Kandathum Pennai - Making of the 2 versions of my song

In this blog post, I am going to describe how I went about making 2 versions of my song, Kandathum Pennai, which were composed by me and written by my colleague, Kannan.

Original Version:
Here is the original version of Kandathum Pennai, which I had already shared 3 months before on this blog. I had always wanted to compose a very simple, straightforward, accessible tune and I came up with this. I also wanted this song to be somewhat like a Yuvan song and that is how I composed the melody.

Do listen to the embedded audio below and share your comments.
CREDITS (all are my colleagues)
Music: Sripathy Ramesh
Lyrics: Kannan Sampath
Lead Vocals: Mohammed Raafi
Backing Vocals: Vidya Kanickairaj, Jenzo Thomas
Lead Guitar: Jenzo Thomas

The lead guitar solo at the end of the charanam was actually not originally planned. I had given the backing track alone (minus the lead vocals) to Jenzo for reference. He didn't realize that I had removed the lead vocals and thought that it was empty in the charanam and played the lead guitar himself to the chord progression towards the end of the charanam. That was a nice guitar piece and yet I couldn't have it behind the lead vocals without distracting the listener. So I repeated the same set of chords after the charanam and included this lead guitar piece there and then I moved on to the pallavi. This suited the song very well and it took it to a new level. Thank you Jenzo! We had apprehensions that the electric guitar was coming all of a sudden towards the end without making any appearance till then, but still we went ahead with that.

Glad to see this song crossing 2000 plays in the course of 3 months since release. It is steadily getting around 100 plays per week, without any constant promotion.

And I was also humbled by some nice messages on this song that I received from people whom I personally do not know:

"The Bass for kandathum pennai is Simply Awesome :) Seriously its kind of too intricate and I have fallen in love with the bass of that song..Its not too tough but at same time gives pleasure for people who are trying to play it :) Way to go :)"

"beautiful composition quite a catchy tune & rendition. makes me harmonize along the chorus everytime i listen, kudos to you & the team!"

Thanks a lot for your support!

Reprise Version:
At some point of time, when I was working on the above song, I wanted to try altering the tune slightly and create a different version using the same lyrics just as an experiment.  The tune and interlude will resemble the original, but still will be different.

Listen to (and watch) the reprise version embedded below and continue reading.

CREDITS
Music and Direction: Sripathy Ramesh
Lyrics and Monologues: Kannan Sampath
Vocals and Acting: Srivatsan Gopaladesikan
Guitar: Sriram Eswaran

Thanks to Anbu Chezhian for his creative inputs.

Similarities between the two versions:
Both the versions are very much similar in the structure and the song's melody. The notes may be different, but the similarities cannot be ignored.

First lets look at the differences:

• The original is in a minor scale (Cm). While the reprise is in a major scale (A), mostly in the scale of Hamsadhwani raga. 
• The original has a faster tempo and is more western in its arrangement and harmonies, while the reprise is a slower version with a very simple arrangement of guitar backing.
• Original was sung by Raafi while Srivatsan has sung the reprise version.
• The original version has a lead guitar solo at the end of the charanam, while the reprise version doesn't have any. 

Now that the differences have been outlined, lets look at the similarities and how it was born.

I first got the idea of this version from the interlude of the original version. The interlude in strings goes like | ---- gPng R,g, RgRn | with Eb as the backing chord. Now Eb major could be looked as a relative major to the C minor scale. When looked at it as belonging to the Eb major scale, I could see Hamsadhwani in it. | ---- gPng R,g, RgRn | in the scale of C minor becomes | ---- SGPS N,S, NSNP | in Eb Major. Considering the vocal range of the singer, I had set the reprise version in A Major instead of Eb Major.

And further, the pallavi just uses the notes S R g P n S of natabhairavi / minor scale. It starts on the gandharam of the upper octave:
| -ggR R,R, | ,SSR n,P, | (2)
| -nnS S,,n | SnSR S,P, | (2) 

Co-incidentally Hamsadhwani also has just 5 notes: S R G P N S. So the above pallavi got translated directly to:
| -GGR R,R, | ,SSR N,P, | (2)
| -NNS S,,N | SNSR S,P, | (2)

Now I knew we were getting somewhere with this alteration. Interestingly, the harmony parts in the pallavi of the original version will sound similar to the pallavi of the reprise version because the note intervals are similar. The harmony parts (seconds) in the original version is as follows:
| -PPm m,m, | ,ggm R,n, | (2)
| -RRg g,,R | gRgm g,g, | (2) 
And the above notes when seen from the perspective of the relative major scale, will yield the notes of the reprise version.

