Unusual observations on Raja's orchestration

PootukkaL Pottalum (Chatriyan - Tamil 1990)

It is no news that this is a song set it waltz. This song is popular in orchestra and 'cover' circles. However, most musicians somehow get it wrong in their execution as they tend to model the song on purely the first pallavi. Like any other film song, this also has 3 pallavis. Pallavi 1 is different from Pallavi 2 and 3.  There is always something that Raja does with his song that should not be taken for granted and when I heard this recently, I noticed that the orchestration is different. I made a similar observation with his song 'Kottum Kuzhalvizhi' from Kaala Paani.

Here is what Raja does. In his first use, he will leave a placeholder. He will fill the placeholder with unexpected instrumentation when he uses it again. Unless you pay close attention, you are bound to miss it. Most of the popular renditions have this error as they assume that the second and third execution is identical.

Here are the lyrics:

Pooottukkal PoattAaalum Veettukkul NirkAaaDhhu KAaatru  - Pallavi 1 - guitar play ; P2/P3 - violins
Thoattathil Malligai  Koootathil PAaadaDhha PAaattu - Pallavi 1 - guitar play ; P2/P3 - violins
PAaatteduppoam - Pallavi 1 Place holder; P2/P3 - violin/flute fill
VAaa - Pallavi 1 Place holder; P2/P3 - violin/flute fill
VAaa - Pallavi 1 Place holder; P2/P3 - violin/flute fill
Poootheduppoam - Pallavi 1 Place holder; P2/P3 - violin/flute fill
PooovAaa - Pallavi 1 Place holder; P2/P3 - violin/flute fill
Kattu KAaaval Vittu Poaga 
Pattu Pooochi Vattam Poadum NAaalDhhAaan 

Pooottukkal PoattAaalum Veettukkul NirkAaaDhhu KAaatru  - Pallavi 1 - guitar play; P3 - background violins continue
Thoattathil Malligai  Koootathil PAaadaDhha PAaattu - Pallavi 1 - guitar play; P3 - background violins continue


Note that the last two lines do not exist in pallavi 2 which is the case with several songs to accommodate the total number of bars.


Hear it on a good audio with your headphones. Most of the listeners follow the lyrics and the rendition of it and miss out variations in Raja's fills and placeholders.

I have included the best version on youtube, but that is not good enough to truly enjoy this song.








Look at the 'n' number of reproductions, and all of them miss out Raja's orchestration. Doing waltz alone is not good enough - you do not need a Raja for that. 

I could not help writing about this song's arrangement, though this is something that will appear on my blog in a few months. 

A whole whack of things happen in just 10 seconds, that most of us would not have paid attention. It is hard to explain if someone would have slogged to do this - this is a great gift this man possesses. I have no other way of describing this.



Focus on 2:18 to 2:28 and see the magic he weaves...

Here are the details of these 10 seconds:

‘Kalise Prati Sandhyalo’  from Aalapana (Telugu 1985). This segment, has synthesizer as its background instrument. Here is how the segment is structured:

Song	Film	Year	Background instrument	CaRe - Instrument1	CaRe - Instrument2
Kalise Prati Sandhyalo’	Aalapana	1985	Veena	Sitar	Flute

 
This is one of the most unusual PolyCaRe arrangements you will hear of Raja.

•  The first 2 seconds is a Indian melody played with the veena. This is the melody that continues throughout the clip as the background melody
  
•  Between 3 and 10 seconds, the sitar joins in the foreground playing a counter melody, again and Indian one. Two Indian instruments playing Indian melody in counter. Please show me a composer who can do this!
  
•  While all this is going on, between 5 and 10 seconds, if you pay close attention, the flute and the sitar is having a CaRe play while the veena continues in the background. Genius!
  

Genius!

When I requested DM to upload the 'Kottum Melangal' song in Makkal Aatchi (Tamil 1995) , he reminded me of another good song in the same movie that goes, Ippodhenna Thevai sang by Lekha and wanted to bring up a discussion on its arrangement.

