Nilave Nillu, this was one of the songs that i had arranged music for a gospel album. Rev.Ezaikel George has been a close friend of my uncle S.Prem Kumar for quite a few decades now. Both of them have released a lot of albums together, Nilave Nillu was a remake of the album that was done by them sometime back in the 80's. This album had 3 other songs that i had arranged music for but Nilave Nillu remains to be my favorite.
I would like to dedicate this song to my uncle Mr.S.Prem Kumar who introduced me to the world of music, keyboards, sequencers, electronics and the list goes on.
Happy Listening.
Song : Nilave Nillu Album : Nilave Nillu Lyrics,Tune,Sung by : Rev.Ezaikel George Music : S.Prem Kumar Arranged By : Prathap Recorded, Mixed and Mastered at : Deepam Studios
This contest was announced sometime back in April. The winner of this contest gets to spend a day with ARR in his studio where the complete remix of the song will be done. There would be 10 other lucky winners who will get featured along with ARR in the video.
I was reluctant to take this up initially as it was a remix and I personally don’t like remixes. However all my friends wanted me to give this a try and convinced me to participate in the contest. I logged onto the contest site and downloaded 2 voice tracks, Gulfisha and Gumsum.
Here are the 2 tracks that I have submitted for the contest.
Phir Chali, Started working on this track back in November '07. Pavan spent a long time onsite and was waiting to get back and make some music. We met up on a saturday and I played him one of my old arrangements which he liked. He started humming a few lines and added some random words to make a tune. We made a tune of close to 4 lines but had a great struggle fitting in the appropriate words. We met up again after sometime before which i had layered some instruments to fill in for the stanza. Pavan comes home and we again do the process of making a tune and then fitting in the lyrics. We had quite a few lines and decided that should be good enough for the song and went onto make a outline for the song and recorded his voice as a dummy track. Once the first stanza was done we were thinking about a different kind of interlude. I locked Pavan in the voice room and asked him to sing something that he has not done ever in life. Then came the ooh,aah,parababappa. Once he was out i took the harmonica and walked in to the voice room and dumped some impromt pieces. Did the final recording of his voice somewhere in January on the same day that i did the recording for my previous song, Oru Poomaram. We wanted Jaishree to sing in a few places for this song and she was all ready to record. Recorded Jai's voice and all the voice dumps were complete. Thanks Jai for your support all the time :)
I had this idea of making a video of the recording process of one of my songs..A visualistic presentation makes more an impact compared to what i write in my blog. Its a first video in making and i still have lots to learn. Keeping my blog short as the video has it all. Happy Listening.
It's been a while since i sent out my last song. It was tough to balance the time between work and music and yes definitely the time spent in traffic. During the time I led the Indian Music Team in my college I had seen many talented singers and musicians who always wanted to be a part of the music team. Unfortunately there were only 8 to 10 people allowed to participate in a competition. I always used to feel bad and guilty for such people not getting a chance to be a part of the music team. One such talent was Sushanth Shankar.
Sushanth happened to find me on orkut recently, it was almost 4 years since we met after college and it took sometime for both of us to realize that the passion for music in both of us was still the same. He heard the tracks Mere Saason Mein and Saaton Janam and was overjoyed and appreciated the compositions. I told him that it was in college that I couldn't really do much, but this time I promised to make a song for him. I suggested Sushanth that it would be great to do a Malayalam song. Immediately he remembered his friend on orkut, Sindhu Nair who had written many interesting poetry and that's how the beautiful words for Oru Poomaram came into existence. Sushanth sent me the poetry and it was initially a little tough for me to grasp the words as my knowledge on Malayalam is very minimal. After getting some help from him I was pretty much ready to compose a tune.
December 2nd 2007, I made an arrangement and composed a tune based on it. However there were a few words which were not fitting in or either the word stress was missing out. We realized this after Sushanth came to my place on a weekend to jam, we thought of making the song much softer and slower to capture the exact feel of the song. After he left I sat back and re-arranged the music and got the basic layer done to record the voice.
