Guitar

How the Guitar Made Me Lazy as ****

Or: How I Took My Guitar’s Help to Be Lazy

I haven’t always been playing the guitar. It’s only been about 9 years since I started. Before that, I was singing. I never realised back then, but I was paying a lot of…

The Dialects of Tuning

I was so used to the pitches that I sang in Hindustani classical music that it never even occurred to me to listen to the actual pitches being used in other styles like Indonesian or Persian or even pop.

An Injured Music

A musician’s attempts to bypass injury

About two years ago, I injured my left index finger from over-practicing. It was quite crushing, to say the least. I was practicing playing the flute too much (the metre-long Indian bansuri) and the resulting…

Uniting with Sound: Pitch

A tuning lesson given through prose

“Instruments are so hard to tune,” he thought. He had been fiddling with the tuning pegs for hours now and it was no closer to being in tune than when he started. He didn’t know what was wrong but he…

How I learned to speak with notes: Harmony

A personal recounting of relative pitch: Part 2

Imagine a strong, powerful voice speaking. The voice is rich in overtones, it carries over a great distance and it makes an impact. What’s the easiest…

How I improved my sense of rhythm: Part 1

This story has a lot to do with singing and playing guitar together but the main lessons are about rhythm, making this accessible to a general music-learning audience. Enjoy!