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HOW TO NAME IT? IT TOOK ME OVER 12 YEARS TO APPRECIATE IT FINALLY!

Topic started by Ilayaraaja For Earth 24 Hours (@ 65.56.133.147) on Mon Apr 29 01:35:32 EDT 2002.
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.

Has any of you had this feeling? Initially many things just feel stupid but later than sooner you just see how amazing that something is? In my case, it has happened to me with many a Ilayaraaja song and most particularly with the strange non-filmy album of the Maestro HOW TO NAME IT? Unlike many popular songs that appealed right away and felt stupid later on, How To Name IT suddenly took me by storm. Is it because I began to understand the science of music over the years and I needed that to truly appreciate the wavelength of thought and complexity of the compositions? Or, is it because there is no really great music out there anymore? Or, the film music is take a nowhere to go turn? Whatever said, I think How To Name It is IsaiGnani's answer to Bach's Brandberg's concertos and Vivaldi's Four Seasons put together!!!! All the 10 compositions are truly of a level that took me many years of musical listening to appreciate past Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and of course our own A R Rahman ;--) Now, I have to get hold of Nothing But Wind, cassette of which I gave off to someone because I thought the compositions were just inscrutable. Has any of you felt the same way like people like me have? I did have problems with India 24 Hours too? But, after a couple of years I listened to it again and my joy is unbounded. I heard IR was coming up with Moods of Ilayaraaja? What happened to it? I just can't wait to get hold of all the non-filmy albums of IR including the Symphony? My God, I can now believe the Saappadu IR was talking about. The film music was Appalam and Oorugai! Imagine that! I can't. My head is spinning at the thought of just taking my mind away from How To Name It? for some time to come!!!!

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Responses:

• Old responses
  
• From: avr (@ 143.127.3.10) on: Fri May 3 03:40:08 EDT 2002
  
  kiru:
  
  I dont have much exposure to WCM/german music at all. I had heard of this one whilst I was learning German at the local branch of the Goethe Institut. I had read and heard the audio tapes of the biographies of German/austrian legends and celebrities primarily as an exercise in vocab expansion.
  
  Thanks for the link anyway. I wish to get a chance to listen to more and more of German music.
  
  
• From: yaaro (@ 195.93.34.178) on: Fri May 3 10:07:39 EDT 2002
  
  AVR-mozart was an Austrian.If you are intersted to know about him, I suggest you watch a movie called AMADEUS.Amazing movie.That actor who plays the composer salieri won the oscar for best performance that year(incidentall, he did not portray mozart in that movie but was the villain).
  http://us.imdb.com/Title?0086879
  
  
• From: Just an attempt. (@ 132.235.18.15) on: Fri May 3 18:27:39 EDT 2002
  
  Kiru, I am a zero in WCM and a bigger zero in ICM. But let me write, which might be interesting.
  
  Basic to any (form of) music is Notes and Sound. And by Notes I mean frequencies (as in frequency of tuning fork in physics). And by sound I mean the timbre and the technique used to get that sound. After I say this, let me write the differences i find between WCM and ICM.
  
  1.They differ on the number of notes in a scale. (WCM is graded into 12, ICM is graded into 16)
  2.WCM emphasizes on polyphony (more than one note), where as ICM is mostly one note at a time.
  3.ICM emphasises on the horizontal aspect of music. Where as WCM emphasises both on horizontal and vertical aspects of music. By horizontal aspect I mean, melody line, and by vertical i mean harmony.
  
  
  First things first. let us look at 'notes' or frequencies. Most of the music we hear is based on the 12 note scale. Did u ever wonder if they are the only notes in an octave? For example, why do we say that the next note after E is F (in a C major scale)? Arent there some frequencies in between those two frequencies (E and F)? Answer for this is yes. Our carnatic system identifies 2 more notes in between (Ga2, and Ga3). If so then why do we say the note after E is F. Two reasons, one is we cannot distinguish frequencies that are very close to each other. And another (may be more important) reason is what is known as temperament.
  
  Equal-Temperament (one link for starters, http://www.ericweisstein.com/encyclopedias/music/EqualTemperament.html, but do a google) is said to have solved a big puzzle in music. Let us look into that first. Please refer to the link, cos I don have to repeat whats in there already.
  
  After u read the first and second paras along with the table u shud have understood the problem. With exact frequencies like that, the F in your C scale is not the same as the F in your D scale. (But in todays music, they are the same , how??). So to overcome this, what they did was this. First the note with double the original note is identified. And then the frequencies in between are made into equal parts. Thus u could transpose ur music from one scale to another and still have the same music.
  
  We said that we will divide it into equal number of parts? But how many parts? Now look at the picture at the bottom of that page. They showed the notes when they are divided (from n= 1 to n = 36). And for n = 12 and n = 19, they found out that there are maximum number of resulting notes that are closer to the defined frequencies of 9/8, 6/5, 5/4 etc.. And they chose to divide it into 12 parts. Thats why we have 12 notes in western system.
  