Disclaimer: I could be completely off base. Feel free to correct me. This is just my theory.



The unusual part of this song is the charanam and its rhythm arrangement. It appears like a typical 6/8 that Raja adds spice with three techniques that only a master arranger can think of. 

1) He arranges the rhythm with two tablas in perfect synchronized timing (I was watching his live program recently, and noticed that his percussion players play in perfect sync for any darn time signature).

2) He also has a rhythm pad that plays to the same time signature (6/

3) He has a clever bass arrangement that has its work cut out when the four bars is over and the next four begins (When I explain the lines of Lekha, it should get clearer)

4) Let's take the lines from the first charanam:

Pani Nilavu Paayum Podhu, Pudhu Paatu Thondrumae (2 bars)
Athu Arangam Erum Podhu, Unnai Ketka Thoondumae (2 bars)
Pala Vizhigal Kaanum Podhu, Idai Aatam Podumae (2 bars)
Indha Azhagu Meni Thanna,i Avai Nottam Podumae (note the bassline here) (2 bars) + bass emphasized note)
Medai Indri Paada Cholli, Aadai Indri aada cholvathaeno (2 bars)
Osai indri ooruranga, aasai vandhu kooda cholvathaeno (2 bars)
Ennai vaatalaaguma, idhu nyayamaaguma,  (2 bars - Lekha keeps time perfectly as the words do not fill the bar by lengthening 'guma')
Ingu eppodum poovadai chillendrum vandaadum (2 bars)

5) Every two bar is played with the same TS, but with three instruments. Tabla one plays the 6/8 as usual. Tabla 2 plays the 6th beat louder (emphasis on the skin that you can clearly hear - this is arranged carefully) - it is very hard to play on one instrument. The third instrument is the rhythm pad that plays the rhythm softly with the 8th beat turned into a hi hat. 

6) There is a simple bassline that plays for the first 8 bars and plays a deeper note at the end of the 8 bars marking the center of this charanam. If you visualize this point, it is perfectly symmetric to the left and to the right. The bass line is the mirror in this reflection symmetry.

7) The 14 and 15 bar is a beautifully arranged line as it still does not compromise the timing of the arrangement and avoids the boredom of very similar melodic lines.


Thanks DM for throwing a challenge. I hope I am right with my theory.

For an ordinary situation, what did we deserve to hear such mathematically perfect arrangement? Not even sure, if that movie deserved it. However, Raja would have had a thousand such situations and may have decided to challenge himself with such a rhythm arrangement.

Thanks for the analysis. Great analysis too. I think you are right there. Also, while I wanted you to write, this was my exact description:

"And when time permits, would like you to write on Ippodhenna Thevai from the same film. Remember you commenting on Twitter too when I had uploaded. Truly unconventional rhythm for the charanams and there's something... something haunting in the melody/orchestration. Beneath all the pleasantness on the surface, the underlying pain going along with the superficial pleasantness and the offbeat rhythm together concoct something only Raaja is capable of."


I started watching the movie yesterday for the first time. This is the first song that plays within the first 15-20 mins. It's about a vamp who is called to 'serve' the CM of the state against her wishes and she sings this song and dances for him. And what I had written... "something haunting in the melody/orchestration. Beneath all the pleasantness on the surface, the underlying pain going along with the superficial pleasantness"... Bingo! Trust Raaja to get you to the emotion of the situation for a superficial film even when you have not watched it.

I was recently watching the 'Endrendrum Raja' program again as I do such things to reset my mind at times filled with musical clutter.

When I watched this program, there is a segment where Raja gets his orchestra to play the Schubert symphony and then starts singing the 'Idhayam Pogudhe' song. I always dismissed this as something I do not understand and left it at that. Now that I am watching this after a gap of a few years, something that struck me from what Raja said - the Tamil song was composed based on the feeling that he had after the Schubert symphony. What was that feeling he was talking about?

