• Writings & Projects •

 

Almost everything: 2016-present

 

Above all, I aim to enthuse fellow musical searchers, connecting new sounds and textures to the human voices, cultures, and passions behind them. I cover topics loosely related to raga, jazz, and global improvisation, drawing on my study of guitar, tabla, sitar, and santoor in India and the UK.

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In the past few years I’ve written for Darbar, The Wire, Jazzwise, Jazzed, MusicRadar, and Guitar World, on subjects spanning Coltrane and Hendrix to microtonal guitar tunings and West African polyrhythms. I also teach guitar & global music (hit me up for Lessons). Here’s a list of nearly everything so far…

—Guitar Resources—

• Fresh Repertoire: global guitar •

• World of Tuning: peg-twisting •

—Indian Classical Music—

• Raga Index: Hindustani horizons •

• Darbar: Outreach musicology •

• Ragatip: South Asian sonic tales •

—Other Writings—

• Reviews: London happenings •

• Odds & ends: other explorations •

• Non-musicals: activism & more •

(green = hosted here, blue = off-site)

• GUITAR RESOURCES •

Guitar Resources: Full List: assorted lesson articles (for Guitar World, MusicRadar, etc) – fresh fretboard perspectives via global ideas, and reappraising some familiar topics along the way…

• DARBAR •

Living Traditions: 21 articles for 21st-century Indian classical music – in-depth collection for Darbar, exploring how music with ancient roots is adapting to a fast-paced, interconnected modern world (2019)

—Interviews: Artists in their own words

—Explorations: Multiple perspectives

Other Darbar writing: articles, events, projects, etc (from 2018)

  • Artist Database: 150+ quick bios of our past performers
  • YouTube channel: 300+ video descriptions on musical context
  • Darbar VR360: covering the world’s first fully VR music festival
  • Raga writings: e.g. Darbari – musicological, historical, spiritual
  • Community: e.g. obituary of Pt. Ramakant Gundecha [n.b. note]
  • Programmes for Barbican, Southbank, & Sadler’s Wells
  • Editing 80+ shorter articles by author & critic Jameela Siddiqi
  • Social media, press releases, engagement with academia, etc

• WORLD OF TUNING •

Exploring how we can get the most out of our peg-twisting rituals, examining tuning horizons from multiple musical angles: practical, harmonic, historic, social, scientific, spiritual, and so forth…

• Menu of Altered Tunings •

In-depth database: ‘Palate expander’ of 6-string tunings from around the world – with notes, songs, origin tales, etc (see Tag List):

 

 

—ALL RESOURCES—
Menu of Tunings (100+) • Altered-tuned artists • Divine Indian drones • Global instrument tunings • Joni Mitchell’s stringed canvas • Alpha-melodic word-games • James Taylor’s puzzle • Double-siding: capo-harp hacks • Tales & quotes • Megatable: analytics • Glossary • Feedback
“There’s perhaps no better guide to alternate tunings than George Howlett’s ‘World Of Tuning’: with its compendium of 100 tunings, each helpfully accompanied by recorded samples, details on the intervallic relationships between strings, and bios of the guitarists who invented or popularised them…” (The Wire: Unofficial Channels, Aug 2022)

—Hindustani Raga Index—
Ragas, while truly mystical in nature, are often unnecessarily ‘over-mystified’. These resources unpack the phenomenon from multiple musical angles, going in-depth (and into new areas) while also building ‘from the ground up’ – with no prior knowledge assumed, and all terms defined. Start from anywhere…
• Search: Find your new favourite •
• Tags: Classifying the ragascape •
• Ragatable: Analytical connections •
• Glossary: Raga jargon demystified •
• Tanpuras: Divine overtonal drones •
• Quotes: Musings from raga artists •
• Murchanas: Swara-set rotations •
• Thaat: Bhatkhande’s base scales •
• Talas: Hindustani rhythm cycles •
• Instruments: Singing sculptures •
• Masterlist: 1000+ ragas profiled •
Sa | Re | Ga | Ma | Pa | Dha | Ni
• Megalist (365+ ragas) •
Ahir Bhairav | Antardhwani | Asavari | Bageshri | Basant Mukhari | Bhairav | Bhairavi | Bhimpalasi | Bhupali | Bihag | Bilaskhani Todi | Chandranandan | Charukeshi | Darbari | Desh | Durga | Gorakh Kalyan | Jhinjhoti | Jog | Jogkauns | Kafi | Kalavati | Kaunsi Kanada | Lalit | Malkauns | Marwa | Megh | Miyan ki Malhar | Multani | Parameshwari | Patdeep | Pilu | Poorvi | Puriya | Puriya Dhanashree | Shree | Tilak Kamod | Todi | Vachaspati | Yaman
—Search the Index—

“Raga: The melodic foundations of Indian classical music…To oversimplify, ragas function something like ‘mood recipes’, each presenting their own ‘ingredients’, such as core phrases, note hierarchies, ascending & descending lines, and ornamentations, as well as rules and guidelines for how (and when) to blend them – alongside a wealth of cultural  associations…particular hours, seasons, or deities. Crucially, ragas are much more about aesthetics than theory, aimed foremost at summoning a unique set of sentiments and colours…”

• REVIEWS •

Various events from 2016, mostly jazz & global concerts in London (…the spectre of free press tickets helped get me into music writing in the first place)

• RAGATIP •

Regular series of quick articles for Ragatip, spanning various topics related to South Asian music and culture – folk & classical roots, modern fusions, historical & spiritual foundations, oddities, etc (from 2020)

—Profiles: quick bios of fascinating artists

—Instruments: intros and sonic samples

—Cultural: tales, snapshots, primers, etc

—On camera: interviews & demos

  • Santoor 101: unpacking the hundred-stringed box
  • Kiranpal Singh interview: global classical santoor
  • Shahid Abbas Khan interview: Sufi roots & fusions

• COLTRANEOLOGY •

John Coltrane left behind some cryptic, handwritten notes entitled ‘Scales of India’. I’ve been trying to work out which ragas they are, where he found them, and what he was doing with them… [out 2024]

• ODDS & ENDS •

Musical breakdowns, interviews, speculations, early writings, etc

• OUTSIDE MUSIC •

Before music I worked in systemic global dev activism, and also dragged myself through 5 corporate years (see Bullshit Jobs)

  • Workplace Activism Handbook: pushing for radical change from within the private sector (v2 draft on request)
  • Assorted global dev projects with GiveDirectly and GWWC, inc. speeches given at Harvard, UC Berkeley, & UCL
  • ‘Zerotaxistan’: a liber-libertarian utopia (“Are you a morally bankrupt, ethically slack company, or a self-serving regulator?…”)
  • Personal correspondence with Gary Otte (1971-2017), spanning his final five years on death row in Ohio (via Human Writes)
  • Urbexing Bristol’s Railway Hotel: looking inside a long-derelict local landmark (photos & writeup for 28 Days Later forum)
  • (…sadly, the local magazine which hosted some of my terrible teenage travel writing has long vanished from the web)

George Howlett | Rāga Junglism

rāga – ‘that which colours the mind’

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