Master Siddharth, Young Drummer

Master Siddharth Nagarajan is India's Youngest drummer. They have launched his official website recently - http://drumsiddharth.com.

I saw him on TV performing for a charity show at Hyderabad along with Kamal Hassan and Jayaram. He was awesome with the drums. Kamal and Jayaram were singing some jathis and Siddharth was answering them on the drums. What I liked is, he was thoroughly enjoying himself while playing and that is very good to watch. I wish him good luck in his career.

There is some performance of his on Feb 16th (tomorrow) at Anna University, Chennai. I would like to go, let me see.

Trills in the prelude of IR songs

Listen to the opening few seconds of the following songs and identify the similarity.

1. Etho Moham from Kozhi Koovudhu
2. Nalam Vazha from Marupadiyum
3. Etho Onnu from Solla Marantha Kathai

You can listen to the song prelude bits below:


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The similarity is they all start with a very rapid alternation between 2 adjacent notes of a scale. I learnt from my colleague, Godwin, that this is called a 'Trill'.

The first song, Etho Moham, is a very beautiful song. You can read a more detailed review by RJAY of the Edho Moham song at http://www.geocities.com/rjaymidi/aedho.html. Heard that our Maestro wanted to meet French maestro Paul Mauriat, and took this song in a cassette to him as a sample. Upon listening to this song, the French composer immediately wanted to meet our Maestro, who was waiting outside.

Coming back to the prelude of the 1st song, there seems to be 3 string sections, all of them playing trills in different intervals. Then the strings sections takes of and the flute follows the melody.

In the second song, Nalam Vazha, some wind instrument like flute seems to be playing the trill, backed by strings filling. There is also some bass walkthrough during this piece. Is it pizzicato strings? I am not sure. After the very short trill, the guitar piece starts.

The Trill in the third song, Edho Onnu, is my favorite of the three. Here the strings section plays the same trill repeatedly. After the first 2 bars, there is a short sweet melody on strings overlapping the trill. After the piece, the song immediately starts. At first hearing, the song seems to start abruptly after the trill, but after listening properly and repeatedly, I am able to understand the timing. I don't think I listened to the strings overlap when seeing the song on TV. So use a proper headphone while listening to the above pieces.

Do you know of any other similar song employing this technique?