Sometime ago, fellow Raaja affinicado Harikrishna sent me his video of Nenjathai Killathe's Title score. It was the dialog between lead guitar and the bass from the original score which he had played flamboyantly in his keyboard and sent me.
The title track has everything that Ilaiyaraaja stands for.
Surprise: Every time you listen to Raaja, you will end up discovering something new. For a long time I have looked closely to see if there are any 'Sankeernam' like applications (i.e., 9/8 time signature) from Raaja but to no avail. When I went back to hearing this score, I was treated with a sweet surprise. It's first 4 bars are set to a 9/8 time signature. Even though its occurrence is short, the deliberate placing of Church bells that fall at the first count of all the first 4 beat cycles, conform to a "1234 12 123" rhythm cycle (there by conforming to a Sankeerna Eka meter).
Innovation: The full length rhythm of this title score is conceived with the idea of a natural jogging rhythm. The initial 9 count oddity augurs well with a feel of uneven rhythm a jogger may follow. As we all know, Raaja chose this idea to signify the romance between the hero and the heroine which develops during their early morning jogs. The song "Paruvame" remains as one of the most adorable song in Tamil and Telugu Cinema to date. But not many are aware that this score already paves the way for it.
Structure: A classical humming evoking the fresh feel of dawn... What starts as a Sankeerna meter, becomes a regular 6/8 from the 5th bar... This jogging rhythm of "12 12 12" forms the base for a complimenting swing waltz played in an acoustic brush kit... With those days' 80s technology, you hear harmonic recorder embellishments and a bamboo flute played in Indian style responding to it in short but a powerful manner... Controlled strumming of a guitar together with a solid Bass track forms the backbone through out... And both of them break free with a chit chat of their own which is the further focus of this blog post... A complete string ensemble that concludes the affair in a grand style. The whole score is incredibly well structured. No inexplicable wandering of the melody... No waste notes... Its by no means a simple piece. But it sounds simple!
Lets now look a bit closely at that dual between both the guitars...
What is a counterpoint is a question nagging many of us. I view this bit as a good uncomplicated example of a basic counterpoint . I base my view on the following qualities: You can see two independent melody line that are in harmony but follow different rhythmic structure. They overlap each other and yet co-exist beautifully in the end.
Please refer the sheet music to feel this:
Please note the crucial areas where both the tracks overlap and the occurrences of dotted notations that differentiate each track's timing being different. (You can also download the sheet music here. Comments and reviews of the sheet music are welcome.)
(Headphones recommended!)
Imagine composing all these are for a time when we are fervently searching for our seats in the dark much to the chagrin of the voice behind: "சாவுகிராக்கி ..!! சீக்ரமா குந்துப்பா!!" ("You irritant.. ! don't hide me and get settled fast!!")
I wanted to post this article in March itself (to keep up my personal target of at least one post a month).. Because actually this article was written in March and hence technically I still met my target.. Posting it on April 1st is not to play a poor fools day joke! But, because it is part My latest article in Solvanam. So I decided to mention it here only after that.
The article is in Tamil. (It always feels nice to write in Tamil..) But non-Tamil readers please excuse me.. I will try to update this post with an English translation as soon as I can..
Basically I attempted playing the song in question to highlight the beauty of silence in this song. Though I did elaborate about it in the article, the best way to connect to my thoughts is through the video I guess.. Where ever there is silence in the original song, I tried to play it a bit spontaneous and not necessarily always sticking to the timing .. I thought the inherent feel of the song is best felt that way. Else I just played the melody with a mix of regular arpeggios and original bass track occasionally.
As always, your opinion matter to me the most. So Good/Bad or Ugly I am curious to know what you think of it. I also notated the sheet music for the song, in case you are interested. And of course corrections are welcome !
I had the dilemma of calling this post "10 Seconds = 2 light years"; But it sure does sound off tangent! Then I thought "Andha Oru Nimidam" would be a catchy title (Which means "That eventful minute").. But that was already taken !! (besides a minute feels like a millennium in front of the time scale that I am going to talk..) Finally I settled for a rather unimaginative title, inline with the spirit of my previous post!!
Recently there was a request from fellow musician/ friend, Kumar about the counterpoints involved in one of Raaja's songs.. It was a female solo by S Janaki that goes "Uyire.. Uravil". The title of the movie in which this song is wasted is called 'Mella Pesungal', which means 'Talk Softly'. Unfortunately the audiences of this movie took the name of its title little too seriously I guess.. The movie was never talked about.. and like many other beauties this song too languishes in the oblivion like a ghost seeking salvation!
