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Advantages of composing prewritten lyrics

Topic started by Udhaya (@ 64.136.27.31) on Tue Aug 12 11:51:47 EDT 2003.
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.

While listening to many old songs, the advantages of prewritten lyrics for composers and singers became evident. I will start with two examples and we can add more as we discover them.

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Responses:

• Old responses
  
• From: rjay (@ 156.77.105.122) on: Tue Aug 26 09:22:36 EDT 2003
  
  MS, listened to your tune. Wow!
  
  The tune is very emotional, rich voice, very good singing with nice gamagams. The tune has a very good focus, it does not go away from its main intent, which is a great thing! And it puts you into the trance when you listen, which in my opinion is a judgement criteria for songs of this genre.
  
  Good job! Keep it up!
  
  
• From: MS (@ 129.252.25.241) on: Tue Aug 26 11:49:49 EDT 2003
  
  rjay:
  
  thanx. Most of the songs I compose are kind of vocalist based songs since I do not have appropriate instruments for orchestration. Looking forward to Sreedhar's version too.
  
  
• From: Udhaya (@ 63.206.212.169) on: Tue Aug 26 12:57:50 EDT 2003
  
  Sridhar,
  If you haven't already seen the lyrics in the "Amateur Musicians" thread, here it is:
  
  The lyrics are as follows:
  
  Pallavi:
  
  paadhi raavil thookkamillaa yaekkamthaanaa en vithi
  jannaloarap paarvai kaattum venmathikkum en gathi
  saayangaala kaatril kooda eeram kandaen unnathaa?
  malaravaL inangaamal manam vendhu vembuthaa?
  
  Charanam 1:
  
  malar meedhu anbaip pozhivaai iravil
  vidiyalil kalaindhupoagum veen kanavil
  
  Charanam 2:
  
  idhudhaanoa kaadhal vaazhkkai niyathi?
  illai, kalai vaazha kaalam poatrum sathi
  maegakkoottam paalaiyengum virayam
  aazhkadalil thaanae muththum udhirum
  
  -Udhaya
  
  
• From: rjay (@ 67.73.194.117) on: Wed Aug 27 00:52:14 EDT 2003
  
  Couple of more versions of Padhi Iravil, for those who might be still interested:
  
  http://www.geocities.com/rjaymidi/RJAY-PaadhiIravil-_ghazal.mp3
  The Ghazal version is a standard Cliche tune.
  
  http://www.geocities.com/rjaymidi/RJAY-PaadhiIravil-beatsy.mp3
  The Beatsy version stuck to me as an unconventional way of parsing the lyrics - and hit me out of the blue. I plan to take it up for later arrangement study...
  
  For now, I hope I am done with Padhi iravil ;)
  
  
• From: Sridhar Seetharaman (@ 67.83.146.59) on: Wed Aug 27 08:49:57 EDT 2003
  
  Guys!
  
  Here it is.
  
  http://www.geocities.com/sridhar_ms/index.htm
  
  You should find a link at the end of the page for the song download.
  
  
  
  
• From: Sridhar Seetharaman (@ 67.83.146.59) on: Wed Aug 27 09:01:19 EDT 2003
  
  http://geocities.yahoo.com/sridhar_ms/paadhiraavil1.mp3
  
  This should work too.
  
  
• From: srik (@ 64.80.98.165) on: Wed Aug 27 09:19:39 EDT 2003
  
  sridhar it here also
  http://www.srikanthd.com/sridhar/paadhiraavil1.mp3
  
  
• From: Sridhar Seetharaman (@ 67.83.146.59) on: Wed Aug 27 09:22:54 EDT 2003
  
  Thanks Srikanth.
  
  
• From: rjay (@ 156.77.105.121) on: Wed Aug 27 13:49:39 EDT 2003
  
  Sridhar,
  
  Very good! Very unified melody - in the mode of MSV?
  
  I can hear a jazz/blues beat as accompaniment, just from your singing! The aekka mood is there in the tune very much...
  
  
• From: Sridhar Seetharaman (@ 67.83.146.59) on: Wed Aug 27 14:05:56 EDT 2003
  
  This has been great learning exercise. Actually I came up with couple of more tunes this morning. Bayangara Sogamaa irundhadhu.
  
  
• From: MS (@ 129.252.25.241) on: Wed Aug 27 15:03:21 EDT 2003
  
  indha maadhiri interpret paNNa mudiyumgaradhu pudhu lesson. indha nadaiyai vEra edhavadhu paattula naanum use paNNikkarEn :-) MSV paadara maadhiri irundhadhe sila idangaLil..Sreedhar MSV bhakthara ? :-)
  
  
• From: Sridhar Seetharaman (@ 67.83.146.59) on: Wed Aug 27 15:29:17 EDT 2003
  
  Ha! Ha! Ha!
  
  Illai. Actual I grew up with Ilaiyaraaja. Very surprising how I got the MSV style singing influence in this song. Could be the lyrics.
  
  
• From: Sridhar Seetharaman (@ 67.83.146.59) on: Wed Aug 27 15:37:50 EDT 2003
  
  BTW, the idea was to come up with different tunes for the same lyric. That is why I decided to sing.
  
  
• From: Sridhar Seetharaman (@ 67.83.146.59) on: Wed Aug 27 16:06:32 EDT 2003
  
  Now let me share my composing experience.
  
  I came to work and opened the internet explorer with TFM Thread on prewritten lyrics. I read thru the comments made by Udhaya. One phrase struck me. That is "longing mood, the bluesy emotion". I
  decided that if the paadal aasiriyar is expecting a bluesy mood, let me pick up the Blues style.
  
