Cue-It Up - 1

There are so many film score cues that I love and play in my mind all the time, but rarely I listen to them coming out of real speakers. Through Cue-It Up series I wish to introduce to you instrumental music pieces from Film Scores that might stay with you for the rest of your life.

Roar (Michael Giacchino)

Let’s begin with a bang and bombast. Roar – Cloverfield Overture is the music that plays in the end credits of a movie that has no music score at all. A big disaster movie with a giant beast and without a music score! – Yes, they really did pull it off. The immensely addictive theme goes through a journey in the piece, as it would through the film if it were made to play to back the visuals of this film.



Four notes (Gustavo Santaolalla)

A note each for Arun, Shai, Munna and Yasmin strung together to make a melody, that is as sweet and heartfelt as the movie (Dhobi Ghat) itself. Glad that Aamir Khan released the score of this film at least in the Blu-ray package of the movie.



Richard Alpert (Michael Giachchino)

Ab Aeterno is my most favourite of all episodes in Lost, where we get to watch the complete back story of one of most intriguing characters of the series – Richard Alpert. I instantly got hooked to this theme, when it first played in the scene where Ricardo rides a horse a long distance to a Doctor for the medicine to save his wife Isabelle. What a haunting tune!



Veena Waltz (Anirudh)

One of the most haunting instrumental pieces I heard this year. With an instantly pleasing waltz rhythm, the melody takes uplifting scale shifts through the course of the piece. I haven’t watched the movie (Edhir Neechal) yet and I don’t think I would, but this piece will definitely stay with me forever. I like the way the flute solo of beautiful melody of the line Husain Bolt line from the peppy club song joins the piece in the second half and seamlessly connects with the Veena theme that reprises on flute. Anirudh – Way to go!



Monkey Chatter (Ilaiyaraaja)

Monkey Chatter from Mumbai Xpress is a piece that belongs to a genre I would like to call Raajazz. Listen to the breathtaking orchestration and the interplay of themes and how seamlessly it flows from one section to another. Usually, I get bored of long instrumental Jazz pieces. That Tightness! The admirable tightness in the Orchestration! Only Ilaiyaraaja can make a piece like Monkey Chatter accessible to a Jazz-illiterate like me. I wonder if anything from this piece was used in the movie, I remember listening to multiple delicious variations of the jazzy Kurangu Kayil Maalai, but not this one.



Gabriel’s Cello (Ennio Morricone)

This is Yo-Yo Ma’s Cello Version of one of the most popular movie themes of Ennio Morricone from The Mission. The theme is sheer Melody - Exquisite! One of those melodies that popularize the instrument on which it is played – Oboe in this case, but this is the Cello version.

Few years ago, in a BOSE outlet, I was testing a speaker that I was going to buy that day by playing different genres of music from my iPod. When I played this piece, for not more than 15 seconds, a guy from the Store was instantly shaken and stirred by the sound of the music, got curious and asked me the name of the piece. I wrote down the name on a piece of paper “Gabriel’s Oboe from the compilation Yo-Yo Ma plays Ennio Morricone”. This series is something like that.

Why this Kolaveri on "di"?

Few seconds into listening to Moondru soundtrack – by debutante composer Anirudh Ravichander, I felt irritated, because in the first song of the soundtrack Idhazhin Oru Oram, the word “Naadiyai” is sung as “Naadeeyai” (Naadeeyai Silirkka Vaiththaai). It irritates me to no end, when in a song a word is mispronounced to make it fit into a preset melody. Music in a song is not just the melody; the inherent musicality of the language in which verses of the song are written is also a vital part of it. One may not consciously listen to the sound of the words sung or even understand the meaning of words, but the vowels and consonants of the language bring with them their innate rhythm, timbre, tone, and contour. If the musicality of the language in the song doesn’t seamlessly blend in with the music in the melody, it ends up being a highly jarring dissonance, at least for me. The short vowel sound in the word “Di” must be placed on a musical note of appropriate duration that doesn’t disturb the length of the vowel, for, stretching it a little beyond its original length would change the meaning of word completely or make the word meaningless; in this case, we have a meaningless word “Naadeeyai”. (A.R.Rahman’s ridiculous Kaadhal yendraal kaayam dhaan in Kannukkul Kannai song from Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa was the last time I got irritated as much with the way the lyrics was skewed into a song template)

I have heard Anirudh Ravichander play Piano in A.R.Rahman’s Band Hunt show “Ooh la la la”. He was part of the band called Zinx and their song Comp 6 even made it to the final “Ooh la la la” album. But, nothing much can be judged about the caliber of Anirudh as a composer from Comp 6 for it was a band song meant for live performances with sections for each instrumentalist and vocalist to flaunt their musicianship in front of a live audience. When Kolaveri di became a rage that it was, there was huge skepticism on his abilities to deliver tender and breezy romantic melodies, for 3 is a love story. Suchitra Karthik Kumar on twitter said, “Anirudh Ravichander is a Piano Prodigy. Kolaveri di is his most normal work”. But, I am quite underwhelmed by his melodies. They are sweet, yes, but shallow; when the melody begins with a sweet, nice phrase, you expect it to turn sweeter and nicer and take you on a journey to hit its sweetest route, but mostly those sweeter turns never come by and sweetest spots are never hit and it hangs around and meanders just as a sweet simple melody. The melody doesn’t make you fall in love with the romance. What Anirudh does get right is the hook line of the song. Hook is the keyword. In contemporary Hindi film music, almost every song is written with a hook line, which gets repeated throughout the song. Even in the soundtrack CD’s back cover, the songs are titled, not with the line with which the song begins, but which the song wanders and meanders all the way to hit - the punch line, the hook. Fortunately, this isn’t a trend in Tamil Film music yet. Such songs have meandering and middling melodies that takes path leading to that one Hook line. It is the hook line that is important, and if that is hooky enough, you can just put anything else around it and pass it on as a song. It would be unfair to say these romantic songs are amateur compositions, but definitely there is a scope for refinement in there and it just doesn’t hit the right emotional chords.

Anirudh fares far better when it comes to songs like Kolveri di. Come on girls is such unadulterated fun. The spontaneity is written all over the composition; the arrangements sound adequately fresh. The instrumental pieces are too short to tell us anything about his orchestration skills, though the life full of Love violin theme sounds interesting with orchestral layers and counter melodies that sound genuinely sprang along with the main melody in the composer’s mind. Po Nee Po remix included in the CD is not exactly a remix. It is a totally different version and far better and interesting one than the original, for the increase in tempo blurs the blandness of the melody in the middle section of the original song. They should have named it Po Nee Po – Hard Rock Version. Satya Prakash – the Airtel super singer runner up, makes his debut as playback singer with this song and he embellishes the tune with an inimitable classical tinge. And to whoever has sung (Harish Swaminathan) that exquisite “Janani” scream where he pours love, passion, angst, desperation and despair all into one – Well done. This blink-you-miss non musical moment is the most heart-felt expression of romance in the whole soundtrack.