You will hear 3 main instruments in this 10 seconds.. These three tracks each of Flute, Guitar and Piano does sound as if they are following the same melody and rhythmic pattern. Poor recording of the early 80s is not helping our cause either. Even then when I first set about the task of decoding this bit, I had no idea what was coming. After all, this is just 10 seconds..
I never understood the concept of this 'light year' in cosmos.. I used to wonder at times, how can there be such vast distances that makes even our Sun, virtually a speck of dust (or even insignificant than that!!)..
Not any more.. Now I know that such unfathomable mismatches do exist in unit of measurements.. Because this 10 seconds took me some light years to understand.. (I do personally recommend you to watch that video in case you missed it in the previous sentence)
For naked ears it feels that during this 10 seconds all the 3 instruments are towing the same line.. If you have a damn good pair of ears, you would know right away that, Flute and Guitar are playing different melodies.. But if you are not Ilaiyaraaja, the only way to decode the ultimate truth is by adopting the patented technique (of how to place your ears on the speaker/ head phone) that I explained in my previous post. :-))
Here is that part again which measured 10 seconds in Raaja's time scale and 2 hours in mine..
This is a counterpoint involving 3 tracks.. What I have done is to unravel each of them separately as midi files as well as to notate them in sheet music, so that we are dealing with the same parameters as the composer and performing artists.
(I was told that, there is some problem that the Yahoo Media Player not being able to play the midis.. I believe you need to have additional plugins in your browser to make this happen. So in any case I am also providing the additional direct link of the midi files. You can download them to your machine and listen to them in your usual music player (such as Windows Media Player). If you still face any problems, please give me a shout...)
1. Here is the First track. This is the main theme played by Flute
Alternatively you can listen to this flute track here.
2. This is the Second track, where a guitar is actually found playing the second fiddle.. :)
From an established western classical stand point, the guitar track is more of a derivative to the main melody and can be quite simply harmonically derived. Such score writing is a given in many classical compositions. So its not such a big deal. But holistically speaking, even a seasoned classical buff must admit the intricacy and the intellectual genius behind this bit.. Especially in the context of below given points..
Look at the platform on which such wizardry is displayed - Some unknown movie in which there is some unknown song, and even worse - it's a sad song which usually doesn't captivate the listener's grip as much as a hero intro song or a love duet or a "kuthu paattu".. But for Raaja where ever he sees the scope for such high quality stuff in any song, he simply goes about applying his intelligence.
Even though the guitar track is regular harmony, the piano track is a sheer genius and out of the box thinking. Such casual application of counterpoints sandwiched between a native melody and tabla rhythm is truly original. As I always say, this is not fusion. This is pre-conceived original genre in which he saw no difference between Sadjamam and the note F (the Key signature of this song) instead he saw them as one. Its like when Raaja is looking at this note, he sees them as green alphabets falling vertically in columns and laughs "The Matrix has you!!"
For such a small period of time, the amount of Workmanship is supreme by any yard stick.. Three soloists (One flutist, guitarist and pianist each) playing in tandem and a string ensemble on stand by to provide the finishing touch with at least few 10s of violinists (who are in turn split into 2 tracks).. So totally 5 tracks for a bit of 10 seconds..
Regardless of the duration, he still finds scope for advanced ornamentation techniques such as Trills for the Piano.
And look at the wholesome aesthetics of this bit.. in spite of what could become a clutter with such overload of instruments, not even a single note is out of place. How is this possible for him..? The answer is here:
(For the benefit of non-Tamil readers, what he is saying here is: "When you get a main idea, you need to again compliment it afresh by writing accompaniment for a different instrument, then again rewrite it for another instrument 2, and then again rewrite, and then again rewrite.. etc. This is called "Full Score Writing", not many people here are aware of this"..)
And below you will find the "Full Score Writing" of this 10 seconds. And again to recap with the score, this is how they all sound together..
(Please remember, this is 10 seconds out of a 4 minute song.. i.e., what you see below is just 4% of sheet music of this song that he wrote.. The score for whole song with an 80 piece orchestra would run for quite some pages I guess. And extrapolate it to significant number of 4500 odd songs that he has composed so far and you will realize what kind of genius we are talking about here..)
Often you will find that Raaja interviews/ stage speeches are on a Spiritual or emotional plane, that lands him in trouble. He is simply put, a very bad orator. And rarely he talks about absolute intellectual stuff regarding music. (If you ask him about music, his responses are usually philosophical). The fact is, he does posses intellectual mind like no other. As his fans or even critics we spare no stone to pick on his "spiritual-talk" blunders. On the other hand, we don't pay as much attention to his real useful intellectual talk. Probably because we prefer the safe route of just "talking" about how he composes "layers of music".. Peeling the onion is hard work and burns the eye, you see..!
