Long long ago, once upon a time, Myself and my very dear friend decided to join a trekking club and go for treks. We decided to go to Nagalapuram, a hill range bordering Andhra and Tamilnadu. It was a two days trek, which went a “do or die” situation. Though most of us had cameras with us, no one were in a mood to click photos. The Trek Lead- Mr.Peter Vangeit, a Belgian by birth and an Indian by his acts wrote the below article. This trek turned to be one of the major turning points in my life. I love this write up and wish to keep with me till I die.

Peter wrote:

Date: 27-Sep-2008, Saturday

As promised, Nagala/4 would be an interesting one, better then all previous
Nagala’s put together.

32 CTC trekkers started off along the main stream, crystal clear water generously flowing in which we swam and from which drunk. The water was amazingly fresh and cool, a natural rejuvenating spa for the body and mind. The taste was enchanting. The stream was sprinkled with small and big boulders, bounded on both side with lush greenery and cut deep into the surrounding hills over thousands of years not seen yet by humankind before. Words can’t explain the experience of walking through this peaceful and serene terrain… (Simply can’t understand why most people spend their weekends in the concrete Chennai city jungle… you guys are missing out on life…) We met 3 major obstacles along the river – deep water pools surrounding by steep vertical rocks – the first and third we conquered by
swimming through with the help of a long rope. The second one we circumvented by climbing over it. We took a dip in several smaller pools along the trail.

Towards the late afternoon we reached a split (named Nagala/6 and Nagala/7 respectively… in the stream – at both sides the water was falling down higher up past we could not immediately proceed. With another 1-2 hours before dark we decided to climb steep uphill on a surrounding mountain to set up our camp for the night. The climb was very steep and tricky, rocks falling down, people holding on to tree branches trying hard not to slip. We reached a fairly flap grassland sprinkled with small rocks where we put up the camp. After some theplas and cup noodles everyone fell deep asleep. An
exhaustive 12 hour trek from 7am till 7pm.

In the morning we climb further uphill and spotted the original Nagala/1
target – a 800+ meter high peak in the center of the Nagala mountain range
somewhat 3km away from our camp. Although water resources were limited and
several valleys separated us from the peak we decided to give it a shot. 16
brave members took off while the others took rest near the camp. The sun was
beating down hard on us, water was running low, the terrain of long grass
and rocks along the non-existing trail was though. We started around 7am and
followed several adjacent green slopes until we reached the base on the
target peak. From there we had a really though climb with no water left and
burning sun on top of us. Sweat was dripping, the legs were trembling,
throats were dry as sandpaper, spirits were low, people close to dehydration
and mental/physical exhaustion, we pushed on and finally reached the 820m
peak around 11am. The mind blowing views, the cool mountain breeze, the
feeling of accomplishment, the spirit of team work immediately made us
forget all the pain, sweat and thirst. The feeling was indescribable -
seeing the entire Nagala mountain range at our feet. We went through hell to
reach heaven. We discovered several new streams, a second entry point in the
Nagala range and a mysterious small hut in the middle of nowhere. We will
soon be back exploring new trails again…

Then came the descend, a steep, long trek back to the night camp, throats getting dryer and dryer, some people were close to passing out, sun relentlessly beating down on us, close to desperation, little shade along the path. We finally reached back to camp exhausted around 2pm and hope was low to exit the hills the same day. Meanwhile two brave souls had climbed down to the river and returned with several bottles of water (still not enough for so many thirsty people). Water never tasted this good! There was no way we would be able to make it back before midnight along the onward
trail – too many obstacles along the river. So we decided to take a new, unknown return trail straight over the hills, crossing several valleys in between. It was navigation using intuition, sense of direction and knowledge
of the terrain (after three earlier Nagala-s and studying Google topomaps) more than using the modern technology GPS. We started climbing down and up across several grassy/rocky slopes Southeast. We finally reached an upper
(dry) stream, found an entry point through dense bushes surrounding the stream and climbed along the stream  sprinkled with big boulders downstream.

Everyone was extremely thirsty, visions blurring the mind, knees trembling under the weight of our backpacks, stomachs empty, body near exhaustion. When will we find water, will we get out before darkness, will we get lost in the jungle? We proceeded further downstream until we finally came across some stagnant, slightly dirty pools, some members unable to resist the thirst and drinking from the same. A little further we reached another dead-end (4th one this trek) – a steep 10 meter drop in the dry stream, impossible to scale. So we climbed up along the steep rocks bordering the stream and created a trail to circumvent the dead-end ending up at the
bottom of the steep drop. From there again we proceeded along the narrow stream, cut deeply inside the surround mountains, crossing several smaller pools until we finally met running, clear water allowing us to drench our relentless thirst. God heavenly! Water never tasted this good! Amazing feeling! At the same spot we hit another steep 15 meter fall in the river bed which prevented further progress.

