IR's composing technique

[dinkoarun]

I have question about IR's composing technique. We all know that he composes tunes first and the lyrics are added later. My question is was he the first to adopt this technique in India or atleast TN?

[kbee]

I dont know who was first, but in one interview when asked why he does it this way (because ppl are complaining about music taking over lyrics), he mentioned that it is expected as a MD from him that he score music for the mood of the story and likewise it is the job of the lyrist to write songs for the tune. He mentioned that after Kannadasan no one can be creative enough to write lyrics for the music (but I think VM did a great job too)

[Kupps]

My question is was he the first to adopt this technique in India or atleast TN?

Nope. I am sure that his predecessor, MSV has a lot of 'tunes-first' to his store. I think, in one interview MSV has told that in many instances whoever turns out first(whether KKD or himself) to the studio has done his part first and the later has followed the predecessor. He(MSV) has not followed any pattern rigidly in this regard.

In another interview(long back, in DD, i guess) KVM has mentioned that almost all his tunes are "paattukku mettu".

I do not have much knowledge about pre-KVM era. But, some of the songs of pre-KVM era had "tunes first". GR's song "Echi pizhakkum thozhile saridhaana" is an instance of "tune first". Infact the tune is a rehash of his(GR's) old tune for "dheena karunaakaranE natarajaa".

In an interview, for the question "paatukku metta, illai mettukku paattaa?", IR has answered something like "its not mettukku paattu its only sandhaththukku paattu". Though IR has predominantly done mettukku paattu, still, some of his paattukku mettu were very good, for example "dEvan thandha veenai adhil dEvi seidha ghaanam" from unnai naan sandhiththEn(?) is tuned for one of KKD's pre-written lyrics (used posthumously).

Our fellow DFer, MD, Srikanth has said that the creativity of the MD is shown when s/he tunes for the lyrics.

[rajasaranam]

[quote]
Our fellow DFer, MD, Srikanth has said that the creativity of the MD is shown when s/he tunes for the lyrics.

This may apply to other MD's not to our IR. Raja brings out the feelings of the song musically even before the lryics are Added to it and this is the height of creativity. In case of Prewritten lyrics the MD already has something to work upon-- like he has got a lyric which has got all feelings/emotions written and its only a mere juxtaposing of different tunes and coming up with a good one to suit the situation and lyrics.

[thumburu]

I think the issue is not about creativity, but it is the challenge of a music director to come up with a tune that is equally appealing and fits well into the sandham of the prewritten lyrics. The yesteryear MDs were experts at that

[vijayr]

"In case of Prewritten lyrics the MD already has something to work upon-- like he has got a lyric which has got all feelings/emotions written and its only a mere juxtaposing of different tunes and coming up with a good one to suit the situation and lyrics."

Its not that easy. Tuning to pre-written lyrics poses another constraint/challenge for the composer. Experts like MSV have the ability to change the inherent sandhams the lyricist presents in the lyrics and create his own. That IS creativity. Difficult-to-tune lyrics and unequal lengths of sentences poses a probem for the composer, especially when the lyricist if of the calibre of Kannadhaasan. And the mood of the song is dictated by the situation to which the lyricist and MD must abide with.

IR hasnt come up with a clear answer yet as to why he did mettukku paattu predominantly. Probably he didnt want the lyrics to affect his spontaneity.MSV has attempted both methods in equal measures with astounding success.

[vijayr]

Manadhil urudhi vendum( Sindhu Bhairavi), poththi vecha malliga mottu, a couple of songs from Bharathy are amongst some I know of IR that were tuned to lyrics. VaaraNamaayiram from Keladi Kanmani is also a good example and a wonderful tune with smooth scale changes.

[thops]

all the songs from Swarnakamalam (K. Vishwanath's Telugu movie) were tuned after the lyrics were written...

[kbee]

I think the issue is not about creativity, but it is the challenge of a music director to come up with a tune that is equally appealing and fits well into the sandham of the prewritten lyrics. The yesteryear MDs were experts at that
Well there are various levels of creativity and ability and IR have possibly prooved everything. For Hey Ram and Sambhu, IR scored music after the entire picturization was completed. In Hey Ram case, MD withdrew in the middle of the movie, where as in Sambhu the producer didnt like the songs so he requested IR to score music, both for existing lip movements. So no need have second thought about IR's creativity.

[kiru]

" Experts like MSV have the ability to change the inherent sandhams the lyricist presents in the lyrics and create his own. That IS creativity. Difficult-to-tune lyrics and unequal lengths of .

How does this work ? If something can be changed, it cannot be called by that name. In tamil, letters are classified as kuril, nedil and sandham is basically lists the sequence/combination of this.
This is what determines the thalam. This is the reason thalam is specified for songs, (say thiruppaavai) but there is a choice of ragams that you can use with a given lyric.

IR is precise when he says, the songs are written to a sandham. This is because the lyrics can be sung in different tunes, but the sandham remains the same.

Maybe I am missing something here.

[prabhudas]

kiru,
what is most appropriate translation of sandham in english ( in lay man terms say in a Hindi song, or a Nora Jones song, or is sandham apt or used only in Tamil songs?)
Also Thalam in Tamil songs are rhythm arrangements for the particular song? if Thalam is rhythm pattern, should it be defined strictly and not altered for each specific song?

Prabhudas

[vijayr]

"If something can be changed, it cannot be called by that name. In tamil, letters are classified as kuril, nedil and sandham is basically lists the sequence/combination of this. "

Thats only in the written form. When you vocalize the lyrics into a tune, you can change the inherent structure of a line, break a line, elongate a word etc. A classic example always given is the the following song:

avaLukkenna azagiya mugam
avanukkenna iLagiya manan
nilavukkenna iravinil varum
iravukkenna uRavugaL tharum

This was the original lyrics written by Kannadhaasan.

But instead of blindly tuning the lyrics with 3 words/line, MSV wonderfully splits it the following way

avaLukkenna,.....
azagiya mugam avanukkenna,
iLagiya manan nilavukkenna,
iravinil varum iravukkenna,

Now if MSV were to convert this tune into vocal syllables(sandhams) and give it back to Kannadhaasan after say a month or two, even Kannadhaasan wouldnt realize that these were his own sandhams. He would come have come up with an entirely different set of lyrics. They both were creative artistes who played mind games with each other all the time.

ThaaLam is something that is in the composer's hands. He can also have different "nadais" for the same tune/sandham depending on his creativity.

Can you believe that the charaNams of "ponmagaL vandhaaL" were actually written to the tune given by MSV? Notice how the sandhams go in the charanam. Blows you off everytime. He was easily capable of working both ways

[kiru]

I think I understand. (I wish I could listen to the song online. But dont know the name of the movie). Looks like, it is possible to add filler notes, between the notes for which there is lyrics. This is a innovation on the presentation side and I still think it is closely related to the tune setting. The sandham remains the same ie. the beats are determined for 'avalukkena'. Not much leverage there.

Yes, sandham is present in all languages. It is called meter, in English. Listen to 'Twinkle twinkle little star' song in the eponymous movie. The same rhythm/beat pattern, but the tune is different.

Only in our language, the musical concepts are well developed. The kuril/nedil are represented by tha na tha na naa. Traditionally, in TN musical notes were sung only using tha na na. (sa re ga ma pa da ni were later day introductions into our land).

I dont think, MSV's genius is in doubt. He is a master tunesmith. But I think, IR also is good at setting lyrics to tune. He tunes music using the traditional way. Given lyrics, he can immediately break it up for the sandham. Once the sandham is derived. It is a matter of stretching/contracting tha, nas picking on a scale/raagam.

Every MD tries to do something different. Film music is popular music. So change is important. With IR, he has references for every aspect of music. For tunes, it is MSV, for lyrics it is Kannadhasan. With these standards, he goes about trying to innovate. His innovation is to present the tune (almost as good as MSV) but with more western classical music aspects. Because of his goal of trying to embellish the tune with more harmony, he will guitar/piano chords, bass lines, single-note here and there etc. Whenever the song had more chords, I have seen people here (like Srikant) accuse IR of making up the tune from the chords, inherently spoiling the smooth flow of the tune. So some people might think of this as progress/innovation, while others might think of this as 'spoiling the tune'. It is totally two schools of thought in conflict. Personally, I feel, the tunes of MSV flow with more 'ease' than that of IR. But the IR tune will be more catchy and more harmonised. Since I like a more filled out background/harmony and the slightly rhythmic flow I like the music of IR as well. A little bit of 'ease' in the tune has to be compromised for adding the harmony notes/chords.

More later.. (interesting thread)

[vijayr]

Here is the link for the song
http://www.raaga.com/channels/tamil/movie/T0000157.html

"This is a innovation on the presentation side and I still think it is closely related to the tune setting. The sandham remains the same ie. the beats are determined for 'avalukkena'. "

You are right. The strict definition of "sandham" refers to the written part which remains the same. However the MD can innovate during the tune setting process like you have mentioned and can alter the lyrical structure.He can break lines in a different manner and elongate/compress certain words to impart a different mood.Instead of sandham I should have used the word "meter" in my earlier post."Meter" is spoken more in the context of length of each note in the tune. Sandham is attributed to the written part.

For example in the song

aththaan, en athhaan, avar ennaithaan

Kannadhasan puts a comma after "aththaan" and hence what does MSV do? While setting the tune, he stretches "aththaaan..." in a yearning sort of way,gives a mini-pause to acknowledge the comma and then proceeds with the rest of the line. But it wont be very obvious to the listener and the tune would still have a natural flow.


" Personally, I feel, the tunes of MSV flow with more 'ease' than that of IR. But the IR tune will be more catchy and more harmonised."

I agree. I dont doubt IR's ability to compose tune for lyrics either. "Mari mari ninne" is a supreme example. I just wish he did more of that. Especially when the quality of lyricists he worked with werent great in the late 80s, asking them to pen the lyrics first would have probably been less of a challenge to them and slightly more of a challenge to IR. When you are used to composing the tune first, after a long time your mind sub-consciously starts giving out tunes that are all inherently set in the same 4/4 beat and has certain kind of predictable patterns. This then carries over to the rhythm patterns too.Atleast when IR did some of those medicore films that didnt provide him any inspiration in the late 80s, he could have adopted pattukku-mettu as some sort of self-imposed challenge. To me, its equivalent to composing a song in a pre-determined raaga. Its an additional constraint that forces the composer to alter his imagination and think in a slightly different way leading to fresh surprises in tune formulation and rhythm pattern.

[prabhudas]

Vijay, Thanks for your description on those songs of MSV.
Kiru , Thanks.

With my barely minimal music knowledge I agree with your last paragraph, IR indeed lost or losing his experimentation, one reason he mentioned about his lesser interest in film music these days is
" after 825 odd films, adhuve repeatation..a povarudhule enukkum edhuvum pudhusa seyya edhvum ille, adaan non film music le sila albums pannalamanu"

Prabhudas

[Ilavenil]

"If something can be changed, it cannot be called by that name. In tamil, letters are classified as kuril, nedil and sandham is basically lists the sequence/combination of this. "

Thats only in the written form. When you vocalize the lyrics into a tune, you can change the inherent structure of a line, break a line, elongate a word etc. A classic example always given is the the following song:

avaLukkenna azagiya mugam
avanukkenna iLagiya manan
nilavukkenna iravinil varum
iravukkenna uRavugaL tharum

This was the original lyrics written by Kannadhaasan.

But instead of blindly tuning the lyrics with 3 words/line, MSV wonderfully splits it the following way

avaLukkenna,.....
azagiya mugam avanukkenna,
iLagiya manan nilavukkenna,
iravinil varum iravukkenna,

Now if MSV were to convert this tune into vocal syllables(sandhams) and give it back to Kannadhaasan after say a month or two, even Kannadhaasan wouldnt realize that these were his own sandhams. He would come have come up with an entirely different set of lyrics. They both were creative artistes who played mind games with each other all the time.

ThaaLam is something that is in the composer's hands. He can also have different "nadais" for the same tune/sandham depending on his creativity.

Can you believe that the charaNams of "ponmagaL vandhaaL" were actually written to the tune given by MSV? Notice how the sandhams go in the charanam. Blows you off everytime. He was easily capable of working both ways

Hi Vijay,

For someone who doesn't no anything about music, this is an awesome explanation. But, I didn't understand the last para about the song "ponmagaL vandhaaL", sandhams in the charanam". can you please explain?

--Thanks.

[senthilv.com]

It is wrong to assume that Raaja creates tune first. In most cases, he creates visual palettes/progression(visual Poetry?) in his mind first and then he creates a tune for the visuals. Nothing but Wind theme music description in the cassette cover is an example of this method.

IMO, this is the best way to compose Indian FILM songs. The exception is when you have poet like Kannadasan transcending the visuals with words. The fact is, there is no poet in 80's who had that talent to consistently transcend the visuals so, it would have been disaster for Raaja to worked with a poet first. Of course, It didn't help the poet that the film song situation were totally crappy for most part of 80's. Simply put, Raaja tune was more powerful than the poetry of 80's and he had talent to create tune in very instrumental and total abstract sort of way. So it was natural Raaja adopted this method more strongly in later period of his career.

There is one more practical reason. Producers mostly had 1 to 2 hrs session to create tunes with Raaja in his peak days. And normally Raaja can create 5 to 6 tunes in 2 hour session but the most poets were not able to come up with lyrics for 5 songs in just 2 hours. So, raaja would create the tune and let the poets take their own time and "figure" out the poetry later.

The main culprit for bad quality of songs is the bad quality of films story/song situation and it is not because of the choice of method made by Raaja.

[vijayr]

"IMO, this is the best way to compose Indian FILM songs"

After some point in time this will give way to repetition in rhythms and sandhams as can be seen in many late 80s songs of IR. You have to force yourself to think differently once in a while. Attempting both methods in equal measures gives scope for innovation. It also encourages the lyricist more rather than using him just as a word-filler


"
The main culprit for bad quality of songs is the bad quality of films story/song situation and it is not because of the choice of method made by Raaja."

Bad films and movies have always existed. Good MDs have always found a way to elevate those movies with their music. That includes IR (in his early years for films like Karumbu Vil etc. )

"The fact is, there is no poet in 80's who had that talent to consistently transcend the visuals so, it would have been disaster for Raaja to worked with a poet first. "

True, but he could have tried more. Probably less than 5% of his songs were lyrics first, in my guess. It could have been more like 20%. There were quite a few talented lyricists like Mehta, Muthulingam etc. who werent properly utilized. Instead GA and Vaali ended up penning ordinary songs for IR more often than not.

I understand the practical reason behind the working methods - constraints in sessions time etc. but the loser is art and the listener. One way would have been to avoid those kind of films altogether beyond a point, but we know he didnt.

[rajasaranam]

It is wrong to assume that Raaja creates tune first. In most cases, he creates visual palettes/progression(visual Poetry?) in his mind first and then he creates a tune for the visuals. Nothing but Wind theme music description in the cassette cover is an example of this method.


Thanks senthil.v for making my thoughts more clearer. That was what i wanted to say.

Moreover Most of the times when raja comes up with a tune words are also added to it and he sings out the words to the lyricist [ atleast the first few lines] and there after the lyricist take over and write the full song.

Recently in an interview GA mentioned the first song of VM. Raja was ready with the tune and it was VM's first song for film and when raja Sang out the tune to him VM was dumbstruck and was not able to come up with anything. It was Raja who gave the lead and said 'Ithu oru Pon maalai pozhuthu....' ippa ezhuthunga. rest was history.

[rajasaranam]

". One way would have been to avoid those kind of films altogether beyond a point, but we know he didnt.

How can he stop breathing :!: even when he knows the air is polluted.

[rajasaranam]

". One way would have been to avoid those kind of films altogether beyond a point, but we know he didnt.

How can he stop breathing :!: even when he knows the air is polluted.

[rajasaranam]

". One way would have been to avoid those kind of films altogether beyond a point, but we know he didnt.

How can he stop breathing :!: even when he knows the air is polluted.

[vijayr]

rajasaranam, looks like you got too emotional :-)

He need'nt have stopped breathing, he could have done more non-filmi albums like HTNI and NBW rather than accepting movies like Eeeti, chinnappadoss, pickpocket, Yuhadharmam etc.that didnt have a single noteworthy song. Thats what ARR has been doing, being selective with his movies while at the same time attempting more non-filmi projects that gives scope for wider imagination. IR neednt have waited till the tail end of his career, when he is reduced to doing 5 films/year, to attempt projects like India 24hrs or Moods of IR(or even TIS). If these had been attempted earlier in the late 80s, maybe marketing them would have been easier too.

[njv]

i dont see that IR is in the tail end of his career, specially since TIS is coming. I have a feeling that he will do someting for the generations to come. I also think that IR will start his dream Music college soon.

[rajasaranam]

Vijayr,

Sure i should have got emotional. illaenaa courtla solra maadhri moondru murai sollirupaenaa :D

From such a large account your are finding three or four movies for each period :arrow: rajasthan, thalaimurai etc., for 90's and the movies mentioned here for 80's :(

well i too havent heard the movies you ve mentioned. but chinnapadass ive heard for sure, that too just recently when i saw that movie in SUN TV and was impressed by the songs and got hold of it somehow :wink: which i had heard in my childhood days and forgotten altogether.
'Athu Ithu' is sure a gripping Disco song from that film, the Percusssion part and the tune itself is enough to make it a classic song. listen to Athu... ithu... then the following drum patterns which carries the whole song forward. At first listening i was never impressed but it definetely grows well.
'Paadum baktha meera' is also a very good Duet song to speak about at par with 'o maane maane' from vellai roja. the first and second interlude is just awesome.... listen to it to get a feel please.
'Vaanam thodatha' come on... here Raaja is brilliant with his piano, trumpets drums et all to give us a complete aural feast
'Paakku vethala' is again a good no. the second interlude especially is a great treat

Will try listening to other movies you have mentioned and get back to them.

Since you have dragged in ARR... cant help commenting on him :oops:
He too have a complete set of bad movies like puthiya mannaragal, vandisolai..., pavithra, parasuram, uthaya, E20U18 etc., He is brilliant indeed, knowing his music can gain fame only with big banners he has resorted doing films with noteworthy directors and Production houses.
Non-filmi? ARR ? What wider imagination did you see in Bombay Dreams?
what wider imagination did you see in CBSO Performance?
Are you talking about 'Set me free' ? was is worth second listnening AT all?
LOTR is yet to be released ... Lets wait [ from listening to the intro music from website it sure sounds excellent :) ]
'Vandhe Maathram' is the only worthwhile Non-Filmi album of his till date

IR:arrow: for a man from Pannaipuram Even chennai was a bigger world and his only agenda was to score for film music. He reaching HTNI and NBW within 15 years of his advent into filmdom is indeed greater achievement.
India 24 Hrs was released in 1997 when he was doing 20-30 movies per year and it was not his tail end of his career. he did 10 movies in 2003. 2004 saw only 5 movies as he was busy with TIS. He has come to TIS/TIO not because he has no film works to Do but for he was offered with the project. he doesnt go marketing himself like ARR.
Yes we do need IR to do some non-filmi projects often but if he is able to give us a 'kaatu vazhi' or ' unnai vida' or 'elankaathu' or ' vaanaville' or poo poothathu' we would like him to be still working for films.

The marketing of HTNI and NBW were not great either, even when he was the king at that time. The music of those Albums were far ahead from the reach of common masses. i never heard them till 7 yrs after its release :cry: And I24H - i was not able to get hold of it for 5 long years and TFM page only gave me salvation :)

You getting too much biased towards the working style of ARR is what the problem is :wink: You miss out great things amidst the hype and hoopla :cry:

[vijayr]

"From such a large account your are finding three or four movies for each period Arrow rajasthan, thalaimurai etc., for 90's and the movies mentioned here for 80's"

rajasaranam, those are just few examples off the top of my head. There are many many more. Percentage wise only about 20% since 1995 is noteworthy IMO. In the late 80s it was about 40-50%.
Here are a few more dhandams. Luckily since these songs dont stay long with you, you tend to forget the names of bad albums from IR pretty quickly.

Dharmam vellum, poruthadhu podhum, meendum parasakthi, Vaazhga vaLarga , thangamaana raasa, Padichca puLLa etc.

I happened to catch a few of these films sometime back on tamil channels and had a hard time believing that the MD was IR.

Dont be surprised if you havent even heard of some of these titles. There are many like this just from 1988-90. Most of these albums will have 1 passable song followed by 3 dhandams and werent commercial hits either.

"He too have a complete set of bad movies like puthiya mannaragal, vandisolai..., pavithra, parasuram, uthaya, E20U18 etc."

true, but percentage wise its very less. Pavithra isnt a bad album by the way. It had "uyirum neeye" which brought national recognition to UnniK.Sevvaanam was a pretty good song too. Vandichola - the movie was probably bad, not the songs,a couple of them were hits.

" Non-filmi? ARR ? What wider imagination did you see in Bombay Dreams? "

rajasaranam, the very fact that he is even attempting something on that scale is noteworthy when he could be accepting movies left and right in TFM(he even left Anniyan out). Thats my point, I am not claiming that Bombay Dreams or LOTR are great classics. My point is IR could have put to better use his talent in composing more non-filmi albums where he could have shown his creativity and done it in the late 80s itself when he still had some market value. Please try to understand my point. I have not written anything about ARR's non-filmi albums. By IR's own admission he got tired of TFM in the late 80s itself. Then why waste time on the above paadavathi movies and countless others?

[vijayr]

"Yes we do need IR to do some non-filmi projects often but if he is able to give us a 'kaatu vazhi' or ' unnai vida' or 'elankaathu' or ' vaanaville' or poo poothathu' we would like him to be still working for films."

those type of songs are few and far in between. You have sift thru a lot of garbage in order to dig out such songs. 1 out of every 5 songs or so.

"You getting too much biased towards the working style of ARR is what the problem is"

there is nothing to get biased about here. I am just laying out the facts.

[kiru]

Re: lyrics first or tune first - I would be just happy if the lyrics were even a little decent in certain cases. In a movie with, with a melodious tune like 'Oh butterfly' you also have 'lovunna lovvu..'. If I were the producer I would have opted for a more subtle lyrics.

One important point made by Senthil that I want to underscore - "In most cases, he creates visual palettes/progression(visual Poetry?) in his mind first and then he creates a tune for the visuals. "

Folks this is a very important observation. This succint statement of Senthil is fecund with a number of germane points. He has elaborated this point earlier with the 'ennuLLE ennuLLE' song. The song plays a progression of changing emotions. It is almost a small story/episode. This is what elevates IR's songs to the level of a composition. Basically IR starts with a 'mood layout' and starts the tunes. This way, even just instrumental music (without lyrics) will be very listenable.

Re: crappy songs of IR - Yes, I am aware of many many songs like this (I have 300 movies of IR :-)) but somehow I am able to distinguish IR from the other MDs. Maybe I haven't listened to much of other MDs. It is difficult to distinguish GK Venkatesh, salil choudhary etc, but dEvA is easy to tell :-)
I also think many of these songs suffered because of the lyrics. The proof for this is that there quite a few versions of hit songs with different lyrics that did not make it to the charts.
The other songs suffer from either non-fresh tunes or orchestration or lack of it (not much harmony, chorus etc).

Another general point about a song becoming popular or not is, I think or believe, that melodies are not things that appeal to people all the time. The more groovy the song is the greater the chances of it becoming popular and IR did lots more melodies. Current MDs are banking on grooves a lot more.

[njv]

"true, but percentage wise its very less
The statistics here wont work out. You are comparing 1000 movies with less than 100 movies, you are comparing close to 5000 songs with less than 300 songs. Yes, IR did scored music for some crappy movies and even some crappy songs, but if you understand the way music is selected for a movie, you will realize that contribution from director (producer and actor to some extend) is very critical. Why dont you take all ARR album where he didnt score for MR or Shankar or BR and see how he shined. Well thats it. For you the music has to have an appeal, but for IR or ARR everything is a good music and they only know the tricks and pain to create them. If the director has good ear and knows the pulse of the audiance, then its a sure hit. Tell me one MR movie where IR failed, or BR movie where IR failed or one Kamal movies where IR failed or one KB movie where IR failed. 0%. You need two hands to clap. IR lot of time could clap alone and give good sound (e.g. Ramarajan, Rajkiran and so many other directors who has no music sense go to IR and just ask him to score music and also ask IR to create scenes for songs).

You know what I hate about this forum after listening to all the discussions so far, Tamil people are thankless people. The respect Telugu and Malayalam people has for IR is more than anything to describe.

