Almost every week, since I joined Paadarivom Padipparivom as a member, have learned a new movie song. Except for 7 or 8 weeks out of ~70, have tried to learn the song, sing it and have submit it for reviews.
Many years ago, I was at a dance competition. One way to get a subsidy on the competition fees or hotel was to be a volunteer at the competition. You run errands for the judges, you walk around the ballroom and collect the score sheets the judges hand over after every round and rush it to the score tabulator, you do score tabulation, you help the guest star performers with things .. a long list basically. Sometimes you end up having breakfast with these judges. Once at such a breakfast, a renowned teacher by the name of Ray Rivers (my memory on dance stuff is intentionally bad..know his last name is definintely Rivers) told me "I heard you have a doctorate in engineering and are dancing competition. Why?" and my response was "I like to dance!" and he said "going to give you a piece of advice! The name of the game, is to stay in the game! As long as you keep dancing and don't give up, you can be a really good dancer!". He was right. I quit dancing shortly after marriage and that good dancer thing went poof!
Why bring this up?!
If you do anything with diligence, intensity and sincerity and keep working on it, you will get better at it. My yoga teacher Matt tells me all the time "you get good at what you practice. you practice the right way, you good at doing it the right way. you practice the wrong way, you get good at that too! So be careful what you practice!"
I am not planning to give up on music this time. Will keep working on it at my own pace with no timetable, but there will always be music. Over the last 17 months, the method to learning and singing this "song of the week" has evolved and it has kind of reached a set routine. I am documenting this routine in hopes that it helps aspiring students who are in the same boat as me. No formal classical training, but want to improve their singing.
1. Listen to the sound track 20-30 times on a loop while walking, cutting veggies, while in the bathroom, when taking a walk at lunch, basically when time permits.
2. Listen to the music on Youtube video but at 0.75x speed. I didn't even know you could listen to Youtube videos at different speeds till this music interest!
3. Listen to the recording of the teaching show. (given the Chennai to California time difference, I always end up watching the recording of the teaching show).
4. Take notes by hand of what you need to pay attention to. Write down every word. My notes are probably for me and may not help others. To each his own! The notation you use might be different.. I put some wavy lines which mean something to me which doesn't make any sense to others. Where possible I write down swarams or notes for select syllables so I can hit the right starting, highlight or ending note.
5. Correct the notes by cross referencing to the OST (Original Sound Track, another abbreviation that I was not aware of!) and the Youtube 0.75x listen.
6. Start singing a few times with audio only to finish entire song. If you make a mistake keep going to finish song. Delete all the wrong ones. Listen but don't save.
7. Once you are okay with singing the entire thing by heart, now go for the feel of the song. Lyrics you know by now. Ragam and Taalam you know by now. So now after 20-30 tries work on the feel and emotion.
8. Once that also seems as good as it can get under current skill set, start recording with video. This is the painful part as you cannot overwrite a specific line in video. You make a mistake, you have to start from scratch. Do it! In video there is no point in finishing song. Here you just delete after a mistake and start over!
9. Verify song before saving.
10. Send song to MIL for review. If she says "okay" or "decent" then submit. Else, delete and start over after figuring out what was off.
This method is the current status quo. Song is taught over weekend. Listening is done over weekend. First few tries on Monday evening, second try Tuesday. Video attempt on Wed and if fail, Thursday. Submit Thursday night or Friday AM before deadline.
Will keep doing this approach. It used to take me 60 tries to get an "OK". These days I get it in 30 tries which is good.
However that said, there are songs which have taken me 100+ attempts to try as they are way outside my current skillset and I am practically memorizing notes and just brute forcing it by repetition.
When singing something not taught yet by Paadarivom, I do same method, except there is no teaching show to watch and the notes are from the OST and slowed down Youtube video. Picking the right track that matches the tempo of the OST is key. Sometimes folks speed up the tracks to make it easier for beginner singers to look good, but that backfires if you want to sing it right and do justice to the song!
Let's see where this method gets me in 2023! Who knows, this method might change as things improve, or more steps might end up being added as more things become obvious! It is all part of the learning!
Wishing all of you a wonderful new year filled with music and happiness!
Started writing this post last year, same time.. but it kept getting revised as time went by to the extent that it never made it out.
Sometimes a journey takes you through so many intermediate sights worth seeing that if you start waiting to post till you reach your final destination, all those posts just don't make it.. that is if your final destination is mind blowing.
When it comes to the music learning journey, have no final destination planned. So it would be ridiculous to wait for some special moment to finish this post. So here goes. . . while this post definitely gets the "publish" button today, the music learning will keep going.
