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Song classification and other technicalities

Topic started by Ramaswamy Gireesan (@ m42.m59.big.ac.at) on Wed Jun 10 19:34:37 EDT 1998.
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.

Hi!

I have a strange problem now, or rather two problems, I should say.

1) you might be aware that I have a homepage hosting about 150 songs, mostly compositions of IR set to carnatic ragas. Now that I have received a biiiig load of cassettes, from which I might be uploading at least 75-100 songs (mostly songs of mottai) a new problem arises. Till now I have had just three pages, one for Classical Ilaiyaraja, one for Rare Ragas of IR and the third page for the non-classical compositions (or songs which cannot be defined as any particular raga/scale) The pages already have upto 40 songs each, and I feel the listings are getting rather big.

Hence my question :

Would you suggest any new classification scheme for all the songs?
a) Songs listed by the raga name (Abheri, Atana, Bairavi.... and so on)
b) Songs listed by the melakarta raga (and their derivatives) - starting with melakarta raga 1 and its derivatives etc. (Might be a bit confusing for beginners to carnatic music)
c) Songs sorted by the 1st line (might be ambiguous for some songs?)
d) Songs sorted by film name (some of the films have only one song listed in my collection)
e) Songs sorted by the year in which the respective film got released (this info might be a bit difficult to gather :-( )

Of course, once this sorting order is finalised, I might have to split the entire list into smaller pages. I want to maintain the carnatic based songs separate from others, as that was my original aim in creating this page.

I can certainly have a central repository of all songs, and replicate the links under various classifications, so that a song may appear simultaneously under various classifications, but then I am afraid this might become too difficult to manage. I would appreciate any tips and suggestions from the TFM fans out there.

2) My second question is rather trivial. I have noticed that there are some sites out there which have been setting links to the songs in my collection directly (I prefer not to name those sites :-) ). Though this doesnt bother me directly, what irks me is that some of these sites are of commercial nature and they are using the songs in my collection for luring more visitors. And the last straw is that they dont even bother to acknowledge the source of the song etc. I feel rather dejected to see the amount of work I have put in to upload the songs, and the amount of server space I have managed to acquire being exploited by others. Of course, some of them have a better interface (Java, CGI scripts etc.) that enable easier surfing, but I feel it is unfair to exploit services like ours. (I am sure Chandra Gobichetipal, Neethan Namchivayam and others also feel the same way). What do you feel about this in general?

The worst thing I could do would be to shut down the site, or add my voice to each song, announcing where the song comes from etc. but I would hate myself later for taking either of those steps. Or is anybody aware of a better technical solution (using a real audio server, using some CGI script to screen the referring URL etc.) that might curtail the commercial exploitation of my services?

Thanks for any response/advice. TFM admins, if you feel that this topic does not fit in the DF, pl. feel free to ask posters to this thread to mail me directly.

Thanks and regards

G.Ramaswamy

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Responses:

• Old responses
  
• From: Ramaswamy Gireesan (@ m42.m59.big.ac.at) on: Mon Jun 15 05:55:48 EDT 1998
  
  Sathiya Keerthi!
  
  nAn ninaiththEn, nIngaL sollivittIrgaL :-)
  
  I have been planning something along those lines for quite some time now. I think I should host all the articles of Classical Ilaiyaraja series on my server too, and hyperlink the ragas to the particular portions in the articles.
  
  In fact I am also archiving my communications with Hari Govindan on IR's use of carnatic music. His replies are usually quite detailed and have a thorough analysis of the song concerned. (Hari! Are you reading this? Some of your mails might go online soon :-) )
  
  Regarding the yearwise listing of Films and then the songs, I guess vijay and yourself are expressing the wishes of many surfers. OK, 'surfer thIrppukku thalai vaNangukiREn' :-)
  
  I think the list of raga based songs is incomplete and has a lot of mistakes. Whos is reponsible for updating this page? TFM admins?
  