Ini Tamil Viraivil Saagum

[kalnayak]

njv,



"true, but percentage wise its very less
The statistics here wont work out. You are comparing 1000 movies with less than 100 movies, you are comparing close to 5000 songs with less than 300 songs. Yes, IR did scored music for some crappy movies and even some crappy songs, but if you understand the way music is selected for a movie, you will realize that contribution from director (producer and actor to some extend) is very critical. Why dont you take all ARR album where he didnt score for MR or Shankar or BR and see how he shined. Well thats it. For you the music has to have an appeal, but for IR or ARR everything is a good music and they only know the tricks and pain to create them. If the director has good ear and knows the pulse of the audiance, then its a sure hit. Tell me one MR movie where IR failed, or BR movie where IR failed or one Kamal movies where IR failed or one KB movie where IR failed. 0%. You need two hands to clap. IR lot of time could clap alone and give good sound (e.g. Ramarajan, Rajkiran and so many other directors who has no music sense go to IR and just ask him to score music and also ask IR to create scenes for songs).

You know what I hate about this forum after listening to all the discussions so far, Tamil people are thankless people. The respect Telugu and Malayalam people has for IR is more than anything to describe.

Ini Tamil Viraivil Saagum


I accept your points on IR. From vijayr's postings in tfm forum, it is very clear that he is partial in giving due credits to IR. Interests vary from person to person. He may feel only the hit are good. It would have happened for him to hear lot of ordinary songs of IR in the proposition he mentioned.

Just because of people like him, you should not have cursed Tamil and its people. I feel very sad.

[tmrrmt]

Kiru and others - in connection with the topic of this thread, I wud like to share with you a very deeply insightful article written on IR's composing style and genius in a Tamil magazine 'Kanaiyaazhi' - I translated that entire article in English, but due to lack of time, cud not post it anywhere on the web - if there is anyone willing to spare time and post it on the web, I would be more than happy to send them the English translated version of the article

[vijayr]

"The statistics here wont work out. You are comparing 1000 movies with less than 100 movies, you are comparing close to 5000 songs with less than 300 songs. "

njv, I can compare with some of IR's predecessors if you want to. They did substantial number of movies and have given a higher percentage of quality songs in the 60s.MSV's percentage would be close to 80% in the 60s and he was doing about 15-20 movies/year with 6 or 7 songs in each of them. But thats not the point. The point is about avoiding projects that dont inspire you and foscussing more time and attention on doing something that inspired you - like HTNI, NBW etc.
"You know what I hate about this forum after listening to all the discussions so far, Tamil people are thankless people. The respect Telugu and Malayalam people has for IR is more than anything to describe. "

Tamil people are obviously thankful to what IR(and other MDs have) has given them. He enjoyed maximum popularity and undisputed fame for a loong time. You dont have to worry about that. As for Malayalam and Telugu IR was far more selective there and gave a higher percentage of good songs, so maybe there's a reason they hold him in high esteem. Personally, As for TFM, IR has given plenty of uninspired products for me to ignore. Compared with the other big MDs of TFM past and present, the junk albums of IR would be far higher in number. And this is just in the late 80s. If I come to the 90s and post-millenium, the number of medicore products would only be higher.

"Ramarajan, Rajkiran and so many other directors who has no music sense go to IR and just ask him to score music and also ask IR to create scenes for songs)"

well why did he repeatedly accept their movies? whose fault it is? Did anyone force him to? On the one hand he complained that people were giving him the same situations and on the other hand he signed every movie which came his way.

[njv]

Sometime you just have to do it to keep the relationship (but still ppl ditched him). If people has gratitude, they wont bother these things. Sorry that I replied to your mail to begin with.

[app_engine]

All that we do each day do not speak of our max capabilities. To illustrate, an ace programmer may be doing an uninspiring job on an average day (like a data dump or conversion script etc.) Why? Simply because it is his job:-) IR took composing music for movies as his `well-paid' job which also brought friends, admirers and accolades...that doesn't mean each of his assigments were challenging and each of his outputs were exotic...

Pick out those special ones and enjoy...after all it is to our benefit to sift and grab the great ones and be grateful for them:-)

[njv]

app_engine

well said. btw is your engine running on unix/linux. lol!

[vijayr]

"after all it is to our benefit to sift and grab the great ones and be grateful for them"

I am "grateful" for the great songs(although it beats me as to how much one should be grateful to the MD, for the MD too depends on the fan for his survival). I am also critical of the bad ones, especially when they are large in number. I dont think being "grateful" precludes being critical and vice-versa. Apparently njv and a couple of others here are missing the main point.

[app_engine]

vijay,

I agree with you...that being a critic at times has its own `kick':-) Enjoy!

[vijayr]

"I agree with you...that being a critic at times has its own `kick'"

When did I say this? Yenpa ippadi solladhadhai ellam sonnengareenga? If I speak of bad songs I am conveying my own angst/frustration at those medicore products, not because it gives me any "kick". Its a question of what if. What if IR had avoided all those bad films or limited his films and concentrated more on bringing out more theme-based albums like India 24hrs, Moods of IR etc.?

[irfansong]

Hi Guys,

One fine example for IR's beat songs would be ' ninnukkori varnam'. Just hear it using headphones. He'll take u to the heaven. One will feel that there cannot be another great music like that.

[rajdes]

Vijay, IR might have simply taken those assignments to pay his bills :-). We need to leave it at that - everyone needs money and how much one needs is a personal decision. It might be that IR needed the money from the 50 movies per year he did for the various activities he did. Now, could he have charged more per film and taken up lesser assignments? That depends on the size of the tamil market at that time. Maybe it wasnt big enough to pay him enough for one project. Remember he wasnt commercially succesful in the money-bag market - Bollywood, which ARR is now and hence can afford to charge more per project.

Next question form you might be, having taken up these assignments, shouldnt he do justice to all equally? Now, thats again a personal thing and for all you know, IR may be genuine when he says that to him a Rasa Magan song is the same as a Thevar Magan song and it takes the same amount of effort and creativity for both. I personally dont credit that as absolute truth but for all I know, this might be his real philosophy - the creative flourishes we identify and enjoy in Devar magan may all be just spontaneous for him. On the other hand, listening to Rasa Magan situation he might have spontaneously come up with the songs he did for the latter movie.
If the latter is of lesser quality in our perception, how can he be blamed for giving less attention to the latter. In his perception, probnably he doesnt do it consciously. If that is so, it is hardly right of us to criticize that.

The needle is on the producer/director to stir his creativity so that his spontaneous output matches the quality that a discerning listener like you expects. Again, that might not be the director's intent. Again, Rajkiran might be happy with the aatha songs that DID stir a chord with the rustic audience and contributed to the run oft he movies, even though you and I may call them ordinary. So, Rajkiran has got what he wanted, the audience for his type of movies has got what they wanted, why should IR cater to you and me in those type of songs?

Next question that might eb asked is: did he not create magic like 16 Yearsile that captivated rustic audience, you and me alike?

My response is how many movies like 16 yearsinile were produced in the 90's or late 80's?

If you look closely, you will get an answer to all your questions - and definitely, as an IR watcher over the years, I will not suspect his honesty and sincerity towards his craft. It may be just that the crappy songs you and I identify were intended as a different purpose than satisfying discerning listeners like you. As a paid employee, it might have been his intention to give the crappy music demanded by that particular genre(even nattupara pattu was a hit!).

IMO, we should drop this question of %'s of good songs etc. Just enjoy his flourishes.

One more point is that a lot of telugu guys appreciate IR for songs that I,a nd people with taste similar to mine, classify as utter junk. And they have absolutely no respect for a putham pudhu kaalai or a pon maalai pozhudhu even though they are rabid fans of IR(or the IR they know). Similar with several Malayalam fans.
I think that means either IR delibereately chose his target audience for specific projects (which is an awesome achivement if he so consciously managed it) or sub-consciously, he understood the projects requirements and his spontaneous output automatically appealed to the target audience of the project(which is even more an awesome indicator of genius!)

I think it is even more difficult than producing uniform music that is appreciated across a country or the world. MJ appeals to a certain type of audience across the world but can he adapt himself to specific aduience? IR can. Infact, even ARR can. As you might want to add, MSV did. We are fortunate to have all 3 and to me these 3 along with Salil Chaudhary form an awsome foursome in Indian Film music genre.

[app_engine]

Vijay, I'm sorry if my casual remark (with a smily ofcourse) hurt you...It was just an inference...it's true you never said so...however, I do sometimes get a thrill out of vimarsanam:-))

It's really something that people can get so much emotionally attached to the profession of IR, and really feel for him:-)

[vijayr]

"I personally dont credit that as absolute truth but for all I know, this might be his real philosophy - the creative flourishes we identify and enjoy in Devar magan may all be just spontaneous for him."

Rajdes, no its not. With Kamal and IR its a different ball game. Include MR,KB too. Andhi mazhai's final tune was selected after 27 attempts (of course Kamal picked the first one after listening to all the 27 tunes). I guess even R. Sundarraajan works on his songs with IR. There are probably a few instances where IR got what the director wanted in his first try itself. Even for the latest mallu film, whose recording sessions are included with the song the director says that IR tried 3 tunes and the director picked one.


Its only for those paadavathi Vijaykanth/Sathyaraj movies listed above made by some unknown directors that IR just gets the first tune off of his tired head and asks the director to either keep it or leave his place. Or he comes out with equally medicore 7 tunes or so from which the director HAS to pick one. I know for a fact that this has happened many times. Even IR has admitted to boredom in TFM and that has amply reflected in his songs.

"In his perception, probnably he doesnt do it consciously. If that is so, it is hardly right of us to criticize that. "

Whether he does it consciously or not might be a moot point. The point is there were innumerable number of "bad" songs or songs where it was obvious that much thought has'nt been put into the process. And not co-incidentally most of those songs have been from bad films/directors a sample of which I have listed above. Whether he did that intentionally is just speculation. But based on his own interviews and from some others in the industry whom I have heard and spoken to in the past, there were many films where he showed blatant disinterest. (I dont buy that he was compelled to do those films and so on, especially with the power he had in the 80s. Also big MDs before and after him have been more selective or even if they werent, have given their best to a higher percentage of films than IR did in the 80s)

"If the latter is of lesser quality in our perception, how can he be blamed for giving less attention to the latter"

For someone who has good exposure to music, has been listening to TFM, IR and other music for along time this distinction can be made(between a medciore product and a creative attempt)with a certain amount of confidence. . Otherwise you could end up arguing that all of SA Rajkumar's songs are as great as IRs and its only in OUR perception that their songs sound different in quality :-)) I agree to a certain extent that its subjective. But in many instances the distinction is not that blurred, atleast to me. There is probably a reason as to why all the songs from those films I listed above were neither criticaly acclaimed nor were commercial successes nor do even hardcore IR fans remember them.

"IMO, we should drop this question of %'s of good songs etc. Just enjoy his flourishes. "

I do enjoy his flourishes. But its just my angst that a composer of his creativity could have cut down on those bad projects which would have made his overall resume look even more impressive, taking a cue from his predecessors. Right now, someone could even argue that in order to give 1 good song in the late 80s, IR had to give 5 bad ones. Its like as if he needed 6 tries to get it right.

[kiru]

tmrrmt, you could email the doc to RR(admin). He will probably link to it at the beginning of this thread. You could also email that to me, actually I appreciate that. I am trying to write a series/article on 'What to look for in the music of IR'. This will help me.


"Right now, someone could even argue that in order to give 1 good song in the late 80s, IR had to give 5 bad ones. Its like as if he needed 6 tries to get it right."

This is probably the case, who knows. IR does not seem to know how a song becomes a hit or atleast wants to. He just does, what he feels like at that moment. He probably did it for money, he probably did it for being the 'numero uno' or monopoly. He probably did it to prove that a lowly guy form a village can do film music whether it is folk, classical or modern. He probably did it to spite all those who probably insulted him in his early part of the career or who still try these things through some media. Whoever claimed IR is a paragon of all virtues or an ideal human ?. He just happens to be a really really good MD, in my books. I am sometimes even happy that he did so many films, even though it is frustrating to fast forward some songs (especially when on LPs :-( ). Because at the end of the day (or period ?) we have so many songs worth listening to again and again after culling out the so called 'crap'. This sort of music (in format and structure) is not )available elsewhere (or from other current MDs). And we also have a MD who is capable do doing bigger/structured works in WCM format (for bgm etc). This is not possible without having all that work experience. It is all a skill and genius is 99% perspiration, right ?.

[genesis]

[tscii:43736491d6]I agree with vijayr 100% - IR's qulaity was going down in the late1980s.

I guess IR preferred to work in Ramarajan/Rajkiran type of movies becase he probably enjoyed the importance he got in their movies. (I remember seeing lot of Ramarajan movie posters featuring only IR – he cannot expect the same in BR or KB movies). Basically these people were just trying cash-on IR's popularity, so they probably accepted whatever tunes IR gave. Most of plots were also very simple; they did not pose much challenge to IR. He could have always redirected the traffic to people like GA and Deva.

vijayr reminds me of one Nakkeeran's dialogue from "Thiruvilaiyaadal" (roughly translated) I am the one who gets very happy to see quality, and at the same time I am the who one gets very angry to see crap.....

njv - you can not stamp someone "Thankless" just because he is a critic. I also love raja's music, but I can not be a HCIRF like some other people in this forum. To some extend these people are responsible for the degeneration of quality... the focus shall be on the "music", not on the "person". They get transfixed on the "person" somuch, they forget "music".[/tscii:43736491d6]

[vijayr]

Kiru, I agree to a certain extent with your points. Its just my wish that rather than gaining work experience by accepting those kind of films he could have consolidated/compiled all musical ideas which came to him spontaneously(and which he thinks were good) but werent used in films or specifically sit down and compose some serious pieces like say HTNI and release them. Or atleast do more devotional albums along the lines of Ramana maalai/Guru Ramana geetham and so on. Even if he had limited himself to just KB/Manirathnam/Kamal/Fazil/Balumahendra/RV Udayakumar he would have had atleast 10-15 films/year(in TFM alone).Another 5-10 movies say, in Telugu/Malayalam. Rest of the time could have been spent on something more creative. There's only so much that he can gain from working on a Ramarajan or Vijaykanth film. As IR himself had said once his attempt to do HTNI or NBW was to "dust himself" off from time to time. Dust that had accumulated from years of working on paadavathi films. But in the end, I guess he was the kind of personality who couldnt firmly say a no to those who tried to cache in on his name. Maybe that was his weakness. As an IR fan you sometimes feel let down a bit when you see a lot of sub-par songs from a composer whom you respect. But so far, thats been my ONLY grouse with IR.
His positives still outweigh everything else by a huge margin.

[rajasaranam]

Vijayr,
The Paadaavathi movies or dhandams you are talking about are mostly by newcomers or a director waiting for a break. since it has happened for many directors that IR's music had proven for them to be successful, these people too would have gone to IR for the same purpose. remember IR was considered lucky and at a period of time he singing the title song was considered Auspicious. Most of these people come from villages to make it big in films and IR should have had a soft corner for them as he too was struggling once upon a time like them. But they were not competent enough in bringing out IR in his best. hence they, the movie and songs failed miserably.

I dont see anything wrong in Ramarajan,Rajkiran movies, whats so grouse in those songs :?

Vijaykanth- i accept but for movies like Sathriyan, captain prabhakaran, bharathan, Chinna gounder etc., most of his movies were craps.

Any way you have comeup with the final statement i believe :)



His positives still outweigh everything else by a huge margin.

[rajdes]

vijayr,
I think I can see your point and angst. Hell, I share that angst :-). My point is when the man is so indifferent to it, why we should(read you should) waste so much time explaining to people why a lot of crap came out from his baton. See ?;-)

Bottomline is, IR decided to do his share of crap films for one or more of the many reasons outlined by Kiru and perhaps some more too. As a listener,we can definitely crib at the man's lack of selectivity but beyond that, he has his own reasons. Like I said, once we start on that line of questioning his choices, I can even go so far as like "why did he marry and waste his time on samsara sagaram - he could have used that time to produce more quality music? " ;-)

That would be going nowhere. This is IR. Johnny is as much part of him as Pickpocket. He has been both artisan and artist. [/i] Some people love him for being an artisan and infact, reject the artist in him!! [/i]

That being the case, I could even interpret his mediocre output as a gift to his mediocre listeners(though there are absolute craps with no audience, I agree. You wouldnt believe this, I know people who love IR only for the aatha songs of Rajkiran and Ramarajan movies!)

Personally, that aspect of IR is what fascinates me - I know many people who identify IR with a specific type of music and reject all his other aspects and still are mad fanatics of him. That includes , as I said, hardcore Aatha song fanatics, purely telugu dabba song fanatics and 70's IR songs fanatics etc

It always reminds me of the 5 blind men and elephant story -each perceiving an elephant according to the part he touched and felt!

[thumburu]

I understand IR has becime a fav punch bag for many. It is not as if MSV is an angel. That his quality nosedived after the parting of
VR combination is well known. He has infact more craps to his discredit than IR. Iam one of those unfortunate few who suffered many junks from MSV in the name of host of films Mangala vaadhyangal, Porter ponnuswamy , kALTHOON etc to name a few in the late 70's which had not even single song worthy of listening. If we can gloat over the melodies of MSV, we can also gloat over those of IR.

[jaiganes]

I dont know why we are getting dragged into IR's failures instead of the his style of composing and orchestrating which the title of the thread seem to suggest.
Art is highly subjective. Case in point is the mother sentiment songs that someone brought out. Someone even went to the extent of trashing all Ramarajan and Rajkiran movies and IR's music in them. I can clearly see that those people are easily taken in by the "sound quality" and orchestration and forget that every work of art at the end of the day must reflect the culture and thoughts of the land to which it belongs. IR's western classical also will have the thamizh ethnic feel in it.
Classic example was the "Do Anything" piece from How to name it. It had a grand western classical opening and soon shehnaai more like the nayyandi naadhasuram (a pipe instrument which I call pee pee :lol:) joins in a rustic thamizh naadu feel note. I was thrilled to hear an instrument used by the most simple folk instrumentalist find a place along with grand flow of violins and flutes. It was IR's way of elevating the sound of the land he came from to a grand scale where it merged with music from other instruments which "people" generally see as grand and "Stylish". There are many friends of mine who thought that the musical piece had been spoiled by the use of the "ethnic" instrument. They said that the rest of the world will not accept such experiments. They were soon surprised as the unbiased western ears to whom I played this music loved the new sound. I realized then that the lowly attitude that we have is to be blamed if IR's music hasn't reached all corners of the globe. As a contrast there have been many of y friends who were disappointed and surprised with the lack of enthusiasm from strangers to the music of a different creator whose musical forms they(my friends) thought was more western and of high quality and therefore automatically appealing to them (the strangers or westerners).
To relate to Rajkiran movies, the two movies he directed might not have had the subtlety of an "alai paayudhe", but it had emotions of the natives captured in an efficient manner and vocalised by IR. I loved it like millions of other thamizhars which seems to be come as a huge surprise to the many intellectuals that haunt this forum. My expectation from IR is not to concentrate only on carnatic-Jazz-WCM-blues fusion. My expectation from IR is to take the soul of the land he comes from in a vehicle of fusion which he has PERFECTED like no one else to the whole world. If Thiruvaasagam is the first step, then I am waiting to go the full journey with his music, no matter how "un fresh" or "repeated " it would seem to many. To harp on this I would like to narrate a couple of incidents which I will continue in subsequent posts.....
to be continued....

[jaiganes]

Incident #1.

I recently bought an album "Six pieces of silver" a collection of Jazz pieces by Horace silver a renowned Jazz guru. It was recommended by a jazz buzz friend of mine. I bought the CD and played it. It had 10 tracks that all sounded the same. I liked all the 10 pieces even though there was very little variations. I asked my friend to explain this lack of variety and "Freshness". He explained to me that jazz performances are live and not arranged and recorded. It is a mood of the mind and the music flows in the same vein as it would flow from a cut- vein. The goal is to reach a "bluey" mood and stay in it as long as possible with the music being a tool to set the mood. The key is , if the mood is attained, then even slight variations in the wind of the players will get the listener jump in joy. Thankfully I was not pre conditioned to get 6 different tunes, or else I would have thrown the amazing music album to the dust bins. I find that many listeners are preconditioned when they listen to IR's music. Some want him to keep importing the latest arranging computers and reprogramming rhythms all the night in the name of composing songs. There was one "critic" who was terribly displeased with the use of "tabla" in IR's songs. No not with the quality of tabla, but the Tabla itself. Well what can one say about these people and how can you weigh the genius of a man based on the words of such "critics"!!!
Incident #2.
I was lost one day while getting back to my home (I was new to the area). As a feeling of panic was gripping me from all sides, I heard "Shenbagame Shenbagame" drifting in the air reassuring me . As I walked in the direction of the flow of music, I stopped near a small makeshift hut of a construction worker where a tape recorder (of the very famous "tea kadai" quality- which cannot play back the compositions of modern music director with good quality) was playing the song while the construction worker and his family were having their dinner. I chatted with him for a while on various things including the song that was being played. Later on this gentleman helped me to find my way back home. I really enjoyed that "home coming".

[Cinefan]

Jai.you are hardly seen in the hub these days(work pressure I presume)but when you come,the words flow in torrents. :D :thumbsup:

[tmrrmt]

Kiru - long time ago, I had drafted a letter to be sent to the President of India APJ Kalam - can I send you the scanned version of the same as email attachment, since it is hand-written ?

Thanks

[vijayr]

thumburu, MSV is not exactly an angel but those few films you are talking about of MSV came mostly in the late 70s after he had been in the industry for almost 2 decades and at the tail end of his career. I am talking about IR's quality even in the 80s which was considered HIS decade.
In fact IR's junk in the 80s alone outnumbers MSV's bad albums from the late 70s. When you consider IR's output in the 90s, he easily wins the contest :-)
MSV's quality didnt nosedive after his split with TR. Looks like you havent listened to many wonderful albums between 1965 and 70. Most IR fans's knowledge of MSV is limited to a few MGR films and the few KB films that
he did in the mid-70s and all those late-70s films. They havent heard enough of him to make a judgement.MSV has been composing since the fifties.

"My point is when the man is so indifferent to it, why we should(read you should) waste so much time explaining to people why a lot of crap came out from his baton. "

rajdes, I am not trying to explain his bad products. I am just expressing my frustration at those. His indifferent attitude only incenses me more. We are talking about work ethics here. MDs in those days used to toil on each and every song until they got what they wanted. With IR it was limited to a few big directors/actors(except his first 5 or 6 years). Definitely talent-wise IR is right there at the top. But when it comes to work ethics he ranks 4th or 5th behind MSV, GR,KVM and even ARR at times.

"Like I said, once we start on that line of questioning his choices, I can even go so far as like "why did he marry and waste his time on samsara sagaram - he could have used that time to produce more quality music? ""

Again professional life is different from married life.
It was IR who used to crib often that he was being given the same situations again and again. No MD before him like MSV goes publicly cribbing about the quality of films he has to score music for nor complain that he was given the same situations again and again. If he didnt like it so much he could have opted not to score for it. Thats my stance as a fan.If he thinks film music didnt give him enough scope beyond a point, he could have done what his predecessor or his successor did instead of tarnishing his resume with innumerable number of uninspired products. Thats my grouse.
Marketing products like TIS in the late 80s would have been easier too.

"I know many people who identify IR with a specific type of music and reject all his other aspects and still are mad fanatics of him. That includes , as I said, hardcore Aatha song fanatics, purely telugu dabba song fanatics and 70's IR songs fanatics etc "

True, there are fans even for Deva. Like I said earlier, how do you maintain the distinction? There might be fans even for Manmadha raasa. But for someone who has listened to IR long enough, even amongst the amma/aatha songs you can separate those that had some creativity/soul in it(like "en thayenum kovilai kaakka marandhitta") from the other run-of-the-mill "kadamaikku composing" songs.

And secondly, I am not trashing ALL Rajkiran/Ramarajan movies. In fact Rajkiran did only 3 or 4 movies with IR and all of them had decent songs. But a lot of crap churned out for Vijaykanth/Sathyaraj/Ramarajan/Murali and other one-time heros in the late 80s.There were other junk Ramarajan films besides the 2 or 3 hits like Karagatakaarn/EOP/Pudhupaattu which had just 1 good song out of 5 and thankfully most of them escape my memory now.

And if we come to the 90s,especially post-1995, the less said the better.

[njv]

There are so many faces to IR and some of them like some face and few other like many faces. Thats a pro and con for IR. There is nothing wrong for vijayr (who I believe is a hard core IR fan and critic) to be critic about IRs recent work, since he only demands more from IR, which is good for all of us anyways.