The previous posts in this blog tab tell you everything that got me to this point. I became a "student" yet again, trying to sing movie songs better than the average bathroom singer. (I am pretty quiet in the bathroom as the showers are always 2-4 minutes maximum. Keep pushing my family to take shorter baths to conserve hot water and the associated electricity bill!). The singing happens in the car when no one else is present.
After joining Paadarivom Padipparivom as a student, I got a chance to be a mentee in a live show. Got a call from my teacher and he asked if I am free on a weekend morning at 5:30 AM. Told him I will obviously be free, but singing with the family is asleep will be a challenge. Was also not ready for this! They knew I was a beginner. What were they thinking ? Putting me up in a live show to learn in front of everyone? My teacher (as for some strange reason like all my other teachers) had more faith in me than I had in myself. Maybe that is a common trait for all teachers? Or maybe I just luck out finding teachers like this? One has to be very lucky to find the right teachers, for any subject! He said "you will do just fine! it is better for everyone to see how you learn from this experience as a beginner!"
There I was sitting on my meditation pillow on the floor in front of the now familiar "manja suvaru" or "yellow wall" at 5AM testing out audio and video. It was one of my favorite songs "Mounamana Neram" and I had been warned by family not to touch songs like this so as to keep SPB's memory alive. The fact that a million others are butchering SPB song's even as I type this post somehow didn't seem to matter to the family! At least I was being taught the song by a teacher, word by word!
The instruction 5 days ahead of this live experience was simple. Listen to this song on a loop 20-30 times. Listen to it and not just hear it. Pay attention to little details as you listen. So I went and did just that, or thought I did! This was also the first time the format of this teaching episode was changing to have two teachers teach two students at the same time. Male teacher teaches male mentee and female teacher teaches the female mentee. The female mentee was a quiet down to earth "pro". She was as tense as me as it was her first time being live, but later I learned that her hubby was her pillar of strength and was giving her a tutorial class at home. Me?! No such luck, as my family was trying to not get involved in this process at all. Gandhiji would have learned a thing or two to speed up the "Quit India" movement, if he had watched my family quit me that week. I sat through that live teaching show and learned one thing. Listening to a song 100 times didn't do shit for my ability to sing it. The little nuances I thought I had understood, all nonsense! What was I even listening to?
Then came the harder part. Having to put out a song invite within 36 hours. There were two lines that I simply could not deliver! I got voicenotes from both teachers giving me a lot of confidence. The female teacher gave me slow motion notes on how to sing the thing and I still was struggling to sing it at regular speed. At one point, they took pity on me and said "this will do!" for the invite. It reminded me of "that will do Pig!" dialog from Babe! A few people were nice enough to join my invite. I could have definitely done a lot better and have done better, since then. Given that moment in time when a zillion lightbulb moments happened in two days with respect to learning something, having a time crunch to deliver <100 words in a 4 minute song to near perfection and knowing I failed in 80% of the words, it was gut wrenching!
I am not just a student. I am also a yogi. If there is one thing my yoga gurus have taught me, it is that "falling down is human but getting back up and trying again, now that is a yogi!"
Dusted myself up after that debacle and decided that I will do better every week compared to the previous week. Whatever that experience taught me, I was going to internalize it and improve on it every week. Was not going to give up on singing because I made a fool of myself on a live teaching show. If anything, this was like getting into an arranged marriage. You like or don't like something about her? It doesn't matter because you are already married to the girl. Just figure it out! Had already embarassed myself in front of the all the teachers and students in the music group, not to mention all my friends and family. This was like rock bottom. There was only one way to go from there! Improve week on week!
My teachers however, were talking as though they had struck gold with me. They were very happy with my sincerity and my ability to pick up at least half of what they were saying. One thing was also clear to me a month after this experience. I had to pick up the pieces and start learning Carnatic music at the earliest to be able to sing film songs better. My ability to place a note where it needs to be was pathetic.
Given most of the teachers in Paadarivom Padipparivom were classical music teachers, I decided to start learning Carnatic (South Indian classical) music as well on the auspicious Vijayadasami day last year. My teacher(Koushik) is a patient man in his early forties with a lot of experience in teaching folks of all age groups. In the very first class he told me "I am not here to teach you knack. Will teach you hacks instead". Will never forget the way he said it. He was in the business of teaching old dogs new tricks and he meant it. Classical music is learned by kids in south India at the age of 4 or 5 and they pick it up over time with a lot of practice over two decades. I was almost 50 trying to start from scratch again!
This needed a different curriculum and syllabus. One designed to keep a middle aged man interested enough to keep going and still make slow and steady progress. Koushik has managed to do it so far. It has been 14 months since my first Classical music class (which is once a week for 50 minutes) and I can in all sincerity say that every class has had at least one lightbulb moment and every class has built on the incremental progress from the previous classes. We have finished a full book of songs in 14 months. Given that there was no planned schedule to get anywhere at anytime, at least from my side, it was suprising that he got me this far.