  I will also put up a Links page soon, as suggested by you. I agree with you, this feature is certainly missing in my page. BTW, I was told that some surfers have difficulties with the graphics (Colour scheme, whatever) on my page, How do you feel about this?
  
  Thanks for the suggestions.
  
  G.Ramaswamy
  
  
• From: Ramaswamy Gireesan (@ m42.m59.big.ac.at) on: Mon Jun 15 06:01:24 EDT 1998
  
  Sathiya Keerthi!
  
  > Parthiban Kanavu - MD is Vedha.
  
  I just checked with some original cassettes (the biiig load I had mentioned in the first posting of this thread :-) ) The MD is actually T.R.Pappa.
  
  
  > Ambikapathy song is vaadaamalarE thamizh
  >thEnE.
  
  Thanks for the other corrections, I will update the pages right away.
  
  Regards
  
  G.Ramaswamy
  
  
• From: Sathiya Keerthi (@ panorama.nus.edu.sg) on: Mon Jun 15 06:37:12 EDT 1998
  
  Ramaswamy G:
  
  Parthiban Kanavu is indeed by Vedha; I am very sure
  about that!
  
  I have no problem with the graphics in your page.
  
  > I think the list of raga based songs is
  > incomplete and has a lot of mistakes. Whos is
  > reponsible for updating this page? TFM admins?
  
  I don't know about the mistakes because I am a big
  zero in classical music. But one thing I know for
  sure is: that list is very poorly put together,
  it is in awful shape, misses many other songs
  which have been mentioned in the Raagaas thread
  of TFM-DF, and has errors in movie names etc. As
  far as I know, I don't think anyone has taken any
  effort to clean it up and maintain that list. I
  think Rajaraman was looking for a volunteer. It
  would be nice if that can be taken-up as part of
  your homepage and maintained there.
  
  It is a very very good idea to put your discussions
  with Hari. For learners it will be very useful.
  How about pulling in people like Rajaraman, Rjay,
  Mukund, Geetha, Mannaru, Vijay who know classical
  music stuff well into making some contributions
  for your page? What happened to Srirangam Ramakrishnan
  who wrote those fine articles? Is it possible for you
  to track him down and convince him to write some
  regular articles for your page?
  
  
• From: Sathiya Keerthi (@ panorama.nus.edu.sg) on: Mon Jun 15 07:00:12 EDT 1998
  
  Ramaswamy G:
  
  One more suggestion. In Singapore Oli 96.8 FM,
  there is a regular nightly feature (I think it
  is relayed for about 10 minutes everyday, at
  about 10 PM Singapore time) called Indru oru
  raagam. The usual person who conducts it is
  a fellow named YazhppaaNam Karunakaran. He takes
  one raagam, gives various details about it, and
  then presents one film song made in that raagaa.
  He also sings part of the song to explain how
  the signature of the raagaa comes nicely in that
  song. Sometimes the programme is conducted by
  Madurai Mani Iyer. (Someone told me that these
  are actually excerpts taken from some audio
  cassettes of MMIyer titled Carnatic Music in
  Tamil Films.) MMIyer gives a lot of info, e.g.,
  once he said that in the song thuNindhapin manamE
  of Devadas, the MD CRSubbaraman handled Kalyani
  in a very interesting way by making minimal use
  of Sa-Pa-Sa.
  
  Since Singapore Oli FM-96.8 is available as realaudio,
  will it be possible for you to record some of
  the Indru oru raagam stuff and put those
  also in your page? But I don't know whether ther'll
  be any copyright problems!
  
  
• From: Rajaraman (@ 192.122.135.224) on: Mon Jun 15 22:01:06 EDT 1998
  
  Ramaswamy G.,
  
  You are right about the film-song raga list. There are many mistakes. I have been thinking about revising it for a long time, but couldn't. Maybe I should do it soon. My plan is to build a real database so that one can search for a song or md or film or raga.
  I may need some help in typing. Let me know if you are willing.
  
