Thursday, August 2, 2018

Intricate harmonies in obscure films/songs – part 4/18


Our journey on uncovering intricate harmonies from obscurity continues…

Kanavu Ondru Thondruthe (Oru Odai Nadhiyagirathu - Tamil - 1983)

Kanavu Ondru Thondruthe from Oru Odai Nadhiyagirathu (Tamil 1983) is another obscure song that has some great harmony parts.
The second interlude is the harmony journey of Raja. Hear the song from 2:43 to 3:18 and this part does not look anything like the rest of the song.

First harmony passage between 2:43 and 2:55 - Three parts of violins carefully arranged with one of the background violins playing the notes rapidly and the other two sets of violins playing the other two harmony parts in a nice dialog.

Second harmony passage between 3:11 to 3:18 - three synthesizer tones in harmony playing the three parts beautifully and at the end before it turns over to the charanam play the three parts as discrete notes. You need good headphones to see the harmony at play for the synthesizer tones.

Let’s hear Kanavu Ondru Thondruthe




Nilavu Suduvathillai background score (Tamil - 1984)

Nilavu Suduvathillai (Tamil 1984) was never a film that I have heard of, till Navin posted the BGM of this film. If I recall correctly, he had posted the title score of this movie.

The score is horns dominated. There is more electric guitar and horns (trumpets, trombones) int he initial part and is also pretty fast faced. Perhaps the film called for such a score. Our focus is on the harmony that is nicely interlaced with these horns and its fast pace. This is not easy as violins, used improperly just with a classical mindset with slow things down making it into a boring score overall. Raja has a few of those to be fair. However, in this case, the arrangement works very well. The recording quality (no criticism of Navin) is average as the source quality may be suspect.

Hear the arrangement from: 38 to 1:00 in the clip, where the harmony is handed down by the guitar play prior to it. This is a nice harmony with violins, synthesizer and flute not reducing the pace of the score. The horns take over after 1:01. Between 1:44 and the end of the track, (1:53) the harmony takes over the score again. I wish the recording quality is better to showcase such work...

https://soundcloud.com/navinmozart/illayaraja-nilavusuduvathillai
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You need a decent headphones to hear the work over the scratches...