IR's composing technique

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)...

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.

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.

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 :-)

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.

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

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Originally Posted by 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 :-)

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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.

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Originally Posted by app_engine

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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)...

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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).

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Originally Posted by Music4Ever

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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.

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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.

"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.