Schubert's symphony was a great piece of composition that was lying, unattended, collecting dust, till a composer took it up to play it 30 years, after his death, as he discovered such great work should not go unnoticed.

The feeling that you get from Schubert's work and Raja's work are completely different.

Now, this reflects how Raja reacts to film situations. I do not think, he thinks like normal humans. When something like sadness or separation is described to him in human terms, he can only respond to it by connecting it to some musical events that he has come across. His synaptic response to this human angst is connected to the emotion he had in his mind when he learned about the story behind Schubert's symphony.

In other words, for every human emotion, he has a musical equivalent somewhere in his repertoire, from any one of the musical systems he is familiar with. He may have composed a CCM based song, based on what happened in the life of Thyagaraja, and not exactly the emotion that Thyagaraja composed for after that situation. His neurons are connected perhaps only with musical events and nothing else. He draws upon those hidden neurons based on human events that are described to him. These hidden neurons are only pushing him to come out with musical ideas that are associated with those connections.

Unlike normal composers, who will react humanly and then translate that to music, he reacts to situations not humanly, but through his hidden musical connections in his brain.

This is just a crazy thought, but I  decided to write about it.

Let me know if this makes sense.

ravinat wrote:A friend sent me a youtube link of a recent Chithra song for Santosh Narayan and I was not impressed. With an experienced singer like her and orchestrated completely with violins, it appears like a great piece of music for some. To me, it had no soul and it appeared like SN was showcasing his musical prowess. I immediately imagined how Raja would have orchestrated that song, but I cannot find a way to share that here as words do not replace the aural experience.

And so I thought.

When I was in college, I used to imagine a piece of electronic hardware that can be attached to a microphone, and any average to good singer would sound like SPB on the speakers. I immediately dismissed the idea of taking a sound source that was rich with harmonics and replace it with another rich source of harmonics. Silly and impossible, I thought.

Step back to some exciting AI stuff that I have been studying and the silly thought appeared no longer silly.  The state of the AI world today is to take a complex input and create another complex output all by the magic of neural nets. The revolution that is underway on supervised and unsupervised learning with Conv Nets and Reinforced learning algorithms is one of the best computer science moments of our lives.

What is today possible are simple voice recognition algorithms on cell phones and fancy language translators that most of us have seen. In this process of studying AI, I have seen several demos of spectacular stuff that make your eyes pop.  For example, I saw a demo of a digital scenery shot by a decent photographer with a DSLR as the input. The algorithm is trained on how Van Gogh paints his outdoor paintings. The algorithm now takes the digital photograph and transforms it into a Van Gogh painting!

I saw another algorithm being taught with thousands of bedroom images and it started creating its own bedroom images – it had learned that a bedroom must have cots, side tables, side table lamps, dressers, windows, drapes, doors, small couches and so on and it was creating thousands of new images with different placements and different dimensions – crazy stuff.

I am sure we can take the violin segment of Santosh Narayan, teach the algorithm on how Raja handles violins for such a mood and have it regenerate the music in a Raja style. Of course, there is no ONE Raja style and you need to train the NN to understand which Raja style to learn and apply. Also, one needs to train the algorithm to understand rhythm and maintain it as the original composer did.

However, this is not science fantasy. Patterns have replaced logic in the world of AI. In the future, long after Raja’s time, when people are bored of the stuff they are hearing, there will be someone who will create a case for re-orchestration with the Raja style to some music of the future. There are legal, ethics and other issues with this. But, this will happen within our lifetimes.

Technology excites me and such things get me to write about it once in a while. I did not mean to divert any music related discussions, but could not help sharing this thought…

  I was going through my usual CS stuff with deep learning and something popped up that I thought of sharing. This is no bragging (other than some Canadian pride) and I was particularly impressed by work done at Univ of Montreal under expert guidance of Yoshua Bengio (one of the top deep learning experts in the world).