Coming to post-1995, the taste of TFM in general changed. People want fast and peppy number. If you look at IR songs from Annakili to AOKK, they all have a IR touch, but for younsters who are exposed to ARR music (and the like) directly, IR music is something hard to accept (the same reason why some of IR fans cant accept MSV music, which are gem and had much better lyrics than IR or ARR days).

If you look at HFM, it changed from soft melodies to disco to fast and peppy, but recently going back to melodies (Kisna, Veer Zaara, Parineeta (best melody in recent years), Nazar, Lucky, Zehr .. you can keep on going, the fast and peppy ones are very few - dbhoom, bunty and bubli). Hopefully when this virus that got TFM now slows down, people will start liking melodies (by then IR might have retired totally from FM and may be focusing on his music college/lecture around the world), then people will start respecting IR and they will realize what IR did for us.

As far as I am conerned, I changed from being a IR fan to IR hard core fan to IR devotee. Nothing in this world, can ever change my respect and love for IR. I do like ARR, HJ, VS, YSR and Bharadwaj, but my religion is IR.

[satish]

It is highly unacceptable to expect even more than 50% of the songs composed by IR to be classics. Given the sheer number of songs he has composed, the number of hits we have is already phenomenal, and worth a lifetime of listening.

It is the motivation that drives people to do extaordinary things. When IR entered TFM, he undoubtedly was motivated, and that reflected in the awesome works we got from him then. But, over a period of a decade, he might have lost it. This does not mean that he has run out of ideas, or stopped producing great music. It is just that the percentage drops a little bit, and may be we have to wait a bit to get the quality we are used to get so very often.

This is where competition comes in. Competition not in the true sense. But, someome to compare. And this happened with the arrival of ARR. I'm very sure this DF would just be 25% of what it is now, but for the fact that we have two greats in TFM. Please don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying ARR produces better music than IR. If there has to be a comparison, it has to be done on level grounds. We should not compare ARR's music to a MR/BR film with IR's music for an unknown producer/director. Given that, not many would deny that IR's best works are far superior than any music director's best works as far as film industry is concerned.

Motivation and competition brings out the best in anyone. That is what makes people to compare. And it adds more responsibility to produce better end-products. But for this factor, we would never be talking about average/bad works of IR. We would just be content with his good works, and just not talk about his mediocre efforts. We should also realize that not all projects deserve the best of efforts. Neither do we know what made him do those.

Given the number of songs IR was composing during the late 80's or early 90's, even one good song out of five would give us 10-15 songs an year, which is very good. And beyond doubt, his recent works have been good. Most of the songs were situational. But that is what film music is all about? Even an excellent song that is out of context would break the flow of the film, and reduce the film's impact. Situational songs are best seen with the movie.

The *most* important aspect of film music is BGM. And IR has never let us down in this department even in his so called *mediocre effot* movies.

It is definitely disturbing for HCIR fans to read so much and hear about IR's "dhandam" songs. But we are talking about facts! All it takes to break this bad effect is just to listen to any one IR classic. And we have many many many of them...

[Dragun]

This is certainly an interesting thread, and some of you have articulated many thoughts I have had about IR taking on way too many projects in the 80s. IMO the good albums with directors like Mani Ratnam, Bharatiraja, Bhagyaraj, and actors like Kamal, Mohan, and Rajini are worth more attention than his bad albums, but we mustn't forget that the guy did an ungodly number of films at his peak, and perhaps if he had taken fewer films and more time on those fewer films the music would have been even better.


And beyond doubt, his recent works have been good.

I think for a time after the arrival of ARR he wasn't producing music that was too good. But in the past 5-6 years ARR has grown increasingly busy with projects in Hindi, LOTR, etc. and so producers go for other MDs, and IR too has benefitted from this more open playing field by getting better projects here and there. It also doesn't hurt that some filmmakers like Fazil and Kamal Hassan are fairly loyal to him. Albums like Pithamagan, Virumaandi and AOKK, while not classics, show that he still has creativity in him.

I'd like to see him get another BIG film project. Something on the Mani Ratnam level.

[MADDY]

I second dragun's thoughts.......i think if IR had done fewer movies he could have just made gems and only gems........IR's movies,strangely, most of them had only 1 good song and 4-5 crappy songs......i had seen a ramarajan movie with that "oorellam un paattu" song which is a gr8 song but the rest were unbelievably horrible...........but his albums for Mani,KB,BR contained good songs thrughout.......

again, analysing such a gr8 mannnn itself is a foolishness......IR is IR for wat he is......and so many ppl. still worship him,call him god,even support his sons...so i think IR is one of the gr8est men in history of TN......

[MADDY]

one more fascinating thing abt IR is the hatred that his followers have for ARR and only ARR.......hatred that IR-fans have for ARR is unprecedented and it has shadowed whole of ARR's career......ARR has been bashed for the past 13 years continously.....and the best thing is that IR-fans bash ARR only and not any other MD.....subbudu, for instance had punctured ARR with his reviews but he has good words for HJ :lol: .......i cant believe it.....

my dad used to tell me that IR was also bashed by MSV supporters, but that was a for a short period of time(1-2yrs), but in ARR's case it has been his entire stay......i dunt think MSV-TKR were ever bashed by anyone cos GR did not have any fan following, IR was bashed by MSV-fans for 2 yrs or so, ARR has been bashed by IR-fans and is still been bashed, which will continue as long as ARR is alive, HJ,YSR get bashed by ARR-fans very rarely....SUCH IS THE GR8NESS OF IR'S MUSIC THAT HIS SUCCESSORS GET BASHED SO MERCILESSLY...... :)

[Dragun]

All this MD-bashing (for people like IR and ARR) comes from this overzealous mentality in Tamil film. People are so quick to raise a dynamic personality to superhuman status, whether it is MGR, Rajini, MSV, IR, ARR, whoever, that not only are they unwilling to hear criticism of that personality, they have to go out of their way to unfairly bash (this is different from criticising) their competition.

However, I haven't really heard much true IR bashing from ARR fans here. The venom is mostly going from IR fans to ARR.

Its one thing to say that Dhina or Deva is a bad MD, its totally false to say that IR or ARR is.

[njv]

Maddy and Dragun

The reason why IR fan bashing ARR is because he is the only one comparable to IR in TFM, thats the reason.

Dragun

In IR forum, you will see IR fan bashing ARR fans. Go to ARR forum, you can find lot of ARR fans bashing IR fans. Infact I stoped coming to ARR fan forums, because ppl call IR as pig and later they say "i mentioned pig as uvamai"

All these bashing only hurt the fans a little bit, but not IR or ARR or it does not reduce their greatness.

[jaiganes]

I am a member of IR yahoo groups and there is a strick rule against bashing any other MD, even mildly. I donno if ARR forums don't have such rules. IR is the first MD in my opinion who broke all the rules that limited creativity for MDs. ARR has faithfully followed IR's footsteps and continued the trend set by IR. Only wish is if he could be more prolific so that we can keep hearing new music from him more often.
Getting back to IR, I have the following opinion or guess about how he lets creativity flow.
In my college days there was a friend who used to do adzaps and creative funny skits. We used to brainstorm and rehearse a lot before the college day. During those sessions, he will spout hundreds of creative ideas. we actually voted and chose the best three ideas and practised all of them(just in case any of the other teams hit upon the same idea). He never thought about cancelling ideas in his mind before telling it to us. We used to ask him y dont u just tell the idea u feel is the best, he said that he didn't want to restrict anything as he wanted his mind to be as open.
IR knows that any patterns of musical thought are worthy of being heard. and when he does composing, he doesn't think of himself as a maestro. If he starts thinking abt himself as a maestro, he wouldn't do certain scores thinking that it is not worth his "maestro" title. That is a limiting process. If he does that, then those musical are lost to him. So he does not mind scoring a "highwaysle" song in manasellam. To him even that is music and of the same pristine quality as "nagumomu". IF he decides not to make "highwaysle", he might not do many other things and that might be a huge loss to us the listeners. It is un limited music flow in which even a tin can be the source of a beautiful melody.
IR's hit rate might not have improved, but he doesn't bother.
Like the age old adage "Thottanaithoorum manarkeni", which means that water source in sand will spout more water as you dig more., IR keeps digging and more nectar comes forth. However sand also keeps piling up and it is natural. However if the person digging doesnt like the sand, he/she will not get the water. and with every dig he/she might not get water always. IR keeps trying in his own effortless way.

[Jacky]

It's like saying Kamal hassan can do 50 Maharasans as long as he gives a Thevar Magan or Nayakan here and there.

[prabhudas]

Flame suite on (for people who think I am thread crapping)
Jaiganes,
that was a nice analogy on a creator's work. I haven't read a lot of history on all those well known past claasical musicians
( Bach, Mozart, Beethoven etc..) but the truth is each one of them have produced music which probably have atleast a few works of them either didn't see limelight or not well appreciated or probably plain simple works without any critical acclaim, same goes probably with carnatic classical music ( my guess with no knowledge) I think probably not every single keerthanas or krithi by Thyagayya is practiced and appreciated equally or for that matter not every single raga is adopted by musicians with the same equal importance or creativity and it is this part where IR has been praised to have excelled ( the variation, situational context and the varieties in the same familiar ragas etc.. etc..) way ahead of his times and way ahead of others, one reference always comes to my mind from a lengthy 12 or 14 part series of article written by one Mr.Laksmi Narayanan ( if I am not wrong) which appeared on the net 6 -7 years ago on mostly IR's music, the ex: I think 'panthuvarali' raagam ( if I am wrong, some one correct me) supposedly used as for sad ( pathos) based compositions which was used by IR in movie " Getti Melam" for the song " pudhu pudhu dhaagame" by KJY and SJ (I think) giving a totally different feel with no pathos feel whatsoever, there are many more such situations, anyway, about the so called "dhandam" songs, was there, is there now and will be there for ever with every possible MD on the earth except if the MD dies after 2 0r 3 successful movies as happened in the premature death of Mahesh ( that includes all those whom I mentioned above), and similarly every MD since the beginning of talkie cinema and IR and ARR are no exceptions. ARR has had his share ( from the time he entered till NEW his last best effort in Tamil probably was KKS, too good IMO, and I am talking about only Tamil movies) it is the amount of total works these two have produced which are uncomparable in terms of total number of movies and hence IR's dhandam songs may appear as more in number , believe me, even if one considers only 30% of IR were classics, this feat is just unimaginable by any MD amounting close to 300 movies which stands apart.

For all those who missed the nonstop Kannad IR 24 hours streamimg music from Kannadaaudio.net few weeks ago, it was just too good. I wanted to share a info on one of the songs from the very first IR movie in Kannada (Mathu Thappad Maga) which had this song " Bhanu mugilina..." by SPB and either VJ or SJ, a kannada version of the classic " Edho Ninaivugal" of Agal Vizhakku which was entirely different than the tamil version in terms of orchestration, interludes, totally mind blowing with no tabla based rhythm as opposed to tamil version, I wonder how I missed this song before, I don't know if it is available in CD, but the broadcast quality was good. Now I am not sure if tamil version came first or kannada, I know the Kannada film was released sometime in 1977 or 78. Similarly the songs from "Geetha" another classic from 1979, way way ahead of times still fresh and I can't imagine any new MD coming even close to the compositions such as " aene Kaelu koduve ninage naaneega" ,"Geetha sangeetha" etc..

Jaiganes, few months back you had mentioned about a CD compilation of IR's late 70 /early 80 hits, did u buy this CD in Bangalore, How is the quality of the recording of the songs? and lastly, Bangalore gang ( IR fans ) have/had any meetings among you ? just curious, let me know if u have any in June , July.

Prabhudas

[njv]

jaiganes & Prabhudas

I really enjoyed your posting. Thanks a lot.

Jacky

Kamal give Maharasan here and there, but the rest of them are sincere attempts. He make mistake while finishing them, so it is not well received by masses, but nevertheless he is another great artist India have and exclusively Tamil Nadu have.

[Jacky]

njv,
I just wanted to say mediocre efforts need not be justified.
A sincere attempt for a song like "highwaysla" could have helped the producer and the upcoming hero. He need not give another Ilayanila, just a decent song will not hurt! And this is a lot different from writing college skits where you aren't playing with anyone's money.
Kamal stopped his Kuppais in early 90's but IR did not. AOKK did not stay one full-day on my hard drive but i still listen to "study for violin" to enjoy its classical richness and soul.

[vijayr]

" it is the amount of total works these two have produced which are uncomparable in terms of total number of movies and hence IR's dhandam songs may appear as more in number , believe me, even if one considers only 30% of IR were classics, this feat is just unimaginable by any MD amounting close to 300 movies which stands apart. "

Prabhudas, there have been MDs before IR who have scored for atleast 1500-2000 songs with a much less dhandam percentage than IR. We are just comparing percentages, not the total number of dhandams. Agreed that IR has a high number of classics as well(certainly not 30%, more like 10-15%, numbering about 300-400 songs)but he could have avoided the 2000+ mediocre-to-junk range quality songs easily, if he wanted to. But he is still adding to the junk list."ennada ninacha" from AOKK is worse than some of the T.Rajendar songs I have heard in recent times.

[MADDY]

"It is un limited music flow in which even a tin can be the source of a beautiful melody. IR's hit rate might not have improved, but he doesn't bother"

i think any sound and every sound wont account to being called music........naai kuraikkaradhu kooda musicnnu sonna MDs oda gathi enna aachunnu makkallaku theriyum.........

[jaiganes]

To prabhudhas:

Jaiganes, few months back you had mentioned about a CD compilation of IR's late 70 /early 80 hits, did u buy this CD in Bangalore, How is the quality of the recording of the songs?
Yes. I bought it in Landmark bangalore and the rcording quality was good.



Bangalore gang ( IR fans ) have/had any meetings among you ? just curious, let me know if u have any in June , July.

I don't know of any such meetings, would love to join in myself after June 27th.

To Jacky:

It's like saying Kamal hassan can do 50 Maharasans as long as he gives a Thevar Magan or Nayakan here and there.
Maharasan is a full length feature film and it was not directed or produced by Kamal. He did it for the sake of his long time associate GNR. And I love that movie and particularly the "1 KG chicken joke" Never thought Kamal-Senthiland Goundamani combo can be so effective. Punch dialogue "Vadivelu enna periya computeraa daa?". Music on the other hand tends to be viewed very subjectively. Prejudice against arts like music, dance and paintings are overwhelming, whereas a film or a play is plain story telling and hence is universal in appeal. So If I say i like "vaanathai paarthaen, bhoomiyai paarthaen" by chandra bose for Rajini's Manidhan, there will be millions who simply don't like it. So being closed minded about music will make you only to count the "dhandams" thereby robbing you of the pleasure of enjoying good music. Why IR makes the so called "dhandams" is something only the man can explain. We can only speculate and if we are going to do only that in the name of a discussion, then I would rather discuss about alien abductions and bermuda triangle than dissecting IR's ego or lackadaisical attitude.
To jacky again:



A sincere attempt for a song like "highwaysla" could have helped the producer and the upcoming hero.
Then the onus should be on the director. In the same movie, the final half an hour IR's music is different, because the director bothered to tell the story only then. Trust me, I have seen this movie a couple of times and I felt that the last half an hour was very good, and wished only if the first 2 hours had been tight like "Idhayathai Thirudadhe". For that movie, IR had given 3 good songs (IMO)
1. Indha jodikkuyil (marriage song sung by Vijay Yesudas)
2. Chinna kuyile kuyile(sung by karthik)
3. The last pathos song sung by hari haran. (I didnt like it to begin with, now after repeated listenings in Sun Music I am afan of this song).
now these may not be ranked in the "classics" list of IR, but they are good ones and went well with the story (again IMO).

To vijayr:


Prabhudas, there have been MDs before IR who have scored for atleast 1500-2000 songs with a much less dhandam percentage than IR.
We would love to know more on there MDs who did 2000 songs and gave only 200 crap songs. Maybe we should see them in the light of the music scene then. However comparing MDs from different time lines where the scenario of the music and movie industries were different is an odious task IMO.

To vijayr again:



but he could have avoided the 2000+ mediocre-to-junk range quality songs easily, if he wanted to.
Well That mediocre to junk was necessary according to IR because there was a requirement for them too. and then lets not jump into why did he accept such a business proposal. Maybe he needs to keep in touch with music 18 hrs a day, since he doesn't discriminate and even crappy music to your ears is just music in his mindset, doesn't feel that he is doing a crappy job. Why do Mathematicians keep solving simple puzzles that is below their range? Well, just to be in touch with maths and numbers. Same way IR keeps in touch with music to beimmersed in it. If he is going to wait for BR or a BM movie, then he has to spend months doing nothing. Thats fine by a software developer like me. But for a genius like IR , it would be hell. plus he had a studio with some 100 musicians depending on him to score continuosly. Who is going to pay for them, music critics or critical fans like you sir? So maybe he took crappy Ramanarayanan and thiagarajan projects. "If it helps 4 people , nothing is wrong" perhaps he believed in that. Now all these could be the reasons behind his "so called" "dhandams". I am going to stop speculating right here. I like IR's music and it is possible that there might be many more MDs who are better than him. However he is the one who has captured my imaginations for more than 20 years. So vijayr, you can keep on counting his "dhandams" happily.

and finally to maddy:

i think any sound and every sound wont account to being called music........naai kuraikkaradhu kooda musicnnu sonna MDs oda gathi enna aachunnu makkallaku theriyum.........
Well again subjective. I liked "Who let the dogs out" it had only dog barking as the interlude and it was so interesting.
(just suppose) If the dog barking is your pet and it is warning of a thief trying to break in, then there is no sweeter music than a dog's bark!!! :lol: Cheer up.

Sorry for the looong post. I guess I couldn't avoid it.

[Jacky]

Jaiganes,
"So being closed minded about music will make you only to count the "dhandams" thereby robbing you of the pleasure of enjoying good music"

Certainly not. I chafe off the dhandams and my playlists are a good companion. But a dhandam is dhandam and complaining about it is no crime - Be it IR or ARR. And snubbing it off as closed-mindedness is something i just can't agree.

[inetk]

This might seem completely off topic given the arguments going on above...but since we're supposed to discuss IR's composing techniques, suggest you guys check out 2 songs from the Malayalam movie 'Achuvinte Amma' - 'Shwasathin thaalam' and 'Thamara kuruvikku'...both are available in coolgoose as well as musicindiaonline/ raaga. These 2 tracks have an intro, probably by Director Sathiyan Anthikad Raja sings with his harmonium a few bars. And then the actual song starts. Very neat.

Karthik
www.itwofs.com

[thumburu]

This kind of overscrutinizing IR's work has stripped off the
enigma and magic from his work. This I feel is a great disservice to the creator in him.
Why isn't anybody doing it for MSV?
vijay, don't hastily conclude that IR fans don't listen to other MDs.
if u take me , I prefer TFM till 1990. 90's is the worst decade for TFM (this is strictly imo) and
Iam convinced that IR's quality drastically fell post 92.
But it is a natural ageing process like it happened for MSV in late 70's. Iam not defending his bad works. But comparison with ARR or MSV can be odious.
MSV, IR both being prolific had their share of bad works .
Being a 70's film aficianado, Iam aware of MSV's bad works like in
"Manipayal", "paadhugaapu", "grihapravesam"( a sivaji hit
where all the songs were bad), enmagan and many more and all these were during MSV's heydays .Only ARR has very few craps due to his per song onerous effort.

[vijayr]

Thumburu, I was talking about the medicore stuff even in the 80s. Most of the movies I listed previously were in the 80s itself. Of course, post-1992, it gets only worse.

"Why isn't anybody doing it for MSV? "

Because in the late 50s and 60s, he maintained a very high percentage.

"But for a genius like IR , it would be hell. plus he had a studio with some 100 musicians depending on him to score continuosly. Who is going to pay for them, music critics or critical fans like you sir?"

well, who is paying for them now? These are all just lame excuses. Musicians arent bonded to IR. If he does less films they can always find another MD to work for. Same musicians play for different MDs.

"Well, just to be in touch with maths and numbers. Same way IR keeps in touch with music to beimmersed in it"

Thats fine. I know he has to be in touch and thats why I felt he could have done more non-filmi albums like HTNI/NBW, attempted projects like TIS back then itself, when it would have been easier to raise funds/market etc. or at the least done more movies in MFM/TeFM and done less junk films in Tamil.

"However he is the one who has captured my imaginations for more than 20 years."

[Music4Ever]

"Why do Mathematicians keep solving simple puzzles that is below their range? Well, just to be in touch with maths and numbers."

Presumably not the ones who are into publishing quality stuff in quality journals. They deal with enough math there. Of course, like in other pursuits, you have the quantity crazy guys in math too, who may simply tweak a result here and there to get one more, just to up their publication rate. God only knows why they do that. The quality guys, on the other hand, take their own time to come up with a finished product that is then suitable for dissemination through a quality journal.

Time waits for no one. GR, KVM, MSV all bit the dust when the flavor of the particular era happened. Same with IR and now ARR. For ARR to achieve the heights of the 90's, he has to work much harder, since his competition has already learned all his trademark tricks of making a song happen. HJ is breathing down his neck like never before. A telephone mani pol is answered with kannum kannum nokia.

Coming to the discussion on hand, I agree with most of what vijayR says. IR's greatest classics are just that. But he also delivered innumerable crappy songs.

BTW, does anyone else also share my annoyance with the guy who presents that sapthaswarangal program on Sun TV? He keeps raving about isaignani all the time, even if the participants present crappy songs. I think he is going overboard with his adulation, which is basically not wrong, but when you are a presenter you should not bring your personal prefudices to bear upon the presentation. It is a contest and fairness should be present at all levels. Even if this guy doesn't award the final grades, his constant chirping about isaignani can be unwholesome to those who present songs from other MDs.

[jaiganes]

Vijayr wrote:

Musicians arent bonded to IR.
I never meant that.
music4ever wrote:

But he also delivered innumerable crappy songs.
I agree but my question is why should you guys haunt every thread that tries to analyse the positive things about IR's music to keep harping on his failures? Sure you can open a thread on crappy songs of IR and keep playing your gramaphone over there. This thread was meant for people who wondered at the way IR composed countless(innumerable) melodies that captured the hearts of millions of music lovers. Please go somewhere else to prove that you guys are the best critics. Nowadays even writing review in rediff or any website has become very easy. You can go over there and bash IR's failures.
What is it that you are trying to achieve by doing this? Atleast we are fans enjoying and reliving the pleasure of some good moments courtesy IR's music. What pleasure you derive out of this non-stop haunting of every IR thread and telling that IR produced crappy songs? I wonder why?

[app_engine]

"He keeps raving about isaignani all the time"...that is not true. I had watched a number of episodes and A V Ramanan gives similar praise to all MD's (even SAR)...I'm sure he appreciates IR a lot (which is deserving too with a good percentage of participants choosing his melodies to enrich the program) but he never belittles others and gives them their due credit...

I feel that is one (rare) SunTV program with decency and some good standard...it has also contributed some decent singers to TFM I think...

[jaiganes]

app_engine, he is referring to the new comperer, T.SRaghavendar. AVRamanan's contract for sabthaswarangal got over sometime back. Nowadays, JayaTV's sabthaswarangal is good to watch and listen to.

[genesis]

Time waits for no one. GR, KVM, MSV all bit the dust when the flavor of the particular era happened. Same with IR and now ARR. For ARR to achieve the heights of the 90's, he has to work much harder, since his competition has already learned all his trademark tricks of making a song happen. HJ is breathing down his neck like never before. A telephone mani pol is answered with kannum kannum nokia.
Please listen to Swades and Bose before writing something like this. HJ breathing down ARR's neck?? Thats a JOKE.

[vijayr]

Jaiganes, if you go to the beginning of this thread, when you werent around, you will know the reason as to why the thread digressed. Rajasaranam brought in a few points and I had to reply to those. Prior to that, I had mentioned some points w.r.t to composing tunes for pre-written lyrics and vice-versa. Anyways, this thread's intro doesnt say that this is only a postives thread or meant for only praising IR's works. It just asks about the technique that IR adopted and I guess you can have all kinds of posts here, both positive and critical ones. Sorry if it bothers you.

[jaiganes]

I understand that vijay. However you have made this point innumerable times in this hub. You go a long time back in this forum. I am a recent entrant. Appeal to IR fans if they go overboard in their adulation and bash other MDs. rajasaranam is not the type who will simply bash other MDs. In fact recently he opened a thread on extraordinary themes of ARR in the "Bose movie", sadly the response to this thread was pretty laidback. It seems that even the fans of ARR didn't want to talk about the great work by ARR. Whatever IR may have done over the past 30 years, he has definitely raised the level of ordinary music fans of thamizh nadu. Now he has done ordinary albums, nobody is denying that. Just that it needs no constant reiteration is my point. I hope I didn't hurt you in anyway. If I have, then you have my apologies.

