Deeper analysis of the unusual conversations – part 1

We did a detailed review of Raja’s unusual conversations, which are basically, CR arrangements outside his usual instrument combinations.  In summary, we reviewed 35 clips consisting of 129 segments of his unusual conversations. What does this review of his orchestration technique tell us? In my view, there are several things that can be surfaced if we start deeply analyzing the data that led to those several posts on unusual conversations.  This technique has a strong correlation to his popularity – tall claim, huh?

Let’s try and look at this data, layer by layer, to drive home some observations. I did not use the term conclusions, as no one technique can lead to any strong conclusion of a composer’s work that is so broad and so deep.


To begin with, let’s go back to restate some of the assumptions in this analysis:

 

1. Usual conversations are C&R arrangements between violins, flute, guitar. Unusual conversations are C&R arrangements that can involve one of the usual instruments, but the other instrument cannot come from this grouping. For example, a violin-flute or guitar-violin conversation is considered usual, but for analysis purposes, a guitar-veena, trumpet-flute conversation is considered unusual
2. The unusual conversations have a close relevance with usual conversations. In fact, the volume of these two types of C&R arrangements vary, but the overall trends that they indicate are equivalent
3. The list created for this analysis purpose, used about 1,600 tracks of Raja’s work. Though he has about 4,500 tracks, the assumption is that these 1,600 tracks are sufficient to uncover any trends
4. There are few tracks in the unusual conversations database that have more than one entry. Most of them are single entry per track

Now let’s try and understand the unusual conversations data that was used in the past 20 posts or so in creating tracks that you enjoyed.

Unusual Instrument	Tracks with Occurrences
Bass Guitar	2
Bells	24
Chorus	5
Dilruba	1
Harmonium	1
Jathi	4
Mirudhangam	4
Persussion	12
Sax	2
Shehnai	7
Sitar	4
Solo Violin	1
Synth	57
Tabla	5
Trumpet	7
Veena	43
Voice	30
Water	1
Grand Total	210

There were 210 tracks where unusual conversations were observed in an overall population of 1,600 tracks. The above table shows the unusual instrument and the number of observations involving such an instrument. For example, the veena line shows a number of 43. The way to read this is as follows: there were 43 observations of Raja’s interludes where he has used veena in conversation with another musical instrument. All the observations must comply with the rules of a C&R arrangement.

Let’s take a slightly different view of these 210 observations and link them to the decade of their occurrence:

Decade	Unusual conversation occurrences	Percent
1970	6	3%
1980	151	72%
1990	47	22%
2000	6	3%
Grand Total	210

More on this analysis in the next post...