A method to the madness

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!