Jan 6th 2008, the day we did the final recording of the song. I was very glad to have recording on this day as it was ARR's birthday, there can't be a better way to celebrate the legend's birthday other than involving myself in music. Recording process went on for about 3 to 4 hours and most of the voice dumps were complete within a few takes. Both I and Sushanth reviewed the recording a couple of times and it sounded all fine.I had scheduled another recording with Pavan (singer of Saaton Janam). Pavan comes in at 2:00 and listens to the recording we had done. All three of us go on a nostalgic trip to the college days and check the whereabouts of people whom we knew in common. So that completes the recording for Oru Poomaran. I only had the mixing and mastering work to complete which took me more than a week. Added a few additional instruments with a few tweaks in voice here and there and finally the song was complete. I personally felt it was quite a while to have composed a new song and promise you all to bring in more songs this year for sure and yes update my blog at the same time.
I would like to thank Sindhu Nair again for letting us use her amazing poetry Oru Poomaram. Hope we have done justice to you precious words. So here comes Oru Poomaram to begin the New Year with a melody. Happy Listening.
It was a long time that i composed and recorded a song completly since Pavan, Kanika deserted me to venture into their onsite opportunities. I was left with the option of just making an arrangement of music to basically give the feel of a song. My creative ideas did not seem to be coming through as before. I would end up in my music room after a tiring 18km ride from office.
Finally one day my thought flow was just gr8 and i came up with a catch line and recorded it immediately, used to play that piece as a loop for almost a week.
The feel of the song was such that, i wanted to give it a 80's pop song touch. I was too exited about this song and i almost finished prelude and the 1st interlude. Now i was stuck in no mans land. Started thinking where do i take this sample bit of my music from here to make it a complete song.
It was just a co-incidence that Adarsh texted me one day saying tat "i am looking forward to make a song with the legendary Prathap, maga". I immediately told him we could work on a song anytime.....I surprised him the next day with the sample bit that i had composed. He was almost addicted to the arrangements i had made and was too very eager to make a tune and write lyrics for it. Adarsh and Swastika (Adarsh's wud be ;-) ) came to my place to Jam on Feb 24th. We composed a tune as Adarsh wrote the lyrics humming the tune and the title of the song 'Mere Saason Mein' was born. Started at around 3:00 and by 6:00 we realised the complete tune is done. Now that the Lyrics and Tune was in place, i suggested Adarsh that we record the song sometime later..(just wanted him to sink into the song and get the feel completly). The next week turned out to be a few weeks and it was time that we really force ourselves out of the corporate world and spend time only for music just for a day.
Pannu, Kanika(She was just back in town and waiting to JAM) reached my place much early to know what exactly is slated for the rest of the day. Adarsh and Swastika were really held up and finally made to my place by noon. We started recording Adarsh's vocals..Now it was a totally new experience recording Adarsh's voice and to be frank he was really good at it. He was note to note perfect and the number of re-takes were less to what i had expected. Then Pannu got his act of getting the harmony parts for some places in the song. Finally the complete voice dump for the song was done and the only think left was mixing and mastering the song. After the final mix was done the song sounded just gr8 and everyone of you liked it more than we did.
Its been a while that we recorded this song, but till date sometimes this song plays in a loop in my cell phone,laptop, home PC.....Adarsh's Gtalk caption still says 'mere saason mein'. We both Text each other many times saying 'Mere saason mein, wat a song maga'.....
So thats how the song Mere Saason Mein saw the light of this world and what an experience it was :-)
Check out the JAM version of Mere Saason Mein....I assume most of you have the track Mere Saason Mein..
Its been a long wait for me to have a blog that explains the entire process i went through in completly creating a song. Its really worth to look back the enitre work done on a song once it is complete. Here in my blog you would find all the information about the songs i compose and offcourse lots of things about my idol A R Rahman. Cheers to Life, Prathap.
