Sound Vs Score

Karthik Raaja speaks about background scores in an interview

"Coming up with a background score is a tough job as it is related to the psychology of the audience. You should know how to treat a scene and create the intended impact. Not everyone can pull it off well. And today, sound effects have started dominating the BGM (background music). There will always be a debate between the composer and the director during the final mix on whether to go for a BGM or a sound effect. But sound effects cannot convey an emotion. You can convey the breaking of a glass through sound effects but then, you can even convey that through the visual alone. On the other hand, a BGM can even tell you why the glass broke. My dad gives a lot of importance to emotions when it comes to BGM; for me, it is emotions as well as what’s being shown on screen that matter when composing BGM."

Sound Effects Vs Music

Needle Drops

• Ilaiyaraaja brings Budapest Symphony Orchestra again for the background score of ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’. The trailer of the film with grand orchestral background score is available here.
  
  
• Recently bought an mp3 of A.R.Rahman’s collections with Mudhalvan, Kadhalar Dhinam and Enakku 20 Unakku 18 and complete background score of ‘Aa Aah’ (Anbe Aaruyirae) in high quality. Did Five Star Audio legally acquire rights to release the background score of ‘Aa Aah’?
  
  
• 30 seconds clips of all cues from Avatar Soundtrack are available for listening here. Here is a short interview with James Horner on the last day of recording Avatar Score. And here is a short review on the Avatar Score.
  
  
• Though the sample cue ‘Into the Navi World’ from Avatar Score is available for listening in avatarscore.com, it is not part of the original soundtrack track listing posted in the website. It is such a breath taking synth-orchestral piece. I hope it is a part of one of the tracks listed. Or is it a strategy to release version 2 of the soundtrack like they did for Titanic?
  
  
• There is a fixed playlist on arrahman.com ever since the site went live. In the playlist, there is a track titled ‘Killing Innocence’ from Mangal Pandey. This music piece plays in the End Credits of the movie. Full version can be heard here (Track 21). When the film got released, there were rumors about a separate Original Soundtrack CD release, which seems to be true.
  
  
• Surprisingly, in Pixar’s ‘UP’ DVD, there are no enough special features on Michael Giacchino’s Score. Even this video that seemed to be a part of the DVD special features is not available in the disk.
  

Needle Drops

• The most eagerly awaited James Horner’s “Avatar” Score is releasing on December 15th. The offical soundtrack tracklisting is available in avatarscore.com
  
  
• Oh! That serene solo violin in ‘Paa’ trailer music is bliss. I expected some instrumental themes in ‘Paa’ Soundtrack. ‘Cheenikum’ had a Veg and a Non-Veg Melody but here we get just a Paa theme remix. Paa Theme remix is not done by Ilaiyaraaja, it is by Vickky Goswami. I am a bit hopeful because, of all things, director Balki chose to talk about Ilaiyaraaja’s background score in the press meet.
  
  
• I love Karthik Raaja’s score for ‘Anything for you’ trailer, with an innate Indian melody, soulful orchestration, it is vintage Karthik Raja. Why doesn’t this guy do some non-film instrumental works like his father?
  
  
• It is good to see budding composers talking about their background scores as much as their songs. James Vasanthan says he has enrolled himself in a course on ‘Film Score Orchestration’.
  
  
• Recently finished reading a book called “Behind the Curtain – Making Music in Mumbai’s Film Studios”; it had some extensive information about how background scores were recorded earlier in Hindi films. The book is a very emotional account of the life of musicians in film orchestras that existed earlier and their subsequent downfall. And not so surprisingly, the music assistants and arrangers themselves admit in their interviews that almost 90% of the composers in Hindi films didn’t care about background scores. The video snippets of the interviews of musicians are available here.
  
  
• I haven’t seen ‘Yuvraaj’ yet, but I listened to the beautiful background score of the film here. How many more such movies, Rahman is going to waste his music on?
  
  
• And yes, I stole the title for this post ‘Needle Drops’ from John O’brien’s comment on ‘Listening Couples Retreat’ post.
  

A.R.Rahman in Apple Interview

A.R.Rahman in Apple Interview says

Describe your method for scoring a film.

I mostly don't write to specifically defined cues. I just watch the film a couple of times, stop watching it, then write something that comes to my mind from the film. This way, when I try to sync the music, the results are that much more wholesome. You get something extra that you don't get when you're looking at specific points in the timeline. The music is much more organic this way, not jumping cue to cue. It's more about counterpointing and, sometimes, walking hand-in-hand. Most of the time it works out. If you watch the picture and try to have a specific chord change here, a tempo change there, when the director comes back and wants to move picture, you find that you've wasted time. I think this way is more appealing to me and to the people watching the film. Click tracks and following the SMPTE are necessary for some things, but once you have everything in Logic, then afterwards you can edit and make minor changes.

Rahman’s is a complete antithesis to way Illayaraja works and yet his music works equally well (at least for me) – This bewildering thought never stops to amaze me.