He always reminds me of the four stages in the learning curve:
1. Unconscious incompetence : I don't even realize what it is supposed to sound like
2. Conscious incompetence : I realize what the thing is supposed to be like but don't how how to do it yet
3. Conscious competence : Know what is required but still a work in progress. all it takes is practice at this point and hard work.. the understanding is there.. but it is a struggle
4. Unconscious competence : can sing it with eyes closed and practiced ease.. no need to think about it!
By the time the mentee experience was done, was going from stage 1 to glimpses of 2. Now after 14 months of learning Classical music and singing one movie song a week with a systematic approach, have gotten to start seeing stage 3 in the horizon.
It is my sincere hope that in a few years, will get to 3 and eventually on to step 4!
In 2022, have sang 36 songs and submit them for reviews and have recevied valuable feedback from the teachers on every one of those songs! Have definitely improved as a singer in the last 12 months. Have also learned to appreciate what I am listening to, thanks to the improved awareness! Also know why some of my fellow students are a class apart from the rest.
The highlight of 2022 singing was this.
Very happy to have music back in my life now! Also extremely happy to have found this community of singers at different levels who really encourage each other and bring out the best that everyone has to offer muscially!
If you are someone who wants to improve your singing no matter what your level is, would definitely suggest joining this community!
The systematic approach to singing one movie song a week is an unfinished post as well. Will post that soon, as it will definitely benefit other learners!
The previous post on my stumbling on to Paadarivom Padipparivom is here...
Having found that there is an initiative to help amateur singers become better at singing Tamil movie duets, went and checked out a lesson where a song was being taught live to two aspiring students.
The song was "Aagaya Vennilave", an old favorite. Had sang it before with my school mates just after becoming a member of Smule. It is not an easy song to sing as there is always some difficulty with the beats and the patterns. Now there was a one hour lesson for a 4 minute song?! Does it really need this effort to do justice to singing this song on Smule? Went in with lots of questions and woke up bright and early to watch this live show at 5:30 AM!
The teacher, Koushik, who was very down to earth, was extremely patient and he broke it down so nicely. In all my life, would not have expected to understand something that was being taught to me this clearly, for how to sing a movie song! It was like being in a dream!
The pattern for this song which gets broken down in four beats of four, gets changed in select lines to give it that punch.. It will always be an unforgetable experience on how the lightbulb went off in my head!
1234-1234-1234-1234 was changed to
1234-123-1234-123-12
That last 12 ... were called the magic notes!
Putting a link to that video here, in case any of you want to see what I am talking about..
After sitting through this lesson, I was hooked. Then came the hard part. Putting what was learned into practice and singing the song! When you have no clue, you can just sing in Smule. Once you know the difference between what you are singing and what it is supposed to be like, then there is a problem. Have to make an effor to sing better.
This was an interesting way to teach people. A teacher or mentor teaches two students (mentees) the song in great detail. They are given some background and context on the song, the raga it is set to, the talam, etc. and the feel of the song and there is a line by line breakdown. All the folks watching this can learn from the corrections that the two mentees get from the teacher. There is also plenty of time to write notes as this is going on.
Once the two students have learned it, they get 48 hours to sing their parts alone and post invites on Smule. All the students who learned the song and want to give it a shot join the invites posted by the mentees. Then they can submit their joins to a review committee that actually selects the top 10% and feature it in the following weeks show. They get sincere feedback on what went right and what went wrong.
To be honest I was devastated. Once you know what has to be done, and you realize you are not there yet, with a deadline to submit a song for a review, I panicked. I didn't have the skill to pull off some of the stuff in the song as I am not a trained classical music singer. Then again, most students weren't! They were all winging it using what was taught.
Eventually with a lot of guidance from my MIL and Jr. who basically acted as my local judge, sang the song at least 20 times and eventually did submit it. San was impressed by my dedication but was not happy with my facial expressions. Why do you sound so sad or scared when you sing? was the question. Didn't have an answer at that time!
Got a detailed review on voice mail telling me what is going right and what is going wrong. This type of feedback is just amazing, but I was lost again after a few more weeks of singing the song of the week and getting the feedback. I did not understand some of the technical terms used to describe what was going on and what needed to be corrected..
Take off, glides, landing notes, etc.. felt like I had ended up in flight school instead of a music school. The teachers though were patient. Explained every little thing to me in a way I could understand it. So I decided to join Paadarivom Padipparivom as an official student two weeks later! They sent me a nice card for the membership. The membership fee was a 130$ a year and my CFO was actually okay with it. Given I had already paid Smule 40$ a year and I was singing almost everyday for at least 15 minutes, think the family decided "if he is going to sing anyways and annoy us, let him at least get better!".
