Draw eSignature Presentation Simple

Music is read from left to right, where going right represents moving forward in time. Since music is not capable of time-travel, it always moves forward, which means to the right. Certain symbols can tell you to go back to an earlier section of music, though, and play it again — which I guess is more like looking through a scrapbook than actual time-travel. Discuss. The grid of five lines is called the staff. Notes can be snapped to any of the lines themselves, or to any of the the four spaces between them. The higher up on the staff a note is situated, the higher its pitch relative to the rest of the staff. The the lower the note is placed on the staff, the lower its pitch. We can also extend the pitch-range of a given staff upward or downward by adding 'temporary' lines, called leger lines, above or below the staff on a note-by-note basis. You can see this has been done to the first note in the example, and it happens once again at the end of the example. Already, then, you can discern the notation well enough to tell that in the above example there is a trend in which the pitch gets higher as the music moves forward in time. If you can do that, you can read music. The rest is just filling in details, no kidding, and you simply get better with practice. Musical notation is not cryptic or arcane. Like any constructed and evolved system it has its discrepancies and idiosyncrasies, but on the whole it is quite accessible and intuitive. In the beginning, there was rhythmRhythm is sometimes neglected in the early stages of standardized music education. Because students and their teachers are so intensely concerned with making sure that the student knows where all the notes are on the instrument and where all the pitches are on the staff, sometimes rather less attention is paid to being able to understand where the notes are in time. This leads to stunted musical growth in some cases, and tragically prevents the development of many otherwise perfectly serviceable would-be funk guitarists. It is extremely important to understand that standard musical notation is not designed to tell us exactly how long the sounds last. It is only designed to tell us how long they last in relation to one another.The rhythmic values of notes, their lengths relative to one another, are in the German and American systems of nomenclature expressed as fractional relationships. Thus we have quarter notes and rests, half notes and rests, sixteenth notes and rests, and so forth. The British may have the upper hand on America in their use of the neat and logical metric system of measurements (which, you should remind them at every opportunity, they only appropriated from the French), but they must admit that they most backwardly continue the use of bizarre and uninformative names like minim, crotchet, and hemidemisemiquaver to describe these fractional relations in time-value. Though it is not at all intuitive that a semiquaver lasts one quarter the length of a crotchet, it is quite intuitive that a sixteenth note should last one-quarter the length of a quarter note: since 1/16 is 1/4 of 1/4, it takes four sixteenth notes to fill the same length of time that one quarter note fills. The Tree of Life or Holy Totem of Rhythmic Notation, then, looks something like this:one whole equals two halvesone half equals two quartersone quarter equals two eighthsone eighth equals two sixteenthsone sixteenth equals two thirtysecondsFrom this it follows that, say, four eighths equal a half, and eight eighths equal a whole. We are doing nothing more than expressing the division of time-lengths according to very basic fractional proportions which are often reducible at will to even simpler fractions. If you're brand new to reading rhythms, you may need to enlarge this diagram and study it closely — it may not 'hit you' all at once. And that's okay, as I'm sure there are still British people reading this who do not yet understand why crotchet is a very dumb name for a simple quarter note.The fraction at the left of the diagram, 4/4 (uttered as four four, not four fourths or four over four), is the time signature. In this case it tells us that there are four quarter notes, or the equivalent in duration of four quarter notes, in each measure. That is all it says. Do not let anyone (especially not anyone British) tell you that it means, "There are four quarter notes in a measure, and the quarter note gets one beat." Nothing in the time signature says the first thing about beats or who gets any of them. The top number says how many: four. No sooner than you have asked, "Four what?" the bottom number informs you: four, meaning one-fourth, representing the quarter note. So in this time signature there are four quarter notes or the equivalent in each measure. The measures, also known as bars, happen between the bar lines. Those are the vertical lines which cut through and segment the staff every so often (every four quarter notes, to be exact, in this case). Bar lines are visual references only, and have no time-value; they are not stop signs, or even yield signs.Notice that there are no quarter notes in the first measure, only one whole, and its equivalent, two halves. These two things — the whole note on top, and then the pair of half notes below — are occurring at the same time, and they occupy the same amount of time relative to one another since 1/2 x 2 = 1 (since two halves equal one whole). Since one whole also equals four quarters, hopefully you can see how the time signature works in establishing the length of a measure: though there are no quarters in the first measure, that measure still contains the equivalent of four quarters, as does every other measure pictured.Each one of these measures, then, occupies the same amount of time relative to every other measure. Though the number of notes is increasing in each measure as we move forward in time to the right, we are really just cramming more notes into the same amount of space with each passing measure: the measures are not getting longer, they are just getting busier. Those sixteen very busy-looking sixteenth notes at far right take exactly the same amount of time to go by in total as the lonesome single whole note at the beginning. You will note (terrible pun intended and in fact celebrated) that:the whole note is hollow, and has no stemthe half note is hollow, but does have a stem poking outthe quarter note is filled-in, but has no beams/flagsthe eighth note is filled-in, and has one beam/flagthe sixteenth note is filled-in, and has two beams/flagsThis is how we tell the notes apart. As the values keep getting halved going smaller in length from the sixteenth (thirty-second, sixty-fourth, etc.), we simply add one more flag each time. It takes some practice to become fluent at recognizing these values by their appearance on the page, just as it takes us time as children to learn our letters, but already you should grasp the underlying principles if I have done a half-decent job of explaining the whole thing. Sigh. A note represents a sound happening. For each of these note-values, there is a corresponding symbol called a rest. A rest is a place-holder which tells us that no sound is happening during that span of time:Each rest has a unique look, just as each kind of note does. You can see that the half rest is the whole rest turned upside-down, the quarter rest is sort of its own animal (like a crotchety Englishman, really), and the sixteenth rest is like the eighth rest only with two little doodads on it instead of one.Learning to recognize all of these different beasts quickly by sight just takes repetitious practice — it doesn't require any insightful knowledge. To see if you are grasping the basic concept of fractional/proportional rhythm and the time signature, try answering the following questions:Do six quarter notes take up more or less time than four half notes?How many eighth notes could we fit into one measure of 3/4 time?How many sixteenth notes could we fit into one measure of 6/8 time?If an incomplete bar of 4/4 time contains two eighth notes and a half rest, what one note or rest could we add that would rhythmically fill up and complete the measure? (the answers are at the bottom of this post, but don't tell anyone that.)We have not yet mentioned dotted notes. The rhythmic dot is a diabolical symbol we place just to the right of any note or rest to add half of its rhythmic value onto itself, that is, to make the dotted version 150% of the length of the un-dotted version. This means that since a quarter note is two eighth notes in length, a dotted quarter note is three eighth notes in length; since an eighth rest is two sixteenth rests in length, a dotted eighth rest is three sixteenths in length. Probably we should also mention ties. These are not the same as neckties, which I never wear if I can get away with it, since I enjoy breathing. A tie is a curved line or ligature which can join two notes together. In doing so, it combines their lengths into one sound. Therefore, the following two measures of music sound exactly the same:In the first measure there are two sounds, represented by two notes: one sound is represented by the half note and the other by the quarter. Though there are three quarter notes in the second measure, still there are only two sounds, since the first two quarters are tied together, making them sound just the same as one half note. It might not be immediately apparent why ties are needed at all; one common reason is for allowing a single sound to extend across a bar line, by tying together the notes just to either side of it.You can tie as many notes together in sequence as you wish. When an opera singer holds a high note so long that you begin to squirm in your seat, there is a pretty good chance that ties are involved somehow. Tempo, and "keeping the beat"If you are not yet dizzy and disoriented, you may be wondering