ILAIYARAGAM
The Learning Curve Series - Introduction
The Objective of this Series
The
objective is not to make you an accomplished carnatic musician. A web-page
cannot really substitute a 'flesh & blood' real time guru. The focus here is on
helping common listeners appreciate usage of carnatic ragas by our beloved
maestro ilaiyaraja, without having to bother much about the grammar (swarams/scale/notes
etc). The plan is to keep this very simple, for everyone.
;-)
Aint this then akin to maestro's philosophy of reaching out with high quality music at the
doorsteps of the common man.
Where Do I Start?
There
are two options to learn how to detect ragas in film songs...
a) Take a list of "raga based film songs" (being raja fans, you can
start here http://www.oocities.org/ilaiyaragam/index.html
a particular raga (e.g. Kapi). Put all kapi raga songs as a list and record the
list as a cassette / CD. If your recording shop guy has couple of keerthanas in the given raga (e.g. enna thavam seithanai for kaapi), you can add them to
your list too, as it will give you more understanding of the flavour of the
raga...
Once
the cassette / CD is recorded, just LISTEN, LISTEN, LISTEN again...the raga will
just seep in deep and you will automatically LEARN the little nuances of the
raga. Believe me, heart is a better receiver of music than brains. (Music was
never meant for your brains, anyway !!) Just trust that you can understand ragas
by this simple way, as i have seen this to be a very practical method that many
have successfully used to get a hang of a particular raga.
This second method given below may cost a bit...but its worth it, let me assure you...
b) Take a list of "raga based film songs"...Also download raga scale
definitions http://www.oocities.org/ilaiyaragam/ragauniverse.htm
...then u need to invest around Rs.1500 for a miniature Casio keyboard. That’s
almost a lifetime investment (keyboards rarely retire....atleast very late).
Download the notes for the song that you want to play (e.g
for notes for raja songs, click here).
Thats
about all you will need to get started. Just start playing the swaras of the
ragas, looking at the raga list and try-out playing some film songs on the
same raga referring to the song
notes...you will see the connection, and will understand the raga
better...This may take months, but you will soon be playing songs very
well...and as you play one raga scale or a song, another song in the same raga
will pop up in your mind, as your mind starts picking up related songs
relatively more easily.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 S R1 R2 R3 G3 M1 M2 P D1 D2 D3 N3 G1 G2 N1 N2
To appreciate magical creations of ace composers (read raja) with a bit more
conviction and especially if you are someone who loves to be defeated by the
intellectual puzzles that ilaiyaraja poses with each of his songs, the above two
methods are good proven ways to start and are adequate.
But obviously, if you are looking at hardcore learning (like you want to be a
singer, musician, composer) then a guru is very much needed. Personally to me,
spending a lifetime in understanding ilaiyaraja's compositions is a better
preposition that becoming just another "run of the mill"
musician/composer/singer or whatever.
Just my thoughts - no offence meant to anybody :-)
- The Learning Curve Series - Part 1 - Having Kapi with ilaiyaraja !!
- The Learning Curve Series - Part 2 - Simple Introduction to Raja's Sindhu Bhairavi.
- The Learning Curve Series - Part 3 - Musings on Brindhavana Saranga and Madhyamavathi .
- The Learning Curve Series - Part 4 - Melancholy, Moutain breeze and the Mystic (chakravagam, malayamarudham and rasikaranjani).