Musicking.gr

Website in greek, for the study of Hindusthani Classical Music

Articles, Tabla Compositions, Dictionary, Bibliography, Multimedia, Interactive Media, Links

Comments & recommendations:

Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome strongly recommended

Please refer to the "About" section for credits and

instructions on how to navigate and search

ABOUT musicking.gr

who, what, why, contribution, framework, content, programming, bibliography, copyright, hints & tips, acknowledgments.

who

Sakis Laios, (content of this website and translation of this text)
Yannis Scoulidas, (programming)

what

I have borrowed the term “musicking” from the title of a Christopher Small's book. This website started late November 2008 as an expansion of a [nearly finished] written project entitled “Dictionary of Hindusthani Classical Music” (in Greek) which I wanted to transfer online. It also includes a Tablā-composition database. It is still not clear whether this site is educational or bloggish oriented, nevertheless access is free and you can check what's going on, even help in putting it into shape.

why

First of all, I am quite crazy about Indian music and learn and practice it for some years now. But there is also people that show an interest in ethnomusicology and, the study (beyond easy listening) of other musics, in general. These people might be interested in a tool that explains world-music terms in their own account and help in forming a map of them. If, for example, people write terms that deal with Turkish, Irania, African etc music, one -searching for the examplary word "scale" (κλίμακα, in Greek)- could see the dissemination of the concept intra-culturally. Moreover, I am interested in collaborating with people who would like to contribute with remarks, notes etc concerning existing material, navigation and usability, or with adding additional material. My wish is that there is enough interest so as it becomes a “World-music Thesaurus”.

contribution

The user is free to navigate, be informed and use fairly parts of the content. There is no financial commitment, nevertheless a donation might be appreciated. The donation formula will be announced in the future. At this stage (beta v.1), adding content into the database is not allowed for anyone but the author. Your remarks, however, will always be valuable, whether you are (or feel like) an expert in ethnomusicology, or not.

framework

Musicking.gr includes 3 main sections:

“Articles” about Indina Classical Music [nothing uploaded yet]
“Tablā-composition database ” [few compositions and videos, still under development]
“Dictionary of Hindusthani Classical Music” which is the most complete (functionally) section [however it only includes small portions of the initial written book].
and an auxiliary one, bibliography

All content is organised in databases containg text, photos, audio and other multimedia

“Musicking” does not actually offer an educational “procedure” or “series”. It is a quite "open" space (for whose limits the end-user is not quite informed) in which each one can perform a unique route. This applies both in transporting between terms in the Dictionary and between compositions in the Tablā-compositions database. In the former, links to associated terms are provided, and in the latter there are suggestions (recommendations) for pre-requisite and follow-up compositions. I could claim it is a form of "cloud of self-contained entities with loosely pre-determined relations.

content

This webpage contains original and originally-laid out material which has been produced using much personal effort (reading, processing, translating, writing). I have, obviously, valuated information but I reserve myself to future modifications. Especially for the initial page of teh Dictionary section, there is only an empty search field in which one can begin by input-ting [?] something (in greek, english or hindi in latin transliteration). A results-page then appear, possibly with terms and their short descriptions. By rolling-over an undelined term, a pop-up window with associated terms appears. The assocciated terms are clickable even inside this pop-up window. While in a term's page, double-clicking a word sets out a search process that will lead to this term's page (if availble), or display a search-results page.

bibliography

The user can navigate to the uploaded bibliography, in which he can perform searches by single-clicking a writer's name or double-clicking any other word. In the Dictionary section, each term's page includes a special bibliographic icon that pop-ups bibliography used.

copyright

Από πλευράς copyright τα multimedia που βρίσκονται εδώ είναι προσωπικού copyright π.χ. όταν ο ίδιος παίζω όργανα, τραγουδάω, αφηγούμαι, λέω ρυθμικά σχήματα, αλλά επιφυλάσσομαι για μελλοντική χρήση και άλλου υλικού (π.χ. δεσμευμένου copyright με δικαίωμα χρήσης, δεσμευμένου copyright με εύλογη χρήση, ελεύθερου copyright)

hints and tips

anywhere in the Dictionary section, double-clicking a word sets out a search process that will lead to this term's page (if availble), or display a search-results page
anywhere in the Articles section, double-clicing a word sets out a process which pops-up elementary information about it (provided it is a separate term in the Dictionary). Using the arrow button on this pop-up window the the user can navigate to this term's page in the dictionary
in this results-page, and as far as Mozilla's Firefox is concerned, one can open a term in a new window (shift + click) or in a new tab (ctrl + click)
to copy text, use ctrl + c

acknowledgments

no doubt, thanx to Yannis for advice, talks on technique and functionality, and programming. Rodi Vogiatzi for abstracting this text's draft (I added more afterwards...), Heleni Bratsou, Rallou Vogiatzi, Rosa Prodromou for editing the text while in early stages. To my music-technology-gurus (Yiorgos Papanikolaou, Kostas Pastiadis, Yiorgos Kalliris) from the "Διαπανεπιστημιακό Διατμηματικό Πρόγραμμα Μεταπτυχιακών Σπουδών στα Προηγμένα Συστήματα Υπολογιστών και Επικοινωνιών" of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, which possess the talent of guiding one through interesting routes in order to seek the essence of matters (and without whose guidelines, I do not think I would have gone much further than the initial printed form of this material). Friends and teachers for musicking together.