Month: May 2020

Posted on

Best Road Trips From Los Angeles

There are many road trips to ride from Los Angeles. You could go to the desert, the mountains, or grassland. These road trips include drives about 2 hr to 10 hr long. There are many interesting road trips to start riding from Los Angeles. This article will talk about the major road trips to ride on from Los Angeles.

       The first one is route 8. This is an interstate highway that starts in San Diego, and ends near Phoenix, AZ. It is a 6 hr drive from Los Angeles to Phoenix through route 8, but the sights are beautiful. First, the highway will pass through beautiful mountains and rolling hills. Then, it will pass through desert and farmland. This may seem boring, but that’s only a small portion of the journey. After that, route 8 will pass through Yuma. Yuma is a city near the border to Mexico that has a casino and some great places to see. It is also a great place to stop and stretch your legs. Closer to the end of your journey, I-8 will pass through the Sonoran Desert. This is where you will see Saguaro cacti scattered around the dry land. These are the classic cacti, as you might know. If you are a dessert person, this would be the route for you.

       The next road trip is the drive to the Grand Canyon via interstate route 40. This is a very beautiful journey, and in the winter time, there is snow. The journey might seem a little uneventful at first, but after merging onto the 40, it gets pretty interesting. You get to go parallel to route 66 for a little bit. You can even go on it if you’d like!!! After the desert fun, it will start to merge with dry grassland and baby pine trees. Soon, those baby pine trees will turn into big ones. After you exit the 40, the pine trees will start to wane. There will be barren land for most of the journey after exiting the 40, but after a while, pine trees will start to grow once again as you get closer to the park. This would be very interesting for those who like various types of scenery.

       The very last road trip is Morning Star Mine Rd. This is a short detour on the way to Las Vegas from Los Angeles. It goes through a thick forest of Joshua trees while going parallel to the interstate highway 15. Cima Rd and Morning Star Mine Rd meet at Cima, CA, and Cima Rd connects I-15 to Morning Star Mine Rd. There aren’t too many things to see in Cima. All that is there are a few houses and private properties. This would be a road trip for those who like detours.

       As you can see, there are many road trips to explore from Los Angeles. There are long ones, short ones, and some are just detours. Pick the one that works best for you.

Posted on

Best Hikes Near Los Angeles

Visiting Los Angeles? You might want to escape the city and connect with nature. There are many interesting hikes near Los Angeles you may want to explore. Some are widely traveled, and some are more remote. This article will tell you many different hikes near Los Angeles.

The first hike we will talk about is the Eaton Canyon Falls Trail hike.  It is about 30 min away from Los Angeles, and a moderate hike that is a 3.5 mile round trip with 375 feet of elevation change. The hike starts off with a moderately hilly trail. The trail goes up very gradually, and then as you get further up into the mountains, it will become less of a trail and more of a rocky adventure. If you go during the rainy season, you will have to walk through rivers, mudpiles, and slippery rocks. Most of the time, however, it’s pretty dry. This trail is full of adventure.

The next trail is the Santa Ana River Trail 2E03. This can often be confused by the Santa Ana River trail in Orange CA. This santa ana river trail has the code 2E03. That’s how you know it’s not the one in Orange CA. The hike is about 2 hr 15 min away from Los Angeles. It is on a flat area of mountains, so it’s a pretty easy hike. There are many trees and wide open spaces, so feel free to walk off the trail and explore. The trail might be hard to spot, but just keep a look out for a parking lane on the side of the road. It also goes parallel to a steep ledge. If you are looking for a serious hike, this might not be the one.

The next trail is the Heart Rock Trail. It is almost 2 hr away from Los Angeles, and considered a difficult hike. In the rainy season, it will go parallel to a river. This is a 1.7 mile loop trail near Cedarpines Park, California that features a waterfall and a heart shaped rock. What makes this trail exciting is that it’s very mountainy. You will have to walk up and down steep hills. At the very end of the trail, however, you have to walk down an extremely steep hill. It’s quite challenging, but if you are cautious, you will be fine. This might be one of the more serious hikes.

The last trail we will talk about is the Wood Canyon Trail. This is located about 50 min away from Los Angeles in Aliso Viejo. It’s a moderate hike with a little bit of hills, and there are also many other trails in which you can take a detour. It is a 6.8 mile round trip that features a great forest setting. This is good for hiking, walking, trail running, and nature trips. It is a beautiful hike with many great views and rolling hills.

