Paadarivom Padipparivom has this wonderful idea to give a platform to students to sing one song each during Marghazi season. There is a lot of encouragement from this community for learning Carnatic music as well as Cine music.
Most of the fellow adult classical music students I have talked to, started learning in hopes that the knowledge here will improve their Cine music singing. It has been two years and two months since I started learning Carntic music again after a long break, from Koushik Ramchander.
He has been an epitome of patience!
For a novice like me, the support this group gives is just phenomenal. If there is one place where the Dunning Kruger effect is in full display, it is while learning Carnatic music or singing Tamil movie songs.
When I started singing, my knowledge was very limited.. not that I could not identify ragas instantly or have a concept of what "right" sounded like. When my own voice was producing the output, my ears somehow selectively decided to be very forgiving when I was off. It takes a lot of "listening", very careful listening to understand that you are off.
If a song had 600 notes total, I would be off on 400 of them two years go. Today I am off on 40 and going towards 4. My MIL has been my one constant judge and supporter while my mom has been my strongest critic.
Two weeks ago, they agreed for the first time after hearing me sing a carnatic based movie song. My MIL told me my voice has finally adapted to sing SPB songs. My mom actually said this and I am saving this for posterity! She prefers if I stick to slokas and bhajans instead of movie songs, which is expected.
My teachers at PP of course gave me honest feedback on every line of that song on where I was off in the notes, pronunciation and execution. The DK effect does play mind tricks, once you know finer details and appreciate what is actually required vs. where you are. You know what has to be done, but it needs a lot more effort to get there and it cannot be done in a week!
Not one for giving up, have been trying impatiently. That is the truth.
Singing with just a Tanpura in background and your own hand to keep the beat was a lot more challenging than singing along with your teacher or fellow student on Smule with a familier fixed backround track! Almost came to the conculsion that Smule singing isn't singing and was downright depressed two weeks ago. This song is usually sung in the ragam Naatai (for most of the instances you find on Youtube). He taught it to me in Gowlai ragam. Asked my teacher why he thought I could do this and he said "You can do this Sundar! you already sang every line after me very well in class. you just have to do it at a stretch and on your own!"
Thank god for teachers. They tell you to buckle up, keep your head high and get your confidence back, one step at a time. Koushik Sir as I call him has been my music shrink as much as my music teacher. When you start learning at 49, the psychological challenges in learning need to be fixed as much as the skill gap. What he says between singing notes and making me repeat is the other half of the lesson, probably the bigger lesson! After many attempts, voicenotes feedback on whatsapp, he finally gave me the equivalent of the Oliver Cromwell look.. that made my day!
A heartfelt thank you to this platform and the folks who make it great!
Carnatic music folks (especially family), this will not meet your standards. The good news is that I am okay with where I am today and tomorrow WILL be better than today!
Thanks again to PP for this experience! It feels good to participate in the Marghazi season remotely!
We used to live in the top floor of a house facing a cemetery in Mandaiveli when I was a kid just starting school. It was more of an asbestos roofed shed than a proper floor. We had to go out of this room to use the bathroom. It was one large room with a countertop for the stove. There was the small terrace where me and my brother could play. My sister was a toddler. The big plus was the windows facing the cemetery, the main road and the intersection that had a few stores, not to mention a clear view to the tea and bhajji stall, right below the window.
Just watching the tea and bhajji's being made in the evening and served to the standing customers was quality entertainment for a 6 year old. As the older kid, I was allowed to sit at the window and watch the road. I also used to be sick a lot with a skin infection and my parents just let me be.
If the tea and bhajji stall was not entertaining enough, the radio in that stall that would always be on provided even more entertainment. Would sit and listen to movie songs from the window and hum along. Was introduced to the magic of MSV and the then sensational breakthrough genius of Ilaiyaraja.. without even knowing their names. We were not a movie going family.. that shouldn't be news to the readers of this blog.. there was always music though. A gramaphone record player where we would listen to MS, MLV and KJY (all carnatic!). I didn't know then that KJY sang some of the movie songs I was listening to from the window.
Usually the same songs would play at the same time for a few days or even weeks till a new song broke into the list. A few of those songs have stayed deep in my head and when I hear them even today, my mind goes back to that window!
One of those songs is "Vaan nila nila alla..". Had no idea about the movie it was part of or the significance of that movie as a debut for so many famous actors.. the song and the alternating violin were haunting.. all I got was the "nila" (moon) part and would see the moon through the window and would wonder why this song moved me the way it did!
Got to see a track for this song recently and sang it.
Didn't even have to practice for this one. Just listened to the original song once and gave it a shot. Had no idea all those song line variations were etched in my head! It just came out like I had been singing it all these years! This was as surreal an experience as me reciting Sri Rudram off my head sitting in some temple and suddenly imagining sitting in my grandpas lap and almost feeling his hand holding me by my stomach so I don't run away.
The song which has an amazing use of words ending in "la", takes you instantly to la-la land and probably sounded like a nursery rhyme to me as a kid. It was easy to hum.. even if I didn't understand at that age!
There are a few more songs from that time that still come out and I don't know how the lyrics went into memory..Machchana paatheengala, chinna kannan azhaikkiraan, Raja enbar, kadavul amaithu vaitha medai... just to name a few.
It is amazing how music works its way into the brain.. subconsiously. More amazing is how irrespective of the sadness of happiness level of the song, the way they transport me back in time usually end of making me smile. Music is magic!
My only recommendation from this is to expose kids to music. Especially melodies! It will definitely help them subconsciously during their adult years! I am one small living example.
If you have similar experiences, please do share!
Someday I wish Paadarivom Padipparivom will teach this song as a solo, or I get to sing this in one of the platforms they provide for the students to showcase what they have learned over the years!
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..