Would still get some imploring requests from San not to "spoil" some songs by "touching them".. "please, andha paatu mattum vendaam! andha paatayum kedukkadhe! Enakku pidichcha paatu adhu!" .. That would always baffle me. While the sincerity of the feedback on how pathetic my singing was, especially when it came to certain songs (mostly SPB, KJY songs with some aalap or swarams involved.. there was a pattern there), there were a zillion guys out there singing that same song in abaswaram where 80% of the notes didn't match.. sure, I am at 20% off, but why not me?! These days I don't ask any questions.. just sing. No song is off limits. There is a bunch of folks who are (or were) in the same boat who believe that this is something that can be overcome as an amateur with practice and picking up some tricks. That is enough hope! San on the other hand has given up hope on my giving up singing. She knows I will keep at it. Now she is hoping I learn fast enough so that what comes out of my mouth is at least above average stuff!
There were daily fun assignments to sing 30 second to 1 minute clips in a Whatsapp group, compressed video lessons from the teachers, a lot of guidance and encouragement and most importanly, excellent feedback on what has to be improved and possible methods to do it!
It has been a fun 6 months being a student and over this time have almost learned and sang one song every week. Sometimes I would spend hours to record the song, if it is a favorite and sometimes wrap it up in 2 hours because the will and motivation for that song was not there. For the most part, I was learning the little intricacies of what a new singer misses.
MIL, Jr. and to some extent San have been my internal critics. If they reject a song, I delete it and sing again. Only if it passes the MIL's test, does anything get posted. (Did post one song when she implored me not to make a fool of myself and regret posting it to this day.. the feedback I got from that teacher was interesting..given he was the one who pointed me to this group, have to make it up to him someday by doing a better job!)
My classmates and hiking buddies and friends have all been supportive of my trying to improve my singing. They tell me when I do a good job and when they were not impressed. That is also new and refreshing. They know I take their feedback seriously and go back and try to figure out what was missed. Have learned a lot of imporant things in the last 6 months!
The first lesson I got was the difference between hearing and listening. Only when you listen to the original sound track a few times (if possible at 0.75x or 0.5x speed), you see the devil.. sorry, the details.
The second lesson I got was that, it is important to note the subtle differnces when the same line is repeated twice in a song. The variations between the first time and the repeat is almost always the same, at least for most songs by Ilayaraja! The first time is plain and the second time has some spice to it, almost in same locations!
The third lesson, which is still a work in progress, is to end a line with the right landing note. In most cases, there is a "hook" to it, where the male singer has to bend the note and hand it over like a baton being passed in a relay race. If you don't reach or if you over run the other person, it is over! Had never even noticed this in the first 4 months of Smule singing.. Just knowing this concept and trying to even crudely implement it, makes me sound way better!
The lesson of all lessons is that one has to sing the same song over and over again, to get to a level of mastery where you are no longer conscious of the lyrics, you are no longer worried about singing to the beat and are not worried about sync'ing with the other singer. Once you reach that stage, then you can emote!! You can bring out the real feel of the song.
If you are constantly worried about missing the pitch, the tempo, the right variations etc.. the only emotion that shows up in the song is fear! Try to sing a happy song, and I sound happily scared.. try to sing a sad song, I sound sad and afraid! All other things have to go on autopilot, for the emotion part to even start!
Have had the same experience in the yoga room. You know what has to be done and it takes a certain awareness to be able to pull it off. Only after years of practice where you know the basic struggles are not an issue anymore, can you get to a certain form and depth. Just like how form is more important than depth in a yoga pose, in singing, you have to get the basic structure of the song right before trying to do all fancy stuff! If you learn that wrong, it is incredibly difficult to unlearn it and start again!
Still going through a steep learning curve with this group of like minded singers and an excellent group of mentors!
It is a joy to be able to sing again after so many years! It is also great to realize that what comes out of my mouth when singing, is a lot better than what it was, just 9 months ago! For that, I am grateful to Paadarivom Padipparivom!
Have also met a lot of people with the same interest in improving their singing and have made new friends. That is another blessing! It is good to know that I am not alone in frustrating the family, by singing the same song a dozen times, back to back!
After joining this group, I was told that based on multiple criteria, there will be a chance for me to be a student on the live show. Did get that chance as well. That was a different experience in itself.
Will share that sometime soon.. not everything goes as planned.. another big lesson!
The first part of this post, that pretty much put my touch and go with music since childhood is here..