[MADDY]

"does anyone else also share my annoyance with the guy who presents that sapthaswarangal program on Sun TV? He keeps raving about isaignani all the time, even if the participants present crappy songs"

i do Music4ever.....i feel like giving him "ONE TIGHT SLAP".....and have u guys ever noticed-participants singing ARR songs do not win 1st prize......that happens in jaya tv singing programme too......pls do not bring some isolated example stating that karthik won in sapthaswarangal after singing a ARR song, my view is a generalised view and i've watched this for the past 3-4 yrs.........
mujhe toh lagta hain suntv and jaya tv programmes shuld be called "Abaswarangal"........just compare it with TVS-saregama on ZEE tv where judges consider ARR's songs as a benchmark for good singing.....

[Music4Ever]

"It just asks about the technique that IR adopted and I guess you can have all kinds of posts here, both positive and critical ones."

You said it, Vijayr.

Considerable tweaking to produce a new number is also a composing technique. Needless to say, it results in a new song, in turn increasing the count of songs composed by a MD. So talking about it is indeed within the domain of this thread.

If highlighting this is considered not germane to this thread, how relevant is the refrain about mathematicians in general?

In any case, are we the self-professed watch dogs for IR, or are the moderators here the ones in charge?

Maddy, IMO ARR hasn't yet reached the level of a Colossus in TFM, or for that matter HFM. He will reach there eventually, hopefully.

If it is any consolation (not that it should matter anyway) to IR worshippers, Isaignani indeed is a Colossus of TFM.

[kiru]

Folks, everybody here agrees that IR has done a good number of 'crappy' songs.
The exact number or percentage might be moot.
So what do you all want to do now ?
Hang the man or sentence him to public stoning ? :-)
Why dont we just move on to the title of this thread ?
Here are a few points that come to my mind -

Re: barking - IR has done music where a violin imitates the
braying of a donkey, one song sounds like a goat's bleating,
unna kaanamE, onnum thOnamE..etc. Whats wrong with this ?
These are all just for fun. Lighten up. Haven't you seen
weird designer wear ?. Same thing here. Some smart people are crazy :-)

Re: Tabla songs of IR - this is almost a genre by itself.
This is the typical 'film song', an original sound, that you
cannot hear anywhere else or buy as loops. Let me explain.

Classical music down south, uses mridhangam/ghatam etc arrangements.
The film music guys used a single tabla as a simplification.
This tabla did not sound very different and it still served
the same purpose without introducing an 'alien' sound to the music genre.
Now what can we do with this -
Indian music is about raagam-thalam-bhaavam.
raagam - taken care of by the composition
thalam - tabla
bhaavan - singer will take care of this.
A good indian melody can 'standalone' . So the above
three elements are the only ones needed.
Film music MDs wanted to add more ingredients to this.
Starting from G Ramanathan, KVM< MSV, IR all embellished the
above with ideas (mostly falling in the category of harmony, with little
rhythm highlighting) from the western classical music world
and helped create a 'genre'.
THe music of IR, can be considered as 'rollup' of all ideas in this area
and some more. ie. all the techniques previously used and more and
more application of these techniques.

With IR and his tabla based songs you can see -

1. tabla + bass lines (eg. nee paadhi naan paadhi, dEvan koil moodiya nEram)
2. tabla + guitar, piano chords
3. tabla + single note harmonies. (vaa vaa vasandhamE )
4. tabla + string harmony (especially, later part of the charanams of kalyana maalai)
5. tabla + guitar ostinato/vibes (hear this in kalyana maalai)

Even though I have have put these into only 5 categories (there are more and
am unable to generalize in a short time) . You can hear a mix of
all these in a single song. There is no strict formula how these techniques
will be used. Everything is based on the tune and done to highlight the tune.
More Later..
(jaiganesh ..appreciate your desire to infuse a positive tone to the discussions).
(tmrmmt..check your pms)

[MumbaiRamki]

Kiru ,
Really Nice !

[njv]

Kiru, Nice and thanks for bring focus and meaning to this thread

[jaiganes]

thanks kiru for driving the discussion in the right direction.
IMO IR was among the earliest to put the chorus to a good use. He didn't shy from using men in chorus to bring harmony. One example that comes up straight away is "Oorru vittu ooru vandhu..." song in karagaattak kaaran. The male harmony kind of replaces an instrument and that sounds really funny when seen along with the movie.

Also the use of human voices to spook the hell out of the audience in movies like Sigappu Rojakkal is a novel one. The "papa" chanting of the choir in the sequences where kamal chases Sridevi is a case in point.
Coming back to Kiru's mention of tabla, who can forget the sitar - tabla combo in Agni nakshatram background music. It reinforced the idea of minimalism of sound when it comes to background music.

[rajasaranam]

Two days 'kodaikaanal' poittu nimmathiya chennai Veyilla irunthu thappichuttu vanthu paartha :roll: Inga atha vida bayangara soodu En paer vaeru izhuthu.
Hmmm.. sandai mudinji samaadhanam vanda apram thirumba aarambikka virumbala.
Continue the discussion pertaining to the topic :thumbsup:

[mythila]

jaiganes, you are right about the impact of using vocals effectively. Even in "tik tik tik", he uses the shrill pitched female chorus for high voltage suspense. For erotic scene between Kamal and swapna, a beautiful humming with guitar punches is used

[rajasaranam]

Though the Digression is over can't help posting this which i found 'googling' in search of some answers to scale in another thread. hope this clarifies many of vijayr's accusations :)

http://www.ilayaraja.freeservers.com/my_art.htm

From the link above

There are people who ridicule me for confining myself to the film media. Cinema is stupid, they say. And making a film music is no composing at all. This is a foolish talk. I feel that a good sculptor is one who can not only sculpt a work of intricate art, but who is also capable of making a humble grinding stone. If he cannot do it, then of what earthly use is he? Cinema is an art. A people's art. Art is not for the creator, but for the people. If art is only for the creator, it should not be imposed on the people.

[vijayr]

Rajasaranam sari sari..:-) we have heard these kinds of dialogues from IR before..he tends to contradict himself by complaining about film music now and then. His comments are based on his mood at that time and are'nt be taken seriously verbatim

[sseshadri75]

kiru :nice post...

would it be worthwhile to anlayse/identify the different genres that evolved during the 80s and a particular orchestration technique that IR used, peaked at a given point of time to generate the maximum melodies/hits

Guitar chords with soothing piano interludes (En iniya pon, En vaanile)
Violins with piano interludes (Engirundho-Bhramma)
violins with tabla (Kalayna maalai)
Violins, with flute interludes and tabla (Mella thirandadu kathavu)

[kiru]

kiru :nice post...

would it be worthwhile to anlayse/identify the different genres that evolved during the 80s and a particular orchestration technique that IR used, peaked at a given point of time to generate the maximum melodies/hits

Guitar chords with soothing piano interludes (En iniya pon, En vaanile)
Violins with piano interludes (Engirundho-Bhramma)
violins with tabla (Kalayna maalai)
Violins, with flute interludes and tabla (Mella thirandadu kathavu)
Seshadri, to some extent that is what I am trying to do. I have picked up the 'tabla' songs of IR as a genre and am exploring the techniques used in them. Yes, we can move on to other types. But since the appreciation for these type of songs seems to be low in the forum here,I thought I will take this one up first.
One good example of a tabla song with guitar chords in 'chittukku chella chittukku'. I really would like to pick one song and do a 'walkthru' (like 'code walkthru' in the s/w business). Once up a time rjay did a 'walkthru' of Edho Mogam. I may not be able to do it as technically as he did, but atleast point out what is going on in the composition, even though the terms may not be precise.

[Music4Ever]

I was listening to a song from the movie Friends today while driving to work. This is sung by SPB, H, and SM and says "kuyilukku koo koo koovida solli koduppom, ada aamaam ..."

IR is in his elements in this song. The music flows smoothly throughout like a clear running stream in spring, with especially the violin and flute exchanges being very delightful. From memory, the song begins with a folk chorus as a prelude, then the voice of SPB singing the intro part. IR aficionados would probably know whether there are other songs from him which are still better re the violin and flute exchanges.

There! For a positive write-up, the oft-stated plea here.

Like KVM is for carnatic, IR is for folk (But, of course, not limited to only that).

[baroque]

My all time fav,

Poove Sempoove.... Starting with gentle flute,
great guitar work, tabla too! Very rich interludes with veena , violin & tabla. Soothing singing by
The Legend KJJ! Enjoy that ending haunting flute!
Great lyrics for the song that expresses the
unconditional love of a man for his lover! love, vinu

[baroque]

kannama kadhal...vanna vanna pookkal- fantastic tabla
Great tabla in 'oru devathai vandhadhu....' Naan solvadhey sattam.
Pochuda now i am all emotional,
I am madly in love with Ilayaraaja!
Kiru please keep going with this topic! love, Vinu.

[baroque]

kalai neera katre... what an usage of veena, Guitar and tabla! Flute interludes simply mesmerising!
Guitar usage in poonthalir aada..., paadivaa thendrale...,ilam pani thuli vizhum neram....

[sseshadri75]

what a number!illam pani thuli!!amazing synchronization of violins,guitar and drums and a haunting voice of Radhika....

[baroque]

how about thavikkudhu thayangudhu.... amazing guitar works too! Now i am listening to geetha sangeetha.... What a composition? Counter point melody with fantastic flute, violin interludes, fabulous singing by Jayachandran! This life paththadhu to enjoy Rajaa's music, i love life with my Ilayaraaja's music!

[baroque]

sorry i mixed up
for counter point composition i want to mention 'keeravani...'
again sorry about that! romba enthuaachu! crazy me!

[baroque]

[tscii:9b740fe58d]What about the splendid violin, guitar prelude, interludes of ‘nilavondru kanden...’ with tabla and mesmerizing singing by Balu and Janaki, heavenly!!!!


[/tscii:9b740fe58d]

[sseshadri75]

On the lines of Tabla with violin interludes;
Gangai aatril from Aayiram Nilave vaa (1983), yet another masterpiece!

China Poo Chinna Poo-Japanil Kalayanaraman...what a composition!Hats off Raja...

such a superb blend of violins,guitar, flute, drums and keyboard (not to forget the chorus)...just listening to the violin interludes makes me feel am listening to some concerto...also note here that the flute interludes are quite different than how it is conventionally used on a more melodious/soothing note!

[rajasaranam]

http://www.chennaionline.com/film/Events/2005/03maniratnam.asp

From the link above:

However, for a director, there was just one handicap. "Ilayaraja will listen to you as you explain the scene, and what he intends to convey. Once the film rolls, Ilayaraja's gaze will be on the screen and a few seconds later, papers would go to the musicians giving them the score, and then there would be no further changes. A director can be taken by surprise at the speed of events. If at all you want to convey anything to Ilayaraja, it must be before he watches the shot (before the background score is added) on to the screen," said Mani amidst both laughter and applause.

How come this is a Handicap for a director :roll:

Hope this doesnot become a digression but a discussion on IR's Composing technique :)

[thumburu]

rajasaranam, the rigid style of functioning of IR might be a big constraint for directors who might like to change some scene or other after rerecording.
I think this is what Mani is saying " If at all you want to convey anything to Ilayaraja, it must be before he watches the shot (before the background score is added) on to the screen," which means IR is not open to any change after the bgm score is done with.
Anyways Mani's interview shows the regard he still has for IR

[gopiharan]

sseshadri75,
where can i get those master piece songs(the ones u were praising for) in net?

illam pani thuli!!

Gangai aatril from Aayiram Nilave vaa (1983), yet another masterpiece!

China Poo Chinna Poo-Japanil Kalayanaraman...what a composition!Hats off Raja...

Chinna kuyil padum....from Poove Poochudava...

[baroque]

Hello gopiharan, the above songs i can send you! venumaa?

[baroque]

poove poochudavaa...
japanil kalyanaraman...
original cds are available oriental records also, for Raaja's gems please visit http://project-gem.tripod.com/index.html

[gopiharan]

thanks baroque,
i got those songs from coolgoose as suggested by seshadri...
really now i am in a dreamland with this mesimerising music....
rajaana raja thaan....melody thesathukku avar oruthar thaan Raja!!!

btw one doubt..is IR, the MD for Poove Poochudava??? If so he is the greatest ever MD Tamilnadu has ever produced.... :P :P

[app_engine]

gopiharan,
Rest assured that IR is THE MD for `poovE poochooda vA' (the first one of the long term association with director Fazil)...this film also had the first `released' song by Chitra in Tamil...(though the recorded one was `poojaikkEththa poovidhu' from another film)...the first Tamil film for Nadhiya Moidhu...

I still remember the `vividh bharathy' ads for this film...'pAttikkum pEththikkum idaiye nadakkum uNarchippOrAttam'...followed by a couple of lines from the KJY version of `poovE poochooda vA'...

Kumudam praised the `chinnakkuyil pAdum pAttukkEtkudhA' as one real good song after a long long time:-) (Though it looked like a complement to this film, many IR admirers considered that as a dig at him of not giving good melodies in years...though all those motherland pictures stuff and others were making waves in the time period prior to that)...

The film had excellent BGM too (which I relished more when I saw on TV recently than when it was released as the first time around...as you tend to get involved more with the other aspects of this really good movie when you see first...)

In any case, Fazil-IR combo has produced some memorable music in TFM, poovE poochooda vA & varusham 16 musically ranking higher than others IMO...

[baroque]

Hi gopiharan, I am glad you got the songs!! Enjoy! Ilayaraaja is God of Music!!!
Friends!!
Please support project-gem.
http://project-gem.tripod.com/index.html
They are bringingout wonderful evergreen Raaja's albums. This is a non-profitable venture with one & only purpose to popularize Raaja's music . Counting on all of your support!

[app_engine]

Back to the topic:

Is the `magician' technique used by IR discussed? I remember reading once (quoting IR) that music is a kind of `sithu' vElai, transforming an existing theme with subtle changes...like changing `ERu mayil ERi varum' (or something like that...a Murugan song) into `mAnguyilE, poonguyilE'...or changing the rAgA of `mari mari ninnE'...

[gopiharan]

gopiharan,
Rest assured that IR is THE MD for `poovE poochooda vA' (the first one of the long term association with director Fazil)...this film also had the first `released' song by Chitra in Tamil...(though the recorded one was `poojaikkEththa poovidhu' from another film)...the first Tamil film for Nadhiya Moidhu...

I still remember the `vividh bharathy' ads for this film...'pAttikkum pEththikkum idaiye nadakkum uNarchippOrAttam'...followed by a couple of lines from the KJY version of `poovE poochooda vA'...

Kumudam praised the `chinnakkuyil pAdum pAttukkEtkudhA' as one real good song after a long long time:-) (Though it looked like a complement to this film, many IR admirers considered that as a dig at him of not giving good melodies in years...though all those motherland pictures stuff and others were making waves in the time period prior to that)...

The film had excellent BGM too (which I relished more when I saw on TV recently than when it was released as the first time around...as you tend to get involved more with the other aspects of this really good movie when you see first...)

In any case, Fazil-IR combo has produced some memorable music in TFM, poovE poochooda vA & varusham 16 musically ranking higher than others IMO...

app_engine....
well said and thanks for the info....i guessed it must b IR from the composing style of the song....Oh my God....i don't have words to praise IR sir...simply genius....this one song...Chinna Kuyil talks all about his versatile talent...IR is real God of Melody land...
definitely i can't find any such matching melody in the recent past :D :D
saw Nayagan yday in KTV.....'Thenpandi Cheemayile' is still ringing in my mind.....genius of the Era.... Happy Birthday Raja Sir.....

[kiru]

Folks here is what I see in a 'typical' or 'quintessential' tabla melody of IR. This is the 'walkthru' I was talking about earlier.

I have taken up thenRal kARRE from eeramAna rOjAvE.

-----------------
The song starts with a mini alaapanai in the classy voice of KJY.
The ending of the alap is picked up by the bell/triangle like sound, which is
a cue for the flute/keyboard to join. This sound alternates with the cello
strikes. Soon, the flute+cello play together with the cellos generating
the momentum, which is quickly ended by the bell like sounds and
the bass, and the last second piano like notes leading to the vocals. All this in just 15 or 20 seconds.
This is the prelude. Notice the fine transition from the instruments to the vocals.

For the first two lines of the pallavi, the bass guitar backs up the
rhythm of the tablas. Then the next two lines,starting at thanimai kothikkuthu,
the bass recedes with the guitar chords more prominent, one note harmonies highlighting
the change inpace, almost giving the feel of 'nadai' change in the tabla beat..
The bass guitar comes back at thunaivaraththan... and help out in the
rest of the pallavi.


Interlude 1: The pallavi's rhythm is picked up by the fast paced flute/strings.
As we proceed further, the strings in multipart are followed by electric guitar,
congas and flutes and with a triangle note we are in the first charanam.


charanam 1: The first part of charanam has tabla and triangle. The later part of the charanam has
wailing strings and bass. I find the strings in second half of the charanam which are very
predictably thereas well as addictive depending upon how much of an IR fan you are :-)

Interlude 2 : The tempo is picked up by Cellos/violo with the bell sounds interrupting them and
bringing the strings into play. You could notice atleast two or three parts to the strings.
The congas join imperceptibly, with bells and flutes and a tabla stroke+triangle leading
to the 2 charanam.

charanam 2: Same as charanam 1.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I had to listen to this song so many times to write this up. There are so many twists and turns but it is very easy to miss the. They are there so naturally, it is lpreposterous to be discussing this, like defining a mountain range as a serious of ups and downs !!!. I hope you all can see the amount of 'music' that is there in a simple tabla melody of IR. Mind you I dont have any knowledge about raagams or specific WCM techniques. But I am able to enjoy this song. Somebody more knowledgeable can throw some light on the indian classical aspects of this. The bass and guitar chords are a light rock influence and of course the strings are western classical. Listen to this song and enjoy more.

[kiru]

I might have not gotten all the instrument sounds right. It could be the indian 'hand cymbal' in the first half of the charanam.

[MADDY]

Hey guys.....i have a serious doubt abt IR's BGM technique......yesterday i happened to watch Mouna Raagam, where scenes feauturing Karthik were supposed to be funny and it had some chirpy BGMs but 60% of the times it was a slow negative sort of music.....i have seen IR doing it in many films......though it is very touching i dunt think it is apt for the fun moment......

IR's BGMs always leave a impact but a negative one, i shuld say......

[prabhudas]

Jaiganesh, Thanks on the info on the CD availability in Bangalore

Kiru, as always thanks, please do write more on IR's Thabla based songs

app_engine, can you give me some sources in India or online sources for the Malayalam IR CD collections ( the late 70 and 80's collections), I can get online source info thro' Google but I wanted some decent quality recordings and reliable sites, if you can help.

Prabhudas

[baroque]

[tscii:d65c7143cc]Great pick Kiru! Fabulous job!
Eeramana Rojave has great tabla beats in ‘adho mega ooravalam’ and the happy song ‘vaa vaa anbe...’ of the same tune of pathos ‘ thendral kaatre...’. What an album!!!!
Some more memorable,repetitious tabla beats are ‘idhayam oru kovil...’, ‘thendral vandhu ennai....’, ‘vaasaliley poosanipoo...’, ‘ethamaiyaa etham...’ film Ninaivey oru sangeetha.
Another song that fascinates me is ‘Neelakuyile....’, film Soorasamharam. Raaja uses drums, guitars in preludes and interludes , nicely switches to tabla when the singers start singing!! sounds very rich & classy! At the end of the first interlude after that melodious flute..... ( I am mesmerized by the charanam: 1) when chithra starts singing ... ‘padum sangeetham kanney ......’ slow, gentle tabla beats pick up the pace, appadiye thaalattum from ‘thai pola naanum thaalattu...’ Tabla Raaja is stupendous!!! Classy!
Again, very interesting Kiru! Thanks, Vinu.
[/tscii:d65c7143cc]

[Shankar]

Maddy,
Can you pls quote other BGMs that had -ve impact ?

IMO, the reason why IR did the melancholic start to Karthik's theme (piano )and the guitar piece starts off in a funny note. The sadness in the tone, to me is to give an idea of the impending tragedy.

[Shankar]

sorry, forgot the ()s...
IMO, the reason why IR did the melancholic start to Karthik's theme (piano )(and the guitar piece starts off in a funny note), to me is to give an idea of the impending tragedy.

[tmrrmt]

Talking of IR's composing prowess and technique, I was listening to SD Burman's 'Pyaasa' and Madan Mohan's 'Barsaat' - they are absolute timeless classics - if at all, there is a living soul who can recreate such magic in India, that is only IR - I wonder what IR would come up with, if some modern day Guru Dutt were to make a 'Pyaasa' like masterpiece and IR does the music for the same!!

Sadly, poets amongst filmmakers do not exist anymore - Mahendran was the last filmmaker who could weave poetry into celluloid - Balu Mahendra did manage that in some of his movies, but the rest are contrived

[Vkrish]

baroque
There is one particular song in 'Ejamaan' with very lovely tabla flow throughout the song. To me, it looks as if the Tabla is talking(!) with the other instruments.
One more in Aranmanai kili sung by Janaki, which goes like 'Raasaave unnai'...
IR's composing technique - two more instances
1. 'listen to the rain drop sounds towards the end of the song 'Chinna Chinna Thural Enna...' what an imagination !!! It's Great.
2. 'Aritharathha Poosikkolla Aasai' - It is impossible to express...I would like u to listen..

[rajdes]

Maddy,
That was a ridiculous observation.
If you are referring to the scene where Karthik returns from Police Station after Revathy aalkattufies him to the Inspector, the scene starts off with Karthik limping and in a rather craggy state ostensibly after the inspector has had a good go at him. Revathy is horrified and suitably the music is melancholic. After Karthik observes Revathy seeing him, he tries to hide the pain and naughtily behaves as if nothing has happened and hops around

[thumburu]

Maddy, IR is one of the very few gifted MDs who just does not end with understanding the storyline or the situation, but also has an insight into every character . This was told by none other than MR. He also said that movies like Nayagan, Thalapathi would be very different if watched without IR's rerecording. It is known to all and sundry the stupendous role played by his bgms esp for directors of few words like Mahendran, Maniratnam etc

[MADDY]

Hey guys.....sorry for not replying to some of your posts.......well what exactly i meant was that IR's BGMs r breathtaking indeed but they always leave u with a heavy heart.......i dunno how to xplain xactly, cos my music knowledge is a big zero.......i'll list a few movies here which had very sober BGMs.......

1.Nayagan ( again here,BGM was a landmark one but y is that IR always gives xcellent bgms to sad scenes and give ordinary bgm pieces to happy scenes)

2. Sathya
3. Mouna Raagam
4. Punnagai Mannan
5. a sathyaraj-Radha movie where he becomes a police officer by forged signatures....dunt know the name of the movie but it had one of the best BGM but again it was very sad.......

[vatsa400]

Maddy,

Watch Michael Madana ..... (great example) or Arangetra Velai (initial scenes of prabhu, revathy and VKR) to find out some apt, enjoyable background music for comedy scenes. Watch Johnny, Aanpavam, Tik Tik Tik for other kinds than serious scenes.

Vatsa

[app_engine]

"y is that IR always gives xcellent bgms to sad scenes and give ordinary bgm pieces to happy scenes"...

Happy scenes - often they have a lot of dialog , when they do not have dialog, they have a SONG:-) This is kind of a formula for TF...However, when there are happy scenes with silence / no song, Raja has used every opportunity to score...If you dig into the permanent thread on BGM, you'll find 100's of examples. One quick one - the scene in which Sridevi sees `suppiramaNi' for the first time in moondRAm piRai...

[njv]

Maddy
Like Vatsa said, Watch Johnny. Johnny is a complete album, from songs to bgm. If i have to die tomorrow, I will listen to Johnny / watch Johnny today or even ask people to burry me with Johnny CD,so I can listen while I am "away".

Maddy, your Q "why IR gives xcelent bgms to sad scenes" I dont think it is the case, because happy incidents doesnt stay in our memory long where as sad incidents last long. Just think for couple of minutes and write down your sad and happy moments

I am sure 1 will exceed 2

Anyways, IR BGM is mood creating for any occasions. I watched Pithamagan (sad again) two days back and I am totally mesmerized by the BGM.

BTW, watch Ramana, in my opinion IR's best BGM at work here!.

[vatsa400]

Talking about BGMs for non-sad scenes, my friend was so engrossed by the BGM of Idhayathai Thirudathe when the heroine is in her playful mood, he asked me to make a ringtone out of it. Searching for that BGM online of good quality. Enjoyable BGM. Maddy, add this to your list of must watch movie for BGM.