Kannan/myself (ahead of the rest to find a trail home) climbed up along the
steep left side of the stream along a 85 degree vertical rock until we met
the grassy foothills of the surrounding mountains. Climbing back to the
stream seemed impossible as it was too deep cut inside the hills with
vertical walls on both sides and probably more steep drops along the stream
would prevent further progress. It was 5pm… the sun setting behind the
mountains already… Another 200m climb brought us at the top of a local
peak from which I could see that we were getting closer to the main stream
from which we started the previous day. I went ahead and climbed down on the
other side of the hill trying to find an access point to the main stream
avoiding patches of dense thorns and steep rocks which were impossible to
proceed over, the climb down was extremely steep. I finally reached the main
stream around 6pm, tracing the trail with the GPS so we could find it back
during darkness when the group would be ready for the descent.

After enjoying another 2l of cool Nagala mineral water and dumping my
backpack, I climbed up again along the steep slope I rejoined Kannan and the
rest of the group helping out those in the back. Everyone was happy to hear
that we would make it back home the same day instead of spending another
night trapped in the jungle. We regrouped at the top of the peak when the
night was falling and prepared for a slow, steep descend in the dark guided
by the GPS. Rocks were falling, feet were slipping, people were falling,
some were sliding down on their bumps, we finally made it down around 8pm.
Everyone enjoyed the cool, refreshing water after a 2 day ultimate
experience which stretched both body and mind beyond what most think was
possible. As usual we saw CTC team-work at its best, previous unknown
individuals helping each other overcome some of the toughest physical
obstacles they had ever faced in their lives, creating new life-long
friendships and memories. Thanks to all the great guys and gals with
amazing, selfless spirit who helped those in need, stretched out the helping
hand, shared that last drop of water and made this trek another successful
mission. I believe this is the essence of CTC. It took us another 2 hours to
reach back to the cars, dipping inside a big, cool pool along the way to
clear all the sweat of the past 2 days. Finally, I reached home at 5am this
morning after one of the best and toughest CTC treks so far. Never felt so
good and alive!

We will soon be visiting this trekkers paradise again. Stay tuned!

Just for this one trek, Peter, I will never forget you… You took care of us like a father does his children. Thank you Peter.

There’s innovativness seen with every instrument/instrument line he uses, he uses a lot of inversions, for example the starting sequence for the song – Engae en Jeevanae” from  the movie “Kalai Thendral” shows a EP piano playing a few notes, and the bass guitar accompanying with the first and fifth notes of the chord. Here the aspect to note is that, the EP track plays out the individual notes of the chord while the bass guitar plays the first and fifth note. He always makes sure that every song can be played or performed differently, it is so evident in the fact when Vaa Venilla is sung in the film “Mellai Threndhadhu”,  in a happy mood where Mohan and Amala dance ( from the scene where they are all gathered for a violin class) and a totally different arrangement when he goes to the birthday party of a college mate, where he sees amala again. Though the tempo/tune/meter/time signature of  
the song is the same, the rhythm change and it’s associated orchestration change makes it a completely different song.

I haven’t seen any other music director create musical passages with so much importance given to help the singer get to his starting note.  He is also probably the first music director to re-use the same tune for different emotions/scenes showing happiness or sadness, it is here IRs vast knowledge on notes/what note combinations can produce what feeling, and in what octave to play to get a required feel, helps. For example, a major chord signifies boldness, smartness etc ( play any major scale like C/F/G) and immediately if you play the minor variation of the same, you’ll get a different feel…there are so many such helper chords available like added 9th,5th,sus4,maj7 min7,augmented etc, when used in a proper sequence you can create so much of musical emotion just by playing these chords alone ( you don’t even have to change the base scale), couple such sequences to a beautiful video track and you get an amazing sequence.

He also makes sure that the emotions/feel the director wants to convey in a frame is heard through his music, a simple example is evident in the song “Katta Vaandi” from the movie – ” Sagalla Kalla Vallavan” , where Kamal makes fun of Amibka as her car stalled and that she had no other way to reach home untill Kamal comes in his old fashioned bullock cart, so keeping this situation in mind, the instrument IR uses for the Ist BGM of the song pefectly fits the shot/it’s required feel. Another blazing example is in the song ” Poovae
Sempoovae” from the move “Solla Thudikuthu Mannasu”  where the director wanted to show the rising tension/disbelief in Kartick’s face as he sees Licy on stage, to this effect IR uses a fast paced bass track, a fast drum track and skillfully placed strings/veena. He also ensures that every part/instrument has it’s own place, it;’s own specialty moments and signature.