Covid hit us all, some more than others. Everyone had to stay at home for months. Travel was simply not possible. There were no random mini get togethers with high school classmates.
A few of these classmates, who all went to BITS Pilani, had been part of a Zoom get together for their college group. They suggested doing a get together for our school group along similar lines.
The idea was to not just have everyone come and introduce themselves and their family, but to make a talent show inbetween the intros. This was supposed to be a 2 hour event with close to 70/100 classmates expecting to show up. It ended up being a 4 hour thing where people just stayed up late and enjoyed the time spent.
The talent show part was to have people post either a recorded video of them singing, playing an instrument, dance, etc. It just so happened that one of my friends sent me a message asking me to sing something in Spanish as he had remembered my Spanish singing days.
Given we were all at home and I was mostly confined to an unheated guest bedroom in the corner of the house, I gave it a shot. Recorded a Spanish song and had to lip sync it live. The sync did not come out great when there were 70 people on zoom. But here is the original recording and a screenshot..
It is very much possible that my friends liked it more for the Spanish, than my actualy singing quality, but I did get a lot of encouragement to keep singing. It is also the first time I heard that multiple classmates were on this platform called Smule.
A few months earlier, another friend of mine told me about Smule and how she was randomly singing with strangers. Her hubby warned me not to go anywhere near it! I did not pay much attention to this or even check out Smule at that time. (I wasn't into singing!)
After this high school get together, the folks who were all interested in singing, decided to start a separate group so we don't spam the rest of the folks with our music interest.
Bathroom Singers was born.. We even have a fancy group logo, thanks to the Lyril girl!
Not sure if we showed that kind of attitude in our singing, but we have all come a long way since the end of February when we had that event. We did a lot of singing. Many of us joined Smule and went through the learning curve of getting the basics of using this platform, just the very basics! Most of us were singing again after decades!
It was all Spanish songs the first month. It was not easy to sing on video. You make one mistake and you start again. I would give each of these a few tries. Good thing was I was singing from memorized lyrics. Could sing it with eyes closed!
Started sharing the links with friends and family. Got a few interesting responses!
My friends were happy to listen, but suggested that I slowly start to migrate from Spain via north India towards south India to join them on some of the songs. Went from Spanish to Italian to Hindi to Telugu to Tamil..
First attempt to sing Tamil was with my classmate and she picked a song that needed mimicry skills. She did an amazing job on this one!
Very soon I learned that putting out invites for others to sing along, was harder than joining someone elses invites, where you are just filling up the blanks! It was also not easy to sing on time and at tempo. You miss a beat, you are toast!
Also realized my repertoire of Tamil Songs was confined to what I listened to as a kid. What my aunts made me listen to when they were growing up. Was missing a few chapters in the middle from the college and grad student years. Had simply not kept up with much of the 90's music. There was also another gap in the early 2000's music when most of my time was spent changing diapers. At least now I knew that there was some stuff that I had to listen to first, before trying to sing and get some context on the songs.
As soon as the Spanish song clips hit India, my parents were in panic mode or at least that is what I saw in their responses. A ballroom dancing Tambram is an oxymoron, an anachronism, an abomination in the eyes of many.. Such a thing doesn't get acknowledged by ballroom dancers or Tambrams and that chapter of my life was buried under layers and layers of god knows what! A resurgence of Spanish on my lips was giving folks nightmares! So I would get nice requests to start singing Tamil (or even Hindi !!) songs, and if I did want to sing again, why not Carnatic music? South Indian classical music was now more accessible, what with Zoom teachers being everywhere!
"Sundaram, indha cinema paatellam vittutu konjam Saami paata paaden da! Punniamaavadhu varum!", was mentioned many times by many folks. (Sundar, why don't you leave all these movie songs and start singing devotional hymns, at least you will get some good karma?!)
I was singing(reciting) devotional stuff all the time anyways. The movie songs were just something to entertain myself and have some fun. Being happy and thereby making people around me happy is also good karma, no?! That was my answer to folks who wanted only devotional or pure classical music. That said, I did want to learn that properly as well, just did not know where to start! It also makes sense to learn classical as that is makes movie songs easier to sing!
In the meantime, the Bathroom singers got busy and after four months, only 4 of the 9 people were singing regularly. The rest of the entire group(almost 50) were sincerely cheering for whoever was still singing. To this day, they do! This group has encouraged me to keep singing more than anyone else!
Some of my classmates are really awesome singers! They just don't have the time. I don't have the natural talent that these kids showed in high school. Maybe I had some and never realized it, or maybe there was none. Bottomline was that in order to sound half decent, I had to practice, a lot!
My wife and kids went back to "can you please shut up?", but realized after two weeks that I wasn't going to.
