Chitravenu a finalist in competition

[uday_shankar]

Chitravenu made it to the finals of the Margaret Guthman Musical Instrument Design Competition 2014. However, it did not win any prizes, which went electronic gizmos barring an elegant, well-designed adjustable fret guitar. It was always a far cry for the chitravenu, given the heavily electronic tilt of the whole competition as well as judges.

However, chitravenu did get mentioned in the New York Times:

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/ ... type=Blogs

[rshankar]

Great going, Uday! Thank you for looping back with us. I was wondering about the outcome.

[uday_shankar]

Thanks Ravi. There's some footage and a sound clip in the TV report:

http://www.11alive.com/news/article/322 ... orgia-Tech

[ajit]

Uday,
Its really great that Chithravenu made it to the finals.. Great job.

ajit

[Nick H]

Congratulations for making the final. It's good to know that you thought well of the acoustic instrument that went ahead of you there.

[Sreeni Rajarao]

Nice! Congratulations, Uday!

[PUNARVASU]

Congratulations, Uday.

[cacm]

GETTING THIS FAR IN THE WEST DOMINATED COMPETITION IS EQUAL TO WINNING. CONGRAGULATIONS. VKV

[arasi]

We are proud of you, Uday. You are a winner, no matter!

[cienu]

Having made it to such a stage is by itself a great achievement. Congratulations Uday

[cmlover]

Great news uday! Of course there is nocompetition with electronic Gizmos!
Your invention is now internationally recognized.
The hard work now is to legitimise and popularise it among CM afficianados!
Congratulations and Good Luck!

[Nick H]

Uday, did you get good interest from people, intersting contacts, etc? That could be worth more than prizes.

[rajeshnat]

Uday
Congratulations uday, if possible can we see /hear the demo that you did in the finals.

[Ramasubramanian M.K]

Bravo Udhay!! hats off to your tenacity and perseverance!!

[Rsachi]

Uday,
You're the winner. FOR SURE.


Imagine being referred to as straight forward and sober among weird creations like an iPhone choir, electromagnetic suit etc.
Woe be to musicians and inventors who abandon voice, wind, leather and string and employ robots to make synthetic sounds.

I urge you to perfect your instrument. Your audience is more than a billion strong- who have grown up listening to flute, veena and mridangam. Not to omit violin.

[tkb]

Sabash and Wishing all the very Best! It is just the start not the END!

[uday_shankar]

Thanks everyone. Attached below are some pictures of the performance.. Will post video as soon as they share it with me. My final design has a "string" section attached, which can be played or let vibrate sympathetically. It's a modified psaltery (an instrument like a harp) which I assembled from a kit (and finished it and cut out and OM sign from color paper and pasted it for effect ). The combination of strings adds an absolutely ethereal sound to the instrument, although it would be a distraction for Carnatic music. Also, I added a couple of "orthogonal" transparent polycarbonate baffles (cut out and shaped as artistically as my utilitarian mind can conceive) that form a unique reverberation chamber and I expect this alone to be copied by other instruments eventually. The vertical sheet separates the acoustic energy that spreads from the two ends (mouthpiece and the open end of slide) and the horizontal sheet reflects all the energy upwards. This arrangement reduces the dissipation of the energy and affords a great "projection" of the sound for both the player and listener. Unfortunately there was never any time to explain all this to the judges...in any case, the judges were good music technology people but not the physics types.

[cmlover]

Awaiting the full video!
The baffles indeed baffle me. Wondering how it sounds with this innovation?

[RAMAKRISHNAN]

Happy to read this and your continued effort to bring it to the world your attempt of Chitravenu. I am sure ,you have bright days ahead in your new venture. All the best

[uday_shankar]

And thank you Arkay Ramakrishnan for being bold and open-minded enough to give me the (ONLY!) opportunity in Chennai to demo the Chitravenu .

[cmlover]

...the one other than at Ravi Kiran's residence (Rasika meet 2013) which we all enjoyed globally

[uday_shankar]

Another TV report...

Chitravenu appears scattered across this news clip and there's a little interview and explanation at the end...

http://www.wsbtv.com/videos/news/p2p-ga ... on/vCSSSb/

[Nick H]

Great

Interesting to see you in American mode

[cmlover]

Uday in actionwith his baffling beefed-up chitravenu!

Uday
Nice to see the news clip. You are impressive.
Pl post the full video of your take...

[arasi]

Uday,
In this segment, you are featured as if you are the winner! May be because the chitravenu sounded more appealing to the interviewer than other inventions...