  This paper talks about teaching a machine to understand and classify polyphonic music. Imagine this - a machine is able to do stuff that a person like me does. They have used close to 67 hours of music of which 7 hours is polyphonic and particularly they have used Bach's chorales as part of the learning data.

  The paper I have provided a link here is very technical and you need to understand AI/machine learning to follow most of the technical jargon. I have the full tutorial of how this is done and hope to test it out in the next several months after I get more familiar with the underlying tools.

https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1206/1206.6392.pdf

  These are baby steps in teaching a machine to understand a style of music that is based on well defined rules. Once you have that under your belt, making the machine regenerate music of one style based on another is not impossible.  This is the area of CS that excites me more than any other today and led me to write about self driving cars, though I find my audience not so responsive.

  Complex inputs transformed to complex outputs that are simplistic for the end consumer - that is the mantra of AI and the possibilities are endless. This is more than simple machine generated rhythms or tones from synthesizers - they have always been viewed as something that lacks soul. However, we have a shot at machines generating music that has soul as they have been trained on music that has soul.

 When that happens in our lifetimes, we do not have to deal with half baked music kids...

ravinat, interesting thoughts on how the cognitive era can transform the ingested IR's music into unprecedented, unlimited musical experience that can whet our unsatiated  appetite.

This post may sound a bit negative, but I have had such thoughts in the past too.

The structuring, discipline and documentation of WCM is what attracts me and this is also the reason for my immense liking to Raja's music.

However, our own classical music has not lent itself to such structuring and documentation. The 'guru' based system is one of its serious limitations.

With just synthesizers and drumming machines that does meaningless electronic adventure, our classical music has taken a hit big time in the popular music worlds (aka film music).

Such AI initiatives will only further western music and not other musical systems.

Clearly, there is a need for harmonizing our music (I remember Raja once saying that he has managed to write harmonies based on all the 72 melakartha ragams). Unless, we do it, how do you train any system to do what we want it to do.

I always imagined that Raja should use his knowledge towards this pursuit. Unfortunately, his priorities are different.

excuse me if this song has been analysed already. been a while i listened to this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDBb1mbqfiM

Ravi, you are a great educator. Thanks so much. We have notations for even rhythm. But I am not sure why we cannot use modifiers on the swaras to write it down. Probably, they thought if they write it down, one cannot experiment further. I am told somebody came up with a notation system. This is the kind of stuff that Raaja should be approached for. Reporters can ask, "we are told you write music fast, do you do this even for carnatic songs ? " . It is lack of this kind of knowledge that annoys him. He thinks people are just wasting his time. Once this level of knowledge is exhibited, he will engage.

Ravinat:

Would like to see your analysis, when you have the time, on the songs from "Maaveeran" and "Garjanai".  Was listening to the songs from Maaveeran today & was blown away with the orchestration  - the violins in Ezhugave, Guitar,Sax & Trumpets in "Nee Koduthathai", 'Hey Maina".  Similarly songs in Garjanai has unbleivable orchestration.  Would like to see more technical analysis of the songs.  Thanks.

(My one sore point with both the albums was the use of Malaysia Vasudevan predominantly as the male vocal - MV has a way of singing that suits folk songs & for me doesnt fit the non-folk songs - I am may be a minority in that opinion.  SPB's voice could have further elevated the songs in these albums).

ank sir,
garjanai has that "சூப்புக்குக் கோழியும் வந்ததக்கா" with SPB-SJ combo



Also, there is varuvAy anbE by TKS Kalaivanan who is given a playback singing lesson by SJ right there in the song

Thx for the clarification - but enna sugamana ulagam & oru ooril with SPB's voice would have been even better and suited the orchestration better IMHO

Continuing on the topic of AI and music, please read this article by MIT Review on how a machine generates Bach's chorales as full 4-part harmonies. They call it DeepBach.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603137/deep-learning-machine-listens-to-bach-then-writes-its-own-music-in-the-same-style/

Fascinating application of AI and deep learning to music. It is a matter of time, when these neural networks get a bit more sophisticated that they can be trained on other composition styles. The pace of growth in this area is staggering as I thought, these things are several years away.

