Sindhuja Bhaktavatsalam

Webpage: http://octaves.blogspot.com

Music has always been like the second tongue at home and I'm glad I had the fortune of receiving training in Carnatic vocal music for quite a long time.
Academic commitments don't allow me to give it as much as I would like to; and Blogswara just serves to fill this void - its an amazing platform for amateur/ part-time musicians and I've totally enjoyed the experience. Thank you, Blogswara!

Blog: http://tailgunner1977.blogspot.com
Music: http://soundclick.com/tailgunner

Many years ago, my first experience on stage was playing the bass guitar for my high school band. To be fair I had no idea what I was doing except that I was instructed to play such and such a note at the given time. Hmm..well...whrrrrr (fast forward to the present)...I play guitar for fun and am a self taught guitarist.

My influences are mainly classic rock/metal. I'm a die hard fan of Deep Purple, Dire Straits, Iron Maiden, Alice Cooper, Judas Priest, Ozzy Ozbourne among others. More recently I have taken a strong liking for Eastern European heavy metal bands (more melodic metal i would say).

My favourite guitar players include Ritchie Blackmore, Joe Satriani, Yngwie Malmsteen, Steve Vai, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Mark Knopfler, Paul Gilbert, Eric Johnson and Jimi Hendrix. I guess I cannot really do justice to all of them but these are some of my all time favorite "axe-men".

Blogswara has been an scintillating experience for me. I first got introduced to Jo through his blog (a google search for the rock band avial and lo behold i land up on Jo's blog). Well a few collaborative efforts with Jo and then subsequently I was introduced to several bloggers (Ganesh, Murali, Jo, Ajay, Meera, Udhaya, Nyneshia and several others) with common interests. Therefore when Jo suggested this idea I was really excited and as I said earlier, I truly enjoyed working on this project and look forward to more in the future.

kahaan shuruu huaa safar, hai aage kaun sii Dagar
be-karaan jahaan, ik boond hum, beh jaayenge yoon befikar

About Blogswara: Music brought us all together from around the globe. Its been an exciting journey for me, meeting so many talented people, making new friends and creating music. I hope to do this again and again!

Sam Kolli

Location, country: Cleveland, OH, USA
Web page : http://verveks.blogspot.com

About me: My main musical influences include AR Rahman, The Verve, Portishead, Prodigy, Indian Ocean and similiar bands/artists. I enjoy the RadioIOAmbient and Philosomatika iTunes stations. I also like Dancing Queen by Abba and Toxic by Britney Spears and my guilty pleasures include Chunnari Chunnari by Anu Malik and Mercury Poolu by AR Rahman. I would like to meet AR Rahman, Sachin Tendulkar, Jonty Rhodes, Lebron James and Steven Gerrard.

About Blogswara : I realized there's more to music than I thought there was. I got introduced to people like Anup, Jo and Meera and interacting with a talented bunch like that is always rewarding.

Nandu Mahadevan

Location : Houston, TX
Web page : www.gumbalsband.com

About me: Hey there! I love to spend time creating enjoyable music. I typically look for some sort of "wow factor" in a song and want to be able to create songs that way too. By "wow factor" I mean something unique and interesting about that song.. may be a nice harmony when not expected or an awesome interlude lead, or some special effect, a rap in the middle or anything like that.. In my opinion a good song should be hummable, should start well, should progress well and should end well. Personally it is easy for me to start a song well, but the harder part for me is to keep it interesting through out.. but I keep trying. My buddy Ramesh and I started gumbalsband.com - you can check it out if you want to hear other compositions.

My experience with Blogswara : I think Blogswara is a fantastic concept.. I love amateur music. There is a special joy in listening to work created by people who are not professional musicians. I have personally learned and grown a lot in the past few years since I started creating original music.. There is a bunch of talent out there and Blogswara will be the place to showcase them. I wish this forum becomes the defacto space for the world to check out and download free original productions - not to mention by pure digitial online collaboration!