IR's composing technique

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:

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

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.

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.

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...

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.

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And beyond doubt, his recent works have been good.

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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.

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......

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...... :)

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.

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.