  I primed myself by playing the blues progression in my mind. That went on for a while and started looking at the lyrics. Pulled out my cassete player. I wish I had a digital recorder. Just started singing. In one shot I got the entire song. Felt really good. Came back home and did a PC recording with the PC Mic.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• From: MS (@ 129.252.25.241) on: Wed Aug 27 16:27:39 EDT 2003
  
  and now mine :-)
  
  I was visiting Vijay (of tfmdf) in Savannah from Columbia,SC for a jam session. On the way in the car, I was listening to "nuvvEnaa.." ( thErOttam.aanandh sheNbaga poovaattam) and "mazaiyum neeyE" from azagan. I had some of udhaya's lyrics printed out with me to discus with vijay. I was so damn inspired by SPB's awesome and splendiferous rendition that I started thinking of making a song with his voice in mind. I had already made the first two lines in an insipid fashion and listening to SPB, I got pumped up. Finished the pallavi in one shot.
  
  Then came to charanam 1 and found that it was two lies whereas the following charanam had 4. Also the chandham (meter) of the pallavi was very different and needed proper extensions to fit the 7 beat based pattern. I was trying to sing in various ways some good, some tasteless and some acceptable. finally I decided to make a humming to compensate for the two "missing" lines in the first charanam. Many trite phrases flashed my mind and I wanted something a li'l different from the regular major scale humming.
  
  As I had mentioned in the earlier writeup, best way to impart new feel to the song when u are finding yourself repetitive is seek out of scale notes and try constructing new melodic phrases. So I intentionally started humming:
  
  g m p s g r
  r g m p n2 d
  n3 n3 da pa
  pa pa
  n3 n3dp n3n2n3Sa
  
  Juxtaposing n3 and n2 and alternating gave new melodic phrases which appealed to me and I fixed that as the signature of the song.
  
  Coming to charanam2, I had to twist the same ch1 tune a li'l bit to fit the sandham. But the third line of the song originally was:
  
  "paLLaththakkil thaane theriyum sigaram"
  
  which I found was fitting the sandham but was too harsh with "paLLathakku" really making reNdition rough. Nevertheless I went ahead and completed ch2. I needed a nice transition from "muththum udhirum" to the humming and I decided to let it hang on "ri" - the musical tension as rjay called it in one of his earlier posts. The song was now complete in tune but had to be sprinkled with emotion or "bhaavam". I had to sing that to myself many times to embellish the bhaavam and finally it was ready.
  
  I asked Udhaya if he could change "paLLaththakkil" line and he came up with another beautiful line " megakkoottam paalai engum virayam" - brilliant ! I could stop amply at paalai to give the required nuances and come up with the song not sounding harsh in words.
  
  That is my story :-)
  
  
• From: MS (@ 129.252.25.241) on: Wed Aug 27 16:30:26 EDT 2003
  
  BTW, the story ended even before I reached savannah :-)
  
  
• From: Sridhar Seetharaman (@ 67.83.146.59) on: Wed Aug 27 16:43:26 EDT 2003
  
  Cool man!
  
  Now we need to work on what melody works for the tune and why so? I though that was the idea of this exercise. We need some objective analysis. Udhaya's feedback will help a lot.
  
  
• From: Udhaya (@ 64.136.26.31) on: Thu Aug 28 02:17:53 EDT 2003
  
  While rjay's sindhubairavi and MS's versions were polarized easily as composer's and singer's perspectives in my estimation, the 2 newer ones by rjay and sridhar's spread the range of classification.
  
  rjay,
  I wouldn't short sell the ghazal so quickly. I've heard my share of ghazals to bravely say that your ghazal escapes the cliche of ghazals, perhaps if we threw in some harmonium and santoor flourishes and some sleepy singing it might (okay let me not go there!). Also, the brevity of the piece only gives us a glimpse of its possible might. Certainly this can be developed well into a fuller piece.
  
  Your beatsy version was very innovative and catchy, so much so that I wouldn't put these lyrics in it, it would be antithetical to the lyrics and more so to the composition.The life and energy in that tune deserve some rightfully joyous lyrics. Anyway, you've truly shown your diverse inspirations with one set of lyrics. I'm truly flattered and impressed. Thanks.
  
  Sridhar,
  Your voice is a dead ringer for MSV's, I agree with others. Perhaps its the stripped bare composition sans music combined with the raw, straight up singing, that I certainly got a world weariness, a certain irony tinged sadness in your rendition. It gives the lyrics a whole other flavor that's beyond the forlorn lover's pining. I get this impact when IR earnestly sings sad/philosophical songs too.
  
  With the 6 versions we've seen so far I've learned so much about the power of suggestion inherent in a singer and/or composer's take on the song and how much it changes the song's mood for the listener. Also, the use or lack of instrumentation can radically alter, enhance or neutralize the lyrics (I've always known this I guess, but now I know the extent of this phenomenon.)
  
  I'm very grateful to rjay, MS, and Sridhar for taking this up. Should anybody else want to add their weight to this experiment, by all means they're welcome. I hope other forumers will add their opinions on the various renditions we have. I hope to hear in detail from other musicians especially.
  
  Meanwhile, let's also discuss other TFM songs related to the thread's focus please in order to engage folks who don't feel the urge to actively get involved in our experiment.
  
  
• From: Sridhar Seetharaman (@ 67.83.146.59) on: Thu Aug 28 05:16:11 EDT 2003
  
  "Power of suggestion". You nailed it, Udhaya.
  
  

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