Let Me deviate

Today, I am not much in a mood to write anything serious. I will write something more from my heart.

Each time, I get into one of the moods, whether happy or angry, or ponderous, or melancholic, or literally any mood which cannot even be described in words, I get some tune, some set of notes in my mind. Every thing I want to say, but cannot say either because I am over-whelmed, or because its too complicated to say, I generally get into a singing or a playing spree. I usually prefer my guitar under such circumstances, because I can express myself the best with the guitar.

Many a times, I don't even remember what I played (in fact most of the times) I just play whatever comes to my fingers, from my heart. At this time, there is a great influence of my previous practice. I find that many a times, a phrase or an expression which I have oft practiced before, comes repeatedly to my fingers. But my heart probably wants to say something different. So, sometimes I go back and slowly play what my mind actually wants. But many times, my mind accepts the expression, because its a more familiar one and seems more pleasing to the ear.

On the other hand, I can't really make out whether some expressions are from the heart or from my fingers. But my mind tells me whether it sounds musically good or no. Many a times, my mind also does away with very simple sounding expression, whether they are from the heart or from the fingers. I have this urge to compose pretty weird music, so it gets reflected in the nature of music I finally play.

Its quite interesting to see the actions of these three things interact with one another to produce a piece of music. And it gives me a great pleasure to watch their interactions and think about all these three parts of the brain from a fourth part of the brain. Isn't the whole idea incredible??? What I called my heart, my fingers, my mind and my conscience, all are actually different parts of the brain itself.

But all the same, many people ask me, how can you compose? Tell me how you compose. But I am not able to answer, what happens to me when I am composing? How do the ideas come into my head? How do I know what to play so that it sounds good? I really don't know. And again I cannot repeat it whenever I want. I am not able to come up with something great when I must. Only when I am at some peak which I cannot even know, I can come up with something really good. I have never performed under pressure.

I think that the ability to play music and to play original music is a God sent gift. I am very lucky to be able to discover it and use it to find relief in my life through all the mental and physical struggles.

Before ending the blog I must point out the irony of my discussion. I wanted to write something from my heart, but ended up writing something from my mind.

Cheers!!!!

More about the physics

So I have some time today after actually a long time, and not too much to do, so I thought I would write something more in detail. I thought I must apologize, but the question is to whom? :-)

Actually I had started this blog a long time back, but today as I continue it, I have to say something quite important. Today is the day, I finally decided after consulting my guide that I will be doing my MSc. research in MUSIC!!! Its almost like a dream come true to me!!!

So as I had mentioned earlier, a musical note is essentially a periodic sound and it contains something called harmonics which may sound like some mumbo-jumbo. So in todays post I would like to explain what this harmonics is all about.

So, most people can find that a song sounds different from the other because it has a different tune. And from heresay from some musicians, we know that these tunes are made of sime discrete components called notes.

Now each note has different pitch (Many musicians may disagree with this statement because, the pitch that they refere to is the reference note of the whole/part of the composition. I shal explain that too later). As explained earlier, pitch is somewhat related to the frequency of the vibrations. However, the percieved pitch may be different from the fundamantal frequency.

I shall explain this a little more in detail. A sine wave is one of the simplest forms of periodic waves in many wave (more so mathematically). For those who do not know what a sine wave is, imagine the cross-section of the surface of water when a pebble is dropped into it. Now if we add another sine wave with a different frequency and possibly a different amplitude, we get a more complicated
waveform, which is nevertheless periodic.

Thus we can make more and more complicated periodic waveforms by adding sine waves to each other. Now if the subsequent sine waves that are added have frequencies which are multiples of the first wave, then the first wave is called the fundamental frequency.

Another way of looking at it is, the fundamental frequency is the Greatest Common Divisor (GCD) of all the frequency components that are present in any periodic waveform. Actually this definition is more accurate, because it may be possible that no component with the frequency equal to the GCD may actually be present in the waveform. And again the other frequency components will be some
(integral) multiples of the fundamental frequency, which are called 'Harmonics'.

Actually, the pitch is often comfused with the fundamental frequency because, it usually is the same. But studies have found that it may not always be the same. Thus pitch is an extremely perceptual phenomenon. Many researchers have tried to quantify it, but without heartening success.

I hope to study this phenomenon too during the course of my research and hope to provide some answers atleast to myself and to this blog.

More later, I am actually feeling sleepy. Its 2 in the night.