PolyCaRe analysis methodology

The analysis is based on the following candidates:

• 1,600 of the best songs of Raja that I have used as my database (it keeps growing with time) for most analysis purposes. This represents about 35% of his overall number of compositions. These songs are drawn from all the 5 decades from 197x to 201x. It is also from all languages that he has worked on – Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Hindi
• About 600 interludes collected from Raja compositions over time (this is a subset of the 1,600 songs)
• About 400 background scores from various sources including Navin

Having got this database of potential candidates, shortlisting  PolyCaRe candidates is a laborious manual process:

1. Scan the 1,600 songs’ interludes for PolyCaRe arrangements
2. A subset of this analysis are the 600 interludes which focus only on the instrument based interludes
3.  Scan the 400 background scores for PolyCaRe arrangements
4. Once a candidate has been identified, document the track, its year of release, language, decade of the release (Excel)
5. For the track, identify  the background instrument,  Call and Response foreground instruments and document them
6. For background scores, exactly identify the start and end positions of a PolyCaRe arrangement in a long recording 
7.  Pivot the data to identify the PolyCaRe arrangement by background instrument, decade of film release and alphabetic sort of the song within this selection
8. The data is now available for presentation after these 7 steps. All the exact PolyCaRe arrangements have to be manually extracted from the tracks

Here is the definition of decades as it applies to Raja’s work:

Decade	Year range
197x	1976-1979
198x	1980-1989
199x	1990-1999
200x	2000-2009
201x	2010-2016

With this approach, there may be a few songs/BGM scores that qualify more than once as the background instrument is different in two qualifying PolyCaRe arrangements within the same song/BGM scores.

Also, I will present 201x first followed by 200x and so on. This is done deliberately to address detractors who opine that Raja does not do orchestration as well as he used to do in his earlier part of his career. There are several examples from all the decades for many background instruments

PolyCaRe categories

All the posts in this category will be based on the background instrument that is used to create the PolyCaRe arrangement. Within the background instrument, we will explore by decade, one decade at a time, in the reverse chronological order.

1.       Guitar based PolyCaRe arrangements: In this broad category, both song interludes and background scores will be showcased that use guitar as the background instrument. There will further be sub –posts by decade:

a.      Guitar based PolyCaRe arrangements in 201x

b.      Guitar based PolyCaRe arrangements in 199x

c.       Guitar based PolyCaRe arrangements in 198x

2.       Piano based PolyCaRe arrangements: In this broad category, both song interludes and background scores will be showcased that use Piano as the background instrument. There will further be sub –posts by decade:

a.       Piano  based PolyCaRe arrangements in 201x

b.      Piano  based PolyCaRe arrangements in 199x

3.       Synthesizer based PolyCaRe arrangements: In this broad category, both song interludes and background scores will be showcased that use synthesizer as the background instrument. There will further be sub –posts by decade:

a.       Synthesizer  based PolyCaRe arrangements in 201x

b.      Synthesizer based PolyCaRe arrangements in 200x

c.       Synthesizer  based PolyCaRe arrangements in 199x

d.      Synthesizer  based PolyCaRe arrangements in 198x

4.       Veena based PolyCaRe arrangements: In this broad category, both song interludes and background scores will be showcased that use Veena as the background instrument. There will further be sub –posts by decade:

a.       Veena  based PolyCaRe arrangements in 198x

5.       Flute based PolyCaRe arrangements: In this broad category, both song interludes and background scores will be showcased that use Flute as the background instrument. There will further be sub –posts by decade:

a.       Flute  based PolyCaRe arrangements in 201x

6.       Pizzicato Strings based PolyCaRe arrangements: In this broad category, both song interludes and background scores will be showcased that use Pizzicato Strings as the background instrument. There will further be sub –posts by decade:

a.       Pizzicato Strings  based PolyCaRe arrangements in 201x

b.      Pizzicato Strings  based PolyCaRe arrangements in 198x

7.       Violins based PolyCaRe arrangements: In this broad category, both song interludes and background scores will be showcased that use Violins as the background instrument. There will further be sub –posts by decade:

a.       Violins  based PolyCaRe arrangements in 201x

b.      Violins  based PolyCaRe arrangements in 199x

c.       Violins  based PolyCaRe arrangements in 198x

8.       Sax based PolyCaRe arrangements: In this broad category, both song interludes and background scores will be showcased that use Sax as the background instrument. There will further be sub –posts by decade:

a.       Sax  based PolyCaRe arrangements in 198x

9.       Voice  based PolyCaRe arrangements: In this broad category, both song interludes and background scores will be showcased that use human voice as the background instrument. There will further be sub –posts by decade:

a.       Voice  based PolyCaRe arrangements in 198x

I would like to thank Navin for his great work in posting quality background scores of Raja, and some of the posts will use PolyCaRe qualifying clips from his posts.

I strongly encourage readers to provide feedback on what they consider as a good PolyCaRe arrangement, that I may have missed. As the process is quite manually intensive, oversight on some good compositions is possible.  Let us celebrate the greatest level of polyphonic sophistication achieved by a composer such as Raja, who is doing this work during our lifetimes.