how it is that musicians know how long these sounds are supposed to actually last, if the rhythmic values of the notes and rests, all these quarters and wholes and dots and ties, only describe fractional relations and not duration in terms of seconds or minutes or visits to the Department of Motor Vehicles.This is the question of tempo. If you visit Italy you'll be surprised to learn that this word can also refer to the weather, but for our purposes it means the speed of the music. We typically define tempo in terms of a steady pulse. That steady pulse can be assigned to any note value we choose. Try patting your right leg with your right hand roughly once per second, and keep that process going for a bit. It's not as important that you tick precise seconds as it is that the pulse be even and unchanging. Let's arbitrarily assign this pulse to the quarter note (in much of written music, the quarter note does get assigned the pulse, but it is by no means a rule). You are effect tapping a string of quarter notes, which looks like this:Now, while continuing to tap once per second on your right leg, take your left hand and tap your left leg twice per second, dividing each second into two even parts. For every one tap on your right leg, you will make two taps on your left leg, which also means that every other tap on the left should line up with a tap on the right. If this presents a coordination problem, you may be British. But you'll get it with a little persistence. Since a quarter note is as long as two eighth notes, you are now tapping eighth notes on the left leg while you tap quarter notes on the right leg:Try starting the process over from scratch, beginning with quarters on the right leg again and then adding equal eights, two per quarter, on the left leg — only this time, make the quarter notes go by rather faster. This means the eighth notes on the other leg will also go by faster, since they must maintain their proportion to the quarters, two to each. This is the concept of tempo applied to rhythmic notation. Feel free to let your fancy wander by speeding up and slowing down at will, but remember always to keep two eighths to each quarter.The tempo can change, and indeed any note value can be assigned to the basic pulse — quarter, eighth, whole, whatever — but the proportions of the note values, their fractional relationships to one another, do not change.We indicate general ideas about tempo using words, often dusty but beautiful old Italian words like Allegro (pretty lively), Adagio (quite slow), Presto (very fast), and so forth. We can also use a more scientific measurement called beats per minute (BPM), which is what a metronome madly ticks away at. Since we can assign the beat/pulse to any note value we want, metronome markings are generally given as "quarter note = 120 BPM," or "half note = 72 BPM," and these values are checked against the ticking of a metronome to give us the precise tempo we need. I have noticed that a common trope in dime-store theory books is to assign Italian tempo terms to ranges of BPM. Allegro might be given as 100 - 126 BPM, Andante as 72 - 88 BPM, and so on. You should know that this has no basis in reality, as these terms were invented and were in common use long before metronomes and BPM existed, and that those who claim that tempo terminology can be even approximately quantified in terms of BPM to any useful extent have been grossly misinformed. Humor me with two more brief rhythmic experiments. Define the speed of your quarter note as about once per second, as we did before (that's quarter note = 60 BMP in metronome-speak), and get it going for a bit on the right leg again, just to get your bearings. Now look at the following example:You can see that each measure of 4/4 time contains a quarter note followed by a quarter rest, twice over. Can you now 'play' this example by tapping it on your leg? Remember that the notes and rests are exactly the same length here relative to one another and to the pulse you have established — they are all quarters — and that we don't stop when we come to a bar line; bar lines are for visual reference only. If you have difficulty doing this at first, or aren't sure if you are right, try counting '1, 2, 3, 4' evenly, with each numeral representing a quarter note — just as if you are counting seconds. You should tap on 1 and 3, since that's where the notes are in each bar, and make no sound on 2 and 4, since that's where the rests are in each. Easy enough? You are now officially reading music, or at least its rhythmic aspect. Try reversing the pattern so that you rest on 1 and 3 but tap on 2 and 4 — swapping out the notes and rests — and imagine how that might look written down. For our second experiment, see if you can tap out the following:Don't fret over the new time signature (3/4). In fact, ignore it totally for the moment. Just concentrate on first establishing your quarter note pulse, and on remembering that two eighths must fit evenly into the same amount of time occupied by a quarter, relatively speaking. If we were to count this excerpt aloud, we might say:1 2 & 3 | 1 & 2 & 3You may find this slightly more difficult to do than our earlier efforts, because switching from quarters to eighths requires you to temporarily 'let go' of physically marking the pulse. In order to "keep the beat," you have to maintain an imaginary stream of even quarters in your head, just as if you were still marking them with one hand on one leg as we did at first. It is even better if you can maintain an imaginary stream of eighths in your head instead (1 & 2 & 3 & | 1 & 2 & 3 &), because this subdivision will help you internally mark the pulse with greater accuracy.This takes practice to master, particularly when the rhythms get more complicated than these. But you can do it, and you should try to master the idea very early on, because it is the heart of musicianship. PitchWe have said an awful lot about rhythm so far, because it is extremely important. But we of course also need to know how to read pitch, which tells us how high or low a note is. As we mentioned earlier, the higher the note is on the staff, the higher in pitch it is relative to the other pitches on the staff. But how do we know which pitch is A, and which is F, and which is R — wait, there is no R, as the pitches are only lettered A through G; perhaps the British have an R — how do we determine exact pitch just by looking at those lines and spaces? The answer is that the five lines and four spaces of the staff tell us nothing about pitch-letters until we place a clef on the staff. Clef is French for key, and while clefs do not at all determine 'key' in the musical sense, they are necessary for us to be able to name the pitches on the staff. The treble clef produces a series of pitches which looks like this:The first C, which is the first pitch given here, is known as middle C. The next C is pitched an octave above middle C, and the other C to the right is pitched two octaves higher than middle C. You can see that we name the pitches by counting A through G and starting over again, and that moving from one 'slot' to the next — from a space to the next line, or from a line to the next space — also moves us the distance of one letter name; none are 'skipped' when we advance one slot at a time in either direction. Try following this gamut of pitches slowly forward through time, one at a time, reciting the appropriate letter name as you come to each note. Then go backwards, that is, leftwards, and do the same thing. (Congratulations — you just broke the laws of music by time-traveling. Never do that again.)Notice that the notes can sit well below or above the staff if we temporarily extend the pattern of lines and spaces using leger lines. The bass clef produces a series which looks like this (this time we'll start at the top and descend as we move forward in time; you'll see why soon enough): Here is another crucial concept: in this example, we begin with middle C, the same pitch we began with in the treble clef, and then go down in pitch from there. That is, the first pitch in this example is exactly the same pitch, represented by the same key on the piano, for instance, as the first pitch in the previous example. This is how the treble and bass clefs are different, and yet linked. Look at the second C in this bass clef example, an octave below middle C, and imagine trying to represent that pitch using the treble clef. You'd have to draw many leger lines below the treble staff and then laboriously count them all to figure out what pitch is being represented. This is why we use different clefs (and there are others still, besides just treble and bass): because it makes the pitches on the staff easier to read depending on where we are in pitch-land at a given time.  