Jr. found it amusing the way I was going about it. The litlte one did not want to have anything to do with my singing. So before posting stuff, I would get it reviewed with my MIL, (and San and Jr.) if they were available and willing.
It turned out that the MIL is an avid movie goer, music afficianado and a great critic. She would reject my post on the first note. She gave me more feedback on where I was off on the tone, the scale, the tempo, etc. She would ask me to go listen to the original to see why my attempt was so far off from the original. She taught me to listen to the background score and sing with it in unison. A lot of little things.
She has been my best critic and supporter. She saw how sincere I was, in trying to put out a decent invite and would give me a pass/fail. It was mostly a "barely pass with a D" type review but feedback is what helps one improve. So I would look forward to the D- instead of the F and rejoice!
My friend RK then told me "your voice will actually suit all the old TMS era songs. Try that!" and sent me a link to some of the songs. I simply would not join any songs from SPB or KJY because they were simply out of my range or so I thought. Also if I tried anything like that my wife would promptly say "Can you please not sing that song and spoil it for me? I am trying to save some good memories in my head!". It would be brutal.
Folks who read this blog, know that I am made of sterner stuff and don't give up on things that easily. Kept going, and RK was right. TMS, PBS, AM Rajah songs did sound better, partly because I knew all the lyrics by heart and had heard those songs a lot more than some of the recent (?!) Ilayaraja songs. My family was also happy that I was singing clean songs with no double meaning lyrics. These old songs were from a time where love didn't have so much physicality or oomph in the music. They could practically pass for devotional songs!
Made some new Smule friends who were singing similar genre of songs. That was great because the bathroom singers were almost silent. Needed the practice!
After singing 150 or so songs on Smule over 150 or so days, I tried to sing a TMS oldie. Once you sing a few songs on Smule, it automatically recommends you other songs to sing! The song, "Vasantha mullai pole" from the movie Sarangadharaa came out in 1958! It is one of my favorites and is almost a classical music song as were most songs in the 50's.
Here is a link to the original from the movie..
Sang it four five times and MIL rejected them all. Even my best supporter was pursing her lips and saying "idhu konjam kashtam Sundar! Neenga originala oru 10 dharava kelungo.. You have to go sing in a high pitch to make this work! You are not ready for this. See if anyone else has actually even sung this on Smule!"
(this is a difficult song Sundar! you listen to the original 10 times)
In Smule there are usually multiple tracks for any given song. However this song had pretty much one track which everyone was using. It was by a person called L. Narayanan. So I went through the list of folks who had sung this song and scrolled past pages and pages of recordings. Most of them were viewed only once or twice and none had likes against them. Then one stood out with 440 likes and a lot of gifts from listeners and a host of comments.
Listened to this relatively young bearded guy belt this out with effortless ease and he was hitting the high notes as though he was buttering up toast! Was mesmerized by it. Definitely worth a listen!!
Played it to my MIL and she was also impressed. My first thought was "Smule is for casual singers and if this guy, Seenusings is a casual singer and he pulled it off, I can take inspiration from this and try to sing it!".
Listened to a dozen times and made my attempt. MIL finally gave me a D- and I did post it (see below)
Whenever you click "Follow" for someone on Smule, the next day it will show you their three or four most recent posts, kind of like when you make a new Friend on Facebook.
There was something called "Open Mic from Seenu" and it was 5 minutes long. At first I thought "Open Mic" was some kind of freestyle singing without any background music and wanted to see how someone would do that. Turned out it was a talk about this initiative for a group called Paadarivom Padipparivom, where he was one of the teachers!
My first reaction was "Good to know that Seenu is a very experienced pro singer! So I should not beat myself over my D- after 20 attempts!".
The second reaction was to quickly go check out this initiative where they were teaching amateur singers to improve their Smule singing, that too for free!
This was almost end of June!
What happened next was nothing short of a magical ride..
Given I have been singing a lot recently, thought of sharing my contact points with music in the blog. Things got to a point where this needed its own section in the blog. So after many years, opening a new tab, just for music!
To understand why I am where I am, it might not be a bad idea to explain things from the past.
My grandmother, who is in her nineties, is a great Carnatic music singer. She had a lot of promise as a youngster and was noticed by many talent scouts (or whatever they were called in those days in Chennai). She got married young, had my mom at 15 and then her kids kept her busy. She still tried to sing after her kids grew up. Then I was born! At some point she became grandma daycare center and singing took a hit. There would always be whispers about how somehow my arrival had something to do with her singing expectations ending.
