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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: Srik (@ 64.80.98.165) on: Mon Aug 25 11:41:00 EDT 2003
  
  On incomplete pallavis,
  we need to know technically something called as resolving the pharse.
  Basically mordern music is mostly based on a note cycle . So when we start with a note, usually the key note or 5th, musician tend to end with the same note. or a 5th note in the cycle.
  (ms's tune also is like this, starts in pa-5th and resolves in similar manner)
  this might give a kind of completion,
  
  But in old songs often (msv or kvm or vkumar), they take some time (bars) to expose the key note. Song does not start with the keynote nor does end on the keynote or its 5th.
  So mordern listeners might conclude it is incomplete., though it not.
  "What is an incomplete pallavi" ?
  technically, finisihng before the beat cycle or technically sandam is cut loose.can be called unfinished...imo, there is nothing called as an incomplete pallavi,
  
  
• From: rjay (@ 156.77.105.122) on: Mon Aug 25 12:14:11 EDT 2003
  
  When a composer composes a tune, he is actually manipulating musical tension in the listeners mind. Like Srikanth states 'Start with Sa or Pa and end in Sa or Pa, you have resolved it'.
  
  The real trick however is how quickly you resolve it. An expert composer teases the listener with false or incomplete resolutions until the real resolution. I learnt this trick first in MSV's 'Oru Rajaa raniyidam vegu naalaga asai vaithar'. I will leave it to you to learn from it.
  MSV is a master of this teasing.
  
  To tease well, you should know which notes of the scale are stable , and which unstable and with respect to each other.
  
  To create a sophisticated tune, you should postpone the resolution. My favorite analogy is storytelling. In children's stories you have clear heros and villains and events have to be clear and explicit on whether they are good or bad to the hero and each obstacle has to be immediately resolved.
  
  Whereas, when you look at something like Mahabharatha or a modern mainstream novel, you have many story lines going on with ambiguity, partial resolutions, until the end where there is a major resolution, which however need not be complete.
  
  To make story interesting, you create new problems before resolving old ones! For instance, you start a story, 'A rabbit was hungry. It dug the ground for carrots.' If you say, it found carrots and it ate, your story is closed, so you create a twist - 'it found a diamond'. Now, to a rabbit the diamond is neutral, so you somehow have to make it relevant to the rabbit. You say that a hunter saw the rabbit digging up the diamond, and came to get the diamond. The rabbit by mistake swallowed the diamond and hunter took the rabbit... and go on...
  
  What have we done, we have started with a problem, hunger and turned into a worser problem, risk to life. Now you say, the hunter did not want to kill the rabbit because it was Friday which was his sacred day, so he took the rabbit home and fed him carrots. Now see this is called IRONY! A resolution comes which becomes irrelevant!
  
  So the golden rule in melody construction is learn to manipulate tension and make sure your climaxes grow in size one after another until the last big bang!
  
  
  
  
  
• From: rjay (@ 156.77.105.122) on: Mon Aug 25 12:21:34 EDT 2003
  
  A very good and rare ARRahman example of building musical tension and resolving it which is worth studying is the charanam of Taal se Taal mila. See how the melody is a developmental kind, building like a symphony and puts you in an emotional turmoil.
  
  
• From: vijay (@ 68.16.25.50) on: Mon Aug 25 12:22:29 EDT 2003
  
  rjay, I was referring to songs like "nee paartha paaravikoru"(Hey ram) where the pallavi ends on a higher note (ni?) as against what it started off with. If you sing the song alone without any accompaniment you will feel as if it was not "resolved" and there had to be one more line after "uyire vaa...". But when you listen to the song you dont feel it because there is a short piano bit after Uyire vaa which helps in linking the last line back to the pallavi. Another case of listeners melody vs singers? :-)
  
  
• From: Sridhar Seetharaman (@ 192.147.58.6) on: Mon Aug 25 12:28:48 EDT 2003
  
  RJAY,
  
  ARR used Laxmikanth-Pyarelal style tune for that song. The orchestration sounds in ARR style. But the melody in the charanam is pure L-P.
  
  
• From: rjay (@ 156.77.105.122) on: Mon Aug 25 12:31:00 EDT 2003
  
  Vijay, I have not heard the song you quoted. But yes, Indian melody has a great mastery of these, because we chose to evolve as a monophonic system, we had to come up with melodic ornamentations that are as good as or even better than the like harmonic ornamentations the west can use.
  
  For instance, our raga system is more than a scale system. A raga is not just a selection of notes, (I used to believe), but a collection of melodic phrases!! If the scale breakthrough is to limit the notes and enhance emotion, raga breakthrough is to limit the sequences used in the selected scale. This is why you can discipline yourself a different arohanam and avaroahanam and create a new emotion.
  
  The north Indian system gains sophistication along other lines too - for instance, using different Ne for avarohanam (Brindavani, Kafi, Desh) and the tension and resolution notes...
  
  
• From: Udhaya (@ 64.136.26.31) on: Mon Aug 25 13:48:01 EDT 2003
  
  After listening to MS' version of "Paadhi Raavil" we now have a legitimate comparison of "lyrics to tune" (rjay's Sindhu Bairavi version) vs. "tune to lyrics" (MS' version). I'm not discounting the merits of rjay's New Age version, but for the sake of the experiment that would be a bonus feature since when making the New Age tune, rjay knew the lyrics were set to another tune by himself.
  