Some instruments, and all the voices, read music from a single staff and may change clefs mid-stream as needed. Still others — like the piano or the harp, which can play a very wide range of pitches — read music from two staves linked together by a bracket into a grand staff, most usually with one staff using the treble clef and the other the bass. That quite imposing structure looks and works like this:The area within the box represents the zone in which the two staves 'meet' and share exact pitches in common. Middle C is underlined as it is represented by each of the two clefs, and the D and E that follow are also pictured redundantly as they are represented by each clef. So, the C, D, and E that you see in the bass clef within the box are exactly the same pitches as the C, D, and E you see written in the treble clef within the box.As you may know, we can apply accidentals — sharps, flats, naturals, and some other even hairier critters — to these pitches in order to slightly alter them: C-sharp, E-flat, A-natural, and so forth. A sharp raises the pitch by the interval of one half-step, a flat lowers the pitch by one half-step, and a natural is most often used to cancel a sharp or flat that has just occurred somewhere earlier in the measure, so that A-sharp can be made just plain old A again, for example. Since sharps and flats require a basic understand of pitch-intervals, which is another topic entirely, I think this is a good place to stop our basic introduction to reading musical notation.This little primer is by no means comprehensive — it is not intended to be — but this should be enough of an info-dump to get you started. My hope is that you can see that the language of musical notation is actually rather simple in character, far more simple than written language, really. If it doesn't yet seem simple to you, have no fear — it takes persistent practice and study to get fluent at reading music, as with any language, but as you continue to gain fluency you will begin to see the simplicity and elegance underneath the all the symbols and their relationships to each other if you do not see it already. Remember: right = forward in time; up = higher pitch; down = lower pitch. Everything else is simply elaboration on these key bearings. Honestly, the most difficult part of reading musical notation lies in the ability to extemporaneously apply your knowledge of notation to the physical aspect of playing an instrument. That is, your understanding of musical notation isn't terribly much good until it is applied to actual music-making, which is a mental-physical behemoth all its own. When I first began reading music as a child comfortably accustomed to doing everything by ear, it was a tremendous struggle to get started. Now, about thirty years later, I can read even fairly complicated musical notation almost without conscious thought, with as little effort or less as I use to read the written word, and can hear in my mind with high accuracy the sounds represented on the page just as you can hear these words in your mind. It's just that it takes a very long time, and a lot of regular effort, to get to that point, and even now I'm not as fluent at it as I could potentially be! (And I can still play quite well by ear and can jam down at the bowling alley with the best of them. The 'wisdom' that reading music somehow harms your musicality is a nonsense notion invented by people who never bothered to learn notation very well.)Do take heart, as there are many British people who can read music. That means that you can, too. N.B.: I actually love Britain and its people, and have been there before without being arrested. Here are the answers to the rhythm questions that were asked in the section on note-values:Less time, since four halves = eight quarters, which is more than six.Six eighths could fit, since 3/4 holds the equivalent of three quarters, and one quarter is as long as two eighths, and 3 x 2 = 6.Twelve sixteenths could fit, since 6/8 implies the equivalent of six eighths, and there are two sixteenths in an eighth, and 6 x 2 = 12.A quarter. The bar of 4/4 allows for the equivalent of four quarters. The two eighth notes add up to one quarter, the half rest takes up the space of two quarters, and this adds up to the length of three quarters, leaving room for one more.J. S. Bach: from the manuscript to the Johannespassion. Just a bunch of very handsomely placed half, quarter, eighth, and sixteenth notes and rests.

The highest-level categories are fermented beverages like beer and wine, and distilled beverages, like liquor.  The former are made by allowing yeasts (a type of fungus) to consume sugars and excrete alcohols.  There is a theoretical upper bound to the concentration of alcohol that can be produced by this process, since the yeast cannot survive in alcohol and will eventually drown in its own excrement.  (Lovely image, right?)  In order to produce beverages above, let's say, 15% alcohol by volume, it's necessary to distill some of the water off of a fermented beverage.Of course, after the actual alcohol has been produced, it's possible to mix things together and add additional flavorings.  There is a hybrid category of fortified wines, for instance, which are blends of fermented and distilled beverages.  Gin is made by producing a distilled liquor, somewhat similar to vodka, and then infusing it with herbs.  Liqueurs are made by adding flavorings and sugars to distilled liquors.Fermented BeveragesIn order to carry out fermentation, we need to feed some kind of carbohydrates to the yeasts.  The choice of carbohydrates determines a great deal about the final product.Beers are produced by fermenting grains -- usually barley, but also wheat, corn, millet, or rice.  (The Japanese drink sake, while usually described as "rice wine," is essentially a beer made from rice instead of barley.)Pictured: Hops, a flower added to beer before fermentation to impart a bitter taste.For more on beer:What are the characteristics of the major types of beer?How many different types of craft beer brands exist in the US?What's a simple, one-sentence breakdown of the difference between an ale and a lager?Wines are produced by fermenting fruits; generally, the word "wine" alone means "grape wine," while other wines will be referred to by the name of the fruit -- e.g. "plum wine," "blackberry wine," etc.  [1]  Grape wines come in two main types, red or white, depending on the type of grape used and whether the skin is left on.  Given that more has been written about these kinds of wines than all other beverages put together, I'll refrain from going into detail about this subject.Pictured: Amarone, a wine made from raisins.For more on (traditional, grape-based) wines:What are the differences between different types of red wines?What is the best way for a beginner to learn the basics about wine?These are the two most common types of fermented beverages, but there are other types of high-carbohydrate foods that can be fermented.   Mead is made by fermenting honey.  It was very popular in Western Europe hundreds of years ago, then fell from favor for a long time, but is currently enjoying something of a resurgence.  Milk, too, can be fermented, although there is to my knowledge no common English word for this category of beverage; it's generally called something like koumiss in the local languages where it's drunk.  Some tree and plant saps can be fermented as well; again, I don't know of an English word for the category, but pulque is the most prominent example.Pictured: Pulque, a drink made by fermenting the sap of the Maguey agave plant.Distilled beveragesWe can produce higher-alcohol beverages by distilling fermented alcohols. (Distillation is the chemical name for any process that separates particular chemicals out of a mixture.  In this case, we're removing water from a mixture of alcohol and water, resulting in a higher alcohol concentration).  There are different kinds of distillation processes, and they do matter, but I'll skip over them for the most part here.Usually, you do not just drink these right after distilling them -- they'll often be aged in casks made of specific types of wood (where they pull flavor from the wood), or have additional flavors added to them after fermentation.  [2]One example is brandy (short for brandywine, meaning "burnt wine"), which is made by distilling wine.  Again, there are all kinds of fruits, so there are all kinds of brandies; the word "brandy" alone usually refers to brandies made from (grape) wine which have been aged in casks.  Cognac and Armagnac are two types of this sort of brandy.  Unaged brandies may be known as eau de vie ( "water of life" in French), generally together with the name of the fruit, e.g. "eau de vie de framboise" would be an unaged raspberry brandy.  Other notable brandies include Pisco, an unaged grape brandy from South America; Calvados, a French apple brandy aged in oak casks; Kirschwasser, an unaged brandy made from cherries without the pits removed; and Grappa, an unaged brandy from Italy made from grapes with their skins and stems left intact.Pictured: Poire William, a pear-based eau de vie.  (The pear inside the bottle is primarily decorative.)Whiskey, (or sometimes whisky), on the other hand, is essentially distilled beer, though the sort of "beer" you distill to make whiskey is a bit different from the sort of beer you would normally drink; for instance, it doesn't contain hops (a flower added to beer to give it a bitter flavor).  Common types of cask-aged whiskey include Scotch (malted barley), Irish whiskey (malted barley or grain), Bourbon (corn), Rye (rye), Canadian whiskey (rye), and Tennessee whiskey (corn). [3]  Of course, these styles come down to more than just the grains used.  For instance, Islay Scotches -- my favorite of all alcoholic beverages -- use malt dried over a peat fire, which gives them a unique smoky taste that's not present in other whiskies, and Tennessee whiskies (of which there are exactly two, namely Jack Daniel's and George Dickel) are put through a charcoal mellowing process. The most common unaged whiskey is Corn Whiskey.  I personally do not recommend drinking this.Pictured: A peat stack, used to dry and flavor the malt used in the type of Scotch whisky made on Islay and the outer Hebrides.Let's pause for a brief tangent about styles of whiskey.  Scotch will tend to have the most complex flavors and less sweetness than other styles of whisky.  There are different regions of Scotland that make different styles of whiskey.  Islay (and the rest of the Hebrides), as mentioned above, make smoky-tasting malts.  Highlands and Speysides seem to be a bit more beginner-friendly.For the longest time, rye was pretty much the official whiskey of America.  George Washington made his own at Mount Vernon.  It's sharper and less cloying than bourbon.  The Manhattan cocktail (whiskey, red vermouth, and bitters) would have originally been made with rye.  Prohibition changed all that by giving America a good sock right in the sophistication.  