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Today, tea is increasingly becoming a drink of the health conscious. Although, consumed for centuries in China, it was introduced to the world only in the late eighteenth century and its consumption spread rapidly as people were intoxicated by its exotic aromas and subtle, mellow flavors. Today, a new breed of tea drinkers are growing, who are consuming it for its medicinal properties. Though its medicinal benefits were documented in Chinese history for centuries, only recently have studies confirmed some of them. Green tea, white tea and herbal tea are being promoted as the best health drinks. Yet, the herbal tea is not really a tea at all!

Thats right! Herbal tea, also known as tisane, is an herbal infusion made from anything but the leaves of the Camellia sinensis (or the tea bush)! Herbal tea is made from flowers (fresh or dried), roots, seeds or leaves by pouring boiling water over them and letting it steep for sometime. Alternatively, they can also be boiled together over a flame in a pot. The herbal tea is then strained and served. It maybe sweetened if required.

Various varieties of herbal tea are found in the market, some for its medicinal benefits and some for its intoxicating smells. Some firms even market herbal tea in tea bags. The term herbal tea is used mainly in the Americas to refer to linden, or lime leaf tea. Yet, there are many hundreds of varieties of herbal tea which have been quite popular in the regions where they are found. It would do us no harm to get to know about a few of them.

There are many herbal tea which are specific to a region and some which are found all over the world. Herbal tea has been quite popular in Asia over the centuries, especially in China and Japan. Some of the popular Asian herbal tea are the Yuen Kut Lam Kam Wo Tea (made in Hong Kong and composed of thirty Chinese herbs), the Mugicha (which is drunk cold in summer and quite similar in flavor to coffee), Cannabis (used in the preparation of Bhang in India), the Sugnyung (or toasted rice from Korea), the Tan Ngan Lo Medicated Tea (prepared in the twentieth century by a Chinese), and the Ho Yan Hor Herbal Tea (made from twenty four natural herbs in Korea).

Herbal tea is, and was, quite popular in the Americas as well, especially amongst the native tribes. Some popular ones are the Mate (shrubs grown in Brazil and Argentina), Lapacho (which is the inner lining of the bark of the Lapacho tree found in Amazonian forests and has numerous health benefits), Essiac (a native American herbal tea), Cerasse (a bitter herb found in Jamaica), and the Uncaria tomentosa (a woody vine found in the Amazonian forests and used to treat various ailments).

Besides these, the Rooibos (a reddish plant native to South Africa), the Honeybush (closely related to the Rooibos, but sweeter), the Bissap (consumed in the Saharas), the Hibiscus (from the Middle East), the Greek Mountain Tea (found in the Mediterranean and used to cure colds), the Chamomile (grown in Germany and used as a sedative), and the Horehound (known for its efficacy in lung troubles and grown in Britain) are quite popular varieties of herbal tea.

The above list of herbal tea though lengthy, is not exhaustive. In fact, if one started of with even all the popular herbal tea, it would run into pages. Though, the varieties of herbal tea mentioned above clearly show one thing, that herbal tea is anything but tea. Yet, the popular Earl Grey tea, which is blended with bergamot, is marketed by some as an herbal tea, though in every way it is black tea! So much so for clearing the confusion!

Herbal Tea has been said to have wonderous effects on health and mind, learn more about Tea at the Tea One Site http://teaonesite.com

# posted by magnuszmspyqb @ 10:40 PM 0 comments

Almost all engineers approach their mixes differently. I like to think of my mix, from the very first track all the way to the mastering stage, as a house.

The first thing you need when building a house is a good foundation. Your low end should provide you with this. It is on this foundation that the rest of your mix will be built. If your foundation is weak, your entire mix will be weak and ineffectual. Just like building a real house, your foundation needs to be solid. The primary instruments making up this low end, in most music we listen to today, are the kick drum and the bass guitar parts. These two instruments must gel, yet be clearly defined. If they are not clearly defined, meaning the listener cannot make out the difference between the two, you may experience some problems with your mix. Many home recordings suffer from the low and mid frequencies overlapping too much and therefore not being clearly defined.

Once we have our clearly defined low end, we need to begin building our house, brick by brick. The bricks we will be using to build our house will be made up of the mid frequencies. This area is much more tricky to clearly define because there is so much stuff going on in the mid range. Guitars, vocals, snare drums, toms, keyboards, plus a myriad of other sounds all compete for the same space in the mid range. If you have a non-clearly defined mid section, your mix will sound very muddy. This, again, is typical of home productions. The mid range is muddy and it tends to ruin the entire mix, your house.

So, how do we keep the low end from getting too muddy? Again, lets look at our house example. If you pay close attention to a brick house, youll notice that in between every fourth or fifth brick there will be a small hole. I once asked someone what these holes were for. His reply, They allow the house to breathe. That sounds weird to me. I am not a handy man, so I didnt understand and left it at that. What I do know is audio, and I know that our mix needs to breathe, especially in that tricky mid range. How do we allow our mixes to breathe in the mid range? Well, there are several tricks. First, we can use different mics on instruments, use different microphone placement, we can tune similar sounding instruments differently, we can set the instruments physically apart in the room to add a feeling of space, we can add reverb to add space virtually, and/or we can use equalization to separate tones of like sounding instruments.

As you can see, there are many things we can do, either singly or in combination one with another that can help us accomplish the task of creating a non-muddy, clearly defined, breathing mid section. You are well on your way to providing a much more enjoyable listening experience for you and your fans if you can make your mid section breathe.