Vatsa

[MADDY]

cool guys....i wud watch all these movies suggested by u guys........njv, i have to agree that pithamagan and Moonram pirai had some excellent BGMs....they were out of the world stuff.......and idhayathai thirudadhe was one of my fav. movie till alaipauthey came by.......

[tmrrmt]

" Maddy, your Q "why IR gives xcelent bgms to sad scenes" I dont think it is the case, because happy incidents doesnt stay in our memory long where as sad incidents last long. Just think for couple of minutes and write down your sad and happy moments"

It is all to do with (Sigmund) Freudian psychology - we tend to remember the sad moments of our life rather than the happy ones - you can extend that to movies as well - can anyone here identify an actor with his/her performance in a happy scene ? no - we naturally refers to Kamal's or Sivaji's emoting in tragic scenes, not their laughing out loud scenes

[njv]

"can anyone here identify an actor with his/her performance in a happy scene ? no - we naturally refers to Kamal's or Sivaji's emoting in tragic scenes, not their laughing out loud scenes
How about Ghilly Vijay!

Just teasing. I cant believe he is awarded the best actor by people (dinakaran awards) and I definitely cant believe Rajni going to 200th day festival of Ghilly. "Kali Kaalam"

[tmrrmt]

if people still have any doubt(s) whatsoever regarding IR's BGM abilities, watch any movie in the last 10 years, which had a very good storyline/plot, excellent performances and technically brilliant but music my someone other than IR - you will see the difference - one example is Gautham's "Kaakka Kaakka" - Harris Jeyaraj's completely out-of-sync BGM made the movie look comic - some of the chorus lines were complete ripoffs from 'Gladiator' BGM by Hans Zimmer - imagine what IR would have done with a movie like KK !

[MADDY]

"if people still have any doubt(s) whatsoever regarding IR's BGM abilities, watch any movie in the last 10 years, which had a very good storyline/plot, excellent performances and technically brilliant but music my someone other than IR"

well mr.tmrrmt, i can give u 25 such xamples......i dunt know whether u have heard Bombay, Uyire, Minsara Kanavu, Duet, 7G Rainbow colony, Alaipauthey, Rythm,Desam bgms.....i think Desam's bgms are as good as any IR's bgms........YSR's 7g was also master class,VS's Paarthiban Kanavu was also good....... still IR scores over ARR in this field but it is stretching a bit far when ppl. say "there is noone else other than IR in BGMs section".......

[vatsa400]

Maddy,

The difference between BGM of IR and others is that they dont create memorable BGMs that often. BGMs are not heard as frequently as a song and are not easily accessible. To score a point in this section and that too quite often emphasises what IR is all about? Sometimes you can identify characters with the BGM. Mahendran said in one interview that one can identify the characters and meeting between two characters by just listening to the BGM from outside the cinema hall. It differs from movie to movie, but the impact lasts longer.

BGMs of others which were apt. The best of ARR in tamil would be Kannathil Muthamittal, thats music for the movie and is pretty good.

Vatsa

[tmrrmt]

Mr.Maddy - "Bombay" and "Uyire" - let us take "Bombay" first - can you name one BGM piece from the entire film that fit in with the development of a character or a sequence - the theme music was just OK - but the rest of the themes - none of them made an impact for one to remember the same once outside the cinema hall

In "uyire", there were a couple of interesting strings based BGM scores, especially when SRK follows MK (or was it the other way around) - besides them, I can't recollect a BGM piece specific to Uyire that stayed in mind - for that matter, except Roja, neither Bombay nor Uyire impressed me as movies in the first place

I can give 'n' number of reasons as to why and how IR scores over others in the BGM area, but the one major reason is that IR's BGM is movie specific, plot specific, character specific and still creative enough for us to take notice! ARR took a long time to graduate to some reasonably acceptable level of BGM scoring only in 'Kannathhil Mutthhamittaal' - much of his BGM scoring was confined to vocal screams and whines

Most significant and relevant is IR's understanding of SILENCE and its importance - he knows exactly where there ought to be a BGM and where it is not required - in many of the movies, you wouldn't even realise that it is his BGM that elevates the mood of the film, because it is scored in a way that makes it inseparable from the film!

[tmrrmt]

examples for the character specific themes - Johnny theme for the bond between Sreedevi and Rajini, theme for the bond between Kamal and Saranya (that theme alone used to send goose bumps along our spines when 'Nayagan' was released), the theme specific for the bond between Nagarjuna and Amala in 'Shiva',
the 'Aan Paavam' love theme, Varusham 16 theme, and Whew!! I can go on

[vatsa400]

I was listening to the "three in one" which was part of Raja's Italy concert. Would be a great BGM piece, wish IR uses it in his movies for appreciation from the wider audience

[Jacky]

"let us take "Bombay" first - can you name one BGM piece from the entire film that fit in with the development of a character or a sequence - the theme music was just OK -"

Height of IR bias!

[MADDY]

well okkk guys......i accept IR is the best and nobody else can even "think" of giving better bgms than him.....his bgms are flawless and the small doubt that i had abt his happy/chirpy bgms is also cleared by listening to the movies listed by u guys which makes IR nuthin less than a living musical institution....whew....cool..... :D

[MADDY]

see guys, i cud have xplained some of ARR's gr8 bgms like Screaming sound when Mk sees raam mandir movement in market, Vinmeenkalai thandi bgm piece in Uyire, sweet memories bgm piece where ash and prashant romance in jeans, sanskrit recitation in mudhalvan, and SRK's entry scene bgm in desam but again the arguement was y is it that IR's sober bgms are more famous than his chirpy bgm's...........

[Jacky]

IR's best BGM should be for Veedu - HTNI track. It conveyed Melancholy so effectively. And ARR's Bombay Theme is no less than IR's HTNI. In fact BT had all the subtle variations HTNI had. Calling it ordinary should be the Joke of the century

[mythila]

There was a mention about Illayaraja's "Insight about characters". I would like to add, it is also intuitiveness about even hidden , not so apparent nuamces in a movie. A classic example would be the last nadhaswaram piece in the film "Engeyo ketta kural" at Ambika's death bed scene. One would expect a soga shenoy blaring at high pitch. But the viewers were pleasantly taken aback by the mangalakaramaana nadhaswaram . This is to indicate , the female character had attained immortality and all the smear on her life have been cleansed when her own husband believes her purity.
Only in her death, her marriage gets the due sanctity.
The same nadhaswaram was also used in a contrasting situation when Ambika leaves her husband and child. This again shows her crossing the marital boundary. What cannot be explained in many words have been cryptically depicted by his bgm.

[MumbaiRamki]

i feel bombay theme piece was very nice - it will be sujective to say its nice or not nice ....I liked it as such ,but i feel Ar Rehman's brilliance was in legend of Bhagat Singh ....

But there is one movie where i feel AR Rehman 's music was abig mismatch ,but not sure if the director wanted such a music ...

Its the movie NEW - the song NEW NEW was an absolute mess ....I felt that a 8 year old guy who turns 28 year old suddenly ,still has the mind of 8 year old ..That feeling was completly missing in that movie ...

[app_engine]

Maddy, Jacky & MumbaiRamki, congrats for keeping up the TFMpage tradition (i.e. discussing ARR in IR thread and vice versa):-)

[MumbaiRamki]

app_engine
U are right - this shld have been avoided :)

[venus05]

Diagression:

//Begin

While I was searching on the topic "Thinking", I found the following interesting link related to one of the topics we discussed in this thread a while ago

http://www.studygs.net/genius.htm.

Please find the #3 item in the list as follows:

============
3. Produce! A distinguishing characteristic of genius is productivity.

Thomas Edison held 1,093 patents. He guaranteed productivity by giving himself and his assistants idea quotas. In a study of 2,036 scientists throughout history, Dean Keith Simonton of the University of California at Davis found that the most respected scientists produced not only great works, but also many "bad" ones. They weren't afraid to fail, or to produce mediocre in order to arrive at excellence

===========
A while ago in this "composing technique" topic, people were discussing about "Dhandam songs (mediocre work)".
Based on the above study on the scientists (of course IR is a music scientist), it looks like "medicore work " is one of the qualities of a Genius too. May be mediocre works are the side effects of trying to find the classics.

Most of the time we assume that if these geniuses work slow and work more on a single piece then the quality will be better. But geniuses do not seem to think so.

//End

Thanks

[venus05]

http://www.studygs.net/genius.htm
Please remove the extra period in the link.
Thanks.

[Jacky]

app engine,
I don't intend to do that unless somebody revives the tradition of belittling other composer's good works to glorify IR.

[vijayr]

"May be mediocre works are the side effects of trying to find the classics. "

If it were true, then IR should have been having more classics in the late 80s when he had more mediocre works and was doing 50 albums/year :-) But his classics were mostly from his first 6 or 7 years when he did around 25 albums/year. So this "logic" doesnt work in TFM I believe.

[venus05]

Vijayr

1. When I posted the link, I did not intend to justify or support IR's "dhandam" songs. When I read that article, I could connect the "Quality, Qunatity, Creativity & Genius" combo discussion in TFM with the findings of the research.

2. I do not beleive in winning the arguments. But I do believe in open minded discussion. I did not intend to change your ideas or opinion about the ratio of IR's classics and dhandam songs by posting the link. My intention was to expose another perception for the relationship between mediocre work,classic work and creativity.

3.Again I did not read anyhing ("logic") like "more classics will be created if more medicore works are created" in that article.

"University of Califoria at Davis found that the most respected scientists produced not only great works, but also many "bad" ones".

In the above sentence it is very well stated that "Many Bad ones"

4.In late 80s there were lot of classics created by IR but again your definition of classics and mine may be totally off.

Thanks.

[vijayr]

Venus, my point is there have been geniuses(before IR) with lesser mediocre works to their credit as compared to their classics. You dont have a to create a library of medicore works in order to create a few classics. But anyways, if you think that the late 80s had a "lot of classics" then this whole thing becomes entirely subjective and moot.

[vijayr]

And even subjectively speaking, most fans would generally agree that there were lot more classics from the first few years(in terms of concentration) as compared to say between 1987 and 90.

[rprasad]

Vijay, The whole discussion about what constitues a classic or dhandam is totally subjective in my opinion. So i think its futile to try to argue whether IR did more dhandams than classics or if other Md's have a better ratio than IR. Also i don't completely agree with your point that IR gave more classics during early eighties. I think IR' most creative and innovative compositions(and these were classics ) were in the period 1985 to 1992 (Till Dalapathy). This is the period where he took TFM to another level with technology and innovation without losing melody at the same time. I agree that early eightiees probably had more good IR songs( i am not sure if most of them can be called classics- subjective again) as far as ratios go, compared to the period i mentioned above where he did a lot of films. Again if you ask a average fan they would tell you IR's peak of popularity was in the above period. Even the so called dhandams might have been popular with average masses during that time.

[vijayr]

rprasad, it isnt totally subjective. There are certain paramters that can easily tell you how much thought has been put into a song. Its partially subjective. Otherwise I can argue that Shankar-Ganesh have given as many if not more classics than IR :-))

" Again if you ask a average fan they would tell you IR's peak of popularity was in the above period"

and who are these average fans? Probably someone who dont follow TFM and especially IR's music seriously and just listen to whatever is the prevailing trend.I am not concerned about their opinions. This discussion is primarily amongst IR fans.

But even if you go by hits, the early 80s had a much higher hits to duds ratio as compared to the late 80s. You can go thru discography in the rajaangahm site and see for yourself.

[baroque]

Posted: Thu May 26, 2005 7:40 pm Post subject: Re: emergence of new genres
Kiru says, " I have picked up the 'tabla' songs of IR as a genre and am exploring the techniques used in them. Yes, we can move on to other types"

Friends, please stay with the topic, Kiru interestingly started two weeks back. Vijayr, You are a intelligent fellow, please post something interesting in this subject so that we learn and enjoy. Lets talk Raaja songs! :D Vinu

[tvsankar]

Vinu
Thanks a lot for ur mail.Thread ippadi thisai maari poradhae nu kavalai pataen.Come to the topic,i want to tell some songs impressed me !!!
1.Ilainjolai poothadha - Unakagavae vaazhgiraen
I don't know technically.This song has a beautiful tabla beats.Slow but steadly.Composing value vai indha tabla vil therindhu kollalam.
Tabla with Singers.
1.Muthu manai malai - Chinna Gownder.
Susheela voda pesum indha tabla.
2.Jodi kili engae sollu sollu - Padikadhavan
Idhil Spb tabla ku seriyaga speeda paduvar Rajiniyaiyum manadhi vaithu!!!!!
3.Vanamellam shenbagapoo - film?
Tabla lyricudan pesum indha songil
4.Nilavae vaa - Mouna raagam
in this song tabla is the jeevan
With Love,
Usha Sankar.

[kr]

Despite vijay's contention to the opposite, classification of songs as great or dhandams are very subjective. In his posts, he has classified a lot of IR's songs as dhandams which I do not absolutely agree to. But it is just that his preferences and evaluations and mine of many of those same songs, albums are different.

He may argue that currrently there are more people who have similar preferences as him than preferences similar to mine. But that is a different matter than contending that his evaluation is more objective than others' and if there is discordance to his preferences then they are just subjective biases.

[thumburu]

vijayr, I can quote atleast 100 melodious songs from your oft quoted 1987-1990 period like songs of oruvar vaazhum aalayam,
isai paadum thedral, soorasamharam, satya, agni nakshatram, geethanjali, maapillai , enjeevan paadudhu , enga oor paatukaran, karagatakkaran, anand, manadhil urudhi vendum, en uyir kannamma, unnal mudiyum thambi, paadu nilavae, nayagan, theertha karaiyinile, pudhu pudhu arthangal, dharmathin thalaivan, aboorvasahodharargal, rajathi raja.
These films atleast have 2 stupendous songs which are evergreen

If you call the songs in these aforementined films as junk, then sorry you just don't like IR.

.Tell me which other MD scored even listenable songs during the same period you have quoted. Many of us here are as equally familiar with IR's discography as you are and we are not diehard fans for nothing.

[thumburu]

IR gave junk songs even in early 80's like for "alai osai" , "ellam inba mayam" etc. This was not any new thing that happened in 1987-1990 period.Till 1992, IR had a very impressive , colossal work of goodies with no slack period in between. Even some of his assembly line products are better than the best of the current TFM MDs.

[thumburu]

Aiyoo manasu kekkalaippaa. My most fav IR perioda pathi yaaru kutham sollaradhu? IR Rasikaperumakkalae !!!
For example, evaluate the beauty of "aalankuyil"(which I consider the best of VS) against "vaa aruge iLam poonguyile" from paadu nilavae which came in 1987 (so called lean patch of IR) . Is the latter song in anyway lower than the former?
Take "pallaviye charanam " from iasai paadum thenral or "nee pournami"(oruvar vaazhum aalayam" (another beauty from the so called worst period of IR) , and evaluate against the best classical based song by ARR and see if it is in anyway inferior. Take "aaraaro" or "engirundho azhaikkum" (excuse the Latha factor he he he) or "anbu malargalin solai idhu"(from 1987 bombed Kannukku mai azhagu" and compare with the best melody of today(which is "poo poothadhu" :wink: for me ).
Also evaluate the folkish beauty of "yetham iyya yetham"(ninaive sangeetham 1988?) with any folk hit of today(Today means post 2000)

[vijayr]

(yeththam aiya yeththam is one of the most medicore folk songs ever composed. There was a discussion on this song in these very pages sometime back)

Anyways, thumburu those films you have listed I have songs in the collection from all of them. Again they constitute about 20% of the overall output. I had listed some films earlier in this thread, go ahead and see them. You might not have even heard of some of them. Or you can check 1987 discography, for instance, yourself.
http://www.raajangahm.com/ric/film/FL-1987.html

Other than Nayakan(where the BGM was better than the songs) and to a certain extent Poovizhi Vaasalile can you pick a single other TFM album and say its overall quality is as good as Johny or Nenjathai KiLLaadhe or Ninaivellam Nithya?
Some albums had just 1 or 2 gnoteworthy songs. I cant pick an album that had 3 or 4 classics in them.

"Take "pallaviye charanam " from iasai paadum thenral or "nee pournami"(oruvar vaazhum aalayam" (another beauty from the so called worst period of IR) , and evaluate against the best classical based song by ARR and see if it is in anyway inferior"

thumburu I am not here to do ARR vs IR comparison, so please save it. My benchmark for comparison is IR's own songs, his classics from the early 80s.

"IR gave junk songs even in early 80's like for "alai osai" , "ellam inba mayam" etc. This was not any new thing that happened in 1987-1990 "

It was not new, but the quantity was higher. 4 or 5 good albums with 20 average or medicore ones.

baroque, sorry for the digression, but venus posted something different than the topic, to which I had to respond

[venus05]

Sorry guys my post reopened the topic which was already closed (and beaten to death).

I thought I clearly specified my intention ("Genius , Quality, Quanity & Creativity relationship) in that post.

Neither I was pointing anybody in my post nor I was passing any of my judgement in that post.

Anyway I will not post any more on this the topic.

Thanks.

[rprasad]

Vijay,

you have to realize that it is not just IR fans who listen to Ir songs. just because others are not self proclaimed IR fans that does not mean their opinions do not matter. It is the general public which decides which songs become popular and which does not. So do not keep harping that it is only fans like you who have the accurate measure of which can be called IR's classic and which is not. Also does every good song have to be classic ? I do not think so. The song has to sound good hummable and soulful. It does not matter if it remotely resembles some other song or it does not feel fresh as long as the tune is good. Now yes that means even Shanker Ganesh's songs can be classified in this category. I would say yes why not? Now IR apart from producing such good/popular songs has also experimented and came up with innovative compositions which others have not been able to atleast not to the level of IR. This is what differentiates him from other Md's. Now the percentage of such songs might be low. It hardly matters since not everyone can notice such nuances in a song. But again the bottomline, the common people need a good song to remember and hum and IR has given a lot of those and i dare say in their mind these might be even classics. Sorry for the digression hope this discussion stops here. I feel i had to respond .

[Music4Ever]

"Other than Nayakan(where the BGM was better than the songs) and to a certain extent Poovizhi Vaasalile can you pick a single other TFM album and say its overall quality is as good as Johny or Nenjathai KiLLaadhe or Ninaivellam Nithya?"

During the times of Johnny, Nenjaththai kiLLAdhE, and Ninaivellam Nithya, IR had to still possibly contend with MSV, who was giving some gems and was capable of the odd coup (eg. NinaithalE Inikkkum). Could that have been a factor for the heightened performance levels of IR? After 1984 or so, IR was the lord of everything he surveyed (until, arguably, 1992) and the lack of competition may have, arguably, lead to the perceived lowering of performance.

[app_engine]

While it is true that a number of IR songs for unknown directors / producers have been very good (which can be attributed to the extraordinary skills of IR), it has to be admitted that he was fairly consistent in giving great songs when working with specific teams, especially specific directors. (Need I give examples...I hear the names of Bharathi Raja, Mani Ratnam, R Sundarrajan, Mahendran, Balachandar being shouted:-))

That could probably give a pointer to a successful albeit non-musical `composing technique'...i.e. working closely with a Project lead who is extra-sensitive for musical quality...and also a leader who pushes the MD for innovation...

A simple example will be `thamthana namdhana thALam varum'...much has been written about this song, long pallavi etc. in other threads. This song definitely includes lot of unique features (musically) and can easily be termed a `classic' without controversy:-)

However, there has to be considerable input from BR which influenced the structure of this song (the chorus that fits the situation, overlapping of female voices etc.) Since movie songs are not a sole property but the result of a team work, best results are obtained when the composer sits with a discernible director and spends reasonable amount of time...

While the above may not exactly fit the description of `technique' it's a major factor nevertheless, IMHO.

[app_engine]

Music4Ever, I don't think so...for early & late 80s, songs of T Rajendar were very popular inside TN...though there were only a couple of albums each year from him, they reverberated through out TN, sometimes even overshadowing IR's sweet numbers because of the raw percussion power:-)

And late 80's had such immemorable films that he did with KB and Maniratnam e.g Agni*, punnagai mannan and others like mella thiRandhadhu kadhavu etc. MTK was in fact done in collab with MSV and not in competition with him...

[app_engine]

'immemorable' to read as 'memorable'...sorry for the typo:-)

[app_engine]

MTK - a milestone in TFM with the all-time classic `kuzhaloodhum kaNNanukku'...

Talking about IR's composing techniques, this film reminded me of a write-up by veteran DF'er Srikanth who witnessed the composing session for a song of this film, where mellisai mannar & IR sweetly colloborated, with absolutely no ego clash - infact with so much of mutual respect and friendliness...and the output is phenomenal...

Kind of supports my theory...in the world of art, it is not competition that brings out the best from an artiste (which is true in design, business etc. but not necessarily in music), but rather a nice team, happy colloboration, calm mind, good but exacting environment etc that brings out the best...

I feel IR's composing was at its best when he had strong partners / friends / exacting but appreciative environment etc...OTOH, rivalry / jealousy / dog-eat-dog /ego clashes, business-like-working-style, business-like-competition and such things spoilt the quality IMHO...

[prabhudas]

idhu thaeraada discussion,... and idhu thaeraada case ( you know whom and what I mean)

Prabhudas

[rajasaranam]

Anyways, thumburu those films you have listed I have songs in the collection from all of them. Again they constitute about 20% of the overall output. I had listed some films earlier in this thread, go ahead and see them. You might not have even heard of some of them. Or you can check 1987 discography, for instance, yourself.
http://www.raajangahm.com/ric/film/FL-1987.html


Thanks Vijayr, for providing us with the link of discography for the year 1987
Iam afraid that its not so grim a year For IR as you have said. a very succesful year IMHO.
The list
Kaamaagni Hindi
Aalappiranthavan Tamil
Aanand Tamil
Chinna Kuyil Paattu Tamil
Chiraipparavai Tamil
Dhoorathu Pacchai Tamil
Enga Ooru Paattukkaaran Tamil
Graamathu Minnal Tamil
Iniya Uravu Poothathu Tamil
Jallikkattu Tamil
Kaadhal Parisu Tamil
Kadamai Kanniyam Kattupaadu Tamil
Kalyaana Kachcheri Tamil
Krishnan Vandaan Tamil
Manadhil Orudhi Vendum Tamil
Manaivi Ready Tamil
Nayagan Tamil
Ninaikka Therinda Maname Tamil
Ninaive Oru Sangeetham Tamil
Paadu Nilave Tamil
Per Sollum Pillai Tamil
Poo Vizhi Vaasaliley Tamil
Puyal Padam Pattu Tamil
Rettai Vaal Kuruvi Tamil
Theertha Karayinile Tamil
Ullam Kavarntha Kalvan Tamil
Vazha Vazharka Tamil
Velaikkaaran Tamil
Andharikandey Kandhudu Telugu
Aradhana Telugu
Maharshi Telugu
Sankeerthana Telugu

27 Tamil, 4 Telugu and 1 Hindi movie
Leaving apart telugu, hindi and Kadamai kanniyam kattupadu which had no songs we are left with 26 movies of which
Aanand, Enga ooru paatukkaaran, iniya uravu poothathu, kaadhal parisu, manadhil urudhi vendum, manaivi ready,nayagan, ninaika therintha manamae, ninaive oru sangeetham, paadu nilave, per sollum pillai, poo vizhi vaasaliley, Rettai vaal kuruvi, Ullam kavarntha kalvan, and Velaikaaran forming around 15 movies were albums which were huge commercial hits making 57-58% success rate
The rest of the albums had songs like
'nillada vennila' and 'etri vacha nerupinilae' - Aalapirandhavan
'Hey raaja' - jallikattu
'Vel muruganukku' - puyal paadum paatu which were big hits too
I have a strong doubt over the songs from 'theertha karayinilae' 'krishnan vandhan' and 'gramathu minnal' i have heard of these movies cant recollect the songs as of now
Of these movies i have never heard of vaazhga valarga, kalyana kacheri, thoorathu pachai making only 11-12 % of unheard songs, Hopefully there are some classics lying in the bin.:wink:
However we see, Raja had been commercially succesful for more than 60% of the movies he had scored in 1987. what more should we IR fans need. :)
Iam stressing over the commercial aspect as you had said earlier that the dhandams were 80% and were not even commercial hits.

Getting on with 1988 will me much tougher for you as this had been a prosperous year for IR fans with more classics and commercial Hits with a national Award too. :D

[app_engine]

Digression
rs, grAmaththu minnal, a Revathy starrer, had a few very melodious village songs. I had seen the forgettable movie in a junk theater in Palakkad, but the songs were quite popular in villages when it got released...most had KSC...