Coming out, we preferred sweeter and less subtle drinks like bourbon and Tennessee whiskey, which pretty much took rye out of the running.  Fortunately, it has been seeing something of a resurgence recently.Pictured: Rye.More on whiskey:What are the differences between scotch, bourbon, and Tennessee whiskies?What is the difference between whisky and whiskey?Rum is a liquor distilled from fermented sugarcane byproducts. [4]  The word "rum" alone usually refers to liquors made from molasses, which is a by-product of extracting sugar from sugarcane.  It can be cask-aged for varying amounts of time, resulting in light rums and dark rums.  Some types of rum, like Cachaça and Rhum Agricole, are instead made from sugarcane juice.  (Some people might just use "rum" to denote molasses liquors, and put the sugarcane juice liquors in their own category.)Pictured: A Caipirinha -- the national drink of Brazil -- which is a cocktail of Cachaça, sugar, and lime.  A stick of sugarcane (for decoration or stirring) is visible in the glass.Tequila is a liquor distilled from fermented agave hearts. (Agave is a plant in the same family as the asparagus and the yucca.)  Like rum it can be aged for different amounts of time.  The tequila you normally see is made from the blue agave plant; Mezcal is a tequila made from the Maguey agave.Pictured: A blue agave plant.Neutral spirits are a bit different.  This term refers to alcohol produced by any method in such a way that any residual flavor is removed and the result is simply pure alcohol and water, or as close as can be efficiently achieved without undue burden.  Neutral spirits can be used as the base for a liqueur.  Some cheap gins and vodkas are also made from neutral spirits.Vodka is traditionally made by distilling fermented potato juice.  However, due to its neutral flavor, the term is also used nowadays for neutral spirits or similar products.   Gin is made by adding juniper berries to neutral spirits, running some kind of "re-distillation" process that I don't even pretend to understand, and then infusing with various herbs and botanicals.Chinese liquor, or "baijiu" in Chinese, technically belongs to the whiskey family, as it's made by distilling fermented sorghum.  (Sorghum is a type of grain grown in China.)  Most westerners are not used to the flavor of sorghum, and when I've taken my white friends to Chinese bars in SF they often aren't able to stomach these, but I've developed a taste for at least some of them.  This is a very wide category, but I don't know anywhere near enough about it to do it justice.  The ones I've tried are Erguotou, an inexpensive, clear liquor, and Maotai, which is what they serve the President of the United States at formal dinners when he visits China.  [5]Pictured: Maotai, a sorghum-based liquor of the "sauce-fragrance" type.Hybrids: Liqueurs, fortified wines, etc.The beverages above get their flavor primarily or even exclusively from the process by which the alcohol was produced.  When they do have additional flavors, they're usually in some sense a byproduct of the process used.  Hops are added to beer prior to fermentation, for instance; similarly, while casked liquors do pull a considerable amount of flavor from their casks, the aging is actually required for other reasons as well.There are many classes of alcoholic beverages, however, which do not get their signature flavors primarily from the process which produces the alcohol, or which contain several types of alcohol made by different processes giving a composite flavor.  This is a very broad category and spans some of the best and worst kinds of beverage.The oldest beverage of this type is probably fortified wine, which is made by mixing wine and liquor, possibly with additional herbs or spices infused.  Originally the liquor was added as a preservative, but the style has now evolved to the point that certain fortified wines are among the most valuable wines out there.  There are a few important types.  Desert wines like Port, Sherry, Madeira, and Marsala are barrel aged and fortified with brandy.  Vermouth is fortified with neutral grape spirits and infused with herbs and botanicals. (Sugar is often added as well.)  Vermouth is extremely important in cocktails, being integral to the Martini and the Manhattan, which are two of the oldest and best cocktails.Another important class of beverage are flavored spirits.  These are made by infusing various flavors into neutral spirits (or, rarely, into other liquors).  Unlike liqueurs, flavored spirits do not have added sugar or juices.  Gin is probably the most important; it's made by adding juniper berries and other herbs and botanicals to neutral spirits.  (Gin is short for Genever / Jennifer / Guinevere, a name derived from the Juniper plant.)  Absinthe, too, was among the most important flavored spirits in its heyday, when it was roughly as popular in Paris as Coca-Cola in the U.S. today.  It's made by infusing neutral spirits with anise and a number of herbals and botanicals, including grand wormwood (artemisia absinthium) from which it takes its name.  Absinthe was for a long time banned in much of the world after a campaign that associated what were in retrospect effects of severe alcoholism with the wormwood in absinthe.  It's now known that drinking absinthe is perfectly safe, and the drink is once again available on store shelves and in bars. [6]  Pictured: a grand wormwood plant, used in flavoring absinthe.Liqueurs are made by adding flavorings and sugar to neutral spirit base (or, rarely, another liquor.)  This is an absolutely huge category in and of itself, comprising both the relatively obvious choices like creme de menthe (mint), creme de cacao (chocolate), coffee liqueur, amaretto (bitter almond and/or apricot kernel liqueur), raspberry liqueur, and so forth, as well as aperitif and digestif bitters such as Italian amaros, Campari , Cynar, Fernet, and Suze.Pictured: Suze, a type of bitters predominantly featuring the flavor of the gentian flower.  My favorite liqueur of all.SummaryAs mentioned in Naomi P Saphra's answer , this is not a clear-cut question since there are piles of categories and subcategories, and it's not clear where to draw the lines.  As a consolation prize, here's a picture of part of the tree discussed above which may also function as a handy reference.Fermented beveragesBeerAlesPale alesBrown alesBelgian-style alesLagersMalt beveragesSakeWineGrape winesRed wineWhite wineRose wineSparkling wineStraw wineIce wineNon-grape winesApple ciderPerryCountry winesMeadFermented milk beveragesFermented sap beveragesDistilled beveragesBrandyCasked grape brandiesEaux de vieWhiskeyCasked whiskeyScotchSingle-malt ScotchIslayHighlandSpeysideCampbelltownBlended ScotchIrish whiskyBourbonRyeTennessee whiskeyCanadian whiskyUncasked whiskeyCorn whiskeyUncasked ryeBaijiuLight fragranceHeavy fragranceSauce fragranceRumMolasses rumsSugarcane juice rumsTequilaBlue agave tequilaMezcalNeutral Spirits(Some) vodkaHybridsLiqueursCordialsFruit liqueursNut liqueursAmarettoCoffee liqueursAnise-flavored liqueursAnisetteGallianoSambucaDrambuieAperitif / Digestif Bitters (may overlap other categories)Amer PiconAvernaAmaro MontenegroCampariCynarFernet BrancaSuzeUnicumHerbal liqueursBénédictineChartreuseJägermeisterKümmelMetaxaStregaFortified winesDesert WinesPortSherryMadeiraMarsalaVermouth and friendsRed vermouthWhite vermouthLilletPunt e mes"Bum wines"Flavored spiritsGin and Genever"X-flavored Y"Coconut rumFlavored vodkasAnise-flavored liquorsAbsintheArakOuzoAkvavitResinated wines[1] "Beer" and "wine" have technical meanings, but they're not always used in this sense.  In particular, since beer tends to have lower alcohol content than wine (say ~6% versus ~10% by volume), sometimes wines with low alcohol contents will be referred to as beers or vice-versa.  For instance, barley wine is a type of beer with exceptionally high alcohol content, while apple cider is often considered like a beer despite essentially being a sparkling wine.[2] You can also age liquors for a short time in non-reactive containers, say glass or steel, in which case they go through some chemical reactions but don't interact with the container.  I'll call these "unaged" here for simplicity, despite the fact that it's not strictly true.[3] Note that many of these whiskeys are made from more than one grain, e.g. bourbon may be half corn and half wheat.  When I've indicated a grain I've just indicated the predominant one.[4] Sugarcane is actually a type of non-grain-bearing grass, not a fruit, explaining why rum doesn't count a type of brandy or whiskey.[5] If, like most of Quora, you're in the San Francisco Bay area, go to Red's Place at Jackson and Grant to try this stuff, then go a block over to Kearny where there's a Chinese liquor store to buy it.  I don't know of any other U.S. importers (UPDATE: There's also one in Chicago's Chinatown called China Palace Liquor City); if you do, add a mention in the comments.[6] The kind of wormwood used to make absinthe was correctly known to contain the extremely potent neurotoxin thujone in its essential oil.  However, the amount of thujone present in absinthe is so low that you'd die of alcohol poisioning long before you could drink enough absinthe to have any effect from it.  As a result of the anti-wormwood campaign of a century ago, there's been a persistent misconception that thujone can be used as a recreational drug, which is false -- it doesn't cause hallucinations or any other desirable effects; it's just a poison.  (Note, by the way, that many essential oils are similarly toxic, and should be treated with extreme care.  Several people have permanently damaged their health or died by drinking concentrated wintergreen oil out of the bottle while making candy.  A single ounce of it contains the equivalent of 200 aspirin pills.)  I am not a physician and this does not constitute medical advice of any kind.