The last part of our house is of course the top, or the roof. As you might expect, the roof will be made up of high-end tones, but this is really not the case in my opinion. The reason for this is that the high frequencies are usually just overtones and higher octaves of our root sounds which take place in the low and mid frequency sections. Most of the time if you have your low and mid sections eqed properly and they sound good, there is little eqing that you will need to do to the high end. Plus, much of the high end will be accentuated in the final process called mastering. So instead of frequencies to build our roof, or ceiling, I like to use dynamics.

Dynamics include compressors and limiters. Dynamic processors help keep your tracks as hot as they can be, which means as far away from the noise floor as possible, without distorting or clipping. This is especially important with all of the digital equipment we are now using because digital distortion sounds quite nasty.

Dynamics can provide a nice, round sound or can squash your tracks, whichever you prefer and whatever compliments your style of music. Improper use of compression will make the recording sound to confined, like walking into a room with a very low ceiling. Proper, judicious, use of compression, on the other hand, can make your recording feel like someone is walking into a room with an open, airy, cathedral type ceiling. You should feel much less confined and much more at awe when you enter the latter type of room, and listeners will much more appreciate you trying to give them this feeling of aural openness.

So there it is. When you build your audio mix, remember to build a house and your mixes should be much more professional.

Philip Langlais is the founder of iKnowAudio.com, the site for affordable, practical online audio production training. iKnowAudio.com specializes in teaching you how to use compressors, eq's, reverbs, how to mix, master and edit using the latest in dgital audio technology. From Labor Day through the end of September,2005, iKnowAudio.com is allowing anyone that contributes at least $5.00 USD to the Hurricane Katrina Relief Fund to take our audio recording course for free. Visit our site at http://www.iknowaudio.com for more details.

# posted by magnuszmspyqb @ 4:34 PM 0 comments

Millions of smokers set fire to it and inhale it every day. Millions more chew on it and as many more again snort it up their nose. What is this substance? Tobacco of course. Where did these habits come from though? Why did we start using tobacco as a means of relief or social acceptance? More to the point what exactly is tobacco and where does it come from?

The tobacco plant is a member of the broad leafed family of plants known as nightshade. Now for those of you not familiar with this particular genus of plant one member of the nightshade family is the deadly nightshade plant. It's not called "deadly" for fun. It's called that because it contains a lethal poison that was used in the middle ages by assassins and spies. The wonderful tobacco plant is a member of the same family. Neat eh? The tobacco plant is indigenous to North and South America - meaning that it only grows naturally in those parts of the world.

Native Americans used tobacco in large quantities to induce trance states. This was always done under the careful guidance of a shaman (medicine man). When the Europeans arrived in America they adopted the practice of smoking tobacco as the natives did. It became so popular amongst the "settlers" that it was then exported back to Europe where it became incredibly popular amongst the rich and well-to-do.

Tobacco and it's derivative products became very popular almost overnight. Snuff (powdered tobacco) was snorted by the upperclass in Europe habitually and in public. It was quite a polite thing to do amongst friends. The act of smoking cigars and cigarettes achieved a huge level of popularity. To deal with this demand tobacco plantations were established on the east coast of the Americas. The first of these plantations was set up by John Rolfe (husband of Pocahontas) in Jamestown, Virginia. Rolfe made an absolute fortune from the tobacco trade in just a few short years and many others were to follow in his footsteps.

Incredibly tobacco was used a treatment for diseases by many European doctors until the 1800's. At one point in France it was referred to as the Holy plant. It was only after emerging modern chemistry isolated nicotine as the active ingredient in tobacco that it was no longer prescribed as a medical treatment due to possible harmful side effects.

So tobacco was exported from the Americas to Europe via the native Americans. I suppose you could argue that the widespread addiction to nicotine is the the whitemans price for the widespread slaughter of native Americans? Or perhaps not. Either way it's something to consider in terms of karma.

This article was provided courtesy of QuittersGuide.com where you can find more help to stop smoking in the form of articles and advice for quitters everywhere.

# posted by magnuszmspyqb @ 10:31 AM 0 comments

Playing the guitar has become a very popular hobby all over the world. Many people young and old have the desire to learn guitar but don't always have the financial means to take lessons or the discipline and direction to begin teaching themselves. A cheap an effective alternative that many forget about is to learn guitar online. In fact there are more resources for you to learn guitar online than any other place in the world. There are dozens off websites that can help you learn guitar online no matter what style you are interested in. Some do charge a small one time fee usually $50 or less, but compared to the $15 to $40 an hour some guitar instructors charge that it pennies on the dollar.

Buying A Learn Guitar Online Program:

The internet has thousands of choices for those who wish to learn guitar online. Do a search at google or yahoo for "learn guitar online" or "guitar lessons". Sift through all the search results and pick some of the ones that seem to fit into your desired playing style and level of experience. Read through each sites sales page carefully. A good learn guitar online program will have three things.

1. Diverse learning tools - To effectively learn guitar online you will want to find a program that offers a variety of learning tools. Look for things like audio clips, jam tracks, pictures, video clips and most of all an instructional book. The more the better.

2. Testimonials - If it is a successful and well laid out program the author will provide testimonials on the sales page to show that others have been successful at learning guitar online using his/her method. Don't stop there though. Join some of the popular learn guitar online forums and see what is being said about the program. Not everyone will agree on some things but an overall positive attitude towards the program is a good sign.

3. Who is the author - Lastly and most importantly look for an author bio page. You want to make sure the person who put together this learn guitar online program is credible and knows what he/she is talking about.

There are many learn guitar online instruction kits that have amazing results and more and more programs are coming out all the time claiming to have the best methods to learn guitar online fast. Just remember before you get too excited about a learn guitar online program to make sure it fulfills the three requirements listed above.

Visit one of the hottest learn guitar online programs.

# posted by magnuszmspyqb @ 4:14 AM 0 comments