Instructional

Mrdanga Clinic with the Mayapuris
Brisbane 22 October 3pm - 5pm
Sydney Temple 28 October 3pm - 5pm
Suggested Donation $25

Updated to version 3 on Friday 4th September, additional kirtans added, some fixes applied. Still work in progress.

Here are some lavish chord charts for the 7 kirtans for harmonium, bass, and guitar that I published the other day.

• Kirtans 2009 Chord Charts PDF Version

Here are some photos:

I first did chord charts like this in 2005. You can see my (re)post of some basic kirtans arranged for harmonium here.

With this one I upgraded it to have color coding for the different chords. In this version I hid the line that goes under the mantra, which is a facility for putting in the notes of the vocal melody. Once that goes in, the book is basically complete in itself.

If you like it, feel free to send me something to encourage me to do more - it can be some feedback, a contribution in kind of chord charts for other kirtans, a video of you doing kirtan after learning from this, or whatever.

I will post the ods/xls source file for this when I get back from Sydney. About to catch a plane... laters!

Krishnapada and I are going down to Sydney this week to do kirtan for two days, on Janmastami and Prabhupada's Appearance.

This afternoon I finally got some time out from organising Krishna's Birthday and Gaura Vani's tour, and I recorded the kirtans part by part, for harmonium and guitar, and generated a chord chart.

You can download the recordings and the chord chart as a 64MB zip file here.

The kirtans are some of my faves: the "Springbrook Retreat" Tune; the "Madhava Two Part" Tune — the first Madhava tune I ever heard; the "Madhava E-D-C" Tune; the "Happy Day" Tune — which I haven't done since NZ, so about eight years; the "Aindra E-D" Tune — I remember the first time I heard that one, H.H. Bhaktisiddhanta Swami was playing it during a soundcheck at the first Loft in Wellington; the "Atma Anthem" Tune, from our 2006 album "Sacred Chant Vol 1" — always a crowd favorite; and the "Bangladeshi" Tune taught to me by Devaki, and available on the "Heart of Devotion" live album.

Also there is an arrangement for Prabhupada's song from the Jaladuta.

Here are some experiments I've been doing with MIDI drums.

This is a Roland TD-04 MIDI drum kit [demo on youtube] controlling an old school Yamaha QY-70 sequencer (pictured above) that I've had kicking around for a couple of years.

I recorded three tracks - the first is a rhythmic/melodic part using a Thai Bell patch. That was fun, and relative easy because it was all arms, not this whole "four limbs doing wildly different things" that I'm currently struggling with. The second is a drum track using a Rock Kit patch. The third is a single snare roll overdub using a Analog Kit patch.

The tracks were recorded at 115 bpm, and you can hear that my live performance is so many kinds of suck - give me a break though, I've only been playing three weeks. The spirit is willing, but thus far the body is completely un-co, as in "unco-operative" and "unco-ordinated".

Here's the track:

Original Track (.wma, 2.8MB)

[Apologies for the wma, but that's the format that my iRiver E100 encodes in, and I don't have a machine handy to transcode to mp3 or ogg right now. Leave a comment if you want to listen to it but don't have enough evil installed on your machine to play it.]

Fixing it in the mix - the miracle of MIDI

Now, if that had been an analog performance on a real kit, captured as sound, rather than captured as digital performance data, there would be nothing that could be done to make that better except to keep practicing for the next two years (which I'll do anyway...)

However, with MIDI, we can do a few things.

Here's what I did:

• Quantize the drum track to eighth notes
• Switch the kit from Rock to Jungle (yeah boyee!)
• Copy the last measures before it all falls apart and turn them into a loop, copying that over the crash and burn

Quantizing magically makes your out-of-time performance "on the one". Or in my case, "mostly on the one accompanied by a few real funky fills that sound awesome, but are actually me playing so far off the one that the computer can't tell one from three and a half".

Here's the remixed track, after about 5 minutes of digital magic:

MIDI Magic! Track (.wma, 2.8MB)

More MIDI options

The other thing I could have done (and which I only thought of later), is to simply reduce the bpm of the "melody" track from 115bpm to something that I'm more comfortable playing at (like 50-60bpm right now), record the drum track performance at that speed, then speed it up again - kind of like Dragonforce do (they do not!).

If you capture live performances (vocals, harmonium, tabla, mrdanga) using a click track or sampled drum beat for timing, then you can add MIDI instrument performances such as this, and use quantize to "fix it in the mix".

You can even record those parts at a slower bpm, then just crank up the tempo when you add them with the live tracks.

Got any more ideas or experience with MIDI? Let me know.

Rock on!

This is adapted from the chapter "Piano Miking Techniques" in Mike Stavrou's book "Mixing with your mind"

I've struggled with getting a good harmonium sound "on tape". On Saturday we did some recording and the sound was ok, but on Sunday night I read more on microphone techniques for recording. Today I put some of it into practice and I wanted to share the results with you.

The principle to remember is this:

There is a science to everything, understanding which one can develop the feel needed for the art.

Science, folks. It works. Do it systematically, and take notes while you are learning, to turn your experimentation into systematic exploration.