My Advice ,is try it here for FREE . At least if you fail , You are still at status QuoBusiness involve Real Money …Writing on Quora does not , trying out Online is one low risk business venture you can start offHave FunIn picking out a niche, see to it that you opt for one that you're interested in. As what you might have experienced, it's absolutely unhelpful to work with something that you loathe. It's rather difficult to convince customers to buy your product or service when you yourself don't have the heart to take interest in it.ChooseThe opening move to selecting a niche that's correct for you is to consider the issues and subject matter that you're most passionate about! By being passionate about a certain matter, you'll be motivated to learn more about it, teach other people about it, and work in it on a daily basis. Among the basic issues when it bears on failure in online business efforts is that a individual selects a niche that they think other people will be interested in, but they plainly have no interest in it themselves. Prevent this downfall right from the beginning - make certain whatever content you pick is that which you have a great interest in!While learning how to pick your niche, it's crucial to ensure that you've a great idea of your "target" audience. By discovering who's best suited as your audience, you'll be able to supply content that will meet the requirements that they have, and school them on items of their concern. It's equally crucial to guarantee that you're part of the audience that you're trying to draw in. This will guarantee that you cover every facet of your niche, and relate on a personal level with the other people that are in the same audience.Next apply the use of content that's uniquely yours. Exclusive material that you write, or have composed by ghost writers who produce professional SEO content, helps to demonstrate you as an authority in your niche. Ensure that your material can't be located anyplace else on the Net! This will immediately drive traffic to your site as you'll be providing visitors something fresh and unique. There are a lot of companies out there nowadays that may offer you unparalleled content.When you begin to put up material on your site, in article directories, or any additional location on the Net that's directly related to your niche, it's crucial to guarantee that you provide steady updates. This will keep your audience returning time and time again so that they might see the "newest" that you have to provide! This means provide fresh articles, keep your site maintained, and tailor your niche according to up to date trends.It's utterly imperative to see to it that you narrow the content down as much as conceivable. For instance, if you run a site on computer game cheat codes, you'll want to incorporate "computer game cheat codes" into your material, but your niche should be specialized to the type of computer game cheat codes that you provide. A good niche would be "The Sims Cheat Codes" - this will help interested Net users discover the material that they require fast!Its simple to learn how to pick your niche. The mystery to being successful is to pick a subject that you're passionate about, ascertain your audience, produce high quality, SEO content, update your material on a steady basis, and utilize keywords and keyword phrases that will reflect what your Net audience will look for.As an author, you've probably went through a lot of times when you just don't know what to write on. Maybe you've exhausted your common subjects and are looking for something different that will bring in the readers. This will give you hints for a few hot article topics. By applying these easy ideas, you'll be able to step-up your views, fascinate your audience, and ensure that your material brings in a constant stream of income.Write on an approaching holiday. General audiences are commonly interested in info concerning to the holidays. If the content is well written and furnishes info that is other than basic knowledge, you should see a good amount of views. These will fizzle out after the holiday has blown over, but will recover momentum, once the holiday approaches, once again.Research up to date events. If the matter is red-hot in the news, it will be red-hot to likely readers. Attempt to determine your own voice and present your data in a way that's unique to your audience.Write a report about pets. There are a lot of pet devotees around the world that like reading about their furry champions. Pet care is a great place to begin.Journal about our surroundings. Green is the up to date theme in news these days, and the chances are that it's here to stay. You are able to write about how persons may "green up" their lives, what fresh alternate fuels are being formulated, or how our environment is bearing upon wildlife. Any subject you decide to write on is likely to take in a powerful amount of readers.Tell individuals how to save income. This is among the most red-hot topics around, and it consistently pulls in viewers. The great thing about this subject is that there are perpetual ways to save revenue, so you should not have a problem making your material unique.Write on your passion. If you are profoundly interested in an issue, there is a great chance that other people are, as well.Do not forget to make your article original. Do not overexploit info that is vastly available over the Net. Pick out an easy yet unique title that will rank high on search engines, and draw in fresh readersAfter you've decided what niche to promote, you are able to then visit free affiliate sites which provide good-quality affiliate products. You must check that these have a great sales page with an elevated conversion rate. You are able to confirm this by getting hold of the creators of your chosen product. Make certain that your product fits with your niche. As well ask your self, if you were the consumer, would you purchase the product?A ProductIf you have been on the Net any length of time, then you know that affiliate marketing is an exceedingly lucrative way to bring forth income online. It's moderately simple, it may be done with little or no ad expenses, and an assortment of niches may be researched. Picking out the correct affiliate products to market is critical to your success. Abiding by these easy steps will assist you in making the most beneficial choices.Put together a list of affiliate products for each one of the niches that are of interest to you.Assess the commission structure of the affiliate plans on your list. Commissions commonly range from five percent to forty percent for palpable merchandise and up to seventy-five percent for digital merchandise.Have a look at the vendor's payment processes. The more reputable companies will pay you either via check or PayPal. A lot more will even pay you through an affiliate network, who will, in turn, compensate you by check or direct deposit to your chosen financial institution on behalf of the vendor.Have a look at the vendor's sales page. This is the page that will be looked at by visitors you refer to the parent company. A great sales page will be simple to read and simple to navigate when the buyer is prepared to make a purchase.Have a look at what the rivalry is marketing. Look up relevant keywords in your preferred search engine and check over the sponsored ads. In a lot of cases, these are advertisements are produced by other affiliates. If no one is promoting your chosen affiliate products or something like it, then there might be no demand for them in the current market.There are a lot of ways to market utilizing the Net. There's email marketing, PPC, banner advertising, utilizing videos, article promotion, doing SEO, blogging, and using social bookmarks, social networking and Web 2.0 properties. There's so much info out there, it may sometimes get overpowering. One way to figure matters out is to ask individuals who have become successful.Discover a discussion board that specializes in Internet marketing. These are sites where Internet marketers go to talk about the cutting-edge strategies, to determine what's working and what isn't, and to find reviews for the cutting-edge courses and software. Some that you might want to travel to are the Warrior Forum, Digital Point and IM4Newbies .The Warrior Forum is the oldest of the message boards and has been around since '96. Many superstars in the industry got their beginning here. It has the threads separated neatly into many different categories, like PPC, ad sense, article promotion, media buys, and so forth, so it's very simple to discover what you're seeking. The threads are well moderated and individuals here are commonly respectful and helpful to each other. This is an oddity in a lot of forums, where individuals tend to often be rather crude. So it's a huge plus that you are able to ask a question at the Warrior Forum without the dread of being called names. While the forum itself is free, there are frequently members offering cheap paid training courses of study called WSOs (Warrior Special Offers), and there's a lifetime upgrade for $37 as of 2010. This provides you access to a few members-only secret threads.Digital Point is likewise a good discussion board where individuals tend to be really helpful. It's organized in a great deal the same way as the Warrior Forum, while it hasn't been around as long, receiving its start in 2002. It's even so well regarded in the Internet marketing profession. It likewise has an area where you are able to