Topic started by rjay (@ 206.152.113.140) on Thu Aug 24 12:45:43 EDT 2000.
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.
Composing Secrets - Tracks and Instruments
Most songs have the following structure:(you can
think of them as parallel tracks)
1. Melody
2. Bass
3. Chord/Accompaniment
4. Drums
5. Percussion
Melody is sung by the singer or could be the
'solo' played by an instrument, when singer
is taking breath. In most music,
melody states the theme of the song/composition
and carries the emotion. All the other tracks
should provide a context to what is says or
reinforce and enhance it.
Human voice, flute, sax, trumpet, and synthetic
sounds serve well as melody instruments.
Drums set the basic pulse and rhythm and there
are many drum kits: acoustic, jazz, techno(used
in ;chandralekha - Thiruda; for example), power
(pottu vaitha kadhal thittam) and many many more.
Bass is usually played by a double bass - huge
violin, plucked like a guitar, or with a guitar
itself. With electronics, synth bass sounds are
generated from keyboard itself(kadalikkum pennin
kaigal - has a wonderful synth bass sound
in its intro.) Slap, Electric, Fretless,
are a few more common sounds. I will get you
recordings of these in isolation.
Accompaniment or backing is usually provided
by piano or guitar class of instruments.
And there are two types: block chords, where
you play the whole chords and hold them,
versus arpeggio and broken chords where
you strike the notes one after another.
In most western music, piano and guitar
are 2 pieces of the five piece orchestra
(voice, piano, guitar, strings, drums)
Strings typically provide counterpoint,
but can also play accompaniment.
My definition, Counterpoint is nothing but alternate melody
which either responds to the lead melody
or plays against it. Examples to follow.
Percussion is the name given by westerners
to all non-western beat instruments! ;)
Shakers, Morocos (chicku chiku) and sticks
and claves and others are examples.
Even bongos (from Africa) and our Tabla are
named percussion, but they are actually
drums because they can play alone and provide
rhythm without the drums.
We can proceed learning in two ways:
(i) We will explore the General midi sounds
128 instruments (16 categories and 8 in each)
and one drum kit. We will take each sound one
by one and learn to identify it and see what
its unique value is and how it has been used
in TFM. I can upload audio demos.
(ii) We can later see the song structure along time
axis (measures) - in terms of intro, theme, break, pallavi
, charanam structure and learn how orchestration
is effectively varied to serve the needs of
the listener at each position.
Basically, tracks and measures are the two
dimensions to understand a composition.
As an aid we can pull apart some famous songs of your choice to see how they are put together. And I can take one of my own compositions and share what thoughts and decisions guided its creation.
Game?
Responses:
- Old responses
- From: rjay (@ 209.130.217.210)
on: Fri Aug 25 12:49:49 EDT 2000
Dear friends,
Good to see so much interest! By collecting
our ideas, we can all learn a lot together.
Subbu, there are quite a few chord tutorials
on the web, but a good starter is Sridhar
Seetharaman's chord tutorials on our site
geocities.com/rjaymidi under his page.
In fact there is a wonderful book which I
will try to locate and give reference to.
There are actually very few important facts
that we need to learn about chords: 3rd
notes, 5th notes and then the circle of fifths.
And inversions. We will try to cover that basics. I am not
very good in harmony, Srikanth and Sridhar and
Naveen are the masters, but we can tell you
secrets to create the illusion of good harmony
;), while we are working hard for real learning! Remind me later. But start with Sridhar's tutorial.
Ajit/djswamy, you have an impressive site. I am not
very good in keyboard selection and my gear
is just a sound card and a midi controller keyboard. But Sridhar tells me that Yamaha
PSR-500+ series are very good in all respects.
I am planning to buy one too.
I have not listened
to your remixes yet. Will do. While remixes
allow lot of opportunity and creativity,
ultimate pleasure comes from crafting music
note by note, you have total control over what
you have to say. Best wishes for you to get there
soon. The purpose of this series is to make
more people create original music, by demystifying
how it is put together.
Vijayaditya, the saraswati piece is good,
I am not sure abheri is abheri. Can you send
me an email?
Udhaya, I thought a little bit more and I think
guduguduppai is the original name and that it
is an Tamil Tribal instrument and when it
went north, people renamed it goob goobi.
The tamil name sounds like the instrument itself
that is why I came to this conclusion!
That site is very good and it is lovely to see
the photographs. And the prices seem reasonable.
Thanks for sharing it.
Also, friends, please make sure your read
instalments 2 and 3 which cover piano sounds,
mallets and organs. Last night I have created
the examples and should get them to you this
weekend.
We will move on quickly over the remaining instruments and then to song analysis...
Anbudan
RJAY
- From: rags (@ 192.216.111.148)
on: Fri Aug 25 13:21:37 EDT 2000
Rjay interesting thread.I would love to learn about the secrets behind the song.
Thanks a lot.
- From: S.Ve Shekar (@ 208.153.11.101)
on: Fri Aug 25 14:11:53 EDT 2000
40 bagpiper, 5 violin.