'nee pOgumidamellAm manasu pOguthE mAnE' is one I can quickly recall (I think MV-KSC)...but there were a couple other better songs...solo's by KSC, I think...

End-digression

[baroque]

"Gramathu minnal" has some melodious music by Maestro.
"kalyanam...'MVasu,SNS enthusiastic chorus song
"rettai kili..." Raaga Devan with Chithra. What a Pathos song!! Raaja extensively used his violins appadiye crying, consoling flute pieces, Raaja's emotional humming, singing with Chithra, very soothing pathos. My fav
"kanney en...." Solo chithra. Listen to that prelude, chithra's haunting humming followed by flute, it has awesome pacy violin & flute interludes..
"Nee pogum paadhaiyil..." Mvasu,Chithra. Catchy tune. Again song has excellent romantic violin, flute interludes.
"Vatti yedutha.." By Raaja
Flute ,Flute ,Flute... Upbeat prelude & interludes!!
Raaja has used the flute extensively in this album. Very soothing.
Raaja's gramathu music is always special and lively!! ennoda aasai rasa maadhiry varaadhu! Okyaa!!

http://project-gem.tripod.com/releases/release8.html

[vijayr]

Music4ever, you are right to a certain extent. Acceptance of a lot of bad films in the late 80s was also a major reason.


rprasad, you didnt get my point. As far as serious comparison goes, as to how IR fared in his early years as compared to late 80s and so on, it is IR fans who keep doing this, not the general public, many of whom may have already forgotten IR for the past 10 years. Thats what I meant. They dont do a serious year-by-year or album-by-album analysis. Of course, their opinions matter in making an album a commercial hit, sure. But even then, the hits dwindled as the 80s went by.Thats my point.

"Now IR apart from producing such good/popular songs has also experimented and came up with innovative compositions which others have not been able to atleast not to the level of IR"

And how do you know that others(before him) have not been able to?

Rajasaranam, come on, manaivi ready?ULLam kavarndha Kalavan? endha oorla idhellam bayangara hit? You have just listed all the songs you have heard from 1987 and called them hits :-))
Per sollum piLLai has got to be one of the most medicore Kamal-IR collaborations. Its a pity that movie came in the same year as Nayagan. A forgettable movie for Kamal and Radhika. I would put it in the same league as Maharasan. Neither the movie nor the songs were a hit.

[tmrrmt]

"Per sollum piLLai" had one "ammammammaa" with amazing orchestration, for which IR had then used several tracks

[tvsankar]

Vijayr
This thread is IR's composing technique.Not the thread of Criticising.U decided to close the thread.Very good.Keep it up!!!!
With Love,
Usha Sankar

[rajasaranam]

Vijayr,

Manaivi Ready was a commercially superhit movie and i remember it had a song - "jaan pillai aanalum'
Ullam kavarntha kalvan - it has some classics like 'en manasa parikoduthaen' - jayachandran and 'kaalankaarthalae' - yesudaas, chithra and 'thaena senthaenae' by SPB. This album is a hit not only IMO but the songs were/are featured repeatedly in Radios and then DD.
Per sollum pillai - comeon this had 'ammammamma' and 'velakethu' i remember this song played over and over again in DD over a period of years during 'Diwali' and 'Aadi velli'

Even if you intend to remove manaivi ready and UKK - 13/26 makes 50% which is much greater than the 20% which you are suggesting :)

All others,
hey iam getting those songs from 'Gramathu minnal' which are buried deep inside my Databank :)

[Music4Ever]

app_engine, it seems we agree essentially on the basic premise, which is that if the environment is exacting it can bring out the best from those who are capable of delivering (Of course, IR is one.). When MSV was there, IR (from what he hear of his great respect for MSV) probably shared a sense of urgency in giving *consistently* good music, because he had to beat the standards set by MSV. With the overthrow of MSV, probably there was no one else to match him (TR included, despite what you say about him), with the result that IR could take a more relaxed approach to music, giving his best when the environment was exacting enough to extract the best out of him and churning out mediocre numbers otherwise where the environment was merely content with having him as MD. Since he was the undisputed Numero Uno of TFM, there was the inevitable clamor to have him as the MD for each and every movie. IR probably couldn't refuse and had to pay a price in terms of decline in quality. Of course, he is just such a Colossus that he could come up with precious albums in between many stale ones.

What I mean is that MSV's mere presence itself would have been sufficient motivation for IR to be on the alert. When that giant was surpassed, meaning that IR had gained then current ascendancy, there had to be some other force to get the best out of him. This force could, quite conceivaby, be the exacting environment referred by you.

[vijayr]

tvsankar, its not just me who's talking. Address your concern to everyone who is discussing this with me. In fact I didnt re-open this topic, someone else did.

[jaiganes]

vijay!
very clever!
venus simply put forward a piece of info that caught his/her attention with relation to a dead and buried discussion we had some time back in which we agreed not to take this further. We all (atleast me) accept that not all IR numbers were universally appealing and successful even in peak IR period in TFM. Venus simply posted something as to why genius's churn out mediocre work. It was another way of looking at it. However you cleverly imposed your old views again using this post of Venus as an excuse. Your take might be that if you beat venus' post with some clever argument, you can disprove that IR is not a genius. You are grossly mistaken.
I thought over some of your clever postings and I had this following idea.
1. According to you IR mostly scored dhandams.
2. Somebody else did/were doing better job at that time.

Then I follow this with...
1. So it makes better business sense to switch to other genius like Raveendran and your all time faves . Right? Why wait till 1992 my friend? Any divine proclamation?

My take is Raja was the most favourite musician at that time and even now he is the most respected. You might not personally like it because your favourites are someone else (which you dont want to put down clearly here for fear of flaming or otherwise). So you conveniently choose the standard shield of MSV and try to hide behind it. Unfortunately for you Raja and MSV are very close friends and they have collaborated many times to delight music fans of Thamizh Nadu.
Now if you dont accept that Raaja is a musical genius, say so or atleast state your favourites boldly like Jacky and Maddy. If Maddy feels that Bombay Theme music is equal to HTNI, that is his opinion and we are OK with it. however your cat and mouse game is very mischievious and intriguing.

sorry for this digression.
Lets get back to how Raaja composed melodious music without compromising the film, situation and demands of the collaborators and stake holders.

[jaiganes]

Getting back to Raaja's composing technique, He has mentioned recently in an interview to AnadaVikatan that when he read Thiruvasagam, the words appeared to him in a musical form and he simply put them down in paper for correction and conduction.
Myself being a software developer, I can relate to this as follows. When users detail the requirements, because of experience , we(software architects and developers) start visualizing the system as software components and more often than not, it is this first visualization that occurs to us translates into a permanent design. This I have found comes only with experience. Best software architects I have worked with waste very little time perfecting the core architecture that they visualized when they first interacted in the use case analysis. Rework is in new extensions and some minor issues.
Experts in other fields also have similar skill which has reached amazing levels of speed and perfection mainly because of years of experience and hard work. Today we may exclaim at the speed of Raaja, I wonder at the tremendous hours of hardship and learning that he would have had to put up to reach this level!!!
As Super * sings in Murattu kaalai, "Ennaalum uzhaichadhukku ponnaana palanirukku". Very true in case of our Raaja.

[baroque]

[tscii:0b9ba4105f]
'ammamma....' from Per sollum pillai enna composition!! astonishing orchestra with Kamal's singing!!!
This album has a chorus ‘velakethu...’ by Malasia Vasu! Raaja with Vasu, his melams, happy flutes ... innum yanna venum ungalukku?
‘Maadiyeri vaamma....’ Balu, janaki. Semathiyaa yerukkum
‘thappu thanda...’ Balu, janaki. . ‘jolly pattu’ ‘ilankuruthu pole...’ I like that stanza very much.

Manaivi Ready!! Very hilarious movie, Raaja aptly composed songs for the movie. Why only ‘Jaan pillai...’, other songs ‘pallavan oodura...’ by vasu, “ varuga varuga...” By DC are good funny, memorable songs!

Please don’t be very harsh on my Raaja! :( Ilayaraaja is the greatest musician!! We love him dearly. :D
[/tscii:0b9ba4105f]

[baroque]

Rajasaranam & VijayR thanks thanks for you guys!
Its been long i listened to 'per sollum pillai', 1987 or 86 vandhadhu rt, when i got married and came to USA in early 90s appadiye dearaa yeduthundu vandhen my Raaja pattu collections! :D Now couldn't snap out of 'ammamma...' song for the past two days... I am looking at the covers of '6lerundhu 60 varai, indru poyee naalai vaa, udhiry pookkal etc..' All vintage Raaja!
Come on VijayR!! Neenga with us or against us? :D chumma ketten, you can have your preferences!

[vijayr]

jaiganes, you dont have to rack your brains so much on my posts. My point or my opinion is(and has always been) pretty simple, that for a stretch in the late 80s, IR accepted a lot of bad movies and gave bad music.Although, he might have still been the numero uno then. Where did I say that somebody else was doing a better job at that time? It is a figment of your imagination. Who is Raveendran? the mallu MD? you must be crazy. He hasnt done more than 3 or 4 films in TFM. Did you see me favouring TR or Chandrabose over IR at any point of time. In fact the whole discussion by Music4ever was about how there were no good MDs besides IR to push him in the late 80s. My comparison with MSV was to show that MDs in the past had been able to do 15-20 films/year and give good music at a high percentage.Not just MSV, many old HFM MDs too.

[tvsankar]

Members Pl concentrate on IR"s composing skill.Dont take diversion pl!!!!! Readers we want to read about IR"s music.Not the arguments in this page. I think you are understanding me!!!! the songs told in this thread had a great work.Purindhavargaluku than puriyum.
With Love,
Usha Sankar.

[Vkrish]

Nice article...
http://tfmpage.com/ci/ci10.html

[baroque]

VKrish, thanks my friend for that article!
They have mentioned 'maan kanden maan kanden...'by KJJ,Vani from Rajarishi! what a classical piece from Raaja. Yes, its a classic example of tabla,classical raaja song. I am vaguely remembering the song, its been long i heard that, I prelude starts with Vani's humming,a flute melody followed by Kjj's singing the pallavi 'maan kanden...' the first interlude has a great violin works, second interlude is very enchanting with KJJ's humming and a chorus(?) , This song is in my blood! What can i say? Ilayaraaja is genius!
Great Day! love, vinu.

[thumburu]

//Digression - vijayr. you are right. I have not heard some of the duds of 1987. I agree that they may not be good. But whichever MD , who has given such songs of the movies I had mentioned in my list in the same period is a genius in my opinion. BTW, "yetham aiyya" is just not mediocre. The charanam has very interesting twists and believe me, only chitra could have done justice to this not so easy song to sing. I rank this higher than another similar teasing folk duet from IR's early 80's "arisi kuthum akka magalae"

For others, I list some of the good melodies from 87 and you can judge for yourself
Aanand - aaraaro, thodaatha thaalam, I want to tell u, poovukku poovaana
Chinna Kuyil Paattu - I remeber a very melodious solo by Chitra "unnai thaane ninaithene"
Chiraipparavai - Has a fantastic karaharapriya raaga based duet "aanandham pongida pongida"
Enga Ooru Paattukkaaran - shenbagame, madura marikozhundhu, azhagi nee perazhagi
Iniya Uravu Poothathu - has a beautiful hamsanandhi based duet Oh poomalai
Kaadhal Parisu - kaadhal maharani - a grandiose orchestration
Manadhil Orudhi Vendum - kanaa varuvaaya, sanga thamizhe
Nayagan - nee oru, then pandi, naan sirithaal
Ninaive Oru Sangeetham - pagalile oru nilavinai, yetham iyaa yetham
Paadu Nilave - malaiyoram veesum kaatru, paadungal paatu paadungal( a good kalyani ), vaa aruge iLlam poonguyile another classy composition . Listen how Raja has used a soga subapanthuvaraaLi scale to an upbeat competition situation and how SPB and Chitra excel in the vocals.
Per Sollum Pillai - for its orchestration
Poo Vizhi Vaasaliley - oru kiLiyin thanimaiyile, Chinna chinna rojapoovae, pattenge
Puyal Padam Pattu - vel muruganukku
Rettai Vaal Kuruvi - kannan vandhu, raja raja chozhan
Theertha Karayinile - rajasaranam, I know atleast 3 good melodies here. [kotti kidakkudhu(watch out for KSC's singing in this sudha dhanyasi scale song), vizhiyil pudhu kavidhai padithen with a different sandham and rythm arrangement, theertha karai orathile

[thumburu]

//Digression - vijayr. you are right. I have not heard some of the movies of 1987. I agree that they may not be good. But whichever MD , could give such songs of the movies I had mentioned in my list in the same period is a genius in my opinion. BTW, "yetham aiyya" is just not mediocre. The charanam has very interesting twists and believe me, only chitra could have done justice to this not so easy song . I rank this higher than another similar teasing folk duet from IR's early 80's "arisi kuthum akka magalae"

For others, I list some of the good melodies from 87 and you can judge for yourself
Aanand - aaraaro, thodaatha thaalam, I want to tell u, poovukku poovaana
Chinna Kuyil Paattu - I remeber a very melodious solo by Chitra "unnai thaane ninaithene"
Chiraipparavai - Has a fantastic karaharapriya raaga based duet "aanandham pongida pongida"
Enga Ooru Paattukkaaran - shenbagame, madura marikozhundhu, azhagi nee perazhagi
Iniya Uravu Poothathu - has a beautiful hamsanandhi based duet Oh poomalai
Kaadhal Parisu - kaadhal maharani - a grandiose orchestration, koo koo
Manadhil Orudhi Vendum - kanaa varuvaaya, sanga thamizhe
Nayagan - nee oru, then pandi, naan sirithaal
Ninaive Oru Sangeetham - pagalile oru nilavinai, yetham iyaa yetham
Paadu Nilave - malaiyoram veesum kaatru, paadungal paatu paadungal( a good kalyani ), vaa aruge iLlam poonguyile another classy composition . Listen how Raja has used a soga subapanthuvaraaLi scale to an upbeat competition situation and how SPB and Chitra excel in the vocals.
Per Sollum Pillai - ammammaa for its orchestration
Poo Vizhi Vaasaliley - oru kiLiyin thanimaiyile, Chinna chinna rojapoovae, pattenge
Puyal Padam Pattu - vel muruganukku
Rettai Vaal Kuruvi - kannan vandhu, raja raja chozhan
Theertha Karayinile - rajasaranam, I know atleast 3 good melodies here. [kotti kidakkudhu(watch out for KSC's singing in this sudha dhanyasi scale song), vizhiyil pudhu kavidhai padithen with a different sandham and rythm arrangement, theertha karai orathile
Velaikkaaran - vaa vaa vaa, uyirai thaa un uyirai thaa.
Here there are about 34 memorable songs by IR in 1987 which can fill few casettes. I care two hoods even if there are thousand junk songs an MD should give if he or she could provide me these goodies in a single year.
vijayr, we prefer to concentrate on these 34 (nothing short of gems) than harp on the missed ones.

[rajdes]

vijayr
just interested in one thign - according to one estimate, MSV is said to have composed around 1000+ movies. Now, lets say thats an exaggeration. Say it is 700.
How many movies can we list as absolute classics?
50?100?200? I would say 100-200 from my knowledge. What is your number based on your knowledge?

Somehow, I think just because we were around 1980-2005, and know Raja's duds crystal clear, we are straight away thrashing hin in comparison to yester year's md's. Only people who were around at that time can tell us whether a large percentage of their deliverables at that time were not duds.

Even fi you now come and say "I know the complete list of MSV movies and believe me, 60% of them are good", I will have my doubts because there are claims and counter-claims all along and we really dont know who has the correct information about discography of artists.

I wonder if someone could list down MSV's movies and say with convction "See there , there are 600(or 700 or 2000, whatever) movies, and wont you agree with me , 500 of them are great and these are those 500 movies!"!!!!

[rajdes]

vijayr
just interested in one thign - according to one estimate, MSV is said to have composed around 1000+ movies. Now, lets say thats an exaggeration. Say it is 700.
How many movies can we list as absolute classics?
50?100?200? I would say 100-200 from my knowledge. What is your number based on your knowledge?

Somehow, I think just because we were around 1980-2005, and know Raja's duds crystal clear, we are straight away thrashing hin in comparison to yester year's md's. Only people who were around at that time can tell us whether a large percentage of their deliverables at that time were not duds.

Even fi you now come and say "I know the complete list of MSV movies and believe me, 60% of them are good", I will have my doubts because there are claims and counter-claims all along and we really dont know who has the correct information about discography of artists.

I wonder if someone could list down MSV's movies and say with convction "See there , there are 600(or 700 or 2000, whatever) movies, and wont you agree with me , 500 of them are great and these are those 500 movies!"!!!!

[vijayr]

thumburu, once again barring 1 or 2 albums no album from 1987 stands complete and warrants comparison with earlier soundtracks like Johny, Nizhalgal etc. You have listed isolated songs scattered over several movies. I have listened to all of them. But most of these albums had just those 1 or 2 good numbers with the rest forgettable. Some albums didnt have a single noteworthy number.

rajdes, atleast for the 50s/60s there existed a list, it was in TFM pazhaya paadal pakkam earlier on and elsewhere. The dhandams would be less than 10%. Although finding the distinction betweena good song and a classic is highly subjective, it is easy to spot out the clearly bad songs from any era. There have been many veteran DFers who have been around at that time and who have also later on listened to most songs fromm that era. I have listened to quite a lot myself. MSV's output was less inspired only in the mid-to-late 70s.

[vijayr]

Here is another example, sirayil sila raagangaL
http://www.raajangahm.com/ric/film/FL000705.html

has supposedly 11 songs, remember listening to some of them long time back. Cant remember a single song from this album in the same league as say, "idhazhil kadhai ezhudhum" or"sundhari neeyum". 11 songs-all of them average-to-poor.
And between 1995 and 2005...I rest my case.

Better to get back to the main topic. I'll stop here.

[app_engine]

The following is partly digression & partly related to the topic (related in the sense, what spurs on IR or gets his creative juices flowing - which is related to composing techniques or creativity)....

With that warning, please read on...

Music4ever,
While we agree on many points, one point of mine, viz. `competition does not necessarily mean classier music' may not fit in with your ideas...

Here are my three lines of argument to support this theory (w.r.t film music, ofcourse):

1. Most will agree that the 2000's are probably the most competitive time period in TFM...with a lot of equals but no clear leader(VS-YSR-ARR-HJ-Bharadwa...each doing a couple of big banner / star projects), even IR throwing a salvo or two with Kamal / Fazil / BM etc., lot more financial resources to performers, access to great recording / musical equipments, phenomenal array of talented musicians / singers / technicians, relatively bigger market -more global exposure with a lot of NRI etc.

However, is the music classy? Any unbiased listener would dump all of these as `so-so' or `all-the-time-sounding-same' or `engEyo-kEtta-mAdhiri-irukku' etc. even if they don't share my view of 'trash' w.r.t. all of them. The output of ARR, arguably the first among equals, is much below par too - say in comparison with his works in thiruda thiruda, bombay, uyirE or alai pAyudhE...Some may say just for argument's sake that Boys was good too, but it is absolute junk, IMHO, compared to gentleman or kadhalan.

2. Coming back to IR himself, what happened to his output post-92? (Though the competition by way of ARR was more by way of sponsors & technology, ARR DID provide `some' musical competition too...And I don't think we witnessed a classier output from IR in TFM, than, say ninaivellAm nithyA or agni * or thaLapathi)...The spin of events only led to bad colloborations, frustrations, some `indhappazham puLikkum' style statements etc...remember the oorugai statement, and the statement of someone making a jewel out the pearls he struggled to bring up from sea bed etc....and few successes like KM, azhagi etc. but nowhere near his previous classics....Ultimately, no classier music is getting created by IR anymore in TFM...I would be happy to take back this statement if the TIO (or TIS or crossover whatever) disproves the whole thing and exceeds the standards Raja set with HTNI 18 years before...

3. OTOH, in Malayalam field, where IR has no `ambitions' to be the #1 or any of that kind of aspiration, no direct competition, no urge to grab market share or anything of that sort...not even aim to make big bucks...
Still see what kind of music he treated us with - kAlApAni and Guru for e.g.....these stand there together with agni nakshathram in my ranking charts...How this output was possible for IR? Obviously a better colloboration, no dog-eat-dog competition but a correct expectation of `good music' by both the customer(producer-director) and end-users (we listeners)...

So, in conclusion, COMPETITION does not NECESSARILY spur the creative juices of Raja (or any great musician IMHO)...And music should not be treated like `big business' which kills musical quality and class but encourages mediocrity...(Remember the great music that was played out through IOKS for which nobody paid anything...compare that with the expensive CD's that today's MD's churn out)...

[vijayr]

app_engine I agree with your points on competition. It is a minor factor. A more important factor is the quality of films/directors IR works with. Sometimes, if the producer is PA(who is a lyricist and probably has good music sense too), the songs are good even if the film is crappy - Vanaja Girija is an example. Unfortunately more bad directors have worked with IR than the good ones and it eventually reflected on the songs.

[Music4Ever]

app-engine, there is absolutely no doubt that IR can come up with lovely numbers even now, so your Malayalam examples are just, so to say, par for the course as far as IR as a MD is concerned. On the other hand, we were basically discussing how he was the MD for a myriad of movies in the eighties and how that situation could have possibly had an arguably detrimental effect on his overall output in terms of creating consistently good music. So, the first observation is whether IR composed for many malayalam movies (many here would mean of the order of 30 or 40 a year). Secondly, I suggested that after MSV's downfall, caused chiefly by the popularity of IR's music, there was little left for IR to prove, as a result of which he needed something to spur him on to produce music of high quality. Invariably, this happened when the director was good but failed to materialize in a number of films where the environment was probably not exacting enough. This was the essence of my previous post. The point about competition figured in an earlier post and stands corrected in my last post.

[rajdes]

vijay, thats still not proof. We are taking an IR movie list and pointing out duds clearly. If you say MSV had 10% duds, I would like a sample list from say 1963 :-)
Not that it matters to me - but this repeated harping on precise percentage of duds of different MD's does grate when not backed up by anything other than your own judgement and knowledge. (though personally I would go by your judgement, given that i find much of your taste in songs matches mine but this assertive insistence of precise percentages is not very convincing :-)

[Music4Ever]

It is possible that MSV's duds percentage is high, but I would doubt it. One reason is that when he was riding high, he competed with the carnatic legend KVM and other great/good MD's like GKV, VK, Shyam etc. Even SG used to come up with memorable numbers in the seventies. In the eighties, however, except for IR, the other MD's were never considered great.

More on stuff germane to the topic, I was amazed that the song Chella piLLai Saravanan Thiruchendur vAzhum Sundaran was composed by IR. A lovely number, with interludes short and to the point and sung excellently by the singers. Such numbers were surely a sign of the times, probably late seventies, when melodies abounded.

[baroque]

[tscii:1111e1f4f8] Hello friends, I am continuing from that ' Classical Ilayaraaja' article. Talking of Classical Ilayaraa & Vani jayaram.. like to mention
Ennullil engo....Rosappo ravikkai kari (1979)
Soul stirring Vani jayaram solo. Evocative Early Ilayaraaja song!! Lyrics suggest
‘mogum’,seduction. An amazing composition by Raaja, very
sensual singing by Vani. Soul stirring orchestra with guitar, violin, flute,veena, tabhla etc..Vani sings ‘ennullil engo yengum
geetham... Vani’s perfect rendering with lilt, ease & grace ‘pongidum poompunalil...’ humming humming also in the charanam before ‘malligai mullaiyin...’ Stunning masterpiece ‘ennullil engo...’ indeed!!
Virtuosity of IR & Vani jayaram!!! Will be back to read the above postings.. for now i intend to enjoy magic of Vani's voice in Ilayaraaja songs! :D love, Vinu[/tscii:1111e1f4f8]

[kiru]

vijay, thats still not proof. We are taking an IR movie list and pointing out duds clearly. If you say MSV had 10% duds, I would like a sample list from say 1963 :-)
Not that it matters to me - but this repeated harping on precise percentage of duds of different MD's does grate when not backed up by anything other than your own judgement and knowledge. (though personally I would go by your judgement, given that i find much of your taste in songs matches mine but this assertive insistence of precise percentages is not very convincing :-)

My opinions on this arguments here is similar to Raj's. Vijay's judgement and taste is spot on, but don't understand the glass is 'half-empty' logic.

[kiru]

...
So, in conclusion, COMPETITION does not NECESSARILY spur the creative juices of Raja (or any great musician IMHO)...And music should not be treated like `big business' which kills musical quality and class but encourages mediocrity...(Remember the great music that was played out through IOKS for which nobody paid anything...compare that with the expensive CD's that today's MD's churn out)...

A good attempt to explore raaja's competitive skills. My take is, he did compete well with MSV and others. Mainly because these MDs were all following the same idiom, set of standards, game rules etc. I think with the advent of ARR, the rules of the game have changed, making it a little frustrating for IR. The usage of grooves/rhythm loops/chord libraries/sample sounds and drum machines in full scale overwhelmed IR, I think. He is so frustrated by the field, which now wants a 'new sound' iin each and every movie instead of a good kalyani or whatever. No wonder people termed ARR 'isai puyal'. Still, I think, it would be silly for IR to operate like ARR, leading to quite a bit of confusion (even subbudu, mentioned, that ARR 'thaalaththai' adipadaiyaaga vaithu paattu amaikkiraar, IR avarukkenRu amaiththulla vidhimuRaigalukkurpattu isai amaikka vEndiyuLLathu' ..meaning after a lifetime of work, IR cannot undo some criteria for his music).

[kiru]

..
More on stuff germane to the topic, I was amazed that the song Chella piLLai Saravanan Thiruchendur vAzhum Sundaran was composed by IR. A lovely number, with interludes short and to the point and sung excellently by the singers. Such numbers were surely a sign of the times, probably late seventies, when melodies abounded.
Very MSVish isn't it ? There are quite a bit of numbers like that in the early part of IR's career. It took a while to get IR's stamp/style on the melody/tune itself.

[vijayr]

"I think with the advent of ARR, the rules of the game have changed, making it a little frustrating for IR. The usage of grooves/rhythm loops/chord libraries/sample sounds and drum machines in full scale overwhelmed IR, I think."

we are talking about the late 80s, before we even get to post-1992. IR's output was so-so even in the late 80s when there were no loops or software etc.


Rajdes, if I find MSV's discography somewhere online I'll try to list the songs. Of course it also depends on how much you and anyone else here have listened to songs from that era. But my 10%, 20% figures arent meant to be taken with a tolerance of 1% :-)) Based on the large representative samples that I have heard from 60s and 80s, kuththumadhippa solradhu dhaan.
Its like saying, 8 out of every 10 songs that I have randomly picked from the 60s have been good or great and certainly not dhandams. Again this might be applicable to me(and you, if your taste indeed is close to mine) but not for someone else. Subjective. Also creativity in MSV's era meant something different than that in the 80s.

But all this is not going change the bottomline-that the late 80s produced a lot of medicore songs, the proof is already existing for me. The last 10 years, even worse. Certainly percentage -wise and in sheer numbers IR's medicore output exceeds that of any big TFM MD(like MSV,GR,ARR etc.). I think as bad as it sounds, its true. IR probably has one of the highest numbers of classics as well amongst TFM biggies. In short, he is as mixed a bag as they come.

[vijayr]

" but don't understand the glass is 'half-empty' logic."

well, I see that the glass is half-full and half-empty at the same time, thats the problem :-)Its just that if you are a Sachin fan, you want to see him score less ducks and single-digit figures than other biggies.

[mythila]

thumburu, thanks for listing most of the melodies of 1987. I think your list is mostly not debatable. But you have missed some of my favourites from "Iniya uravu poothadhu" - "chikkendra aadaiyil "(Jane Fonda overlapped aerobic song) and "enge enge".
36 good numbers for a year cannot be just 20% as what vijayr has put. And going by mere percentage is misleading. It makes 36 good songs out of 100 songs per year equal to somebody who could just compose 4 good songs out of 10 total songs for a year. Probably hits wise , it might not be a good year for IR. I think Chandrabose's Manidhan, Shankar Guru etc topped the charts.
M4ever, I tend to agree with you regarding the competition part. But MSV could have been a threat only for IR's initial 2 to 3 years. He stopped being a force to reckon with after NinithaalInikkum. It was SG who was in a neck to neck race with IR during late 70's and early eighties. IR had no other option but to experiment . Contrary to what vijayr says, IR enjoyed the maximum commercial hits only in the 1985-1992 period and not much during early 80's or late 70's. SG was equally, if not more prolific than IR . Some of his hits includes "palaivanacholai", "aaniver", "Neeya", "vandi chakkaram", "nakshathram", "vidhi", "aatukkara alamelu", "kanni paruvathile", "moondru mugam" and it is a long list. IR's best works lke "kallukkuL eeram", "nenjathai killaadhe", "johnny", "niram maradha pookaL" , "Nandu" etc were only patronized by the musically discerning crowd and not the mass.

[rajdes]

Vijay, I dont even need the MSV list :-). I have listened to a good many numbers from 1950's to 70's and have a deep respect for MSV specifically, even in comparison to his contemporaries.
It is just that let's not hang IR for his ,say,80% duds(exaggerating beyond the tolerance limit) in 1980's without knowing how many duds MSV produced in 1950's and 1960's(just for comparison, it could easily be SD Burman or even Veda!).
I mean, you know about Per sollum Pillai and Aalapirnadhavan because you were around when they were released. Just consider 20 years later, how is a Vijay of future going to judge IR. He is probably going to listen to NN, Agni *, Moondram Pirai etc and conclude that of the 100 IR songs he heard, 70 were good. So IR must have had 70% consistency - hope you get my point.

Who is to say MSV or any other MD didnt have his own aalapirandhavan or Pickpocket in the 1960's?

And yes, my question still stands:
How many films do you think MSV has done? How many songs?
How many of these do you think are good(an estimate)?
That would establish your stand and I think there shouldnt pretty much be any argument after that.

[mythila]

ShankarGanesh used to quickly implement whatever IR did.
Kanni paruvathiley was a reply to 16 vayadhinile
Sivappu malli to KaN sivandhaal maN sivakkum. If IR used Naatai scale with western blend in "panivizhum malarvanam", SG used the same scale with western blend in the song "santhana punnagai minnidum " from NadodiRaja soon. SG also had the kadai kaN paarvai of Vairamuthu for palaivanacholai, Amma and many,
There were also times when SG actually overtook IR in terms of mass hits during early 80's . For IR , who was on his way to the top, SG factor might have pushed him to heights of creativity.

[thumburu]

mythila, welcome :)
rajdes, I completely agree with you. When proper list is not available for IR's predecessors, it is not fair to compare based on percentage. The elders in my family used to rave the quality of 30's and 40's era when legends like SVVenkatraman, GRamanathan, SMSubbiahNaidu were composing and the likes of GNB, MSSubbalakshmi, NCVasanthakokilam, MKT, PUChinnappa were singing. If you ask them, they say mediocrity in TFM crept in only after VR era, and that is when our films began dialogs laden and actors who cannot sing but can speak well, gained prominence. Generally music played a second fiddle to lyrics whereas you know here in TFMPage, it is almost a sacrilege to criticize the VR era. But Iam thankful for our radios as they took the onerous task of segregating the chaff and gave mostly the good melodies.What one sees in the pazhaiya paadal pakkam are normally only the good ones which avid old music lovers remember from hearing thru the radios. Hardly anybody would remember the duds. Iam convinced there must be sizeable black sheep in the bye gone era too. I have read Kalki's film music reviews in kalki magazine's "Amarar Kalki ninaivu pakkangal" . You can see that he has given scathing reviews for few of VR's block busters like "kudiyirundha kovil", "Ragasiya Police 115" , "Kumari Kottam". He has repeatedly lamented about the slow death of classical music in TFM.[It is understandable as he is the one who has penned lyrics for classics like "Meera" , "Sevasadhanam" etc.] . So if you start looking from a music connoisseur like Kalki's point, there were lot of craps even in the 50's and 60's.

[thumburu]

rajdes, moreover, Iam fairly familiar with 70's as I don't miss any 70's film shown on the TV. Early 70's was when MSV was the undisputed king of TFM with TKR biting the dust. One need not strain to look for bad elements only from late 70's. MSV has given lot of duds even during his peak period which could outdo IR's. Films like "thalai prasavam", "Manipayal", "Paadhugaappu", " Needhi" , "Ninaithadhai mudippavan" , "Engal kula deivam", etc. Even mega hit movies like Raja, "Sirithu vaazha vendum" , Bharatha vilas, Urimai kural etc had just only one song even worthy of mention. Radios used to play only that one single good song like "konja neram ennai marandhen" of "Sirithu vaazha vendum" or "vizhiye kadhai yezhudu" from "Urimai Kural". Who cares to even remember the rest of the craps like "mera naam abdul rehmaan" or "ponna porandha aambillai kitta " .
Everybody remembers only the lone hit song "malare kurinji malare" from Dr.Shiva. Do they care to know the other junk songs in that movie? Only a sridhar' or KB or few high profile MGR starrer like USV could guarantee a good album from MSV during his peak. Add the compulsory obscene cabaret numbers from LRE which unfailingly featured in every other movie . But this paucity of melodies from MSV was to some extent compensated by MD'S from neighbouring states like GKV, Vijayabhaskar, Devarajan, a very rare Salilda.

[vijayr]

SG being a competition to IR?!! Good joke. Anyways we proved earlier that IR's quality isnt affected as much by cometition. If it did he must have had innumerable classics between 1992-95.

"36 good numbers for a year cannot be just 20% as what vijayr has put. "

Mythila, yes it is. IR did about 30-40 movies a year totalling around 150-175 songs. Now you do the math. And even amongst those 36 songs, a lot of songs are just decent or above average. They are not duds, period.

"R's best works lke "kallukkuL eeram", "nenjathai killaadhe", "johnny", "niram maradha pookaL" , "Nandu" etc were only patronized by the musically discerning crowd and not the mass."

again not true. Just for argument sake we shouldnt twist facts. IR became a big factor by 1982 only because his earlier albums were big hits, starting with AnnakiLi. Payanangal mudivadhillai, for instance, was a super duper hit and had platinum discs.


thumburu, MSV's output after 1976 or 77 is comparable to that of IR's after 1995. But we are talking about their peak periods, the 60s and 80s. In the late 50s/60s you wont find many duds like how you could find in the late 80s.

"It is just that let's not hang IR for his ,say,80% duds(exaggerating beyond the tolerance limit) in 1980's without knowing how many duds MSV produced in 1950's and 1960's(just for comparison, it could easily be SD Burman or even Veda!). "

Rajdes, I stand by duds theory. Suffice to say that it was a large percentage, somewhere between 50 and 80% as we go year by year between 1987 and 92. Not that the balance were all classics. Many of them were average and I have been kind enough not to include them along with the duds :-) Anyways MSV's duds in the 60s have little bearing on IR's in the late 80s. I am not exaggerating, I am looking at the facts.Even if we dig out a few duds from the 60s, that not going to change IR's bad songs list, does it?


Rajdes, in my estimate the number of albums could be 400-500. There were quite a few albums he did in the 50s. In the 60s, it should be around 160-200 albums with a 10-20% dhandams at most. That was his peak period, 1958-70.
This is probably a partial list from PPP
http://www.tfmpage.com/ppp/msv_des.html
have to click on both links for albums before and after 65.

[vijayr]

"Just consider 20 years later, how is a Vijay of future going to judge IR. He is probably going to listen to NN, Agni *, Moondram Pirai etc and conclude that of the 100 IR songs he heard, 70 were good. So IR must have had 70% consistency - hope you get my point. "

rajdes, true, thats why we are still fans because we listen only to those goodies and forget the bad ones. I cant remember the bad songs to list them. I am not about to hang IR for the 100-0dd average or bad songs in 1987. My angst is that he could have reduced that number. It was in his hands entirely and he didnt limit his choice of films. 35 good songs in a year sounds like a nice big number but is somewhat tarnished by the 100 other average-to-junk songs. Even MSV wouldnt have given more than 25-30 good songs in a year in the late 60s, but he succeeded in limiting the number of dhandams by not doing 40 films/year. (he did it later on in the late 70s after IR's advent. thumburu seems to remember MSV's bad films better :-) )

[rajdes]

vijay,
I have absolutely no problems with your opinions. I am not even into the numbers business except for the fact that I am counting the absolute no. of goodies provided by IR in comparison to others(the judgement here is mine) and stop there.
The junkies will soon vanish into obscurity and as I said, IR will acuqire a MSV-ish Halo for a Vijay of the future generation. Which is where he scores.

IMO, this is all unnecessary detail into the enjoyment of his music. I*just*dont*care*about*his*junk*songs.

Why he did them is beyond us to speculate?Could be a hundred reasons and probably valid practical reasons. We just cant comment on that from an idealistic point of view.
Despite his obvious Musical genius, IR didnt choose to put his professional life above personal life so he might have had simple financial compulsions in agreeing to junk movies. I dont see a problem with that even if he didnt oproduce great music fo these - that is definitely not lack of professionalism. He has been clear about his philospohy - "What comes spontaneously to me is what will be delivered. "
If there are producers willing to take that, fine. He sold his talent for uppu,puli,molaga. So what? In the process, even if 20 our of 100 songs were good, we should be happy. I will not think about the 80 he did for his pozhaippu.

Surely, Kamal etc got good music because at the outset, they were clear that they dont want just any song from him - If you listen to Guna composition(however setup that sounds) session in the cassette, Kamal approaches with a clear cut definition of what he wants down to the "tak tak sound " of ceiling fan. Obviously, he will get a better product than Ramarajan who says "anne , edho paarthu pottu kdunga".

If I am a vendor, and you are a client, what you ask is what you will get. I will not produce extra features unless you specifically ask me and pay me for it. THIS IS PROFESSIONALISM.

I think we have to agree to disagree if you have contrary opinions:-)

[Music4Ever]

"Who cares to even remember the rest of the craps like "mera naam abdul rehmaan" or "ponna porandha aambillai kitta " "

A quick reply for now (There is so much to read and reply in this thread!). Interesting to note that the poNNA pirandhA number is crap to some. According to me it is a very good song. However, since we are into attacking MDs based on our perception of good/bad songs, that should be OK, I guess :)

Mythila's observation seems to be correct. IR had probably more to fear from SG than MSV as far BO record went. However, it is safe to conjecture that it was MSV he regarded as his equal/superior. Beating MSV must have given him most satisfaction. This is somewhat analogous to ARR vs IR. Even though Deva/VS are good composers, ARR must have gotten lot of satisfaction in going one-up over IR in the nineties.

Kiru, you are correct, I felt that the Chella piLLai song was somewhat reminicent of MSV or other MDs of his era. Hats off to IR for that song.

Finally, after much introspection, it seems somewhat uncharitable to criticize IR for his possible higher duds percentage, considering that he has given a far higher number of quality songs compared to any other MD. The theory that music springs spontaneously out of him has serious merit, IMO. Because of this producers and directors probably begged him to compose for their films, which IR couldn't refuse.

[rprasad]

Rajdes, I completly agree with you. There is no point in speculating about what if IR had not accepted those junk movies. Ther period 1985- 92 saw the release of so many junk movies and directors trying to just cash in on IR's name to market their movies. As Rajdes said IR gave what the directors wanted. Most of these junk movie directors took whatever tune IR came up with and just ran with it( ihheard stores about directors/producers falling at this feet). Some of them ran commerically well making even the songs popular while some of them sank without a trace. Now we can always argue as to why he accepted those movies. But maybe that is the way he works . I am amazed that he came up with classics like Nayagan, Agni etc while working in so many movies (most of them junk). Makes you scrath your head literally thinking as to what if he had avoided those junk movies. Well it,s his way of working, maybe he wanted to keep composing all the time without breaks. Maybe thats the way Geniuses work sometimes. Thankfully we have enough classics to last a lifetime and more. So lets focus on those.

[app_engine]

Digression (related to the `Genius' stuff and only distantly related to the thread)

Greenfield village in Dearborn,MI is a Ford sponsored museum where the house of Wright bros, their cycle shop, the home of Webster and a number of similar places are moved and set up in a old American village like environ. It also hosts an old lab and a workshop of T A Edison (Edison & Henry Ford were close friends, says the museum)...I remember reading there that Edison set himself a target of x number of inventions per week, y per month, z per year etc. Going by the number of his patents, there is no argument that he was prolific.

However, in the lab, along with the prototypes of the gramaphone, carbon-filament lamp and such treasures, you'll also see lots and lots of items that can be considered insignificant as we see today. (for e.g. they have preserved a few coconut fibers that he tested out for the lamp's filament and many such naturally available materials till he hit a reasonable quality fit)...While no one in his right mind can say he shouldn't have tried them (as it is part of experimentation, obviously), at least some of us might think that why he wanted TO KEEP THEM IN THE LAB after finding a superior stuff...shouldn't they been thrown away, we might ask silently...

However, he chose to keep them in the lab and the museum authorities still keep them as exhibit and people pay to visit and see these things...

Does this coconut fibre strike some common thread here in the digressing discussion?

[app_engine]

A small clarification - coconut fiber =thEnga nAr:-)

[vijayr]

"Well it,s his way of working, maybe he wanted to keep composing all the time without breaks."

He could have still done that-keep composing all the time-by doing 15-20 movies/year and spending the rest on some other projects like TIS or Moods of IR or India 24hrs and the likes. And at that time, he was commercially successful enough to sell or market such albums. Or spend more time on those 15-20 films and come out with 3 or 4 classics in each album. IR took several days to finish Guru's songs and BGM - he didnt compose them in 1hr like he did for the average movies. That shows that even spontaneous artistes have to work on their scores to make it perfect.Same with TIS.
Also,he himself has lamented publicly about the quality of films and directors who keep giving same situations. No one else before him has publicly lamented , atleast to my knowledge. So the best thing would have been to do limit movies in TFM, instead accept better movies in other languages(telugu, malayalam etc.) and release more HTNIs and NBWs. Rahman has been trying to do this somewhat(although of late his TFM selection hasnt been very good). He has been selective right from the beginning and (even if his classics arent high in number IMO) the dhandams associated against his name will be less. Meanwhile he spends time working on some worthwhile non-filmi projects. I think IR squandered some opportunities working on pathetic movies in the late 80s/early 90s when he could have done something better. That's just my stance. For his talent, he could have accepted something more challenging.

rajdes, I agree with your points. But in the first 6 or 7 years even bad films/directors got good songs because IR in an attempt to break through wasnt discriminating(eg.Karumbu Vil,PoonthaLir,Kaatrinile varum geetham and many others). Or the very first tune he got in his head at that time was a great one. But in the late 80s he either was discriminating or needed someone to push him to give a creative product. Thats when he should have drawn the line instead of complaining about it and then continuing to do movies like yenna peththa raasa, thozhar Paandian and the likes. Thats just my peeve. He of course had his own reasons to do those films.

[rprasad]

Vijay, I see your point, but again how many good films were being made during that time? If he chooses 15 films maybe 3 or 4 could fall under the good category offering him challenges. Films like Guru are rare for IR where he takes more time than usual to compose. Infact he did do a lot of Telugu movies during that time along with tamil and other languages. Its very hard to find a movie that pushed IR to take more time to compose. I am not sure how much time classics like Agni, sindhu bhairavi, punnagai mannan took. Also lets not take seriously anythng he says to the media. We all know how eccentric he is and moody as well. I think its just his nature to keep accepting any movie by any director (as long as there has not been any ego conflicts Eg- Balachander, BR) especially during his peak. He just either does not know how to say no or just his nature. I think his talent to churn out songs with incredibile speed became a curse during that time made him feel like he can handle any number of movies. and as i mentioned earlier the junk movie directors helped it more by running with any tune he provided.

[vijayr]

rprasad, not just good movies, good directors/actors as well. If it is Kamal, then even an average masala like Soorasamharam will have good songs. Kamal was doing 2-4 films/year at that time. Other than that KB, Manirathnam, Fazil, BaluM,BR, PanjuA-produced movies, Rajni, R.V. Udhayakumar movies and K.viswanath/Vamsi movies in Telugu would be enough to get to around 15 movies or more. I might have left out 1 or 2 more in that list.
Basically work with all the top directors/banners and just do 1 or 2 films for Ramarajan/Vijaykanth/Sathyaraj. Spend the rest of the time on some albums.I am pretty sure Sindhu Bhairavi wouldnt have been composed in 25 mins like Chinnathambi. KB had a keen music sense and IR must have worked atleast a few hours if not days on songs and BGM.

[thumburu]

vijayr, you can spare your condescension. I don't know if you were around that time. But SG did provide a stiff competition in terms of mass hits. SG's golden period (by BO standards) was 78-84. Songs from "nenjamellaam neeye"("yaaradhu"), "theeraadha viLaiyaatu piLLai"("malargale idhoidho"), "megame megame", KalyanaKaalam, Nellikani, Nakshathram("Shivaranjini"),Neeya, Darling Darling
were lapped up by all melody lovers.After 85 till 92 when SG lost steam, the field became IR's personal fiefdom and few northie MD's like BappiL. LP proved to be just a flash in the pan. Chandrabose and TR were mercifully not prolific.
IR did attempt something different around mid 90's (94-96) after ARR had clearly overtaken him. But due to various obvious reasons, it did not pay him off and he must have become a frustrated man.
"Maharajanodu"- sathileelavathi , "nil nil ", "poongaatrile", "vazhi vidu" from paatupaadavaa, "munnam seidha" from vanaja girija , "ippodhenna thevai" from mmakkaLaatchi, songs from Kolangal, raasaiah etc had a very modern feel[more synth, less natural instruments] , soft, sophisticated and quite different from his earlier works .

[thumburu]

btw, Iam mythila's mouth piece :))

[rajdes]

vijay,
can see your point there. but he has moved on. No point we cribbing, especially 15 years after when-it-could-have-been.
Actually, what, he could stop making music now and I would still not find all his gems in my lifetime, including the 80's ones.
Namakku evvalavu kuduthalum podha maatengudhulla ? :-)

[Cacaphonix]

btw, Iam mythila's mouth piece

thumburu,

Was wondering whether you had a talk with guys like * (prabhu), hehewalrus before you took this mouth piece avatar :wink:

[vijayr]

thumburu, SG ratio was 1 good song out of 10. They hardly had any big blockbusters. The songs you have listed didnt exactly set the charts on fire. How many albums of SG had platinum discs? Some of these songs were played on radio at that time and hence we are familiar, thats all. You have listed isolated popular songs from several films. I cant think of one single big album/blockbuster from SG. Even TR had Oru thalai raagam.

"IR did attempt something different around mid 90's (94-96) after ARR had clearly overtaken him. "

very few and far in between. I remember him delivering duds like Saadhu(for P. Vasu), Thozhar Pandian, Ponvilangu and several others. Clearly no amount of competition could drive him. Even the synth stuff that you are talking about was probably because of KR's involvement. After symphony #1, IR seemed to have lost quite a bit of interest in TFM.

rajdes, I just felt that part of his time could have been better spent on non-filmi albums, thats all, where he could compose without any constraints. In the process, he would have also reduced the bad numbers in TFM. Otherwise, the good ones he has given in TFM is more than enough.

[arun]

Vijayr, I agree with you. For some reasons unknown, he never looked comfortable outside of the commercial world of film music. If my memory serves right, he mentioned in one his interviews that he composed the albums How to name it? and Nothing but Wind during the break time he got during film music scoring sessions. I think his symphony and Thiruvasakam were the only two instances when he stole some time from his film music schedule.

I also remember in the case of symphony he gave himself only a month and swiftly returned to composing for some mindless movies. I am afraid if that had any bearing on the quality of the symphony. Its very rare among even the greatest of European classical composers to compose a symphony in a month. According to Mozart experts, even Mozart, arguably the fastest and one of the greatest, took a lot of time and corrected his notes frequently before he presented his works( Indepth research into Mozart's life has negated the myth that Mozart had everything in his mind and put his notes directly on paper without any corrections).

I am just wondering what more he could have achieved if he had come out of his addiction to film music. In European classical music there is a musical form called Rhapsody, wherein you take a folk song and convert it into a classical piece. Hungarian classical composers like Bartok, Liszt and Antonin Dvorak often took Hungarian and Gypsy folk songs and converted them into classical pieces. Ilayaraja, with his immense knowledge of Tamil folk music could have created hundreds of Rhapsodies thereby creating a fusion between European classical music and Tamil folk music. That would have been a totally innovative thing. Or just look at what Bach did. Not only did he create great compositions, but he also left something for posterity. He wrote seminal works on musical techniques ( The Well Tempered Clavier series for example) which inspired countless musicians including Ilayaraja.


Bernard Herrmann, whom many consider the father of film music, once wrote, produced and released an Opera named "Wuthering Heights". He spent enormous amount of money from his own pocket even though he knew from start that it would be a commercial failure. Now thats what I call as true devotion to music. Compare Herrmann's attitude to that of Ilayaraja's. His symphony has not seen the light of the day and Thiruvasakam is in a state of perpetual postponement. This inspite of the fact that Ilayaraja never wastes a chance to say that it was the project for which he was born.