outsource work that you don't wish to do yourself, like programming jobs, article authoring or site design.IM4Newbies, although much littler than either the Warrior Forum or Digital Point, is a dynamic community with about 70,000 members. It's a great place to get rolling for those completely fresh to Internet marketing as everything is set up for the fledglings, and they pay special attention to what they call their 101 classes, like Niche Marketing 101, Affiliate Marketing 101 and Net Business Management 101. It's likely less daunting to begin here too. As there are fewer threads, there's less of a data overload than what you may get at the other 2 forums.Make A Site Or BlogYou must produce your own site or blog, where you are able to put all your marketing techniques. If you want to maintain a site, be prepared to use a few bucks. Instead a quality hosting and a WordPress blog may guide you with the simple development of your page. The latter is truly helpful since you are able to join their site free of charge and you are able to be guided with whatever you desired to do with your page.Do It FreeIt is crucial to have an internet site if you have a business. Most internet sites commonly have multiple web pages that display info about the owner, product, service or contact. If you are merely setting out to have an internet presence with your business, it is a great idea to make a business web page. You are able to even begin a business web page free of charge.Look for a free web site hosting service online that lets you publish content. Some free of charge services that allow you to begin a web page fast are Blogger.com - Create a unique and beautiful blog. It’s easy and free., WordPress.com: Create a Free Website or Blog, Content Management System, Blog Software & Publishing Platform and weeby.com. Have a look through each of their choices and select the services that you like best. The advantage to these services is they are free of charge to use.Sign on for the service they're supplying. You need to make a username, a password and supply your e-mail address. After you sign on, you will have to pick out a title for your web site. Normally you are able to only register your site name under a sub domain name as you are hosting under their service. For instance, if you would like to produce a free of charge web page on WordPress.com: Create a Free Website or Blog and wish to title your pizza pie business http://greatpizzashop.com, your domain name will be WordPress.com.Pick out a template for your particular business type. You are able to pick from a lot of free templates. For instance, in Weebly you are able to select a design and choose from over thirty different templates. You are able to pick out the category themes ranging from instruction to marriages. You will prefer to pick "Business" for templates that have business conceptions.Produce material about your business and place a link to a product or service you are selling up on your freshly made web page.Push the publish button. Once you have a business template picked out, informational material and a product or service to sell, push the publish button. Individuals online will now be able to have a look at your business web page, which you made free of charge.Write write WriteWhen you get all set up, you must learn to enjoy writing since blogging is the chief way to communicate all the good things about your product with the buyers. Moreover, you are able to add an affiliate link in the resource box for your blog. When it's clicked, your reader will then be automatically redirected to the sales page. If you've your own product, then all you require is a simple webpage with an enlightening article about your product.AuthorAuthoring a great article that has relevant keywords to your niche included in it might be very confusing to a lot of online authors. On the other hand, if you wish to bring targeted traffic to your material or web pages, you need to include keywords in your material. This will give you a few great ideas on how to author an article that includes keywords to supercharge your article views or site visits.I keep reading associated articles that state to utilize the keyword tool supplied by Google; this is a great tip for web masters and authors. However, how many great keywords do you add to your material per length of article? Perhaps if we center on satisfying our readers with helpful info, the search engine top-ranking will come on its own. Shoving relevant words in articles is never advocated and it is looked at as "Black Hat" SEO or a spamming article. Attempt the steps here to write a good and helpful article that will be placed well from the words you pick to include in your articles or web pages.Perform research on Google trends. Discovering what data is searched for is a great idea when attempting to pick out a great article topic to write about. Monkey around with the Google tools and discover related keywords to include in your article(s).Prevent gorging your whole article with words that you're trying to get placed high for. This will just hurt your rankings. Author your article freely and aim the conversation or article info in a way to talk to your readers not the search engines.Include your primary keyword in your beginning and end paragraph. You are able to too include one in your main paragraphs as long as you're not wedging extra words into your content and articles. If you author a three hundred word article, attempt utilizing your key word around 3-4 times including one in your title.Author long and valuable info on your articles. Not only does Google like people friendly material, it likes to find well needed and valuable info to display in search engine results. The more valuable information, the more beneficial the ranking will be. Discover what individuals want to know about in your niche and explore the answersMarketing methodsIn increasing your sites traffic, you are able to quickly work at 3 kinds of easy methods: social marketing, forum marketing and article marketing.MarketOn social promoting, beginning building up your social network on Facebook and Twitter. Those are the two most well-situated to setup and most popular social web sites you will find currently. Begin establishing relationships with other people by becoming involved in a genuine and real discussion.In the discussion board marketing, you are able to begin by traveling to popular forums that accept topics touching on the problems or solutions that lead to your merchandise as the resolution. Go to Google and look for “discussion board”. Utilize different keyword phrase related to your niche. The method to link back to your web site is to utilize your signature to state a mighty advantage you are able to provide at your web site and post your website urlIn the meantime, you are able to post your articles to the leading article directories for the article promotion. The way I accomplish it is to re-purpose my own blog post. After my blog post is updated for a couple of days, I commonly submit that article to two primary article directories: http://ezinearticles.com and http://goarticles.com. Simply make certain you include a mighty beneficial statement in your resource box to link back to your web site. You need to incite the reader to come to your web site with that advantage you have listed.To produce a life long revenue in internet marketing business, you have to build up your own list. You might have heard it a lot of times that the revenue is in the list…and your relationship with that list as well.The ListIt does not take you long to learn to use a tool like Aweber to frame-up a potent system to build your list. The most beneficial tool is an auto responder like Email Marketing | AWeber to seize the e-mail addresses of people who come to your site. The wonderful thing about utilizing an auto responder system is you are able to author a series of e-mail sequences in advance prior to you getting your first subscriber that joins your list.It is referred to as “set it and forget it.” When the e-mail sequence is set up, you do not have to fret about it. A few internet marketers have set up the e-mail sequence to communicate with the subscriber base for a year or even longer.The primary goal is to utilize the e-mail sequence to establish trust with your subscriber base by giving helpful tips and tools that relate to your niche. Do not right away use a hard sell with anything in your beginning e-mail. You might utilize a strategy called “breath out, breath in”.That is to hand out useful info in your beginning e-mail, and then in the following e-mail you do a sales pitch to get the order in. And keep that cycle to get your subscriber base to read your e-mail and see your sales pitch or fresh info more naturally.Just like many of you, I at one time subjected myself in unrelentingly discovering ways to make money from home. I've constantly researched the net for tips and essentially steps on how I may begin my career online without necessarily leaving my job or overlooking the crucial events of my lifeI attempted to discover answers from net training programs just so I could simplify the seemingly complex techniques of the net world. Since I've forever believed in the construct of “teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”, I desired to share what I learned with you.I wish you to experience the success of net money-making and distinguish how you are able to produce income and have a Net lifestyle at the same time. Let’s begin now...