  But ICM identifies 16, instead of 12 notes (pls refer to http://www.guitarprasanna.com/Column/QandA/, see the question3 by Narayan jaykumar). So is it possible to get those 16 notes from the western system? Yes, and thats where gamakas play a role. Becos of those gamaks we identify those subtle differences (of course we shud be training our ear to that). Some music systems have 5 notes per scale, or 7 notes per scale and so on. (pls refer to this, http://www.seriouscomposer.com/Tunings.htm i shud warn u that some scales were developed by some computer algorithm, and they mentioned Indian music has 22, where as Prassanna says 16).
  
  Second thing is WCM is full of polyphony. (And yea, the 12 note system is inherently useful for harmony. 16 note system may be tough for harmony.) So when u write ICM in staff notation u wud find a horizontal line (or curve). But when u write WCM, u can have notes together as a vertical line (harmony or chords). I shud mention here that our composers are trying to get this vertical aspect in ICM also. With my limited knowledge, I can think of Intro for Devanin Kovil by IR and ending of PP title song by ARR. There might be more examples outside our film music.
  
  Again, WCM emphasises too emphasises on horizontal motion (counterpoint), but here both vertical and horizontal aspects are involved. Infact, in Ernst Toch's Shaping Forces in Music, he writes that harmony is "arrested motion". (I recommend that book)
  
  I will write more again but, people like hihi, swamiji, or Srikanth can write better things.
  
  
• From: Sam (@ 132.235.18.15) on: Fri May 3 18:32:22 EDT 2002
  
  Sorry if I was unclear or pedantic in my above posting. Also I love this aspect of sound in music. Please put in ur thoughts, so I cud also learn.
  
  Sam
  
  
• From: ignorance to the power of 2 (@ 172.183.129.168) on: Fri May 3 19:39:35 EDT 2002
  
  Sam,
  
  enjoyed reading your post. that too, after i was almost giving up coming to this forum to analyse sound and music. i wonder what motivates some to share experience of music in this forum. TFM, for that matter, WCM & ICM are lost in identity. what goes is 'ignorant populistic creations' that has no clear boundaries.
  
  Sam, in the experience of linearity and polyphony of aural experience, how does emotional experience, in musical creations, fit in?
  
  sorry for the digression. other contributors, please carry on from where Sam left.
  
  
• From: kiru (@ 192.138.150.249) on: Fri May 3 23:42:41 EDT 2002
  
  Sam, if you are zero in WCM or ICM ..Then I must be -ve !!! Wish I had your knowledge in music and also your humility !!
  That ICM has 16 swara sthAnams is news to me. I thought it was 22. But people these days are working only with the 12 notes, I think. Looks Guitar Prasanna's site is not accessible now. I will read this up later.
  Yes, like you said indian film music was laid on the foundations of fusion of ICM & WCM. Vijayabhaskar in an interview mentioned how the english guy to whom he went to expressing his ambitions to compose for movies, mentioned that he needs to have good fundamentals of polyphony/harmony (as an aside my Unix computer is name polyphony :)) And everybody including IR have been following this dictum.
  You mentioned 'dEvanin kOil' as an example of polyphony in IR's song. I feel most of his songs have polyphony in them. He is a very unique composer in India and this is his trademark. In a compilation of kannada songs on a full cassette I could pick out the 3 or 4 IR songs correctly (while driving around the lush hills of Ireland :) .. a good place to see..but take a raincoat with you).
  
  I randomly clicked on an IR song in dhool.com - pon vAnam panneer thoovudhu innEram. Wow ..what a song. There is a bassline throughout the song. Is this not considered polyphony ? This sort of bass line is present in almost all of IRs songs. In this particular song, there is also a piano accompanying the bass guitar along with the rhythm instruments in the pallavi.,
  
  
• From: Vj (@ 203.197.21.116) on: Sat May 4 06:31:55 EDT 2002
  
  ppl... i hv a query to make.. anyone has both the original tape (which was released when "How to name it" came out for the first time) and the CD which came later on? i find the songs' titles jumbled in the CD (by oriental records). for instance, the 2nd song in the CD is the last song in the tape which is a differnt title. so can anyone list the chronology according to the 'first' tape?
  
  thanks in advance.
  
  
• From: eden (@ 210.214.4.182) on: Sat May 4 08:52:57 EDT 2002
  
  Vj, I got the tape when released but lost it:-) However, I can type out the write-ups for each of the piece given in the in-lay card of CD for you. The raga etc. are often mentioned in that. Probably you can compare and confirm which title rightly belongs to what piece...game for it?
  
  
• From: Vj (@ 210.212.215.130) on: Sun May 5 04:49:48 EDT 2002
  
  thanx eden.. but i too hv the CD with the inset card explaining things... but its kinda "Match the following" stuff.. :(... wd be happy if anyone comes up with the correct order.
  
  
• From: THE MAESTRO IS THE MAESTRO OF IT ALL (@ 172.163.37.61) on: Sun May 12 03:51:52 EDT 2002
  
  Was How To Name It a wide selling album? In fact, I am so much in love with it that for the first time ever I have kept aside film music to listen to this album for so many days now! It would be just the best thing in music to have a How to Name It 2 come out. (HOW TO NAME IT TOO!) any thoughts on this one.
  
  
• From: Vj (@ 203.197.20.47) on: Sun May 12 07:19:22 EDT 2002
  
  yeah.. absolutely no doubt that its a wide-selling album... you can still get 'sold-out' reply at landmark/music world in chennai, at times. and that shows how much it is still in demand.
  
  

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