Neethane En Ponvasantham | Yeto Vellipoyindhi Manasu | Assi Nabbe Poorey Sau

[brigs]

My thoughts exactly! I still wonder why the choice of Yuvan there (upon repeated listenings, i feel he is not a perfect choice) when Raaja already roped in Suraj Jagan - who is extremely popular for rock songs - for pudikele maamu! I hear NEPV everyday but i still cannot get over this sore thumb called Yuvan in this album - be it saindhu or this song. Infact, I have compiled a cd for car that has all songs of NEPV with saindhu saindhu replaced by telugu version. Unfortunately, pengal endraal in telugu has yuvan only

GVM said that it was him who wanted Yuvan to sing those songs. It wasn't IR's choice/decision. GVM deserves credit/critizism for this

[Gregorysab]

GVM said that it was him who wanted Yuvan to sing those songs. It wasn't IR's choice/decision. GVM deserves credit/critizism for this

he does but given that GVM gave a freehand to IR, IR could have easily told him "dude, i think there are much better singers that suit these songs"! He didnt .. I somehow dont buy the argument of "Yuvan's voice suits the emotion there"! Saindhu Saindhu sounds much much better in Telugu. Emotion being the same, how come Shaan delivers better than Yuvan? even for Pengal endraal - I am sure there are much better singers who can not only suit the emotion there but also make it sound more better, vocally.. i would blame both here - for looking at commercial angle more. I feel this all the more because in all other songs (the vocals were just right for the singers; vaanam mella is an exception though - i felt even that song could have been much better with any other singers). this is precisely why I feel the songs which score 10/10 in this album are Kaatre konjum, Mudhal murai and sattru munba and to some extent ennodu vaa vaa.

[jaiganes]

Saaindhu saaindhu is a delight and u1 is apt - he is not that great in pengal endraal - but still is effective..
Much of u1 bashing is at best a simple prejudice and not an objective recollection of listening experience - Having said that,
much of what we do with respect to observing and appreciating an art form is highly and intensely 'subjective'.

[irir123]

Suggestion to irir123 - a copy of the CD with a tip to listen to muthal murai, saRRu munbu should reach the hands of Sarah Brighthman or her agents. I can help in mailing it out etc but need your help in the template/contacts etc.

it could be done - with one condition - ONLY ORIGINAL NEPV CD please - already two ppl have expressed their unhappiness even about iTUNES downloaded stuff - one jazz reviewer has outright rejected my invitation to review once I told him, i dont have the original CD - he had initially been enthusiastic abt NEPV after hearing the samples!

if it is to be sent to someone at a professional level, ONLY original CDs should be sent

you may PM me with more details abt Sarah as well as what is it that you have in mind

contrary to what many ppl think in this hub, things work way differently abroad, esp in the US where copyright laws are very stringently observed with a team from the department of justice very vigilant

[irir123]

NEPV has made it to a reputed Film Music site !

http://www.filmmusicsite.com/soundtracks.cgi?id=9605

[brigs]

he does but given that GVM gave a freehand to IR, IR could have easily told him "dude, i think there are much better singers that suit these songs"! He didnt .. I somehow dont buy the argument of "Yuvan's voice suits the emotion there"!

no no... GVM said that IR can have freehand to use any orchestra or compose anywhere he wants. According to GVM, he not only asked for Yuvan to sing couple of songs... but he even asked for certain instruments to be used while composing songs - my memory is vague but any of you remember this from the NEPV episodes on Jaya TV or maybe I read this on this forum posts somewhere?

I don't think Yuvan did a bad job with Saindhu Saindhu... He really has that youth feel. Not all that bad... I will try to get catch the Telugu version some time.

[jaiganes]

just a joke.. Vijaykanth says in ramana 'Doctor kittayin lawyer kittayin sollave koodaadha vaarthai 'evlo selavaanaalum parava illai'' (sentence not to be uttered to doctor or lawyer - ' I am ready to pay anything to save X or Y').
But producer has to say that to IR - to get a whalloping musical album like NEPV...

[Gregorysab]

Saaindhu saaindhu is a delight and u1 is apt - he is not that great in pengal endraal - but still is effective..
Much of u1 bashing is at best a simple prejudice and not an objective recollection of listening experience - Having said that,
much of what we do with respect to observing and appreciating an art form is highly and intensely 'subjective'.

