Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Guitar string's'weak point discovered!!

I discovered a phenomenon on my guitar today. I have sore fingertips while typing this out because of the sudden excessive time I spent experimenting on it after a long hiatus.

My findings are such. We all know that unless the string is pushed down to touch one fret, the sound made is not clear. The sound kind of loses itself into the solid body of the guitar and into our fingers. When we touch a string slightly and strum, there is again a lost note, a non-sustained sound.

What I discovered today is that, for each string, along its length, there is ONE point where the light placement of our finger produces a soft, sustained note (even though we aren't pressing); as if we were gently strumming while pressing the string down on one fret. Also, the pitch of the sound we hear at that point is very nearly the same pitch that we would hear when we press the string down to the fret exactly below the point where our finger is (and NOT the pitch that we hear if we strum when the finger is not on the string). Oh it's so amazing!

The phenomenon occurs only at one point along the length of each string. I don't know if anyone has noticed this before!!

Monday, June 10, 2013

'Foreign Body' by Robin Cook

I finished reading the book.

Being a Mumbaiyya, I have got used to seeing filth all around the city. There'd be vegetable remains acting as  slimy carpet in the crowded marketplace, human excreta and plastic bags full of waste thrown across railway tracks; all this was regular sight in my daily life. It's normal for a Mumbaiite.

But such a sight, I have understood from the words used in the book, must've been a sore to Robin Cook's eyes when he came to do his little tour of India while writing his book 'Foreign Body'. He has described the overcrowded buses and people traveling on the roofs, dirty, barefoot children running around on filth and begging in front of five-star hotels. He has also described the stink and dirt in the holy city of Varanasi.

Such a shame! He has tried to be as nice and respectful as possible during these descriptions. If it were me, I'd add a line that said, "How in the name of God did people manage to live in so much stink and muck!?"

Another book's on it's way!