Another notable aspect to his orchestration is the inter-mingling of notes with which he creates unbelieveable harmony – a striking example is the song “Kanmani Annbooda” from the movie “Guna”, just notice how the bass lines play along with the melody. His background score is even more amazing, one striking example – the background score of Anjali is heart rending, so is Hey RAM and Mouna Ragam.

More to follow…

I have a lots to say about IR. I think it was some 15 years ago that I first had heard a song that he made. This was the time when VCRs were around, so one of my dad’s friends had given us a video tape that had the song “Nilavaee Vaa”  from the movie Mouna Ragam. I was barely in my teens then, didn’t know tamil, but as i heard this song, my mind was captured to the intricate style in which he orchestrated the song. The sequence, parts layout, harmonization,chord usage – everything was superb ( something  tha I”ve never heard before at all. I immediately wanted to get more and more songs from the same composer, but since my tamil knowledge was limited, and most of the students and friends I knew never had an interest for his music(they themselves were probably in the same boat as I was). Days and years passed by, still I didn’t have much on IR, but I used to hear songs from him frequently – not knowing  that those songs were again his compositions. My next reaction to getting his songs came from “Oliyum Oliyum”,  I had quite a hard time ‘judging;’ his music because my benchmark was a song like Nilaavae Vaa only. I was spellbound to later realise that he has surpassed so many laurels and composed for so many films.

There’s one particular incident that took me 6 yrs to get that song. This song was featured many times in Oliyum Oliyum, but since I didn’t know to read tamil, i couldn’t get the song. I used to faithfully check every broadcast of the programe. The strings arrangement on this was fantastic. IR’s knowledge and his dexterity to use strings (and wind percussion) remains unbeaten. I went to Malaysia as a part of my work and there found the name of the movie that the song was in and finally got the song. It is called “santhosham endra santhosham” sung by S.Janaki for the movie ” Manithanin Marrupakkam” . By this time i began to understand what to look for or to expect from an IR number, and i was getting used to his style of arranging/scoring. It really helped me because i was a great listener, and a growing musician. It’s  a different thing when you know  to sing a song and a totally different thing when you know to play that same song. It’s as if you are going through the same emotions and feelings that the composer had when he was creating that song. from then on, I slowly started to take interest in all his compositions. I even went to purchase VCDs of movies where his songs were hits, just with these songs the movies that had them were hits too. His improvisation knows no bounds..for example take the BGM of Mouna Ragam, this (in popular circles) is loosely connected to the soundtrack of the hit English movie – Flashdance. Giorigo Moroder did the original soundtrack for the movie. If you listen to the soundtrack of Flashdance and then listen to the BGM of Mouna Ragam, you can notice a common thread, but that’s all that you’ll notice. The common thread being the feel and the tempo of the music there.  IR composed something to that effect but a totally different chord progression and feel to it.

I am an 80s freak, I love both Tamil music and English music of the 80s. As my knowledge slowly started to increase about IR, i started a journey to collect his masterpieces (it’s still an ongoing process) and I discover that each of his songs have a story to tell, be it the simple – Kanae Kalaimaanae or the gusty Illamai Idho Idho…the way he composes, the way he arranges, the way he chooses what instrument for what part, the octave it should be played, the positioning of the same in the stereo field (instrument panning), how effects can be applied, and how much of it’s application help a song, what all instruments need effects and what effects to use (based on the feel of the song), to give a striking example, take the song “Panni vium malar vanam’ from the movie “Nineivellam Nithya”. This song has a fast feel to it and just after the introduction has been played and as the song starts off, there’s an electric guitar being played (strummed) that catches your ear. This guitar has a unit attached to it, this unit is called a Phaser and it modulates the clean electric guitar tone to make it sound as if it’s coming out of a rotating tube, more like how you see waves on a sea shore, couple that Phasesr to a compressor and a chorus, you get beautiful tone.  This effect was necessary to give that song a raunchy feel, if you play the song without that effect, there’s something missing – and the clever part here is that the frequency of these waves is matched to the tempo of the song. His knowledge on harmony is remains unbeaten, his 500th film Anjali is a treat for every musician. The intricate arrangements in  the title track Anajali is such a delight, he makes it look as if all the instruments ‘talk’ with each other as in , these instruments are correctly panned left/right and have different parts to play, so as one part is over, the next part starts up from the right and then left, sometimes together. (as heard in the II BGM of Anjai and II BGM of the song “Singalathu Chinna Kuyilae”  from Punnagai Mannan)

