Peak tamil film music

[sunson]

Music is said to be infinite. Atleast in theory, because its all about combining 12 different notes, add a dimension of meter that can further increase the possible perceived unique combinations to produce tunes. The theoretical possible combinations is so huge that its said to be infinite

Comments

[birdonthewire]

Wow - unbelievable that Ilayaraja composed for 50 movies in one year! Great post!

[sunson]

51 at peak, 50 x 2 just before and after the peak.

50% of his movies were made in 25% of his career span. But I guess that stat might just apply to a lot of people, since we're talking only % ;)

[anonymous]

Brilliant Suraj...but i do have a difference of opinion on certain points....now yes Rahman has a whale of technolgy at his disposal..so do listners who can dissect and assemble songs...so scrutiny has increased ..then MSV songs were not freely avbl as discs wer expensive and people got to hear them very rarely..with illayraja we saw the rise of Tapes and LD...but again it was not affordable for all ..but with ARR we saw the rise in Cable tv,music players and computers so people got to appreciate music by dissection...so ARR inpspite of lower volumes had to incorporate different shades to the same song...so i guess effort required is more and with Raja directors had to take the music which was given to them unlike these days when producers are asked to give out options for a single situation so it leads to a faitgue ..which MSV saw in 80's .Raja in 90's and ARR in 00's...and if u look at ur chart the period for them to arrive at that fatigue is different.It took MSV 35 years...raja 25 years and rahman about 15 years...One more thing

[sunson]

Hi Karthik!

By your argument, technology makes scrutiny of music easier. I disagree - people who loved and hated raja's music listened to it mostly on tapes. They found it brilliant not because of the quality of recording. I don't think today's generation hates Rahman's music because of his excellent quality of recording. Infact, to me, its the opposite. I ask my mind to shut up trying to see repetitive patterns from the past ( I do that all the time) and instead sit back and enjoy the amazing textures of sounds rahman produces.

People criticized raja for how he used music itself (western + folk + carnatic blend). Of course, there were a bunch of people (like me) who liked his use of technology back then (think Vikram: whatever tape player I had, it still sounded good).

The rickshaw pullers didn't go mad about MSV + T.M.Soundarrajan for the quality of the sound but because of the soulfulness or whatever of the songs.

So, sorry - its not about the technology available to the listeners.

[anonymous]

It could also be that the # of tunes a musician can compose is finite. Maybe because of his own creative limitations. Similar to science:- Einstein didn't have anything big after relativity?
Instead of looking at individual musicians, if we plot the # of original tunes over time, I expect there will be spikes. (where a music genius was at his peak). If the spikes are getting shorter, then the conclusion you are coming to makes sense.

[sunson]

Point noted.

I actually went around looking for original tunes... or so called hits, like what the article I've referenced to in the footnotes does about Rock music (and shows how Rock is finite ;) ). But couldn't find a good source. so instead I rationalized on the following mechanism:

1. If an artist is good, film producers will approach him thereby pushing towards "Growth" year over year.
2. When the artist starts peaking, they find an alternative.
3. Assumption: MSV or Ilayaraaja or Rahman are not very different. Just that the amount of tunes they could exploit was proportional to the amount of easy tunes waiting to be made.
4. law of diminishing returns of research and production technology applies.

This explains why raja was ousted at around his peak - the water cut equivalent in music, that is stale, same sounding songs must have been so high at such volumes that they had to find alternatives... and they did.

[raodyboy]

Interesting observations. I don't really have of an opinion on the finite/infiniteness of music, but do think there are some practical considerations you're ignoring. I feel the number of scores that ARR is churning out is lesser than his predecessors coz his overall workload is a lot more than either of them would've had. How many national/international concerts, Grammys, Oscars etc. did Ilayaraja or M.S.Vishwanathan have to perform at in addition to composing for movies. That plus the rigours of endless PR exercises for each album, I'm sure leaves a much smaller portion of his time for actually composing new stuff. I guess it's sad for us fans that we'll get to hear a lot less new stuff from the genius!

[sunson]

The PR phenomenon is an interesting angle. Indeed, a lot of time is spent these days in doing PR. Is the excessive PR work just an arms-race, everybody progressing in lock-steps and outdoing each other with more PR work, a kind of Ratchet effect? Where is the voluminous quality of the yesteryears? When there is cheap, easy to get music that gives profits, why go after expensive PR work?

[rfc9000]

I was about to point you to that blog post comparing rock'n'roll hits and oil production, when I saw it in the postscript

[sunson]

I think it would. If you looked at the basic structure of an Endaro, I don't think its something beyond Lalgudi's reach. Just that it was already made!

The genre thing you're talking about is exactly it: You can only do so much with an Electric guitar, though it did last for a very long time (for about 4 decades?). But remember it was Peak Jazz before that... and then rock... and then pop. Kinda like how Pennsylvania was exploited to it's fullest and while it was declining, they found texas... and then mexico... and then middle east... and then north sea.. and so on. Each 'pool' of musician or genre might have its limitation, but remember, once a musician churns out a simple, catchy tune, it can't be made again! its gone, lost forever!