This is exactly what I am worried about - the next onslaught on music that is non-western. 

Complexity from music creation can be delegated to machines, and it is one more step to training these networks on how they can understand the aesthetics of music creation. Machines today understand harmony, polyphony and now they have begun writing simple chorales. Yes, WCM has not had a great composer since 1908. So is our classic music. However, we cannot just be lamenting about it. 

Bach lived before the times when electric power was invented. He used his gifted brain from nature to write music that went unnoticed for 300 years, till Canadian Glenn Gould, decided to showcase the perfect western composer to the world in the earlier 20th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Gould

Gould's work is paying off and today, every piece of music created by Bach is notated and a century of musicians (including Raja) have been able to wonder at the genius of Bach.  The key takeaway is the documentation that Gould did that everybody including AI research teams are taking advantage. 

Raja must stop wondering about western composers and must come out in the open about his technique of harmonizing the 72 melakartha ragams and a few janyams in Western full scores. This will be greatest contribution to Carnatic music and will be remembered as the Glenn Gould of Indian music, instead of being known as a popular film music composer. Yes, musicians have to perform, but a few select musicians have a duty beyond their performing careers.

Over the past several months, I am convinced that humans talk about a number of things without a deeper understanding of what they actually mean:

  - No machine can replace the kind of work I do
  - The kind of multi-tasking that I do cannot be replaced my machines
  - Arts is not an area for automation - it is those rote jobs that deserve automation
  - No electronics can replace the live music created by orchestras
  - when there is no electric power, only Ilayaraja can create music

Hopefully, we do not slip to days of no electric power. Cognitive power will negate everything that we have been claiming for centuries about human intellect. Only very strategic long term thinking process is hard to model. All short term skills, experiences, are fully cognifyable, once you put your mind to it. At the end of the day, they are our unique traits of humans due to nature's continued adjustment of weights and biases to the human neural network layers. Today's neural networks (compared to the level of sophistication of frogs as they have few billion internal network connections) are able to drive cars, understand music, identify objects, translate sentences far better than a high school grad.

Unfortunately, both paintings and music, fine form of human art, are difficult and when there is a void in human excellence in these areas, humanity tends to stop believing that such giant strides are any longer possible. Instead, they try to analyze the work of the great masters and get machines to do what these masters did - my examples of Van Gogh and Bach, illustrate this.

The sad part of this story is that undocumented art forms will die with human neural networks - that includes Indian musical forms.

At 73, this is what Raja must do instead of trivial pursuits in film music.

Kannukkoru Vannakili should be one of Raja's 1990s movie that would have have  a quick run before disappearing.

There is a song called Unnai Naan Paarkaiyil sang by Balu & Ashaji, beautifully orchestrated and sang. One of the fine melodies of the 1990s... Mostly Raja uses soft synthesized tones and light drumming:



The same song is orchestrated using tabla and traditional orchestration sang by Yesudas. Exactly the same tune. The interludes are different. It gives you a completely different feel...



Same tune but a different feel - only Raja can do such things with his magical orchestration.

ravinat,

 indha madhiri styleil..inum sila paatu indha listil irukiradhu.. ungal parvaiyil adhu sariya endru theriyadhu.....

1.vaa vennila unnai thane vaanam thedudhae...

SPB version and SJ...  interludes. romba vidhyasamaga irukum..........

2. pottu vaitha oru vatta nila

KJY IR

unnai naan parkaiyil song madhiiri.. different one....

3.Thena odum oda karaiyae

IR  
Sujatha

indha paatu something special...... haunting number.......... different interludes .. analum .. andha haunting azhagaga contine agum......

