Sometimes all you have to do... is listen!

One of the advantages of living in the bay area is the significant local population that is interested in South Indian Classical music. 

We have two organizations that have memberships and have a concert(Kutchery) series announced early enough. The main one is SIFA or South India Fine Arts and the other one is Sankrirthi Laya. Then there are the other one off concerts where you buy direct tickets for artists who do just one or two concerts!

This spring concert season in bay area starts when all the artists have done performing in Chennai and Mumbai and they migrate to the bay area when the temperatures just start to be manageable compared to Chennai. They end up starting in California and go east as the weather warms up there. 

Have been treated to a wonderful concert list. Most of these concerts are on Sunday, some being on Saturday. It is almost a concert every weekend for 12 weeks. Made it a point to attend almost all of the vocal or instrumental ones. Skipped the dance programs. 

Given my knee was already hurting and inflamed for most of spring, sitting in one place for 4 hours for each concert, not to mention the lines to get seated.. the carpooling with friends back and forth to venue, each concert was a 5 1/2 to 6 hour commit. Given the interest with my friends, we went as a group! The group is 5 ladies and me. Apparently only one person in each of those families manages to sit in one place for 4 hours! Given the ladies color coordinated their Sari's for every concert, they would even publish the color in our whatsapp group and where possible I would even wear a T-shirt in their color of choice. All said and done, I had a lot of fun attending the concerts. 

Most of them were amazing, some were like "meh" and one we left 30 minutes before concert ended as one of the carpoolers had to take care of an urgent issue at home. Somehow we were all okay leaving that one early. 

Here is the list that I attended in the order

Violin concert by Lalgudi siblings

Vocal by Kalyanapuram S. Aravind

Vocal by Sudha Raghunathan (this was not through the memberships but a concert organized for fund raising for OPEN education).. she did more of a lec dem than a traditional concert

Vocal by Saketaraman

Vocal by Abhishek Raghuram 

Vocal by Malladi Brothers

A special "carnatic'y concert based on Ilayaraja songs by RaGa (Ranjani Gaythri) which had discounted tickets thanks to SIFA! Added bonus was that I got to take Jr. who had just landed from college the previous day!

Vocal by Amrutha Venkatesh

Vocal by Gayathri Venkataraghavan 

This pretty much wrapped up Spring season. Fall season begins in September!

When you get to listen to all these artists and their accompaniment artiss on voilin, mrudhangam, tabla, ghatam, kanjira .. you are in for a treat in every concert. 

Listening to the different styles, the way the artists express themselves in each piece, their mastery of their craft and in some cases the amazing syncronization between two artists, gives you a subconsicous understanding of what these ragas make you feel. Going to concerts is also a good learning experience, when you and your friends are chatting on the whatsapp group trying to race to identify the raga for the song or the concept being tried. We discuss the concert on the way home! Sometimes my friends and the jokes pre or post concert add more to the experience than the concert itself. 

When I get to write more, will key in my thoughts on each of these concerts and the special lightbulb moments!

The good thing in these concerts was the number of parents who managed to get their kids to sit and listen. Sometimes it is tough to keep them in one place. For the most part the kids sat, listened, guessed ragams, sang along in places and their smiling faces in the audience made it all the more interesting. Carnatic music wil definitely survive another generation at least based on the audience stats!

The regular memberships for SIFA is 160 USD for a year and Sankritilaya is 75 USD. You get ~12 and ~8 concerts for that a year! If you get to attend most of the concerts, you get your monies worth! Trick is in clearing your weekend calendar and prioritizing this over other events.  My family has been extremely supportive in letting me disappear all evening for this many days! They do it because I come home with a song on my lips and have a happy high for a day or two post concert! That means they have to deal with regular me only for 5 days a week.. Given a choice they would send to a concert every three days. 

They say "katradhu kai mann alavu, kallaadhadhu ulagalavu!" (what you have learned so far is comparable to a fist full of sand, what you are yet to learn is as vast as the earth). Even though we familiarize ourselves with as many ragas as possible, in every concert we learned a new ragam and what it sounds and feels like! 

The listening continues, as does the learning!

If you are a bay area parent trying to get your kids interested in learning Carnatic or South Indian classical music, do avail yourself of these memberships in the organizations and give your kids a chance to hear these wonderful artists. They will definitely enjoy and take an interest!

My film song singing definitely improves over time as my Carnatic singing progresses. Given time constraints and the knee issues, have not been singing movie songs to the extent I used to. That will pick up in the next three months!

Here's to more music listening!

An age for everything

It has been almost two years since I got the Smule account and started singing. 

As of now, most of my friends agree on one thing. I have consistantly improved week on week by singing one song a week.

This has continued to this day. The song selections are not my choice though. They are all duets, but cover different times from the 1960's to 2010's and different music directors, singers, song genres over the years. 

Some are simple lyrically and crisp with no hidden meanings, some are risque and some are downright NSFW.. if you are in a workplace where folks speak Tamil that is.

While the compliments for the singing improvements keep coming on one side, there is also the comments on the songs themselves.

There is one repeated theme from family and extended family. Sing songs that are appropriate for your age.. aka Bhajans and devotional songs. It is no secret that I turned 50 a couple of months ago and this "age appropritateness" always makes me go "where is this written down?".. "who made these rules?".. at what age is singing what appropriate? 

I am not going against this logic blindly. Just trying to understand the categories and what age is good for what..

For example..

0-3 years: Nursery Rhymes

3-5 years : just Rhymes and kids songs. (think Rafi songs like Baby Beluga or Down by the Bay, when I write this)

5-15 years : Carnatic training (geethams varnams keerthanams , I guess if you are lucky enough to get trained?)

15-25 years : Movie songs (one has to sing them as youth or when else can you sing love songs?)

25-40 ? : Mature movie songs? 

40-50 ? : slokams?

50+ : Bhajans only?

60+ : stop singing ? as it is no longer age appropriate?

These questions have no good answers but have summarized the general suggested direction with ? 

Not sure if this is the generic thought process across Tamil families .. any stats collected in this regard would be nice to analyze!

If you actually analyze some of the slokams or devotional hymns that are in praise of the female goddesses, they describe the goddesses and their beauty with unparalleled metaphors that would make the modern day movie song lyricists look like nursery rhyme writers.. not that there is anything wrong with writing nursery rhymes!

As per this unknown age guidance, I am to sing devotional songs only for the next ten years and taper off to recitation mode only. Maybe this is written down somewhere and I am not aware of the source. Maybe it is the right thing to do. Who knows?

For now, I am just going with the flow and singing the song that is taught each week. Some songs suit my voice. Some suit my voice and pitch (preferably C# to D!.. now that I know what those mean). Some songs also work with my ability to show some emotion in the voice (Sadder the better ?!) 

I do put warnings when posting the songs if they have some double meanings.

If any of you would like to share your thoughts on the age appropriateness of select music, I would definitely be interested in compiling it and updating this post!

In the meantime, one song a week. You can check it out under my smule id sundar72ps.

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!