IR's composing technique

"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.

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)

Kiru ,
Really Nice !

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

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.

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:

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

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.

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

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)