My grandmother never mentioned anything to me ever. She always sang to me and would say "edhavadhu vadhyam vaasikka kaththuko.. ungamma appavala moonu kuzhandhaiya Engligh medium schoolukku anupparadhe periya vishayam. Ippo illattiyum ennikkaavadhu sandharpam kidaichcha, kaththuko!"
(learn to play some instrument.. it is a big deal for your mom and dad to send three kids to English medium schools. Even if not now, someday when you get the opportunity, learn an instrument!"). I remember it like yesterday.
Given my impatience, I rolled on the floor, cried, threw a trantrum and got enrolled in a Violin class at Shringeri mutt. It was a 1 hour group class in a small room in the office building attached to the Saradhambaal temple, near what is now Mandaiveli Rail station, and the monthly fees was 5 Rupees! However, there was no violin at home! I got to learn there and the teacher, a very old Iyengar thatha would let me stay back and practice for 30 minutes. Managed to learn the very basics, and did Sarali and Jantai Varisai there over a few months. Then things changed, school got busy and that was that!
Then I ended up in Varanasi. My classmate found out that the music department under Dr. N. Rajam had a beginners one hour violin class every Saturday. The teacher, yet another old Iyengar thatha, would teach four of us students and none of us had a violin! All three of us would practice the finger positions without a violin and play there on Saturday. It was also hard given Saturday noon was feast in the mess halls and this class would be at 2PM. We would fight the "undamyakkam" and try to concentrate in class.
On top of that, it went swimmingly well as this thatha told me "You have to undo everything from the past and re-learn the right way". So over 5 months, I went from scratch (Sa-Pa-Sa) to Alankarams. Then the teacher got sick and the classes stopped. We became third year students and memorizing new English words on the Baron's GRE guide took priority over any other attempt to pursue learning Violin in Banaras!
In the last two months before leaving for the US, my moms school violin teacher taught me two geethams. Still no violin, but I did practice with her violin for a few days. She was a really great teacher. None of the "Undo this and redo that.." business. She smiled and encouraged me to adapt as she was teaching me. Then I came to the US and given the two suitcases where my packing would have rivaled that of astronauts, it was amazing that the music book made it! Later I learned that my own sister was a student of the school from the very man who wrote that book! She sings well, but sticks to Carnatic music in select functions. Have not heard her sing otherwise or share recordings.
A few months into grad school, our senior and guide Vish Vadari organized a music class for a bunch of interested grad students and post docs. This was also a once a week, evening class on campus, where we would block a room and learn from a local teacher. She did something interesting. She taught us the basics (from Sa-Pa-Sa to Alankarams again) but also taught us music appreciation (as we were all adults) by teaching us Rama Nama Sankeerthanams by Thyagaraja. These are songs we have all heard in social functions like weddings etc. We even went as a group and sang at a local Thyagaraja aaradhana in New Jersey in a Church converted to a temple. This was my first attempt at singing carnatic music!
Two years in, I moved schools and as a farewell gift, my grad school buddies all pooled in and bought me an antique violin! It was beautiful. They had it refurbed, new strings and all. Started practicing on my own whenever the mood hit me. It was always the sarali varisai to Alankarams. The one finger stuff Kalyani teacher had taught me before coming to US, was sadly forgotten.
It is around the same time that I started dancing and the music I played was almost always dance music. A heavy Latin influence to the point that my PhD thesis was dedicated to Julio Iglesias and Carlos Gardel. The only songs that came out of my mouth were in Spanish.
Eventually ended up in the bay area. Got married, stopped dancing and tried to sing again after my wife encouraged me to go find a teacher and learn. The one place which was the go to music school in those times was in Fremont, a good 45 minute drive. Used to drive 45 minutes one way for a 45 minute music class.. Again from Sa-Pa-Sa.. unlearn.. relearn.. this time again, there were some small songs, taught occasionally.
Then jr. was almost on her way into this world and she became my music.
When Jr. was in elementary school, I started to learn the guitar. That went great for a year, till my accident where my right arm was pretty much out of commission. It almost felt like there was some divine intervention that stopped me from learning music every time I crossed a six month period! If it happened once, it is a fluke, but this happened over and over again.
This time wanted to keep at it. Once my hand healed, thanks to yoga and another surgery, continued with the guitar. Learned for almost four years till my teacher said "You have graduated and I have taught you everything I could. The rest is up to you to practice and perfect!" . Then my job changed and ended going to Austin every alternate week and eventually to China and Taiwan every third week.
The guitar gently weeps.. still.. (here are some old videos from the blog!)
this video pretty much sums up my attempts at playing anything at home.. "Appppaaaa" would come the scream!
While I paint this as a bleak picture of me never getting to stick to music and being in the wrong place at the wrong time, truth is I was always close to music.
Here is the upside..
