I usually wouldn't want to post about anything too technical when it comes to the website, but I thought I will mention this, in case someone out there is interested. If not, just skip over this post to get to the next musically-related or otherwise more interesting post.

If you have visited this blog recently, you might have noticed that it went from a somewhat generic theme to complete integration with my prasantmusic.com website.

I actually happened upon this while contemplating a switch over to a self-hosted blog using Wordpress. I had already installed Wordpress on my server, imported my old blogger posts and was playing around with it when I realized that it would take me way too long to figure things out and and potentially make it work with my site. It definitely has much better features as everyone else says on the web, but I'm a musician, not a techie (even though I have often stay up late staring bleary-eyed at the computer, testing little changes in coding), and I just don't want to spend too much time/effort starting out from scratch.

I am a ravenous Googler, like I think everyone has now become, and I found a nifty tutorial on how to integrate an existing hosted Blogger into a normal website. Since I'm familiar with the guts of Blogger template code, I was able to do the integration in a very short time.

Anyways, there are a few shortcomings to keeping my old ftp Blogger setup.

1. Archive features are bad. It is very cumbersome to navigate posts through the archives and there is no "older posts" link at the bottom of each page, so navigating the archives is inevitable.
2. No integrated search. ** Well a little bit of tweaking and I got a nifty search box for the blog using Google Custom Domain Search, so that is fixed and appears to work well, I might add.
3. No tags, categories etc. There are labels, but no dynamic way to display them.
4. No dynamic "related posts" or "recent posts" features.

Of course I could switch over the Google hosted blogspot and get some of these features, but I would really rather host it myself to protect my data, and I would have to use one of the generic themes again.

I guess the main thing is that I don't think too many of you would miss these features too much -- would you? Check out the new setup, and let me know if there is anything you find to be too much of a pain or difficult to use. Or perhaps, you have an idea or a feature you would like to see. Let me know!

Now, back to listening to Madurai Somu...oh, it just changed to Rage Against the Machine.

These shuffle playlists are crazy!

Labels: random, webdev

I mentioned in an earlier post that I would let you know when the new VidyA CD would be available at major retailers online.


Well, its a bit delayed, but here are the links you might have been waiting for.
Some independent music stores like Amoeba, Rasputin, Aquariu etc., will also carry it. If you don't see it, ask for it! There are also other online services that have it as well.

Labels: albums, vidya

Well, after over a month's absence posting here, I finally decided to put together a brief round up of my trip to India. The trip went very well. I had a good mix of personal practice time and concerts among other things. I even got to catch the latest Batman film, "Dark Knight" a couple days before I left. Definitely a dark and chilling film.

I was very happy to spend some quality time with my guru, Dr. Kadri Gopalnath. I was also able to catch up with some friends, mentors and other musicians who I usually spend time with, such as T.R. Subramaniam, A. Kanyakumari, Guruvayur Dorai, V. Suresh, Ganeshprasad among others. This time, it was a treat to perform with B.U. Ganeshprasad (violin), Trichur Narendran (mridangam), Phalgun (mridangam), and V. Suresh during my concerts among others.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, my first concert of the trip was at Rameswaram. Rameswaram has an interesting history, mainly because of the religious background. Myself, Ganeshprasad and Phalgun did a morning concert there after a long a night train. It was a part of a three day Gurupurnima event. A video was taken, but as usual, I never find time to upload. I will do it soon enough. Here is a screen grab from the video I have...


After Rameswaram and Thiruvunamalai, I had a concert at a new hall in Chennai called Sri Muthu Venkata Subba Rao Memorial Hall. Quite a long name. I can say that I was extremely impressed with the hall. I think it is the best hall in Chennai. The concert was curated by the hall's programming director and sponsored by a company there called Gatsby. It was definitely a crowd different from the usual Carnatic listeners, but the response was very good and it was a pleasure to play in a quality environment and ambience focused purely on the music. The whole thing was recorded, both audio and video, so hopefully I will share some of that with you soon. That concert had myself on saxophone, B.U. Ganeshprasad, Trichur Narendran on mridangam and V. Suresh on ghatam.

The concert brought with it a number of press articles of all types. I haven't received a copy of them all, but here are some links to the ones I heard about so far. If you want to get the latest, probably check back on my press page. If you find anything that is not there yet, let me know.

• "Strict Adherence to Classicism" - Concert review in The Hindu by Lalitha Krishnan
• "When East Meets West" - An article in a The Hindu supplement called "NXG"
• "Carnatic Music Gets a Saxy Makeover" - Article in a Hindu magazine called "Ergo."
  
• "Unchained Melody" - Article in India Today magazine: Online Version | E-Magazine Version
• Interview in "The Score" music magazine: Online | PDF | Photo (jpg)
  

There was also a TV interview, but I lost track of that one. Some of these articles have a slightly odd interpretation of what I had said during interviews, but I have learned that it is unavoidable.

Anyways, that is about all I can cover right now. The other concerts were memorable as well, but I don't think I will go over everything here. I will try my best to post some videos or other media soon.

By the way, I just added a little feed of my latest photos from flickr to the left of the blog. Hope you like it. Between that and my Twitter updates (feel free to "follow" me), you can easily see what I'm up to just by looking at the sidebar, even if I don't have a chance to update the blog.

Just finished listening to the 1967 Lalgudi Jayaraman concert at Krishna Ghana Sabha...again. Never gets old!

Take care, and keep listening!

Labels: concerts, press