These hikes might seem far to some people, but might seem nearby for other people. There are many other hikes, of course, but this only talks about four of them. There are a couple of google maps links down below for these hikes.

Eaton Canyon Falls Trail hike

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Eaton+Canyon+Falls+Trail,+California+91001/@34.1946134,-118.1046897,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x80c2dd3028275a71:0xf9e163baa3011426!8m2!3d34.194609!4d-118.102501

Santa Ana River Trail 2E03

https://www.google.com/maps/place/East+Flats/@34.1716931,-116.8526065,1692m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m12!1m6!3m5!1s0x80db4b1c5ca2ea33:0x83e36ec413a1a0e6!2sSanta+Ana+River+Trail+2E03!8m2!3d34.1726706!4d-116.848004!3m4!1s0x80db4b830788b567:0x4ce6933585fb001f!8m2!3d34.1648698!4d-116.8457848

Heart Rock Trail

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Heart+Rock+Trail,+Crestline,+CA+92325/@34.3790008,-117.7260401,10.19z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x80c35a79a6164a1b:0x61bc8b357c4fceb3!8m2!3d34.2598146!4d-117.3054966

Wood Canyon Trail

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Los+Angeles,+CA/Wood+Canyon+Trail,+Aliso+Viejo,+CA+92656/@33.8187443,-118.2569831,92739m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m13!4m12!1m5!1m1!1s0x80c2c75ddc27da13:0xe22fdf6f254608f4!2m2!1d-118.2436849!2d34.0522342!1m5!1m1!1s0x80dce605248bb193:0xf3c9cce4e0a65b2f!2m2!1d-117.7464021!2d33.5824889

Posted on

North Indian Classical Music

Indian classical music? We all might have heard it before, but how does it really work? What’s the structure? Indian classical music allows you to compose and create almost whatever you want. You can do on-the-spot improvisation, compose melodies in advance, or take ideas from someone else’s creations. Indian music has a basic structure, raga, and seven swaras.

First, we need to understand Ragas and swaras. Swaras are like Indian notes. For example, Sa is equivalent to Do, Re is equivalent to re, and Mi is equivalent to Ga. So, the Indian note scale goes like this: sa, re, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni, sa. It’s very similar to the western scale: Do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do. But, what is a raga, and how does it correspond with swaras? A raga is just a specific order or style of how you play certain notes. For example, if you play the ascending scale in the raga Hemant, it would sound like this: Sa, ga, ma, dha, ni, sa. It skips re and pa (sol). But if you play up in the raga Ahir Bhairav, it would sound like this: sa, re, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni, sa. It skips no notes. Ragas can also differ depending on their flats and sharps. Two ragas might have the same ascending or descending scale, but are different because one has a sharp note, and the other one doesn’t. One important rule of Indian music is that you must follow the structure of every raga. You can not play a re on the way up if the ascending scale in your raga skips re.

Now, since we understand ragas, we can now talk about the basic structure. The structure starts very slow. A very calming combination of notes, and then gets faster and faster as you get closer towards the end. It has five main parts: First is the alap, which is a slow free for all combination of notes that are played at the beginning of a piece. Next, is a vilambit gat, which is a slow melody that is played after the alap. Then comes the drut gat, or ati drut gat, which are fast melodies played in the middle of a performance. After that is the jala. The jala is an even faster part of the piece that is performed by striking one note, and then playing “do” three, two, or just one time.

The last part of an Indian Classical piece is the ending taan and Tehai. These are the fastest parts of the piece. The taan is usually played three or four times, but the Tihai is always played three times. As you can see, the structure is very unique from other types of music.

North Indian musicians don’t play alone. They always play with tabla. Tabla are the North Indian drums. So how do the tabla and the instrument play together? They go in a fixed beat structure. The most common beat structure, or taala, is tintal. Tintal is 16 beats. When musicians play a gat, a Jala, or an ending tihai, they usually start on beat 1. Then, the music flows through the next 15 beats and then starts over back on 1. It’s a cycle.

As you can see, Indian classical music is very complex. There are many more concepts of Indian music to talk about, such as bistars, gat taans, and Jhor. But we won’t get into that in this article.

End…………………

Here is a video link of Pandit Tarun Bhattacharya playing Raga Hemant: