IR's composing technique

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.

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

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

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 :)

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.

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.

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.

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.

'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

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!