The most obvious, and probably wrong, way to mike up a harmonium

The most obvious way to mic up a harmonium is to put a mic directly over the reeds, pointing down on them.

This is the most immediately obvious thing to do for a beginner (and what I did until today) - I mean, that's where the sound comes from, right? And you want to record the sound of the harmonium, right?

This is where you will get the brightest, hottest sound. However, it's also the most treble, because you are essentially recording the "metal" of the harmonium - the reeds.

To attenuate that treble you will have to cut the treble end of the EQ. The result is that you will get either a harsh, cutting sound (with no EQ), or else a muddy, indistinct one (if you attenuate the treble).

What you want to do is record the "wood" of the harmonium, the resonance of the box - especially if it is a good one.

If you get a rich, resonant bassy sound you can boost the treble via EQ and you'll boost the harmonic overtones. The reverse is not true - if you record the reeds you have no bass to boost via low-end EQ.

Do you want it to look right, or sound good?

Where you put the mic is not a function of how it looks. It's a function of how it sounds.

To discover where to put the mic:

• Set up your mic and put on your headphones
• Turn up the mic so that the sound in your headphones is louder than the room sound
• Have someone play the harmonium while you move the microphone around it, finding zones of resonance and character. Make a mental note of any interesting areas
• When you find an area with a smooth, resonant sound, lock off the microphone and get ready to roll to tape (or to disk, more probably these days)

No substitute for hearing

There is no substitute for experimenting and hearing what it sounds like. The atmosphere, the player's technique, the size and shape of the room, standing waves created by other instruments being played in an ensemble - all of these conspire to make each recording session a unique experience.

At the same time, you'll get some idea of where to mike up a particular harmonium if you use it regularly.

Example

Here is my example. Today I did a few test runs with a couple of mics in different places around the harmonium. I didn't have an assistant to play while I checked, so I just did some different position. There is really no substitute for moving the mic around while someone is playing though, and getting an accurate picture of the three dimensional sound field around the harmonium.

The first mic I used was the Shure SM 57, a dynamic mic that is a staple for live sound miking of instruments.

The second mic was the Behringer B2Pro, a dual diaphragm condenser mic. I had the bass cut set to level, attentuation to 0db, and polarity pattern set to cardioid.

I boosted some of the recordings by 8-10dB, to try to get a similar relative level between them. Frequency analysis was done before boosting.

01. SM57 directly overhead
First off the ranks, the Shure SM 57 directly over the reeds:

A frequency analysis is useful for EQ'ing purposes, and when you are trying to find out which instruments occupy which frequency bands. Here's an frequency analysis of the resultant recording:

Here's an mp3 of the recording:
01. Shure SM57 directly over head

02. SM57 rear lower corner
For the next take I tried in the rear lower corner, where it was particularly resonant:

Here's an frequency analysis of the resultant recording:

Here's an mp3 of the recording:
02. Shure SM57 rear lower corner

03. SM57 side over the clasp hole
Next I tried it over the hole in the side where the clasps are:

Here's an frequency analysis of the resultant recording:

Here's an mp3 of the recording:
03. Shure SM57 side over the clasp hole

04. SM57 side front lower corner
Next I tried it on the side, toward the front and at the bottom. It's all about capturing the resonance of the cabinet:

Here's an frequency analysis of the resultant recording:

It can be amplified and EQ'd later. The main thing is to find a spot where it has good resonance and tone.

Here's an mp3 of the recording:
04. Shure SM57 front lower corner

05. SM57 directly in front
This one would be difficult for someone to play, but I tried it to get an idea of the sound possibilities:

Here's an frequency analysis of the resultant recording:

Here's an mp3 of the recording:
05. Shure SM57 rear lower corner

06. SM57 front side lower corner
I kinda liked the sound on the front, so I tried a mic position that would be easier to play with:

Here's an frequency analysis of the resultant recording:

Here's an mp3 of the recording:
06. Shure SM57 front side lower corner

07. B2Pro directly overhead
Now we move on to the B2Pro, starting with the obvious overhead position:

Here's an frequency analysis of the resultant recording:

Here's an mp3 of the recording:
07. Behringer B2Pro directly overhead

08. B2Pro rear lower corner
This was kind of in the middle actually, but pointing down, at the back.

Here's an frequency analysis of the resultant recording:

Here's an mp3 of the recording:
08. Behringer B2Pro rear lower corner

09. B2Pro front side lower corner
Now on the front, in the lower side corner:

Here's an frequency analysis of the resultant recording:

Here's an mp3 of the recording:
09. Behringer B2Pro front side lower corner

10. B2Pro side midway bottom
And finally, midway along the side, pointing down:

Here's an frequency analysis of the resultant recording:

Here's an mp3 of the recording:
10. Behringer B2Pro side midway bottom

Conclusion

To be honest with you, I like the sound when it's miked up directly in front. That's probably not practical for recording.

The SM57 is pretty bottom heavy. The B2Pro, as a condenser, has a greater frequency response, and I'd probably go with that for recording the harmonium, depending on what else is going in the mix. To fill out the bottom end in a recording with not much else down there I'd use the SM57.

