SOUTH INDIAN CINE MUSIC DIRECTORS – TAMIL -[ OLD VERSIONS]

SOUTH INDIAN CINE MUSIC DIRECTORS – TAMIL   -[ OLD VERSIONS]                                                                  [On request from Prof. K. Venkataraman]

Preamble

A great deal of perception correction appears essential in the light of what I have seen of some friends discussing or portraying their version of ‘Music Direction’. There are several steps before a song takes its shape that we finally come to hear. A major component of most songs is the ‘metamorphosis’that a song proceeds through, before the MD ascertained with his colleagues “Shall we go for ‘take’?” A moment before this, the MD would already have verified the state of readiness by ‘sound engineer[s]’ who ought to satisfy themselves of the right output from every section in the orchestra. If needed, the Sound engineers may suggest some re-positioning of instruments or placing of microphones for improved reception. Honestly, the success of a song for its clarity and high fidelity tonal quality of instruments of those times was the silent contribution from sound engineering wing in audio recording. This was the situation till late 1980s after which computer-aided technology came into the domain of cine music. With advanced equipment and technology, track recording came about. Track recording meant ‘recording some skeletal voice for creating a space for the ‘final human voice’ to be incorporated in that space, by erasing the previous voice record. This gave enormous advantage to singers; earlier they had to stay in one recording theatre until a song was completed. With the advent of track recording, they moved between recording stations only to fill the slot by rendering a song in the suggested tune. Thus, they got far removed from critical facets like the co-singer[s]/ for which movie the song was and such data.

The story of the ‘manual era of song recording’ was totally different. In plain terms, it was physical participation by every member of the team in the same place, time and period. So, those songs were,  proudly [and rightly so] proclaimed as products of ‘LIVE RECORDING’. There were no ‘joints’ of pieces of music played by different teams. Every artiste played his instrument as per specification of the MD; the voice and orchestra were arranged to be in sequence and the entire song used to be recorded in the same format as we know of that song. Any error by anyone meant “repeat the whole song from the start”. There was no facility to correct the erroneous segment. Do it right or do it again and again until you do it right was the way that song recording was carried out in those times. Requirements were so rigid that MDs / producers/ singers /Orchestra members preferred thorough rehearsals before final recording. With so much of ‘repeats’ every member had a thorough grasp of his / her part and the final take was generally “perfection personified”. The then MDs and their assistants were too involved in the task that even minor slips were never allowed to pass by. Now, it should be clear as to why ‘uniform clarity’ has been typical of old songs.  With every instrument played on the spot, their tonal quality is/was fine. Key-board generated instrumental tones are just no match to live-play of any instrument. Besides, those songs were recorded by ‘live performance’ of all components. That is why those songs give a sense of rich satisfaction, as every syllable, note and synchrony look to flow smooth and frictionless; by repeat hearing we remember songs ‘by heart’.     

The process of Song making

The narration presented here is relevant and valid to what was the practice in 1950s – 80s. Later the process has witnessed changes just to accommodate for convenience. Convenience has swallowed conviction which was the original criterion in song making. By ‘conviction’ I suggest the relevance aspect for a song in a movie sequence. The long standing glory of old songs owes itself to the correct placement [relevance] and its value to the process of story-telling , better still- story propelling. Those songs carried the subtle idea of ‘portraying’ the mood of the character ‘on screen’. So, songs had to appeal by content. From appealing songs, we have come to a state of appalling songs.

Why did they appeal? Those songs were phrased to synchronize with the movie situation; they very much did so because, they were made under the supervision and consent of the Director of that movie. Directors then were held in high esteem and he /she ought to ‘clear’ every product before it finds a place in the movie. With the consent of the movie producer, the Directors used to choose the Lyricist/ Music Director in 1960s. Prior to that, a movie maker banner used to have ‘company MDs ‘ who were on their pay rolls, scoring music whenever the company made a movie. In any case, a song had its birth from a thorough discussion between the Script writer, Director, Lyricist and the Music Director. In the early days a song was written by lyricist and handed over to the producer for further decorations like tune, musical back-up and embellishment. By late 1950s all the movie-making team leaders used to sit and ‘develop’ a song. Developing a song involved three important parameters to be satisfied. 1] appropriate words befitting the stature of the ‘screen character’, 2] conveying of right emotions for the movie scene and 3] ‘comfortable‘ seating of words in the chosen tune. If a word or phrase does not fit the tune, alternative word or phrase would be provided by the lyricist. So, the lyricist used tostay on until the entire song is framed to a defined tune structure. In MDs’ language this part was referred to as ‘COMPOSING’. The assistants of the MD make note of the tune flow by depiction of ‘swaras’ and also the pattern of flow by noting down the musical scale [notations].  The MD with the consent of the producer, selects the appropriate voice for the movie character and effective conveying of emotions. Those singer artistes were repeatedly trained to sing the lyric in that tune. The singers make note of the song flow notations for them to deliver while recording the song. With a tune ready, the MD had to formulate   scores for prelude music, I interlude after ’pallavi’, II interlude after first charanam , III interlude after II charanam and a postlude to wind up the song in a mode  befitting the mood. Assistants of the MDs furnish musical notations for each instrument as fixed by the MD and SEVERAL ROUNDS OF REHEARSALS were followed; later the rehearsals would include singer[s]. Final rehearsals [3 or 4 times] were on full scale. Then came the “take”; it meant the playing of song for recording as prescribed.  So much of co-ordination was behind every song of the good old days. Let us consider how the MDs went about their task.

Prof. K. Raman