A Treasure

While the composer himself is taking the least amount of interest in officially releasing his great background scores of 100s of his movies, there are his hardcore fans and music enthusiasts all over the world who with advent of technology do it unofficially via internet. Dilip in his blog provides us background scores of some of Illayaraja’s best background scores in incredible audio quality without dialogues (the best I ever heard on the net) for download. One can just download, write it on a CD and sell it as an official OST of the movie. A real treasure. Grab is now. Dilip has not only extracted but also compiled the background score pieces chronologically and thematically together. I especially like the way he has done it for the score of Pithamagan and Heyram. Billion thanks to Dilip. I wish he continues to do this.

A.R.Rahman on Scoring

AND his next Hollywood project.

AND AND his next "Passage" with Shekar Kapur. I am excited about this. The music in the trailer is very good and it sounds like it is going to be a classic orchestral score throughout.

100 Years of Film Scores

Hollywood Reporter has listed the 100 greatest Film scores of all time.

Sivaji Background Score

Just now saw the Sivaji's Silver Jubilee function in which the producer AVM Saravanan announced that SIvaji OST with background score pieces is going to be released soon. Rajini's last movie, 'Chandramukhi' background score was also released. Rahman's background score was okay which was loud enough to suit the grandeur of the scenes. Rahman has mostly used the songs in the background except for the Motta Boss Rap theme, Aadhiseshan theme and the Title theme. Ofcourse fight scenes had a lot of incidental music recorded with a symphony orchestra which may not be completely enjoyable as stand alone tracks. Anyway, let us wait and see.

Also, saw an interview of Vidhyasagar in which he spoke more about his background score for the movie 'Pirivom Santhipom' than the songs. He said he has worked hard to create a background score to aurally bring the contrast between the first and second half of the movie. Even cinematographer M.S.Prabhu talked about movie's background score. It is good to see that there is some talk about this aspect in promotional interviews. I also remember noticing Vidhyasagar's background score in Karupazhaniappan's Parthiban Kanavu.

Jodha Akbhar Soundtrack

Finally the track list of Jodha Akbar soundtrack is out. Audio is also officially released. As expected, there are no background score pieces included, instead, two instrumental tracks are included as it was in Swades. The flute version of 'Jashan-E-Bahaara' and the Oboe version of 'Khwaja mere Khwaja'. The interesting thing here is the usage of Oboe for a qawwali tune. Eagerly waiting to hear this particular instrumental.

Screen Nominations for Best Background Score

Yet another instance to understand how bad the recognition for background score composers is in Indian Cinema. Vishal-Shekhar is nominated for Best background score, though Sandeep Chowtha is the actual background score composer of Om Shanthi Om. Also, Daniel B.George's background score for Jhonny Gaddar deserves a nomination.

(Heart)Breaking News

Illayaraja's background score pieces from Rakkamma BGM page has been removed. I expected that this would happen sooner or later. I think Agi Music Agilan has sent a mail to the Rakkamma team to remove the BGM's. Agi Music now partly own the copyrights of all Raaja's works. But what is the use? Owning copyrights and just keeping it for themselves serves no purpose.

Anyway, if that message is for everyone who puts Raaja's works for streaming or download for free, then anytime soon, the message from Agilan may knock my inbox too. I Don't know how I am going to maintain this blog without posting Raaja's scores.

Jodha Akbhar Soundtrack

In the discussion forum of the official website of 'Jodhaa Akbar', Ashutosh Gowariker himself has put a message that the audio CD of Jodha Akbar would include instrumentals. And that is one of the reasons why Audio release has been postponed (Previously announced audio release date is today).

A.R.Rahman has always given his best in background score when it comes to Asutosh's movies. Both Lagaan and Swades has good enough music pieces which could have been released as a seperate soundtrack CD. 'Jodhaa Akbar' being a historical movie, there would be ample scope for Rahman to prove it again in background score. Let us wait and see if the audio CD contains all the background score pieces.

Rahman's 4 tracks

It seems Rahman has composed only 4 pieces (Philip, Mary's Beheading, Battle and Divinity theme) among the 20 tracks of Elizabeth - The Golden Age soundtrack. Philip is credited to both Rahman and Craig Armstrong. Among the four, I was sure that Battle and Divinity theme are out and out Rahman's works and thought Rahman did contribute a little bit in all the other tracks but it seems he didn't.

News on Scores

Yashraj Films have released the background score of ‘Veer-Zaara’. Are (mainstream, commercial, or whoever we think don’t give a damn about background scores) Indian film makers, really taking interest in background scores, or is it just done with a commercial angle as anything with ‘Veer-Zaara’ or Yashraj label sells? Earlier, Yashraj audios released the OST of Black as they were the distributors of the film.

It is good to know that the background score for 'Taare Zameen Par' was recorded live (according to the information in Aamir Khan's blog). I thought Aamir would release the entire background score in CD but there is only one instrumental. The 'Ishaan's theme' from the movie's beautiful soundtrack is one of the best Piano pieces I heard in recent times. It doesn't stick to just the main melody, it starts with a cute main melody and goes through various emotions and comes back to the main theme at the end. A must listen.