’t danced to them in awhile!

At times I’ve stressed about how many hours a day I practiced .  Usually counting hours backfires for me and I don’t practice as much as I was before.  But going dancing works on your time and feel for the music.  Besides having fun, dancing lets the beat move into your muscle memory and subconsciousness.

Sing along

Feeling shy about your singing?  You aren’t alone.  Just don’t forget you just stopped at that red light with the windows rolled down!  Seriously, give it a go and realize having a great voice with good intonation doesn’t happen overnight to almost anyone!

Singing along with the singer will help your voice and phrasing.  Singing the different parts will help you learn the construction of the music, the feel of the music and the actual parts.

When I was a kid, I used to whistle along to some songs that we had back then. I think I stopped for awhile because I was critical of my voice.  But recently, I’ve realized that developing my voice will really help me to develop my musicality.

Work on your time when you walk

I imagine drum beats while I walk.  Since you walk around a lot in life, you can use it as good way to come up with beats.  Besides the heartbeat, walking has to be the most obvious day-to-day rhythmic activity of humans.  You can work on your time by keep a very steady walk.  You can feel the different tempos by walking really fast or really slow.  You can walk with different accents and in different time signatures.  Also, I notice I generally walk with a triplet feel.  I think most people do.  You can walk to beats like the samba or make up beats for when you go jogging.

Anyways, between dancing, singing along to the radio or iPod and walking, you can probably get a couple extra hours of practicing in a day.  It’s 21st century music multi-tasking.  Haha!

I’ve been looking into different ways to provide music to people around the world.  Two companies make CD holders out of recycled paper. Groove House and ReBinder.  Check out GrooveHouse’s website because they have a whole stamp and sticker system to decorate their blank recycled CD covers. They have some cool examples of CD artwork.  (They have blank record holders too which would be awesome)  If you get a custom ink stamp and the right kind of ink you can also take printable blank CDs and stamp things on the actual CD as well.

No, I haven’t found actual CDs made out of recycled plastic yet.  I’ve looked but I don’t know if these exist?

Also check out cdbaby.  Their business was made to help indie musicians and labels.  You can submit individual tracks or a whole album.  They will eventually list your material on all the major online retailers like iTunes and Rhapsody.  Also, if you have any covers, you can take care of royalty fees in one spot.  (it’s about 9 cents per digital download of a song at the moment) A wider audience can listen to your music!

I really love to see people dance while I play.  Something about it feels very fulfilling.  Just wanted to throw this sketch out there to see how it turns out!

Hopefully we will record the entire 4 Seasons in the fall.  I play the 2nd violin part.  The guitar really fills in the space between the bass and the violin.  Sometimes I add some smaller chord voicings to suggest a string section and built energy.

Here’s a song that we did this summer.  Vivaldi’s Adagio from Winter.  Hope you enjoy!

Playing violin parts on the steel string guitar works pretty well.  You need to make sure your guitar has good intonation. I like the solo violin stuff for Bach.  I’ll write more later…

There seem to be two main variations to the way the people hold the right hand.  Basically, you either touch the palm of your hand with your index and middle finger or you use the index and middle finger to touch forehead between the eyebrows.  In the YodaToday video, Adi uses the former technique.  I’m not an expert but most videos on YouTube show the variation that this video demonstrates.  Yoga.dk shows pictures on the homepage with the alternate method.

Also check out this study (pdf) about the immediate benefits of doing Nadi Shodhana Pranayama.  Nadi Shodhana Pranayama is the name of the breath exercise and loosely translated means Channel Cleaning Breath.  Best wishes!

From my favorite yoga video series – this video really helps me feel more calm, peaceful and relaxed.  It takes less than 9 minutes.  Do it anywhere you feel comfortable and where you hips are above your legs.  You could probably do this at an office just by closing your eyes.

Basically the lady guides you through a series of breathing that allows you focus on different parts of your body.  Hope you get a chance to check it out!

thanks to D Sharon Pruitt

Just something I found while I was cleaning my external hard drive.  Playing bass and a couple guitar tracks.  Hope you enjoy!

House music doodle

World Cup 2010.  Besides Messi, no one has more profoundly affected the world at large than Asamoah Gyan.  By missing a penalty kick in the last minute of the last overtime, he lost the opportunity to usher the first African team into the semifinals of any World Cup. But he played fairly, and with heart, much more than can be said about many famous, wealthy European and South American players. To me, his reaction to this defeat embodies the love and beauty of game more than anything I have witnessed in many years.  It represents the truthfulness and passion of not only African soccer but of soccer played around the world.

In a way, watching the world cup signifies ones’ loss.  Only 22 players in the whole world can win.  Billions will not play in the final.  Ghana was so close you could taste it in the air 1000s of miles away and hear it in silence of the collectively held breaths of a continent. But Ghana and Asamoah, you were so close that for me, it was good enough. And while you may not win the World Cup, you certainly hold a place of high regard in the hearts and minds of millions.

the biggest spills in the world – when iraq destroyed the kuwaiti oil wells, the current one, ixtoc 1, exxon valdez. ixtoc 1 actually was in the gulf of mexico, too.  it took about 8 months to stop the leak.  the leak stopped when the finished they side wells. maybe that will be the solution to the current problem?

if you just watched the preceding video, the newswoman states that the oil company is using old technologies and no new technologies have been developed/used.  i believe the new technology is the oil/water separator. i’m sure it has always been around but currently companies, such as evtn have technology that will filter up to 3600 gallons of oily water per minute.

according to wikipedia the current rate of the spill is about 2,000,000 gallons per day. and current total hovers about 120,000,000 gallons. according to the epa, there are 643 quadrillion gallons of water in the gulf of mexico. the gulf covers about 600,000 square miles. the closed area of u.s.a waters is 78,597 square miles, according to deepwaterresponse.com. average depth of gulf is 1,615 meters or about a mile deep.  so here’s some math:

percent of gulf covered (potentially)= 13% = 78,597/600,000

average depth of water affected (guestimate) = 30 meters

percent of depth affected = 2% = 30/1615

amount of water affected = 167 trillion gallons =167,180,000,000,000= 643,000,000,000,000,000 x 2% x 13%

so to filter the water with a vortex separator at 3600 gallons per minute or 5.2 million a day, you would need 1000 working for 33,000 days. say most of the oil only mixed with the top 1 meter of water due to the fact that it floats – it would take about 1100 days.

but not counting underwater pockets and streams, most of the oil could be on the surface, in the top 10 centimeters.  in that case, it would take 100 days to clean the area. this sounds about right. i think it would be better to protect the area closer to the coastline first.

but maybe it would be more harmful to filter the water, you would probably kill a lot of algae and bacteria.  the downsides may outweigh the benefits.  also remember you would potential need 1000 boats working for 100 days.  the current payment rate for a small boat is about $200, so the cost wouldn’t be more than $20-100 million for the boats and then having to buy the vortex and fuel them. even if each vortex cost $1 million dollars, the whole project would cost under $2 billion.  in the grand scheme of things not that much, considering the government would recover a large chunk in taxes.

the 1000 boats would each have to cover about a square mile a day to cover the entire 78,597 square miles.

here they are plus the link to the salsa lesson! salsa lesson one