I am always an admirer of Ilayaraja, the musical genius. But Ilayaraja, the man will always remain an enigma to me.

[arun]

Vijayr, I agree with you. For some reasons unknown, he never looked comfortable outside of the commercial world of film music. If my memory serves right, he mentioned in one his interviews that he composed the albums How to name it? and Nothing but Wind during the break time he got during film music scoring sessions. I think his symphony and Thiruvasakam were the only two instances when he stole some time from his film music schedule.

I also remember in the case of symphony he gave himself only a month and swiftly returned to composing for some mindless movies. I am afraid if that had any bearing on the quality of the symphony. Its very rare among even the greatest of European classical composers to compose a symphony in a month. According to Mozart experts, even Mozart, arguably the fastest and one of the greatest, took a lot of time and corrected his notes frequently before he presented his works( Indepth research into Mozart's life has negated the myth that Mozart had everything in his mind and put his notes directly on paper without any corrections).

I am just wondering what more he could have achieved if he had come out of his addiction to film music. In European classical music there is a musical form called Rhapsody, wherein you take a folk song and convert it into a classical piece. Hungarian classical composers like Bartok, Liszt and Antonin Dvorak often took Hungarian and Gypsy folk songs and converted them into classical pieces. Ilayaraja, with his immense knowledge of Tamil folk music could have created hundreds of Rhapsodies thereby creating a fusion between European classical music and Tamil folk music. That would have been a totally innovative thing. Or just look at what Bach did. Not only did he create great compositions, but he also left something for posterity. He wrote seminal works on musical techniques ( The Well Tempered Clavier series for example) which inspired countless musicians including Ilayaraja.


Bernard Herrmann, whom many consider the father of film music, once wrote, produced and released an Opera named "Wuthering Heights". He spent enormous amount of money from his own pocket even though he knew from start that it would be a commercial failure. Now thats what I call as true devotion to music. Compare Herrmann's attitude to that of Ilayaraja's. His symphony has not seen the light of the day and Thiruvasakam is in a state of perpetual postponement. This inspite of the fact that Ilayaraja never wastes a chance to say that it was the project for which he was born.

I am always an admirer of Ilayaraja, the musical genius. But Ilayaraja, the man will always remain an enigma to me.

[tvsankar]

Arun
I read ur post.You are the another wrong person enters in this thread like me.Thread oda topic parthu yemandhurteengala? :lol:
Ingae IR oda composing tec pathi pesarnaga!!!!! Neenga enna solla vareenga?
Ingae irukum knowledgable persons solra madhiri solla theirja sollunga? otherwise watch them.This is a public discussion forum..
Nanum ungalai madhiri dhan ninaichu ingae vandhaen.Edho notation,harmony,cards.wmc nu pesuvanga nu.Illai.Idhu IR in composing skill patri( not the music skill) pesara place.So neengalaum indha madhiriyae pesunga :lol: Indha madhiri pesaradhu dhan discussion forum.Especially about IR.Ha ha ha!!!!
With Love.
Usha Sankar.

Ps: Indha madhiri naan pesaradhu dhan unga kuda discuss panradhu!!! Right? Learn panraen from u!!!!

[thumburu]

Digression :
K oops Cacaphonix, self defence enna thappa? thumburu kitteye naradhar velaiya? Naaraayana Naaraayana......

vijayr, regarding SG, Iam not talking about quality but mass hits. "They hardly had any big blockbusters. The songs you have listed didnt exactly set the charts on fire" - palaivanacholai(1981), neeya(1980), Kanni paruvathile(1980) sivappumalli(1982), Darling Darling(1982) , Vidhi(1982) , Ranga (1982),moondrumugam(1983) did.
Check out with knowhows, there might be more.

"IR did attempt something different around mid 90's (94-96) after ARR had clearly overtaken him. "

very few and far in between - How could they be far when I have clearly listed the songs(not exhaustive list but nevertheless) within just the variation of 1994-1996? Whether KR was there or not is irrelevant. But it is a fact that there was a marked change in atleast the overall feel to some of his songs with or without KR that time. Ponvilangu is not by IR.
IR's reaction to competition might not be so apparent. But he is a true blood film MD. Aana paavam avar thothu poittaar. avalothaan. Otherwise why all this sour grapes syndrome like his wasting all his years in film music blah blah.

[rajdes]

vijay, agreed. I see your point of view. He could have come out of his comfort zone but didnt. Only thing I wanted to convey is that doesnt make him a lesser musician in comparison to MSV or SDB or anyone.Comparisons are odious...

[vijayr]

thumburu, the movies you have listed of SG- only isolated songs from them were popular in radio. I dont think they had blockbuster albums with all song hits- like PayanangaL mudivathillai. That way,even Chandrabose had a few isolated hits in the late 80s.
"very few and far in between - How could they be far when I have clearly listed the songs(not exhaustive list but nevertheless) within just the variation of 1994-1996? "
Because there were so many other films which didnt have anything new in them. And yes, Ponvilangu is indeed by IR. You can confirm it with his discography

rajdes, not a lesser musician in terms of talent, but definitely questionable professional methods/ethics(like complaining about bad films/directors and continuing to accept them. Either devote same attention to all movies, or accept less). Like Arun mentioned earlier, that part of IR is an enigma.

[app_engine]

thumburu,vijayr

reg.S-G, once Kumudam lights-on made a remark (after kannipparuvathilE & palaivanachchOlai) that they are leading the industry ahead of IR:-( It was a deliberat attempt to belittle IR (which the vambu magazine relished) while not true...At no point S-G had any influence on the listeners like IR/ARR (and to a lesser extent MSV/KVM), where the listener will say `Hi, idhu ivarOda music'...

Having said that, one must admit that `kannipparuvaththilE' was a big hit album with adi ammAdi chinnappoNNu (my personal fav song), nadaiya mAthu (popular with youth) and pattu vaNNa rOsAvAm (two versions, one by SJ another by MV, reverberated in all patti-thotti, much to my dislike... the song itself was inspired from IR's`uchchi vahindheduthu')...

All the others except neeyA were popular only because the movies themselves were big hits and the songs followed...even then vidhi songs weren't much heard (at least not as much as people heard the `olichchithiram', which was so popular)...neeyA songs were hits but exact replicas of the hindi originals...

Well' sorry for the digression...if there's a thread called S-G's composing technique (or Deva's for that matter), it'll be "pick a popular western song, hindi song or IR song and make a (`poor' in case of S-G and `noisy' in case of Deva) replica of it":-)

[balaji]

App_engine

It was not only Kumudam, but also Ananda Vikatan. I vaguely remember their review for a Devar Movie (I believe it had LAkshmi, Jai and others) in the early 80s after the success of PCholai.

They said something like 'With SG going in this range, they would soon overtake IR'. ...

There was one good SPB-SJ song. However later I found out that the song was lifted from the Hindi "Justi Chowdry' with Bappi Saab as the MD

Thinks were very rough to IR in the early 80s as many of his musical hits did not essentially cash at BO

Bala

[Music4Ever]

"At no point S-G had any influence on the listeners like IR/ARR (and to a lesser extent MSV/KVM), where the listener will say `Hi, idhu ivarOda music'... "

app_engine, the above remark in which MSV and KVM figure is highly blasphemous :) MSV and KVM did have influence on listeners of another era, about which you are probably unfamiliar. Specifically, guitar bits used to be a distinguishing feature in KVM non-carnatic songs, and thabla and flute was MSV's forte, not to forget the bangos (sp?). I for one, could clearly discern an MSV song those days (late seventies). Raagangal padhinaru, Gowri manohariyai kandEn, kana kaanum kangal mella, ilakkanam maarudho, kamban emandhan, vendum vendum ungal uravu, sippi irukkudhu, were all trademark MSV numbers of the late seventies and early eighties. Bonafide mellisai numbers.

Not to in any way belittle IR (Although my heart is in favor of MSV/KVM/GR/GKV/VK..., my head says IR is better than each one of them individually in the overall achievement scale), but I used to figure out his songs through the meandering/seemingly out of context interludes that were characteristic of many numbers. When we were growing up, we used to regard SG like Deva is being regarded now, that is spoilers. But now, objectively looking at things, SG and Deva are good MDs, IMO.

[app_engine]

enna Music4ever sir, "on listeners of another era"nnu solleetu, namma era pathiyE (late 70's,80's) ezhudhi irukkeenga:-)

In fact, all the MSV songs that you've mentioned are post-IR entry, which kind of vindicates my theory that people took real note of MD as someone important for a movie after the entry of IR! (adhukku munnAdi MGR-Sivaji dhAn ellAm...minjippOna TMS-PS-AMR-Jikki-Kannadasan'nnu ellArum `lion's share' eduththuttu, michcham dhAn MDkku kidaikkum...I mean from the moviegoer / listener's point of view...till recently, i.e. till the V Kumar thread, I was crediting almost all of his songs to MSV, thanks to this confusion-as-to-who-shares-max-credit problem. IR was the first clear winner MD, most times grabbing lion's share credit from even Kamal-Rajini films)...

Though I belong primarily to IR era, I pretty much observe the way my seniors talk about TFM (including my dad who had 78RPM records featuring MKT / NSK)...and I can vouch for the fact that maximum credit for MD started with IR...(agreed MSV had his moments, mostly after IR's entry, like `ninaiththAlE inikkum')...and the only other flag bearer is ARR...ippO uLLadhunga ellAM -VS,YSR,BW,Deva,SAR etc- andha recognition'ai maRupadiyum tholaichchittu nikkudhunga:-( (It's again Rajini song, Vijai song'nnu Ayittu varudhu)

[app_engine]

namma DF'aiyE eduththukkunga, there are separate forums only for IR & ARR:-) maththavangaLellAm onnu pazhasu alladhu currentu'nnu koottaththOda koottamA thAnE irukkAnga?

[vijayr]

That's because of the current age group of the fans who visit TFMpage who are predominantly in their 20s/30s including TFM admin. Few years from now, IR will be lumped along with old MDs :-) In any era, the composer is vital. Without his contribution there are no TMS-PS-Jikki/ KJY-SPB or MGR-Sivaji / Rajni-Kamal songs. From IR's era, hype for the MD started with posters/cutouts and IR himself helped the cause by making numerous appearences in films(for someone who is supposedly media-shy) and singing atleast one song in every film during a stretch. There was a movie I vaguely remember which starts off with Gangai Amaran begging IR to score music. Ridiculous.

In Rahman's case, him breaking the Hindi barrier was significant and helped him along with emergence of sat TV channels. He himself was good in marketing his products.

Whereas, MSV/TKR and others MDs of that era believed in doing their job and remaining in the background and not trying to hog the limelight. And the media of that era was probably more focussed on MGR and his political movement.

[app_engine]

Digression again -
"Whereas, MSV/TKR and others MDs of that era believed in doing their job and remaining in the background" - because putting their pics on posters or showing them on screen won't market the movie or music...neither it will if they do today with any of the current MD's...customer demand illAmal idhellAm nadakkAdhu...business sir business:-))

Very few MD's in India had the kind of recognition (vijayr may call it `hype', I chose `recognition' which is a more reasonable term IMHO) like IR and ARR - not just in ad glitz, but also by pundits...Go to Kerala and check any of the music shops - you'll find KJY's pic (& nowadays KSC's too, some even have Latha M's pic)...no MD...It'll probably be the same story anywhere in the country - except TN, where you'll see IR / ARR banners -adhukkellAm ivanga reNdu pErum vandhu kAsA kodukkarAnga? abimAnam sir, abimAnam plus marketing:-)

End-digression, S-G pidikka, ippadi mudindhadhu...let's focus on IR's composing technique...

[thops]

From IR's era, hype for the MD started with posters/cutouts and IR himself helped the cause by making numerous appearences in films(for someone who is supposedly media-shy) and singing atleast one song in every film during a stretch. There was a movie I vaguely remember which starts off with Gangai Amaran begging IR to score music. Ridiculous.

numerous appearances ??? GA begging ilaiyaraaja ??? give us a break...and what is wrong in IR singing a song in each of his movies other than your personal nonpreference for his voice....

vijayr...though several of your points are valid it is your choice of inappropriate/insensitive words that elicits strong reactions on this forum i guess...just an observation...

[vijayr]

"because putting their pics on posters or showing them on screen won't market the movie or music...neither it will if they do today with any of the current MD's...customer demand illAmal idhellAm nadakkAdhu...business sir business:"

They didnt have to put their faces on posters to market their music, because the quality of the songs spoke for themselves. No need for extra hype. If they didnt have customer demand how did they survive for 20+ years? Their most successful earlier albums like Paava mannippu, Maalayitta Mangai etc. didnt have any MGR in it or any political overtones. They did it just with the quality of their work. Anyway, to each his own opinion :-)

Anyways, If we were to judge the quality of a body of work based on popularity then Britney Spears would end up being a better artiste than Bach :-))

[vijayr]

"numerous appearances ??? GA begging ilaiyaraaja ??? give us a break."

I'll give you a break :-) Yes, numerous appearances. NizhalgaL, Saadhanai, Villupaatukaaran, Pudhu Pudhu arthangaL and 2 more movies. And in one of these movies, the opening scene is GA and others going to invite Raja for doing music and soem dialogues follow. Either Karagaatakaaran or Enga ooru paattukaaran, I dont remember.

"and what is wrong in IR singing a song in each of his movies other than your personal nonpreference for his voice.... "

Its not just my non-preference. Technically, there are better singers who could have sung those songs. Even amongst IR fans, his voice evokes mixed opinions. That should tell you something.

[rprasad]

Guys,

Its high time people here stopped discussing abour IR producing more junks, and what if scenarios. and now it seems we are dragging MSV. SG and others into discussing who is more popular . This topic is about IR's composing Technique. Lets stick with that. Everyone lives life in their own way and does things their own way.There will always be what if's. All that matters is IR produced some unforgettable classics for us to enjoy for generations to come and his status of a legend in TFM as well as Indian Film music is assured no matter what anyone says. Lets just move on to discuss his composing technique as the thread is supposed to do. I am not really that well versed in technical aspects of music but let me throw something out there and you guys can respond if its really pertinent to discuss in this thread. I wanted to talk about the style of using elaborate catchy Introductory music for songs and the concept of Chorus which was heavily used by IR and very succesfully too. What do you guys think? We can move on if you think this is not the right thread for this.

[tvsankar]

rprasad
You are the another wrong person came into the thread.Pl u start a new thread about the topic.(Anal angae unmaiyana IR composiing patri sonnal pesinal parthu sandhosha paduvaen naan.Adharku endha disturbanceum varamal iruka kadavulai vendi kolgiraen.)
Ingae irukum some people very clear about on their discussion!!!!Ha Ha ha!!! :lol:
Indha thread ai ippadi oru topic il arambitha andha hubber endha idea vil start panni irupar? IR ku -ve agava? think panraen.
With Love,
Usha Sankar.

[rajdes]

vijay,
have to go back again. I agree with you as a musician, IR could have done better than to accept the junk movies in 80's.
However, I dont agree that it was unprofessional to do so. For whatever reasons(money,practice..whatever) he accepted those, I am sure he was very clear that he was selling his talent in order to support himself(either in financial or say, experimenting with music). Producers knew what they were going to get - whatever came off his head at that moment.
Having known this, if they went to him, and he gave them some junk and some gems, that is not UNPROFESSIONAL. As i said, a vendor will give what the customer asks for. In the process, if there are additional features, well and good. else, it is not unprofessional to just give a so-so product which just about meets the customer requirements. I dont agree on the professionality part of your argument.

My take is
1) As a musician, he has enoigh classics for us to ignore what we perceive as junks and still call him a great musician to be compared with any of the greats India has ever produced
2) As a professional, he made some choices and having made them, he defined his own terms and sold his talent for a certain price - he was clear about what the customers were going to get - within those terms, he did justice - and infact much of what we call junk were hits and made the respective producers happy. I am still not happy with those - so are you unhappy but that doesnt mean he was unprofessional to his clients. And it is on record that most of his clients were happy with that. Where is the questipn of unprofessionalism in that?

[thumburu]

"Whereas, MSV/TKR and others MDs of that era believed in doing their job and remaining in the background" - vijayr's desperate attempt to make a saint out of them. Avangalukku chance kedaikkalai . Why is MSV seen in many movies these days than heard thru music ? He is even seen in jingles these days.

[thumburu]

Because there were so many other films which didnt have anything new in them. - That is because his new attempt didn't find any takers and he had to resort to his Karakaatakkaran type of songs

"And yes, Ponvilangu is indeed by IR. You can confirm it with his discography" - I have seen that dud movie and MD is some Balabharathy or ManiBharathy. Many web discographies are fraught with factual errors.

[vijayr]

thumburu's desperate attempt to defend IR :-)

"Why is MSV seen in many movies these days than heard thru music ? He is even seen in jingles these days."

MSV is very much heard thru his music. Do you watch "thenamudhu" on TV channels for his melodies?
Even 2 days back there was a felicitation function for him where IR included himself and Rahman as those greatly benefitted by MSV's music.

Now that he has retired from TFM he can sing, dance or play cricket or do whatever he wants:-) The point is, when he was the numero uno and TFM MD he didnt do all that.

"That is because his new attempt didn't find any takers "

and why did his so called "new attempt" didnt find any takers? Because there was nothing much new about it as compared to the trends then. And even then it was still the 1 song or so that was supposedly "new" in an album. The balance 5 were same old stuff.

Ponvilangu is indeed by IR. TFM encyclopaedia Saravanan has confirmed it here
http://tfmpage.com/forum/23371.12068.06.46.36.html
Even other wise there were plenty of other duds- aanazhagan, MuthukaaLai, periya marudhu, Maharaasan, thedi vandha raasa etc. etc. The list goes on endlessly. It would be surprising to find more than 1 decent song from these albums.

Rajdes, he wasnt being true to himself. Complaining publicly about bad films and same situations on one hand and continuing to accept them. Thats what I am talking about.Even professionally, there were many tiffs between him and directors in the late 80s. Some were asked to accept whatever he gave them. Since he was the biggie then, they had no choice. But as soon as they found a choice(after 1992) they dumped him.

"and infact much of what we call junk were hits and made the respective producers happy"

no, much of what I call junk were'nt hits. When I listed those films here, even many hardcore IR fans here claim not to have heard them. And I myself have been an avid radio listener during the 80s.

[app_engine]

Digression

some spice-
http://www.dailythanthi.com/article.asp?NewsID=190525&disdate=6/17/2005

End-Digression

Now, here we can infer from MSV that for great output from a gifted musician, good and sometimes even task-master-like team members (e.g. MGR) are needed...Explains why IR's output for Mahendran, BR, MR, KB were exceptional...

[Music4Ever]

app_engine, without doubt IR started (wittingly or unwittingly) the trend of MDs getting more and more publicity. I didn't mean that. What I meant was that even before IR, we were able to identify MSV, KVM, and others according to their type of music. Vasantha kaala nadhigaLilE, adhisaya ragam, ezhu swarangaLukkuL, vizhiyE kadhai ezhudhu, ninaivalE silai seidhu etc were in the early or mid seventies and these were clearly discernible as bearing the stamp of MSV. So the statement "idhu IR-oda music" is not special only for IR is what I wanted to say :)

[app_engine]

Music4Ever, nAn adhu suththamA illainnu sollalayE...please refer my original post on this...I mentioned MSV/KVM to a lesser extent'nu solli irukkEnE:-)...Ofcourse, discerning listeners (like you) as well as admirers of specific MD's in particular (and ofcourse industry customers themselves like MGR,KB etc) could always find out specific ingradients in songs...

However since when a commoner (like me who didn't differentiate a VK song from MSV songs in 70's or some MSV songs from KVM songs of 60's) started caring about who the MD is and started making comments to his friends like `indha mAdhiri saththam vandhA adhu Raja dhAn'? I'm just trying to give the due credit to Raja there...

And also due credits to ARR...one of my previous colleagues (an Engineer ofcourse) who could not distinguish violin sound from harmonium sound, and used to exclaim `ada indha satham violin-nu unakku theriyudhE' in late 80's started making comments like `ippadi sounds vandhA adhu Rahman dhAn' in the 90's...

Hype? Marketing? Savvy? Call anything you like...but I'm clear in my mind - based on my interaction with 100's of people in TN & Kerala - that IR & ARR are the ones who made MD an icon! ( I don't mind them being compared to Britney while MSV/KVM is to Bach...let me be part of the kuppan-suppan group and not the elite)...

[app_engine]

'clearly discernible as bearing the stamp of MSV' - TFM page varadhukku munnAdi varaikkum I thought `mannavan vandhAnadi thOzhi' is by MSV and `mAdhavippon mayilAL' by KVM for e.g....and `kAdhOdu dhAn', 'nAn unnai vAzhthippAdugiREn' were in my MSV books...

[vijayr]

just like how many thought "oru kaadhal devadhai" or "oru peN pura" or "taj mahal thevai illai anname" are by IR until they were informed otherwise. Deva, Balabharathi, S-G all made clever imitations of IR's style and sometimes the resulting product was even better than some of IR's own songs.
For the 80s generation MSV/KVM might not be discernible. But probably for someone who grew up in the 60s, MSV's style was probably clearly discernible from the heavy classical stuff that was TFM till that time. "Mellisai" or light music was first ushered in by MSV and he used a variety of instruments not used before in TFM. Unless otherwise we ask commoners from the 60s, we'll never know. A lot of things(other than music) were different back then. We have to look at how media evolved, the cultural/social changes etc. Otherwise a comparison between MDs based on just their perceived popularity would be meaningless. For instance, MSV didnt benefit from TV exposure the way IR songs did and IR didnt benefit from sat TV channels and internet(and other advances) the way Rahman did. All these play a part in the perceived popularity.

[Music4Ever]

"Ofcourse, discerning listeners (like you) as well as admirers of specific MD's in particular (and ofcourse industry customers themselves like MGR,KB etc) could always find out specific ingradients in songs... "

app_engine, idhu konjam over-nu nenaikkarEn, this placing me in the discerning listeners list :) Of course, I was an avid MSV admirer in the seventies. For example, if you listen to adhisaya ragam and gangai yamunai, the mridangam is very prominent, a typical feature of many MSV songs (may be even the song muthu thAragai vAna veedhi vara, IIRC, was a mridangam special, but I could be wrong).

" 'clearly discernible as bearing the stamp of MSV' - TFM page varadhukku munnAdi varaikkum I thought `mannavan vandhAnadi thOzhi' is by MSV and `mAdhavippon mayilAL' by KVM for e.g....and `kAdhOdu dhAn', 'nAn unnai vAzhthippAdugiREn' were in my MSV books..."

Of course, there are exceptions as Vijayr has rightly pointed out :)
Take the song "adho andha thendral oru poovai thedudhu". For a long time I was under the (mis)impression that MSV composed it. It was SG, however, who was the MD. Also, I believe that the sixties and seventies had several equally talented MDs unlike the eighties, so it was hard to identify certain gems as to who composed them.

"Hype? Marketing? Savvy? Call anything you like...but I'm clear in my mind - based on my interaction with 100's of people in TN & Kerala - that IR & ARR are the ones who made MD an icon! ( I don't mind them being compared to Britney while MSV/KVM is to Bach...let me be part of the kuppan-suppan group and not the elite)..."

I have no problem at all with your above observation. Definitely the MD was an icon starting with IR and continued during ARR's time in the nineties, but not anymore. However, I was only commenting on the discernibility of music composed by pre-IR giants, which you also seem to accept :)

I am also in agreement with many points that Vijayr has proposed.

[rprasad]

Vijay, Pl stop commenting on IR's profressionalism or work ethics based on your assumptions and speculations about what might have happened during that time. Even if you insist that you know certain things, the truth of the matter is nobody knows what happened and why certain things happened. To question the professionalism and work ethics of somebody of IR' stature without any factual knowledge is absolutely stupid and just shows your immaturity. so what if he complained publicly of same situations being given to him, it does not mean he hated the work. we all complain about our work sometime or the other but still continue to do the job. IR was comfortable in film music and that was his job so he continued doing it even if he complained about it.Infact great singers like Mohd Rafi and Kishore Kumar always ridiculed the kind of songs being made but they still sang a lot of so called junk songs because that is their job. People who had a good music sense got the best out of Ir and that is all what matters.

Guys pl stop responding to Vijay and his adamant insistence that he knows all the facts and his opinions are always correct. This is not the thread for that let him create another thread like "Junks of IR " or "Professionalism and ethics of IR" and keep discussing this topic. Please move on to discuss IR's composing techinique and not get caught up in this mindless and worthless discussion.
Hope everyone gets back to senses.