My favorite sound overall was the last one, number 10. That's where I'll start from in our next recording session.

What do you think?

Which one do you like best? Got any further tips for recording harmonium?

Let me know your thoughts.

Today I joined a mrdanga forum over at Gauravani.com. There I discovered a remix of the first section of my 2001 book The Art and Science of Harinam Sankirtan Yajna.

Rock!

It's attractively formatted and has had some material added to it.

I release my material under a Creative Commons Share Alike-Attribution license, as noted at the bottom of my website. My purpose in doing this is to allow others to remix, reuse, and to build on my material.

I don't use the "Non-commercial" clause of the Creative Commons license. If someone can figure out a way to make money out of it then "good on them", I say. Of course, due to the license anything that is produced from the original material must be released under the same license - that's the meaning of the "Share Alike" clause.

Here's the remix. It has "(c) 2008" on the front page, but the correct license is CC 2.5 SA-BY, so you can remix, reuse, and redistribute this to your heart's content, including commercial use. Enjoy!

• The Art and Science of Harinam Sankirtan Yajna 2008 remix

In reference to yesterday's post about mrdangas and metronomes, Maha-mantra wrote me to say that "triplets at 66 bpm is too fast for beginners", and of course it is.

I didn't start out on 66 bpm with triplets - and neither should you. The 66 bpm practice of that mantra is just what I'm doing at the moment. The post is as much inspirational as it is instructional. The main point is - practice with a metronome.

Mantra suggests starting out with single beats at 204 pm. You can use the initial mantras in my book "The Art and Science of Harinam Sankirtan Yajna", such as te ta and te ta ta. That way you'll be following, rather than imitating.

When I have a little more time I'll sit down, start with the basics, and go systematically from there.

In mrdanga playing power is good, endurance is great, but precision is king.

If you have power and endurance people will notice you. If you have precision you can become invisible - the kirtan will rock so hard that people will forget you're there.

And that's the goal.

To develop precision you need to practice with a metronome. It's a form of hasta-sadhana ("finger practice") that involves subordinating yourself to Krishna in His form of time (kalo 'smi). It can be hard on the mind, but that's what it's all about - conquering the mind and becoming a faithful and useful servant of the kirtan.

After I shot this video I had a realisation about muscle fibres. You see, I've been practicing with a metronome for 30 - 60 minutes a day, and my precision is pretty high. However, I've been noticing that while my power and endurance have been going up with my new physical training program, my precision has been disappearing.

Here's my theory as to why: the precision is not simply in the brain, it's also in the muscle fibres. High speed mrdanga playing uses reflex actions. These reflexes are stored in the muscle memory. As you add new muscle you need to retrain it to make it precise in mrdanga playing. So it's back to the metronome and hasta-sadhana for me, otherwise all this power and endurance is just for show.

By popular demand, a video demonstrating darbuka beats to accompany the Bengali mrdanga beats used in ISKCON kirtans.

A sifu master once said: "If you want to master something do it ten thousand times".

Of course, beyond the conception of mastery is the realization that we are subordinate to our environment and exist in order to serve.

However, the principle is valuable. I express it like this: "The difference between an experienced drummer and an inexperienced drummer is ten thousand strokes."

The other day I taught the basic strokes on the mrdanga to a student. Then I told her: "Now you know what I know. The only difference between us is ten thousand strokes."

There is no short cut, no substitute. Of course, there are lots of things that you can do to accelerate and deepen the effectiveness of your practice. Serving and associating with others who are better than you will lift your game. But still, the hard yards are there, just waiting for you to do them.

Ten thousand strokes - that's all it takes to get to the next level. How long will it take you to do them?

Prahlad and I are studying the Egyptian tabla at the moment. When I watch a video like the one below of young Yunus firing over a 12/4 rhythm, I realize that he is simply picking up from where he left off in a previous life. Born into an appropriate family, he quickly reconnects with his previous patterns. This is the fate of unsuccessful spiritualist as well - he or she gets the opportunity to take birth in a family of pious, devoted persons.

So in a sense our explanation that at the time of death everything material is lost is not strictly true, because otherwise there would be no such thing as karma. According to Bhagavad-gita 15.8: "The living entity in the material world carries his different conceptions of life from one body to another as the air carries aromas."

While material wealth cannot be taken with you, your conceptions of life remain, and you continue to evolve, or degrade in terms of your consciousness.

Materially or spiritually, you get some impetus from your previous life's effort, and you go from there. Ten thousand strokes. Whether it's playing an instrument or progressing in spiritual life, the principle is the same. Do the hard yards.

These guys have dedicated their time to something. Instead of playing video games or watching tv, they've developed this skill. They have the same number of hours per day as everyone else, but they have invested them in a focused way. They have used their time to do ten thousand strokes on one drum.

"Those who are on this path are resolute in purpose, and their aim is one. O beloved child of the Kurus, the intelligence of those who are irresolute is many-branched." - Bhagavad-gita 2.41

Focused effort. Enthusiasm to begin, simultaneous determination and patience to see it through.

These are the principles of success.

"Ten thousand strokes" - that's what it takes.