The pied piper and his Magic note

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!

Birth of the "Bathroom Singers"

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..