Through such "Seconds to Light years" exercise, I wish to clarify one point.. Such ideas didn't go to paper from his head via a computer.. There was no software that filled in the blanks for him. There was no infrastructure whereby he could "process" the idea through zillions of pre-programmed musical techniques that could change the dynamics and texture.. There was no cherry picking on which instrument to choose from precompiled list of exuberant tone banks..
There is only one "thinking" entity in all of the music that he produces.. It commanded him to Write this 10 seconds of notes for flute, and then rewrite another 10 seconds for Guitar and then write 10 more seconds of counterpoint for Piano and then rewrite another 10 seconds for String Ensemble..
And that entity is his intellect..
Unfortunately such entities are suffering a fate similar to WWF's list of species threatened due to man made causes..
With Love Vicky
PS: - You can download all the notations used in this post as PDFs here. - You can download all the Midis used in this post here.
- Credits to Sharankay whose youtube video I have used in this post.
This post is very special to me... (Note: Read the previous one for the background check on this one.. !)
For the first time I made a serious attempt in representing Raaja's music as Staff notations. The piece I have taken for examination is the Pallavi of the one of the greatest Malayalam songs.. "Thumbi Vaa " from the movie 'Olangal'. I took the Concert version of this piece performed by Raaja himself during his "A musical journey" concert that was played live in Italy circa 2003.
I took the orchestra version because the bass pattern in this track are proper minims (half notes) and hence easy to follow as compared to the original track where the bass pattern though of lesser no. of notes is of more complex time signature. For additional simplification I didn't consider the minute Sangathis etc., Just the lead melody on the treble clef and the cello tracks on the bass clef.
A quick guide to read the above notation is that: Its a score with 4/4 Time signature and the key signature is C minor. I have used "Repeat volta " where each line has to be played twice instead of unfolding them as many times and cluttering the score. As a sample, I employed one slur on the second line to represent the gamakam (ga ma ga ri).. A sheepish attempt at best.. !!
This score also explains the Contrapuntal technique in a very basic form where two melodies are played simultaneously with different patterns and also sometimes in opposite directions crisscrossing each other..
If you want to see the tracks played in real time mapped against Piano Keys, I suggest that you download this midi file here and play it using the Van Basco midi player that can be downloaded here. It gives you a much more clearer idea of how the notes are divided and played simultaneously.
This is a very basic first attempt and I have no idea if the score is written properly. Therefore I would really appreciate if someone gives a open review of this score (CSR ..?); Also please note that the notes in the sheet music are identified by raw hearing and I would be happy to know if there is any odd note that isn't in sync with the original..
Finally to put things in perspective, this the language that the musicians world over communicate with each other. Can you imagine, this is the language with which Raaja wrote the notations for Thiruvasagam or Guru or Hey Ram and musicians from Hungary who never knew anything of Raaja or India or Tamilnadu could play it instantaneously in exactly the same way that he intended. Isn't that amazing..?
In the future, I hope to unravel many of such Raaja's classics in its purest form !!
And Yes, I also hope that the PT Sir would be proud of the black sheep now !!
With Love Vicky
Special Credits: 1.) A wonderful software called Lilypond that helped me notate this score. Its an automated engraving system that can generate printable sheet music in a traditional plate.. It has some extremely handy features such as midi output as well as image output of the score. And its FREE... (Hail Open source !!)
2.) Simple and complete Musical theory pages of the Connexions website such as this one that helped me bolster my basics and clear some doubts that arose while notating this score.
This blog offers my perspective on Maestro Ilaiyaraaja, The soul who has undoubtedly been a great influence in my life. Its a sequel to
my older Website that I used to maintain for Ilaiyaraaja in '02. Apart from
giving my objective thoughts and subjective emotions on his songs, I hope to bring out some anonymous ultimates. Also a regular feature of this blog
would be 'Vicky's Virtual Playlists' .
I hope
to make this blog, home of my (and of course your) Ilaiyaraaja Experience
One of those run-of-the-mill Indian techie who thinks "I am different!”.
Apart from occasionally junking (I mean Writing), I also do a bit of Violin, Keyboards, sequencing in my PSR 730 and assorting albums.
I listen to a lot of Ilaiyaraaja (a South Indian Film Music Legend), Carntaic, Western classical, Country, Soft-Rock and Jazz.
Personal Finance, Traveling, History and Tamil Literature are my likes too. View My Complete Profile
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