Towards the end of the pallavi in the reprise version, I added some 'oh oh kanden' hummings which felt very natural to me and then I took on to the interlude from there. This 'oh oh oh oh' (G,mG R,,,) is the place we deviated slightly from Hamsadhwani and used the madhyamam of Shankarabharanam. Though Hamsadhwani is placed as a janya of Shankarabharanam, it is said that it is best perceived as a janya of Kalyani, if one observes the nuances of the raga carefully. I also noticed that the melody of Aval Appadi Ondrum Azhagillai song by Vijay Antony is predominantly in Hamsadhwani, while the music arrangement is in Kalyani. I too used both Hamsadhwani and Kalyani (though in a lighter fashion) in my first song.

Now we have the pallavi and interlude ready. Only the Charanam is remaining. The charanam of the original starts as follows:
| -ggR R,RS | RSR - - - |

Instead of starting the charanam of the reprise also on the gandharam (the way I did for pallavi), I decided to start it on the shadjamam (like the relative major scale concept used for the interlude). At the same time I also decided to make subtle changes such that it sticks to the scale of Hamsadhwani. So the charanam in the reprise version became:
| -SSN N,NP | NPN - - - |

The next 3 lines are mostly identical with subtle variations.

During the lines 'nadaipathai edhilum' of the charanam, the notes in the original version goes like:
| --PP P,g, | g,,, g,,, |
| --P, P,R, | R,,, R,,, |
| --PP P,S, | S,,, S,,, |
| --nn R,R, | R,,, ,,,, |

I translated the same to the notes of Hamsadhwani by changing ga to Ga and ni to Ni:
| --PP P,G, | G,,, G,,, |
| --P, P,R, | R,,, R,,, |
| --PP P,S, | S,,, S,,, |
| --NN R,R, | R,,, ,,,, |

These 4 lines ar repeated once again. At the end, these lines sounded very plain in the reprise version. It sounded monotonous and was obvious that it lacked imagination. The original version had some nice harmonies backing these lines and 4 different chords were used, 1 for each line. In the reprise version, I didn't have any harmonies originally. And I had used only 2 chords - the tonic and the dominant - to stick to the scale of Hamsadhwani. All these added up to these lines being boring. So I added an overlapping vocals at the end of each line that goes as follows. Note that the 4 lines mentioned above are repeated once again, so for the second time, the overlapping notes were changed slightly. Here are the notes of the overlapping vocals which are in harmony with the melody and the chords (alternating chords of tonic and dominant triads).
| ---- ---- | ---- G,S, |
| R,,, ---- | ---- R,N, |
| S,,, ---- | ---- S,P, |
| N,,, ---- | ---- GRSN |
| P,,, ,,,, | ---- S,G, |
| R,,, ---- | ---- N,R, |
| S,,, ---- | ---- P,S, |
| N,,, ---- | ---- SNSR | G

Towards the end of the charanam, the original version goes like:
| --g- g,R, | --g- g,R, |
| --g- g,R, | g,R, g,,, |
| --g- g,R, | --g- g,R, |
| --g- g,R, | g,R, g,R, |
| m,,, ,,,, | ,,,, ,,P, | 
| m,,, ,,,, | ,,,, ,,,, |

For the reprise version, I changed that to the following keeping in mind the scale of Hamsadhwani. The ending of the charanam was changed slightly.

| --G- G,R, | --S- S,N, |
| --G- G,R, | G,R, G,P, |
| --G- G,R, | --S- S,N, |
| --G- G,R, | G,R, G,R, |
| P,,, ,,,, | ,,,, RGRS | 
| N,,, ,,,, | ,,,, ,,,, |

And then we are back to the pallavi again.

On the video:

We also recorded a video to go along with the reprise version. Since this version was very slow, we thought having the full video in slow motion will be a good idea. If you noticed in the video embedded above, once the song starts, the visuals is fully in slow motion and Srivatsan will be lip syncing the song in slow motion as well. This has been done by other people many times before, but still it was a first for us. What we did was to double the speed of the song and Srivatsan practiced singing it in that speed. We then recorded the video in 60 fps with Srivatsan singing it at double speed along with the track. Later during editing, the video was slowed down to half and we used the song in its original tempo. That is how we were able to have the video in slow motion, yet get the lip syncing right. Here is raw footage from the location for you to get an idea of how we recorded it.


Kamal Hassan went many steps further and did a slow motion song in reverse for the song Neela Vaanam from the movie Manmadhan Anbu. The visuals are in reverse and in slow motion, but still he lip syncs to the song. Watch Kamal explain how he did that here.

We hope you liked both the versions of these songs. Feel free to comment on this song. Share with us your honest comments on what you like and what can be improved.