What you have said is accurate. Raja has done several other such songs. Few such song pairs that I wondered were:

1. Pudhucheri Kacheri - happy and sad versions in Singaravelan
2. Vellai Pura Ondru - happy and sad versions in Pudhu Kavidhai
3. Mayanginaen Solla and Pratidinam
4. Jyotheyalli and Jane Do Naa
5. Kuzhaloothum and Baatein Hawa

However, what was striking about this song in particular is that there is no change in the tempo of the arrangement. However, the orchestration makes all the difference to how you feel about it. All the above pairs do change the tempo of the song. Some change the lyrics too. This is like Raja telling us in his concerts how he connects the dots between several compositions, that all appear line one to him.

Ravi, I agree that IR should do more theoretically interesting stuff but he is a fine blend of contradictions. He does not believe in classical vs popular. So he revels in audience adulation.I guess his view id - If it does not sound like music to a human ..it is not . 
Re: publishing his techniques -  I believe he thinks he will generate enough body of work and then people can decipher/learn from it, after all he feels "that is how I learnt and why should you have it easy". Re: DeepBach - I think IR's specialty is making the melody and again this is input to the program, it is only harmonizing. I think IR also does the same, first melody, then harmonize. He probably is also influenced just like the machine "learnt" it. Surely, harmonizing is a technique whereas melody-making is creative stuff. IMHO, humans will continue to have the creative edge.

kiru wrote:Ravi, I agree that IR should do more theoretically interesting stuff but he is a fine blend of contradictions. He does not believe in classical vs popular. So he revels in audience adulation.I guess his view id - If it does not sound like music to a human ..it is not . 
Re: publishing his techniques -  I believe he thinks he will generate enough body of work and then people can decipher/learn from it, after all he feels "that is how I learnt and why should you have it easy". Re: DeepBach - I think IR's specialty is making the melody and again this is input to the program, it is only harmonizing. I think IR also does the same, first melody, then harmonize. He probably is also influenced just like the machine "learnt" it. Surely, harmonizing is a technique whereas melody-making is creative stuff. IMHO, humans will continue to have the creative edge.

Kiru

  It appears that the message did not get across very well. Let me explain again.

  I am not claiming that a machine can replace a composer such as Raja or Williams. The issue that the West and we face is this: Our classical music gurus created great music some 300 years ago. In the last 100 years, there has been no great musical master both in the Western and our Carnatic world. Both cultures are content with performing what was created 300 years ago. While new forms of popular music have emerged on both sides, classical music has been stagnant. 

  The West is now attempting to take the complexity out of its classical music by getting machines to deal with it. There is also another view to this development. Unlike the last attempt with synthesizers and electronic music software, we can get machines to do interesting things than appear 'machine like'. 

  In other words, technology developed beyond a point, will soon become indistinguishable between a real human creative creation and a machine generated music.  This is where the trouble starts. It does not take much time to push this holy grail of music on others. All musical systems other than Western will be the casualty in the process. 

  My point is that if Raja focuses on helping create a blended version of his music into this ecosystem, it will not only be a novelty, but also something that will keep his name in world music history. This is a unique opportunity only he can fulfill. Now, there is no point in just making statements such as, 'it happens - I can't tell how'. 

  If it is so easy to do what he does, why is there nobody that is even as 1% capable? There is enormous complexity of both Carnatic and Western musical systems that he has internalized that he uses effortlessly. If his legacy needs to move forward and nourished , there is no point in this being 'internal' to Raja. 


  All he needs to do is to define a few rules per week (remember, he can write HTNI during lunch breaks) and a group of researchers can take this forward. This must be a group of musical and AI folks. I know that India does not have much deep know how on AI. However, Raja fans are everywhere and this is not a huge problem to volunteer techies towards this cause.

