Pizzicato Strings based PolyCaRe arrangements in 198x - interludes

Pizzicato is a technique of playing violin not with a bow but plucking its strings with a finger. There are several songs where Raja has used this technique. Popular songs such as Maalaiyil Yaaro use this technique in its interludes.

We will continue the journey on PolyCaRe arrangements of Raja, with his compositions based on pizzicato strings as the background melody instrument. In this post, we will particularly focus on his interlude compositions in the 198x. As we made it very clear in the definition, the PolyCaRe arrangement not only requires a background pizzicato strings  melody, it also requires two call and response melodies in the foreground played according to our rules of CaRe arrangements.

Let’s begin with the song ‘Neela Kuyile’  from Magudi  (Tamil 1984). This segment, has pizzicato strings as its background instrument. Here is how the segment is structured:

Song	Film	Year	Background instrument	CaRe - Instrument1	CaRe - Instrument2
Neela Kuyile	Magudi	1984	Pizzicato String	Solo Violin	Synthesizer

1. The first 4 seconds is a dialog between the plucked strings and the short violin strokes. This is the background melody that plays throughout the clip
2. Between 4 and 15 seconds, there are two CaRe arrangements, between the solo violin and the synthesizer. While this is going on, the background dialog continues.
3. This is more than a PolyCaRe arrangement – it is a PolyCaReCaRe arrangement. Even the background melody is a CaRe! Only Raja can think of such crazy yet melodious arrangements for 15 seconds.

The foreground melodies can stand on their own feet as simple CaRe arrangement. The background synthesizer melody makes them polyphonic and hence PolyCaRe. There are 4 foreground melodies playing on top of the constant background pizzicato strings and violin melody in these 11 seconds.

Let’s hear the PolyCaRe CaRe arrangement in the song Neela Kuyile …