  Sathiya Keerthi,
  I think the "Raagam thantha gaanam" comes at 10:45pm SGT. Don't know if they changed the timing recently.
  Apart from Y. Karunaakaran (disciple of Maharajapuram Santhaanam), the other conductor is
  Madurai G.S. Mani. He is not to be confused with Mani Iyer. :)
  
  There is a similar programme coming on SUN TV also, as part of Vanakkam Thamizhagam on Mon, Wed & Fri.
  
  
• From: Nithin (@ nc.pr.mcs.net) on: Tue Jun 16 00:10:57 EDT 1998
  
  RG
  
  First time I am in this thread. Your site and the songs you have are just great. To a great extent you have played up the memories of Radio Ceylon of the early 80s. Before I forget, the song ' Chevvaname SeerKonduva, Venmegame Theyerkonduva...' from Kadal Kiligal is a brilliant nostalgic song of KVM, not Illaiyaraja!
  
  My suggestion would be to categorise by Raaga, since very few people can do that type of listing. Then naive listeners like me knows which Raagas are what and which raaga makes a sloth like me more functional!!!
  
  Your categorisation in this manner can be educational to most listeners.
  
  Thanks for the great work.
  
  
• From: Geetha (@ gatekeeper.oracle.co.uk) on: Tue Jun 16 10:42:10 EDT 1998
  
  Guys, have you seen Satish Subramaniams Database, it is updated by him and has the basis of what you're looking for. He is willing to update it as we send him stuff. This is the link for it and he also has different types of searches, e.g. Search for raga by name of song, search for song by name of raga, e.t.c.......It's very useful, but not too accurate, so please e-mail him and offer to help....Thanks in advance.....Satish, if you're reading this, hope it helps.....
  
  http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~subraman/raag.html
  
  
• From: Ramaswamy Gireesan (@ m42.m59.big.ac.at) on: Wed Jun 17 06:51:09 EDT 1998
  
  Yabbaaa! I didnt have the time to check the DF for one day, athukkuLLa ivvaLavu postingaa? :-)
  
  Sathiya:
  
  The HMV cassette I got (hits of A.M.Raja) said the MD was T.R.Pappa. I know Vedha only as a copycat MD (Deva <-> Vedha : veRum ultaa case :-) ) I couldnt imagine him delivering such original pieces. I will also check with some other sources meanwhile and make the correction, if the need arises.
  
  Hari has agreed to provide some writeups on some of the raga based songs (I already have an excellent analysis of andhi mazhai pozhigiRadhu :-) )
  
  I have heard the programme in Singapore radio. It is very interesting. I am afraid there will indeed be copyright problems if I use them on my page.
  
  I have devised the foll. structure for my pages :
  
  A page where all ragas are listed (Melakarta structure and derivatives of the 72 ragas) - hyperlink the ragas themselves to raga based listing of film songs (with these pages themselves being linked back to the main raga index). These raga based listing of film songs would in turn be linked to the real audio files and also notes on each song, if there is something worth mentioning about the song.
  
  Nithin : I think the above solution should be satisfactory to you also :-) BTW, 'sevvAnamE' is indeed classified as KVM's composition. I corrected this a looong time back.
  
  Of course there is no other way but to create a repository of all songs. I will then have to create a yearwise listing of IR's songs and set the real audio links to the repository. Same would apply to compositions of other MDs also.
  
  
  Rajaraman :
  
  I will be only glad to help you with the database. I will be a bit busy till the end of this month, but July-August should be relatively free. Please send me a mail if you are interested.
  
  Geetha : Thanks for the URL. I will check it right away.
  
  Regards
  
  G.Ramaswamy
  
  
• From: Thenraja Kaliappan (@ ttwd53.doas.state.ga.us) on: Wed Jun 17 07:18:09 EDT 1998
  
  G.Ramaswamy,
  You could send a email to Singapore radio asking their permission to use their program in your page. I am sure the will say Yes!
  
  

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