  Unless you try for a few months and understand how this works, it cannot be perfected. Unfortunately, this is an endeavor that cannot progress unless he sets his mind to it. This cannot be done by a pure Carnatic musicians as they do not understand WCM and other run-of-the-mill musicians.

ravinat,

indha topicil...  sEnorita i love you.. paatu varalama..


indha paatu ipodhu kaeten. manadhl vandha ennam. vazhakamana instruments dhan. anal
output.. something extraordinary . indha paatuku endru vidhyasamaga kaetpadhai pola enaku ennam.....

thavaraga irundhal. mannikavum....

Oh Vennilave - Anada Kummi (Tamil 1983)

Two things that stood out about this song for me was the use of duffle and shehnai. I heard this song again recently and realized the richness in orchestration in this song. It is a brilliant show and tell of orchestral integration between the East and the West. Nothing new for Raja, but, I decided to write about it as I missed this earlier.






Thanks to Kadar Majee for the quality youtube upload.


0:53 to 1:03 : Two shehnais are arranged in a nice call and response fashion using the left and right channels. I have not heard such a use of shehnai in Raja’s music.


1:04 to 1:09: Nice harmony arranged between the violins and the cellos providing the grand introduction to the song.


1:10 to 1:20: Beautiful piano run in the background as SPB sings the pallavi’s first few lines.


1:32 to 1:48: When SPB sings and later Janaki repeats the following lines:


NaaLai Indha VeLai Emai Nee Kaana Vaa Oh Paal Pola Vaa
The background arrangement for these lines is plain staggering and Raja does this every time these lines are repeated. There are 4 distinct parts that only he is capable of arranging: The bass guitar plays its lines, the regular string guitar plays its melody, the synthesizer plays its melody and the female chorus also play their own melody. Listen carefully and you will notice that there are four other melodies other than what the main singers sing.  It is beyond me to comprehend how Raja imagines all this. Staggering is an understatement.


2:10 and 2:20 – Another invertible CP between the guitar and the synthesizer


2:21 to 2:37 and 4:23 to 2:30 – This is a mind blowing harmony with the 4 parts written for the cellos, violins and the synthesizer. Clean and nice – one of the top quality execution of harmony for 1983. Hear this part repeatedly and there is nothing Indian about this part. The magic is how he uses this to link it to the charanam.

Overall a song with some grand orchestration that links the East and the West seamlessly.

Mizhiyil Meen Pidanju - Sandhyakku Vandha Poovu (Malayalam 198x)

I was hearing this song today and noticed some brilliant orchestration parts in both the interludes. Sada keeps saying that he writes notes for the veena and changes it to the guitar at the last moment. This track is one such example.



1:12 to 1:22 - the guitar is made to sound like somewhere between a sitar and a veena. 
1:40 to 1:47 - I suspect that this segment is the electric guitar made to play like a solo violin. Maybe, it is a synthesizer - not sure

3:03 to 3:13 - this is the absolutely crazy Raaja. he uses a distortion guitar as bis base and uses another electric guitar to play counter to it (this is the same tone that I suspect it as guitar though it sounds like a violin). 

For such a super melodic tune, there is only one composer who would experiment with such ideas and not be content with just the tune. This is why I love this man!

[quote="ravinat"]Mizhiyil Meen Pidanju - Sandhyakku Vandha Poovu (Malayalam 198x)

I was hearing this song today and noticed some brilliant orchestration parts in both the interludes. Sada keeps saying that he writes notes for the veena and changes it to the guitar at the last moment. This track is one such example.

engo padithen.. innum sila paatu iruku ena ninaikiren. ninaivillai......
adhaiyum ingae sollalamae...

Oh Vaanamulla Kaalam Mattum (Puthiya swarangal - 199x)

I heard this song today and noticed that The Raja version of the song has something different. Both the interludes are arranged as plain jathis. No instruments at all!



The Das/Uma version is the usual film song.... (nothing special)