  Some history on MS' tune. When I showed him my lyrics portfolio of unproduced songs, he took a liking to the "Paadhi Raavil" lyrics. I told him it was written for rjay's tune. Without hearing rjay's tune, MS came up with this tune. So we have two pure and distinct songs to compare "preset tune and preset lyrics."
  
  Some of the revelations for me after listening to both the songs:
  -rjay's tune and orchestration are more dominant than the lyrics in that song. Even though the lyrics are the same in both songs, I believe that an uninitiated listener would sooner remember the tune and music before the lyrics of this version. No judgment is made here as to what's better, just an observation. The longing mood, the bluesy emotion is very palpable in this version. My mind is hooked on the springs and turns of the instruments more than the voice or the lyrics.
  
  -MS' version (perhaps helped by the lack of orchestration) highlights the singer first and foremost. Also, due to the singer taking center stage, the lyrics gain more notice. The tune is not readily accessible as the previous version (this could be rjay's explanation about memory playing favorites with the familiar structure in music); it sounds more like a proclamation than a lament. Also, the slower pace of the song highlights the song in phrases rather than in lines (sorry, being a writer I think in textual terms and not musical ones). Contrary to what one might initially think, feeding the mind phrases builds more anxiety and takes longer to register the meaning. Whereas lines, even when fed faster, register in the mind easier since they give a more wholesome thought. In a more generalized way, this theory can be applied to how formal poetry is easier to memorize than free verse or modern poetry.
  
  Without any predetermination, rjay's and MS' versions have brought out a greater understanding of the distinctions between preset lyrics and preset tunes.
  
  rjay, I still want to hear the completed New Age version to do it full justice.
  
  
• From: rjay (@ 156.77.105.121) on: Mon Aug 25 14:21:24 EDT 2003
  
  Udhaya Wrote:
  I'm not discounting the merits of rjay's New Age version, but for the sake of the experiment that would be a bonus feature since when making the New Age tune, rjay knew the lyrics were set to another tune by himself.
  
  Udhaya,
  
  Actually this is not a bonus, but a hindrance, because you have to FORGET the first tune to create the next one. You have to have ways of getting out of its groove.
  
  In fact, the real test for composing is how many different tunes you can create for same lyrics, without sounding repetitive!
  
  
• From: Udhaya (@ 64.136.26.31) on: Mon Aug 25 15:29:01 EDT 2003
  
  rjay,
  I realize it was a hindrance for you. But I was writing from the forumers perspective, in that it was a bonus third song in the same lyrics different tunes deal, and an outsider in the "preset tune" and "preset lyrics" variations.
  
  
• From: rjay (@ 156.77.105.123) on: Mon Aug 25 16:11:19 EDT 2003
  
  Udhaya, thanks for the clarification.
  
  A request, if MS feels OK, and others would like Srik or Sridhar to participate, let us take this one lyric and try to create many more tunes and we can see how different minds think. We can then have DF-ers vote for the appeal. If we can keep our ego-s aside and listen to the comments, we can see what makes some melodies work and some not. If we still feel vulnerable, we can hide the authorship and get votes on tunes... However to level the playing ground, we can only record vocally sung melody or a instrumental version of the tune without any backing. (We can get to arrangment in a different thread ;)
  
  Does this make sense or will it harm rather than help?
  
  Such an exercise would make full use of a listening forum like this.
  
  
• From: Sridhar Seetharaman (@ 192.147.58.6) on: Mon Aug 25 16:17:27 EDT 2003
  
  I like this idea. Can I have access to the lyrics? This exercise has already proven its worth. Thanks to Udhaya.
  
  
• From: MS (@ 129.252.25.241) on: Mon Aug 25 16:55:15 EDT 2003
  
  rjay:
  
  "..if MS feels OK..If we can keep our ego-s aside and listen to the comments"..
  
  I have no problem. I have tremendous respect for all the amateur musicians who participate in discussions that continue to educate me in understanding the songs and composing. If fellow DFers like Sreedhar and others want to go ahead and try their hand tuning the same, I think it will be a nice exercise too. I will get to know how the same poem could be viewed from different perspectives.
  
  "..because you have to FORGET the first tune to create the next one"
  
  That is indeed right unless you are a genius of MSV or KVM's calibre. I distinctly remember a Jaishankar movie in which the song "nee enge..en ninaivugaL ange" was tuned in a light and semi-classical fashion. Another instance is the joke that actor raghavendar makes on a lunch table in the movie Sindhubhairavi illustrating how "konja nEram konja vENdum ennidam" could be tuned for various actors. It was really very nice.
  
  
• From: k (@ 192.138.150.249) on: Mon Aug 25 20:29:21 EDT 2003
  
  Ofcourse, setting lyrics to tune has a major plus..the lyrics writer can write something meaningful and coherent (if he is capable :)) without just picking suitable words for the tune..
  And then if you do the tune first you could create interesting patterns. No wonder, in WCM, people just listen to the notes alone. Even in ICM, I think we just fill in swara notes etc in between. So I think we all know the advantages of either approach.
  The reason I am posting anyway is -
  rjay suggested, "we can only record vocally sung melody or a instrumental version of the tune without any backing".
  I think this raises some basic questions in my mind (which is not that great when it comes to music anyways :)). It looks to me that indian singers always sing with the thalam backing (with a drum), whereas western singers sing with chord/harmony (using guitar or piano). To me these are two systems, one not necessarily better than the other, even though we may have our preferences.
  So to make a fair comparison, the tune should be done on a keyboard (which hopefully restricts indian type slides etc).
  
  

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