Ilaiyaraaja and strings

I was recently listening to "Gana Gana gana vena kanavinai vidhaikkira mazhaiyey mazhaiyey". This is one of the innumerable beautiful rain songs that IR has composed. There are the famous rain songs like oho megam vandhadho from Mouna Ragam, vaan megam from Punnagai mannan, Aathadi ammadi from Idhayathai thirudathey and then there are the not so famous ones like Ponnaana meni from Meendum kokila, Pothukkutt oothudhadi from Paayum Puli to which we could add Gana Gana. I couldn't find Gana Gana in any public domain, so you'd have to either hunt it yourself or be satisfied with your memory of the song, if you've heard it, and my blog.

The songs starts of with a fantastic signal of the onset of rains, before the strings join the party at the 6th second and starts celebrating the wonderful downpour. IR uses repetition, one of the key aesthetic principles, beautifully from the 10th to the 12th, where he manages to take a small 4-note motif and repeats it 8 times within 2 seconds. I've seen many lesser directors make an absolute mess of trying to repeat a small motif. They'll most likely tune a motif which is complete by itself, and then when repeated, it sounds awry. IR's simple rule in all such aesthetic repetitions is to pay special attention to the beginning and the last note, the 1st and 4th note here. The first note will be somewhere after the beginning, and the last note slightly before, where they were supposed to begin and end respectively, had they been featured in a non-repetitive motif. Composed this way, the repetition never tires the ear and is able to progressively build on the momentum generated by the repetitive motif.

I will try to find examples of good publically available IR's aesthetic repetitive motif and other examples of poorly composed repetitive motifs.

Photo frames

I finally managed to pull myself out of my lazy couch and get my cherished memories framed. I had picked photographs from old photo albums.

I tried relating to the differences in my behavior as a consumer towards photographs over a 30-year time period. I've been a user of multiple technologies, photos taken by my dad's 128mm kodak camera, 35mm minolta camera, my first camera a 35-180 mm minolta, my first SLR - Canon EOS and a multitude of digital point-and-shoots and my most recent Canan D350.

Back then photos were memories, not aesthetic expressions. Most of the old photos that I've chosen for printing are ones that were taken during official occasions school functions, class photos, studio photos etc. Then there are pictures taken by my dad using his 128mm Kodak. Amazing photos. He must have had a lot of zest for life then. I cherish some of the prints from my film-SLR cameras. I had a ratio of 1 good picture for every 10 pictures shot. Good by my standards, which I'm sure is a lot more lenient than many amateur photographers might consider.

With the advent of digital cameras, one had instant feedback of the result. This should have improved the good-pictures to the pictures-shot ratio, but I haven't developed the merciless objectivity that is required in deleting all bad photos. Also I find it easier deleting photos that don't involve people, because the act of deleting a photo with someone you know is so difficult it is almost like tearing a photograph. Result, I have a huge collection of digital pictures that I can't peruse with the same happiness as I do for my limited print-photographs. Which makes me wonder, is this a legacy of the "Raj-era" (an era in India where a constrained supply artificially created a higher demand).

Happy shooting.