The way he arranges strings/violins makes you happy or sad, as in the songs – Sandhosham endra Sanshosham from the movie Manithanin marrupakkam, or Idhayamae (title track), the other point to be stressed is that wind percussion is probably one of the difficult parts to play as it’s played by humans. Unless you have proper breath control, proper wind pressure, you cannot play percussion, especially when it comes to fast notes at fast tempos also slow (long notes) where you have to hold. It’s also tough to get wind percussion play at any octave as these instruments depend on wind pressure to sound, so if there’s no adequate pressure from the player, trumpet hits wont have a punch. For every wind instrument, there are a variety of options that come along,..for ex: in trumpets you have bright trumpet/solo trumpet/jazz trumpet etc…each of these leave a particular signature on the song.  Another reason why most people get instantly latched on to songs that are made by him ( or by composers of his time) is the authenticity and naturality of the instruments used, to be more specific, the tones used. Before the advent of modern digital recording,everything was analog, which means for a recording you’d have 2 tabala players, some more percussion players veena’s, violins,guitars etc etc, when these instruments get recorded, the sound that the instruments produce, the dynamics introduced into the environment, the recording ambience, the natural warmth of the instrument are all captured by the microphones and these are recorded as analog signals ( basically a change in voltage). Now with digital technology, (though its very very beneficial), the actual process of the whole chain of recording revolves around bits/ 0s and 1s. Though clarity and depth of each instrument tone has been reproduced accurately, the sharp shrillness of the new age instruments/samples/rack boxes seem to take a toll on our ears. You can hardly listen to a song more than 5 times with today’s music, whereas if you put a song like Sangeetha Megam or Paatu Thalaivan or Nee Oru Kadhal Sangeetham – you can play it for a long time, as the sounds there don’t irritate you or hurt your ears at all.

He’s probably the only music director to use everything that was available to him, even guitar effect units were not spared. His level of understanding harmony and  the knack of mixing the correct notes to give 2/3/4 part harmony is outstanding – a perfect example – rajja raajathi rajan – from Agni Nakshathiram. He brought in the bass guitar, an instrument that was only used in Western music into tamil films. Song that feature a lot of bass guitars – Devanin Kovil – from the movie Aruvadai Naal, ( the bass guitar plays notes that’s related to the melody in the background), there are different styles of playing for a bass guitar,  you have fretless bass, slap bass,picked bass,acoustic bass and many more, IR has used all of them, particularly in songs like Raja Raja Cholan from the movie Rettai Vaal Kuruvi (Slap Bass), Pattu Ingae – from the movie Annanagar Muthal Thiruvu, Thumbee Vaa from the Malayalam Movie Olangal. All these effects/ style of playings/differences in arranging /chord inversions/rhythm changes were all just getting developed and were never heard in Indian music till IR came along. Today we have everything available to us, music production is more like making fried rice where you just throw in all the components necessary to make a sequence, add some effects and then vocals, polish the vocals with a touch of compression/eq and your song is ready. It has become so affordable that anyone who has a net connection and a decent fast computer can make music in seconds. If IR could do all this and much much more, (when nothing of this even existed as theories) then he is the king of music.  His music gives life to every frame of a movie, and as much as he makes music, he also does know the power of silence too. Apart from his music, lyrics also played an important part in shaping a movie, you don’t get lyrics that make you think these days, it’s just pure commercial logic that exists today. Take for example Poonkodi than – the song from the movie idhayam, analyze the stanzas, or any good song, can you ever imagine to get lyrics like that today ? or take Sangeetha Megam  from the movie Uthaya Geetham.

It’s true that you can’t contain someone like IR in lines like these or by blogs/websites etc, his music is the universe in which all of us live. He has done so much and achieved so much in music, that today most of us take certain things in music for granted. He is instrumental in creating fades ( where the volume of the track reduces over time) stuff like fade in , fade out and cross fades, he is also instrumental in creating stuff like intro sequences for a hero, musically creating empathy,pathos, etc. His arrangements are all tight, with different variations to a common rhythm pattern. The differences in rhythm create different arrangement opportunities for a song, the result of which you see in film where a song is sung in a a happy mood and the same song is sung as a sad slow song. His chord progressions are fantastic, the use of diminisheds,major 7ths,minor 7ths, added 9th/5ths/ etc and when coupled with root inversions (for bass), creates /lifts the song, a simple example – the introduction for Vaa Vaa Paakam Vaa – from the movie Thanga Magan, his use of the human voice as an instrument is also a new thing – the shining example being Raja Raajathi rajan – from Agni Nakshathiram and also the starting part for the song Devanin Koyil.

More to follow…

[image courtesy:http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_lsxB2f-l77c/SIl7OFIXpaI/AAAAAAAACuM/ci9aeszEZT4/s320/ilayaraja2.JPG]