The composition is a delight for sure but I disagree that yuvan is apt! I asked at least 7 people who have more keen ears than I do in terms of identifying apasruthis. I had a doubt if he was going off key and everyone confirmed it. As for emotion, it's a romantic ballad, not a drunken-revelry song where apasruthis can fit the emotion. The orchestration is so gentle - like suresh wrote in his blog - that it really demanded a soft voice and not coarse voice that yuvan has. And forget musically knowledgeable folks, even generic audience.. like at least 11 of my friends gave a reaction "why spoil such a noise song with such a wrong singer"

I agree that yuvan's coarse voice could be the characteristic that would've suited pengal endral.. But I felt, as much as the choice of yuvan was almost right here, he doesn't match the composition in the 1st half (yuvan's fault IMO). I felt his voice becomes effective, as you rightly said it, from charanam onwards. That's where I felt he got it right.

[MelHarmony]

The composition is a delight for sure but I disagree that yuvan is apt! I asked at least 7 people who have more keen ears than I do in terms of identifying apasruthis. I had a doubt if he was going off key and everyone confirmed it. As for emotion, it's a romantic ballad, not a drunken-revelry song where apasruthis can fit the emotion. The orchestration is so gentle - like suresh wrote in his blog - that it really demanded a soft voice and not coarse voice that yuvan has. And forget musically knowledgeable folks, even generic audience.. like at least 11 of my friends gave a reaction "why spoil such a noise song with such a wrong singer"

I agree that yuvan's coarse voice could be the characteristic that would've suited pengal endral.. But I felt, as much as the choice of yuvan was almost right here, he doesn't match the composition in the 1st half (yuvan's fault IMO). I felt his voice becomes effective, as you rightly said it, from charanam onwards. That's where I felt he got it right.

Saaindhu is one milestone song in Ilayaraja. Hee has never done such a song earlier and Yuvan is indeed the apt choice. After so many songs which proved to bee diffcult to sing or dictated totally by Ilayaraja, this one is packed with lot of emotions. This song is not for sruthi suthham, as we associate with other songs. when it is sleepy night mood, who will sing with 100% sruthi sutham.... this will fit perfectly as "T" for the situation

[MelHarmony]

[While listening to the awesome songs of Neethane En Ponvasantham (CD | mp3) by Ilaiyaraaja, I made an interesting discovery. To me, it looks all the songs end in the Panchamam (Pa note). Not sure if it is intentional or if it is coincidental. Songs ending with Shadjamam (Sa note) is very common. But all 8 songs (actually 9) from the album ending in Panchamam was interesting]

Good find!

I have a few minor comments.
Mostly IR songs will have scale differences between songs in a single film. This helps in a great way making the user feel to get a different experience of the raaga or harmony. But due to several reasons such as time constraints, composing sequence/composer's mood, motivation, film requirements, IR has provided this kind of single scale albums in the past. we can name them a lot, I believe from his 900 odd films.

But for NEPV I feel the reason for this single scale album are multipleIT could be cause of the following 2 main reasons...

1. When scale changes, retuning need to be done for many instruments if not all(particularly percussion). For ex., by default, percussion instrument will be tuned to E major in an orchestra. Piano doesn't need retuning. Except for a few instruments, most of the instruments require retuning when scale changes. There are many instruments (as always in many IR albums) used in this album. Typically tuning so many instruments for different scales for each song in an album is not an easy task as it is time consuming. First of all it requires lot of sound engineering effort to get it done before even rehearsal. Retuning percussion is not easy...
2. Another factor that comes to my mind is, this chosen scale actually suits both IR and YSR . Going beyond this scale, means they have to strain a lot to sing which would not have come out well. Hence IR would have judiciously chosen this scale. This is the not the first time he doing this way. I am seeing this being done for a very long whenever he sings.
3. Another factor is the sequence of tune creation. I dont know which was the first tune for which GVM requested IR a song. Going from that song, the comsposing sequence will actually affect the scale of the other songs because when IR creates a tune and records the tune in a particular scale and OKAYED by GVM he will not change that scale for that song. Also for the next song he will be influenced by other factors such who to put for singing. Also as we know all songs were composed in a single sitting and with the same love theme, I feel the panchamam scale for all songs is not a surprise.