Two things to note before we begin:Most truths in life are not simple. Those expecting easy answers will be disappointed with this one.While answering a hypothetical question about history (“would this have worked”?), it is important to understand that: (a) we have a massive benefit of hindsight, and (b) we have a bias.Please read my answer keeping this in mind.Most people claim that Gandhi’s methods of passive resistance would not have worked against the Nazi Germany. I just have one counter-question: before dismissing, firmly, that his methods wouldn’t work, shouldn’t we even ask if those methods were even tried in the first place?Now, hang on there. I want you to examine that point very, very carefully. It’s easy to jump to conclusions (“oh they wouldn’t have worked!”), but if you’d like to analyse something, you need to resist such conclusions.It’s important that we understand that World War 2 did not pop out of thin air. It’s not that, one day, Hitler just decided to move out of his home, and announce how he can save Germany by massacring the Jews, and everyone simply jumped on board, delighted with the idea. Like I said, the most profound truths in life are not simple.With this background, let me start.A] Some nonviolent methods were used in Europe during World War - II, and some instances were pretty effective. The problem was: these methods were never even tried on a large scale.I will start with some examples of successful implementation of nonviolent methods across Europe against the Nazis:In Norway, in 1940, Nazi Prime Minister Vidkun Quisling wanted schools to teach Fascism. More than 10000 teachers protested. They were imprisoned, but accepted it willingly. This moved thousands of citizens who wrote letters of protest to the PM, thereby forcing him to concede defeat. Little children were saved from the Nazi propaganda. Read more - Got Fascism? The 1942 Norwegian Teachers’ Nonviolent Resistance to Nazis Has AnswersIn Holland during 1941, the Nazis wanted the Dutch doctors to follow their guidelines such as racial screening and excluding the Jews from accessing medicine expertise. Thousands of doctors protested nonviolently. They abandoned their practice, and with the support from the people increasing, the Nazis were forced to trace back their steps. This was just one of the many nonviolent attempts from the Dutch. Read more - Dutch citizens resist Nazi occupation, 1940-1945In early 1943, Bulgaria had signed an agreement with the Nazis to deport more than 20000 Jews to the concentration camps. All was arranged and the Jews were arrested from all over the country and boarded a train that was set to depart for the death camps. Due to the nonviolent resistance of Dimitar Peshev, who organised a signature campaign to urge Bulgaria to stop the deportation; and due to the nonviolent protest of activists such as Bishop Metropolitan Kiril, who threatened to launch a campaign around the country and to lie down in front of the train to stop it from moving, the plan was finally cancelled, and tens of thousands of Jews were saved from being sent to death. Read more - “We Must Help!” The Rescue of Bulgaria's JewsThis one is from Germany itself! In 1943, Jewish men married to German women were being arrested for deportation to the concentration camps. More than 600 German women stood in front of the building, and peacefully protested. They stood their ground even when warning shots were fired. The protests continued for over a month, after which, the Nazis released almost all the Jews. Read more - In 1943, hundreds of German women saved their Jewish husbands from death campsDenmark is another good example of nonviolent movements coming to fruition against the Nazis. The citizens organised a protest against the government joining hands with the Nazis. Thousands of workers went to strike, curfew was then imposed which was ignored and people went on to streets. The Nazis were forced to relent. Several Jews were saved as a result of this non-cooperation and civil resistance. Read more - Danish Non-violent resistance during WW2In France, a small village of Le Chambon demonstrated an inspiring feat against the Nazis. The village became a hiding ground for many Jews due to the leadership of local bishops who campaigned to save the Jews. When a government official arrived in the village, the local pastor openly declared their support for the Jews, and reportedly said, “These people came here for help and for shelter. I am their shepherd. A shepherd does not forsake his flock. I do not know what a Jew is. I know only human beings.” The Nazis later sent buses and armed military to round up the Jews, but nobody in the village gave up the names or locations of the Jews. The Nazis finally gave up and the buses returned empty. Read more - May We Never Forget the Miracle of Le ChambonThe above are some instances of how nonviolent methods actually did work against the Nazis. At the very least, we should accept that ‘nonviolence cannot work’ is a wrong thing to say.Obviously, the instances I presented above are minor compared to the sheer scale of violence that was seen in the Second World War. After all, saving a few thousands of Jews is a ‘small’ achievement when you consider that millions were killed anyway.These examples, however, should be seen as a reminder of how nonviolence could have worked. I urge you to think about this. Nonviolence could have worked. But that thought leaves us with a bigger question.Why was the nonviolence in Europe not as effective as it was in India? Why did so many small nonviolent protests arise and then stop in isolation? What went wrong? These questions are important. And the answers might surprise you. But before that, let me talk about something else.B] People who claim that nonviolence would not have worked are automatically assuming that violence worked against Hitler. Are we sure that violence actually worked?Well, Germany lost the war, you say! So obviously they “lost”. But that’s besides the point. What you call a ‘victory’ against the Nazis came at a very heavy price. Remember that almost 70–80 million people died. That is a staggering number, and I wouldn’t call it a ‘success’.It’s messed up, for sure. And while we celebrate our heroes of war (as we should), we must also remember that war comes at a cost - at huge cost, in this case - and that cannot be ignored altogether. This video here does a wonderful job to give context to the cost of the war.So before you dismiss the points I mention in the answer below - and say that nonviolence wouldn’t work because of whatever reason, always remember that the alternative to nonviolence is violence, and you really should watch that video to understand what violence looks like.Let me now come to the bigger aspects.C] The public perception of the Jews since after World War One defeat was pretty bad - and not much was done to counter it. As a result, antisemitism grew too much, and coupled with the depression and defeat - resulted in the catastrophe that we talk about todayHistorians have noted that the German society was badly humiliated after its defeat in the First World War. Now, frustrated and defeated minds are a ripe ground for sowing discontent and enmity. That was the time when the Nazis offered the “stab-in-the-back” myth.The myth was that Germany did not lose due to military weaknesses, but simply because it was betrayed by its own citizens - the Jews. Interestingly, people found strange hypothesis to support this, including that the Jews actually benefited and prospered with Germany’s defeat.[1]Initially, there was not much resistance to this. Let me share some insights from experts about how the Jews reacted to the initial antisemitism brewing in Europe before the second world war, as hosted on the UN website[2]How did the Jews in Nazi Germany respond to their persecution before the war?During the first days of the Nazi regime, it was difficult for them to grasp that anyone could strip them of their German rights and identity, that they could be turned into pariahs in their own land. "Germany remains Germany," stated a leading article in the newspaper of the organization that represented the majority, the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith. "No one can deprive us of our homeland and fatherland."On the other side of the ideological divide, the German Zionists, who were more pessimistic about the viability of a German Jewish synthesis, seemed better attuned to the new times. Even they, however, could not fathom the full extent of the Nazi threat to Jewish existence. They, no less than other Jews, tended to assume that the revolutionary ardor of the Nazi regime would spend itself after the first months in office and that its bite would not prove to be half as dangerous as its bark.The point is that the Jews simply could not respond to the hatred brewing against them. If you were to compare this with colonialism, you’d realise that perception management is a big tool that Gandhi used to his credit.Before India’s independence movement, colonialism was justified in the western world simply as something that is good for the colonies. India’s struggle for independence did a good job of “unmasking” the monster that colonialism really was. And that did the snowball effect.In other words, that ‘unmasking’ did not happen with Nazis.D] The Nazis were wary of a backlash. This explains why the most horrific parts of their agenda were actually hidden from the German public. In such a case, the nonviolence test fails.I’m going to tell you about two important things:Every human wants to be a hero.Everybody wants to rationalise what they do.Why do I say that? Because the Germans who supported the Nazis thought that they were doing something good. Things that are common knowledge today - including concentration camps and the holocaust - were not so common in that time. And plenty of people were hushed about it.An article published on the UN Holocaust Memorial Museum’s website talks about how this propaganda machinery worked in several stages - first, by projecting Germany as a victim, and then projecting the conquests as