I thought the thread was too serious. CD Enake
Sorry for the digression
- From: rjay (@ 206.152.113.140)
on: Thu Aug 31 12:29:29 EDT 2000
I found a very neat site on drum sounds with lots
of descriptions and audio demos of various drums
from all over the world.
http://www.thedrumclub.com/world
- From: Krishnan (@ 199.246.40.3)
on: Thu Aug 31 13:37:29 EDT 2000
rjay, something wrong with the address you have given. I get the following when I tired to connect to it.
-----------------------------
File Not Found
The requested URL was not found on this server
-----------------------------
I even tried world.htm(l).
Krishnan
- From: Krishnan (@ 199.246.40.3)
on: Thu Aug 31 13:45:56 EDT 2000
Rjay, I should have tried something more before asking you. Anyway, did you mean the below link.
http://www.thedrumclub.com/WORLD/RAgrov.HTM
Krishnan
- From: vijay (@ 129.252.22.221)
on: Thu Aug 31 14:18:12 EDT 2000
Rjay,
Pl. check out my posts in composing secrets -2 in case u havent seen it already. thanx
- From: rjay (@ 208.51.40.112)
on: Fri Sep 1 15:32:22 EDT 2000
Vijay
I did see your responses. Your examples
of Piano usage in TFM and HFM are good ones!
I am posting as separate threads and hope
that as long as people are active on the subjects
the threads will be active too! We can later
consolidate the discussions and create a
series of articles and place on a site.
Thanks for joining
RJAY
- From: rjay (@ 208.51.40.112)
on: Fri Sep 1 15:33:19 EDT 2000
Krishnan
Sorry for goofing up on the site url,
and thanks for taking time to figure
it out and correct it.
RJAY
- From: rjay (@ 208.51.40.112)
on: Fri Sep 1 15:33:25 EDT 2000
Krishnan
Sorry for goofing up on the site url,
and thanks for taking time to figure
it out and correct it.
RJAY
- From: rjay (@ 208.51.40.112)
on: Fri Sep 1 15:33:31 EDT 2000
Krishnan
Sorry for goofing up on the site url,
and thanks for taking time to figure
it out and correct it.
RJAY
- From: Naveen (@ 204.255.14.188)
on: Fri Sep 1 16:30:27 EDT 2000
Krishnan,
Please forgive RJay! He is feeling very bad I guess :)
Naveen
- From: eden (@ 61.1.250.202)
on: Sat Sep 2 00:37:55 EDT 2000
Is `chaNdai' already listed? (The instrument played -or beaten - during elephant processions in Kerala):-)
- From: Venkatesh (@ 206.49.110.156)
on: Sun Sep 3 03:18:46 EDT 2000
Useful links to classical instruments and music:
http://www.s-hamilton.k12.ia.us/antiqua/instrumt.html
http://www.studyweb.com/links/1817.html
- From: Subbu (@ 192.39.71.67)
on: Mon Sep 4 05:30:11 EDT 2000
rjay,
I completed Sridhar's Tutorial. It was very useful. Pls let me know about that 'wonderful book' you mentioned. Also about the other tutorials / illusion of harmony etc.!
Eagerly waiting for the next step...
- From: other_side (@ )
on: Wed May 14 19:30:20 EDT 2003
iam just eagerly awaiting for further postings from rjay :)
- From: Sridhar Seetharaman (@ 192.147.58.6)
on: Thu May 15 09:59:45 EDT 2003
I tried the "notating on the fly" this morning (As usual in the train). I picked "Ilamai Idho Idho" pallavi. This is my first attempt ever in my life. It worked. I am so thrilled.
I sang "Sa Pa Sa" for a while. Then tried singing the song.
I tried to get the skeletal melody first, like this:-
In "Ilamai Idho Idho", I removed the spikes. I visualized the song as a graph. Hence the word "spike". So, literally I sang the song with as below.
ee | ee | ee
Sa.... | Sa.... | Sa....
ee | ee | ee
Sa.... | Sa.... | Sa....
Magic happened and I realized that "ee" was mapped to "Sa".
Then worked on "College Teenage Pengal". Again skeletal notes. I was think of a strings behind the voice dropping down like this.
Kaa | Tee |Pen
Paa.... |Maa.... |Ga.....
El | En |Ka
Paa.... |Maa.... |Ga.....
Back to
Ila |Ila | Ila
Sa.... | Sa.... | Sa....
Then it wasy easy for me to get the other notes. I did have confusion on Sa Ga Sa. I thought it was Sa Ri Sa. But Rjay fixed it when I called him from the train.
Sa Ga Sa | Ga Sa | Ga Sa
Sa Ga Sa | Ga Sa | Ga Sa
Paa maa ga | Maa ga Sa| Ga Maa
Paa maa ga | Maa ga Sa| Ga Maa
Sa Ga Sa | Ga Sa | Ga Sa
- From: rjay (@ 156.77.105.123)
on: Thu May 15 10:55:03 EDT 2003
THe song uses Sudhdha Danyasi scale so it is realtively easier! It is good idea to start with songs in Mohanam or Sudhdha Danyasi which have fewer notes to work with!!
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