Indha kazhudai ketta Manja sevuru

Have not posted anything about music this year and it is May. That doesn't mean there was no music this year.

The year started with learning classical music heavy movie songs and semi-classical songs for the entire January with Paadarivom Padipparivom, and I loved singing every one of those songs. 

We were busy traveling in Brazil and Argentina and I kept listening to "Vedam Anuvilum oru nadham" on repeat even while walking along the beaches in Copa Cabana. Knew I had to sing it as soon as we came back. Had hummed it silently so many times that when it came time to sing it, there was a confidence that the notes were close to where they needed to be! The rest of the songs in the genre were also appealing and challenging but loved it.

Also got a chance to be mentee again after two years and jumped at it. There were high expectations this time from my teachers and hopefully I didn't let them down. Have never tried singing Jathi ever and had to memorize the Jathi portions for a song and sing it. It was a great experience and my teachers were very happy with my enthusiasm. Will write about this mentee experience on a separate post. 

Then we went to India and work caught up and singing took a backseat for a good month. Every now and then, would banish myself to the unheated guest room with the yellow accent wall (hence the title for the post) and try to sing the song of the week from 10-11:30 PM. Given the kids are not here and my wife is busy watching some Korean serial till midnight, can practice till my throat protests. 

One fabulous thing that happened last month was the first US members meeting of Paadarivom Padipparivom in Dallas. Why Dallas? Because two of the teachers are now in Dallas and there are also three members there. One of them is an extremely passionate event co-ordinator and he pulled off what the three members in bay area could only talk about for the last two years. 

Students flew in from all parts of the US to meet and sing with the teachers and the other students. (some are not in the picture as they had to leave early to reach their destinations. there was bad weather and flight delays that weekend to add to our adventures)

The big bonus for us was a crash course on "how to get the most of a dynamic microphone" by the two teachers. Many of us who sing on Smule with our teachers use the mic that comes with earplugs which we hold with our hand (the earpods typically don't work well as they have a lag). When handed a mic in front of a live group the voice simply doesn't sound the same and one has to work too hard.. if you don't know how to use the mic!

Me happily demonstrating how not to hold a mic.. too low and not tilted up enough to suit my throat and mouth!

The teachers helped fix my problem in that one session. Turns out everyone is different and the angle you hold the mic and how close you hold it is something you can figure out easily. One has to practice it though.. kind of like holding the flute at the angle that suits your whistle. 

At the end of it, was able to hit high notes without straining my throat. Given the gain in the amplifiers, we don't even have to be loud. We can sing at a lower volume and sound way better. That was the big takeaway for me. All this time I was "seerghazhi govindarajan'-ing in front of a live audience. Holding the mic but using my real voice to reach.. bummer!

There was also great food and excellent conversation. Met some of these folks in person for the first time but feels like I have known them all my life. These folks are going to be friends for the rest of my life. 

It was great that San joined me for the trip. Within a day and a half, we managed to also visit 3 temples, eat at four places and catch up with friends and see the local area. Traveling with San is always fun for me as I just enjoy watching her be happy! Her face lights up when she is with friends and food.

Will cherish this trip for a long time to come! San also thinks my singing has actually improved. My first song was iffy beacuse I had practiced to a Smule track and was so used to seeing the gray and blue bars move to prompt me to sing and we ended up with a different track in Dallas.

There were two lessons there. First, just sing to the music and avoid the visual aid. Should have actually done that given the song was memorized already. Second lesson is to go before the start and get a feel for the sound of the room. Sometimes it is not easy to hear your voice when singing through a microphone because the amplified voice takes a second to hit your ear and if you are not used to it, you will be late on the beat. Guess this is why people use ear monitor in the mics. However that is not required. Just getting used to it before actually singing the songs does the trick!

San said I did fine after the first song. She even said it to our friends and that made me really happy. She sets the bar very high and we fight every now and then on the topic of "just repeating the same thing is not going to fix it. you have to understand what you are doing wrong and fix it and then sing it".. the repeats for me are to get to a basic level before even attempting fixes. We are clearly at different levels when it comes to singing! 

Now I am back to the manja sevuru every now and then trying to sing. Paadarivom Padipparivom has been a true blessing. The 4th year anniversary was celebrated last weekend. In two months it will be my 3rd anniversary with this wonderful group of people. 

My enthusiasm is still alive, but finding time with changed travel schedules and things at home is making it challenging to do more than just singing one song a week and practising Carnatic music for few hours a week.

Happy to be able to do at least that! 

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! 

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!