something necessary for self defence (i.e. moral high ground), and then even misleading the public as to what was actually being done with the Jews.Positive stories were fabricated as part of the planned deception. One booklet printed in 1941 glowingly reported that, in occupied Poland, German authorities had put Jews to work, built clean hospitals, set up soup kitchens for Jews, and provided them with newspapers and vocational training. Posters and articles continually reminded the German population not to forget the atrocity stories that Allied propaganda spread about Germans during World War I, such as the false charge that Germans had cut off the hands of Belgian children.In fact, propaganda, lies and deception was one of the fundamental tools that helped sustain the Nazi regime for so long. Read more here: Death of truth: when propaganda and 'alternative facts' first gripped the world. The “truth” was compromised in the World War. Big time.Go back to what I said at the beginning of this answer. Today, when we sit down to analyse what would have worked, we have a huge hindsight. We know things now that people in large did not know then. Moreover, the propaganda was widespread to such an extent that even if somebody told the truth, they might be largely ignored, because people believed what they wanted to believe.What works in such cases?E] This is where I introduce Gandhi’s methods. He took on the propaganda right on the face of it. He did everything in public, and the British were forced to retaliate in public.The salt march was public. Non-cooperation was public. Civil disobedience was public. Not only was it out in the open, Gandhi also ensured that all these things were sufficiently covered by the world media. That, in my opinion, was the masterstroke that made the difference.Here is a little experiment for you to think about.Let’s say someone is punching you in the face. And there’s nobody around you. And at that point you decide to experiment Gandhi’s methods of nonviolence. So you decide that you won’t retaliate and will happily accept the other person’s punches, hoping that he will see the fault in their ways, and will automatically stop hurting you.While it might work, it is a pretty risky approach to take. And, in my view, this isn’t what Gandhi usually meant when he talked about the power of nonviolence. You see, nonviolence is pretty effective when it is in public. So, for that, let’s think about another perspective.Let’s say that the same person is punching you in the face, and there are many people around you. These other people can clearly see that this person is doing something that is wrong, and that you are not retaliating.Two things happen in the second case:The mute spectators will feel pretty uncomfortable with what they see. They will see that one of the persons is hitting the other, and the other is not hitting back. At some point, they will feel the urge to stop the attacker form doing this.On the other hand, the attacker himself is also pretty conscious of the fact that this third person is watching him, and his own victim is appearing to grab the high moral ground.What’s really happening here is that - through this suffering - people will start to see themselves from the perspective of the other person. This is the crucial part of the process of nonviolence. There is a shift in perspective, and you entertain a thought in your mind - what would I have done if I were in his place? Would I have done something differently?This is where a person begins to change. And nonviolence draws its strength from this inherent goodness that we all have. While the likes of Hitler cater to the darkest part of our souls, this method caters to the purest part of it. If humans can be influenced to kill other humans, they can also be influenced to save humanity. This is all nonviolence is about.On the other hand, if in that place you witness one person hitting the other, and the other person fighting back, you will not notice any injustice. You will only notice two people fighting, and get over it. But this is a very bad situation, especially for a person who is not physically powerful.If you say that hitting back works, then by that definition, the most physically powerful people will always win. In that case, how are you going to stop bullying in schools? By telling the kids to out-bully each other?The true power of nonviolence lies in making the dispute public. Gandhi advocated the same for the Jews too. His most controversial remarks in this context are reproduced below:Germany is showing to the world how efficiently violence can be worked when it is not hampered by any hypocrisy or weakness masquerading as humanitarianism. It is also showing how hideous, terrible and terrifying it looks in its nakedness.Can the Jews resist this organised and shameless persecution? Is there a way to preserve their self-respect, and not to feel helpless, neglected and forlorn? I submit there is. No person who has faith in a living God need feel helpless or forlorn. Jehovah of the Jews is a God more personal than the God of the Christians, the Mussalmans or the Hindus, though as a matter of fact in essence, He is common to all and one without a second and beyond description. But as the Jews attribute personality to God and believe that He rules every action of theirs, they ought not to feel helpless.If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German may, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment. And for doing this, I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance but would have confidence that in the end the rest are bound to follow my example. If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now.And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy which no number of resolutions of sympathy passed in the world outside Germany can. Indeed, even if Britain, France and America were to declare hostilities against Germany, they can bring no inner joy, no inner strength. The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the God-fearing, death has no terror. It is a joyful sleep to be followed by a waking that would be all the more refreshing for the long sleep.Now, I understand that this looks pretty bad on face.Because telling the people being persecuted to let it happen is quite wrong. And, many people have rightfully criticised Gandhi’s approach here. However, I think that most of us haven’t understood what Gandhi wanted to say. And that has to do with the fact of the massacre being public.I know that I’m treading on a difficult premise here, but the point is that we don’t care to understand Gandhi’s methods before passing judgments on the same. And this is why I wanted to put his case on the face of it.To truly understand how and why nonviolence works, I encourage you to read this answer of mine where I discuss that topic extensively: Palkesh Asawa's answer to Why is Gandhi so popular when we all know non-violence doesn't work? Read it with an open mind to learn.In summary, my assertions are:We don’t know whether nonviolence could have worked against the Nazis. But, we shouldn’t just ‘decide’ that it would not have worked because it wasn’t even tried properly.Some instances of nonviolent resistance working perfectly during the second world war show us that, at the very least, nonviolent resistance would have been better than what we like to think.Gandhi’s insistence for nonviolence is often quoted out of context. The context in which his words should be seen are that millions of Jews died anyway, and Gandhi claims that they would have controlled the narrative substantially if they had organised much earlier in resisted the gathering storm. They couldn’t do that, for whatever reason, and the rest is history.Those who insist that nonviolence would not have worked are automatically assuming that violence worked, but there is no reasonable basis to accept that as a ‘fact’. The Axis powers could have won too, and world would have been different.The major criticism for Gandhi’s brand of nonviolence comes because people often confuse nonviolence with cowardice. And, as I have discussed before extensively, there is a huge difference between the two.At this stage, I’d like you to consider something totally different. To do that, you’d have to go back to the First World War. Why do you think the war started? Everyone says that the ball was rolling when Frank Ferdinand was assassinated. Well, the truth is that that assassination was only used as an excuse to escalate violence in the region, because people already wanted violence. It is this kind of violence that’s a problem.It’s still acceptable to want retribution, or revenge. But to want violence as the first course of action is something that has proven to be a catastrophe for the world. We’d be fools not to accept that reality. Nonviolence may or may not be effective, but it always deserves to be tried before jumping to violence. That is my assertion here.I’d conclude by quoting this another answer of mine:Violence is not always wrong, but preferring violence over nonviolence, by default, is entirely wrong. Regardless of whether nonviolence works or not, it is our duty to try it.Gandhi’s message was clear - have a bias towards nonviolence.I have a problem with bias towards violence.People want to hit other people, they want to dominate other men. People want to get the upper hand, they want to slaughter their enemies, they want war just so they could be proud of it.I don’t know about you, but to me, this sounds horrible.To learn more about Gandhi and nonviolence, read these:Why is Gandhi so popular when we all know non-violence doesn't work?Was Mahatma Gandhi more practical or an idealist?Do you think Gandhi would have imposed non violence if he had been our PM during 1948, 1965, and 1971 or 1962 & 1967 wars?What is your view on the defence speech of Nathuram Godse after killing Gandhi?Is Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of non-violence really a practical solution to every problem we face in today's modern world?Footnotes[1] Stab-in-the-back myth - Wikipedia[2] http://www.un.org/en/holocaustre...