As a kid, I was always listening to my grandmother sing to me. My fathers elder sister was also an amazing singer and she used to sing whenever we used to meet or spend time together. She would tell me "Murali, unakku kural nalla irukku! Nee paatu kaththuko!" (Murali, you have a nice voice. You should learn to sing!) . Have never heard my mom or her siblings sing though, during my childhood.
Here are my dads older sister and my maternal grandma doing the aarati and singing. They would always be the ones to sing in any family function! (that grainy photo is from my Poonal)
My dad decided to splurge and get a Phillips gramaphone record player when I was around 4. We had only 5 records early on and we used to play it at bedtime almost every day in rotation. They were and I kid you not..
- Soundtrack of Ayappan movie
- Soundtrack of Adi Sankara movie
- MS Balaji Pancharatnamala
- Ayigiri Nandini by Anantharama deekshadhar
- MLV hits
Then my dad got a three disk MS set which had a black ODEON sticker in the middle. There were like 30 songs in those. A year later my uncle got a tape recorder after he came back from his first trip as a new employee. The whole family would be around this tape recorder. Tapes were becoming cheaper and more tapes were available. We could also "record" what we heard on All India Radio and our own voices. My grandmas voice was on a tape! My voice was on a tape somewhere!
We used to listen to music on a Phillips Transistor radio that had an antenna that went across the entire room. It was a copper coated mesh, that much I remember. We had it always set to AIR and listened to concerts and some film music. That was largely thanks to my last three aunts who were the younger generation and were fans of the movies that were emerging. This was the time where Rajni and Kamal were replacing Sivaji and MGR at the box office. Ilayaraja took over the airwaves. ( you can see that radio in the top shelf.. the TV was the first TV that we got. Doordarshan was our only channel and we would mostly listen to Carnatic concerts and the odd Hindi and Tamil movie they would play on Saturday and Sunday nights).
When I was in 5th grade and suffered from severe Jaundice or when I had a skin infection and missed out on school for three months, would listen to whatever was playing on a small pocket transistor radio all afternoon with my eyes closed. That was my only solace during a miserable period.
When I was going to college, my dad got me a Sony walkman from Burma Bazaar. I would spend most of my college days listening to all kinds of music on it. My collegemates, gave me a window to pop music which was also interesting!
The first thing I got after coming to the US was an RCA tape player and radio. Music was there in the lab all the time. On the plus side, I never had stage fright. Somewhere, there is a photo of me holding a mic on stage and singing at a TAGDV (Tamil Association of Greater Delaware Valley) Tamil New Year funtion. There was also another picture of me singing on stage at the Thiagaraja aradhana in NJ with hippie hairdo and all. Sadly, I cannot find those photos. Spent a day searching!! This is a photo of the Carnatic music group! Still in touch with Vish and Vatsan. The rest, I have no clue.. Hope they are all still singing!
Then the RCA player just started playing a different language. The feet were always moving, the heart was just beating to a new rythm!
As a dad, would sing to both kids at bedtime. There was a nightly quiz for them called the "Tamil Mirugam Raagam", which was questions about Tamil translations, a quiz about animals and identifying Carnatic music Ragas. Had to practice a little bit, just to make sure they did a good job of identifying.
Jr. would guess about 20 ragas and the little one about four or five. This was when Jr. was ~5 and the little one was ~2. Still remember how the little ones answer to all clues were always "Is it Shanmukhapriya?" and when I would actually hum that, she will say something else!
We would play music on the radio or CD's all the time with the kids.. Learned to sing the entire collection of Rafi songs thanks to Jr. and the little one. The Boowah and Koala collection, Barney and Friends, Elmo hits. The musical taste just changed a lot. Wish there was a recording of my rendition of "down by the bay" or "baby beluga"! You would be proud of my effort!
Music was always there, in the periphery, just not in a way I could sing and get better.
As the kids grew older, everytime I would start singing in the car, or sing along to something on the radio, the instant response would be "Appa, can you please shut up?!" . They would say "Please" before the shut up.
Jr. learned to become a really good Saxophone player and the little one learned to play Western classical Violin. We wanted the kids to have music in their life. The amount of time I spent driving them to their class, sitting outside their class, hearing them learn and play, went by fast. Watched Jr. learn music for a few years, then decide to dance instead and do her Arangetram. There was a lot of music. The blog has videos of their journey with music and dance over the years! So we were surrounded by music and again it was just a different type of music.
The antique violin still is in good shape. I just haven't gone to it regularly!
In the last 10 years or so, I had not opened my mouth to sing anything for fear of the "please shut up!" shout from the wife and kids. So shut up it was!
Saturday, December 31, 2022 at 9:29PM ;)
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