Thursday, January 25, 2007

When recording meant nothing more than singing...

It was only recently that I learnt about cool music softwares and what they can do to your voice and how powerful tools they are. Of course I knew about their existence even before, but somehow never really felt upto it to try my hand at using them... Blogging etc. never really crossed my mind. I was a happy listener and visitor to others' blogs.
So until some months back, my recording exercise consisted of just one thing- singing. No amp, no reverb, no normalising, no pitch benders or scale changers... nothing. And most importantly, no mixing! Just pop in the original casette or cd into the music system and another empty casette, hit the 'karaoke' button and just start recording, singing along with the original singer, trying drown her voice hehe...(wasn't even aware of karaoke cd's being available in the market!)
Actually in a way recording that way was great fun. 'Ignorance is bliss' so holds here.
Since I would record on a tape, there was obviously no cut-copy-paste or anything, so even a slight slip here and there, and the entire song would have to be redone, right from the beginning! There have been so many instances where I goofed up something towards the very end of the song and felt so frustrated about having to start all over again!
Although modern softwares and recording on the computer gives one a lot of flexibility and luxury, recording on tapes was a challenge in itself and the satisfaction it would give me after the completion of a song was immense. Especially after singing some of them atleast 5-6 times (the entire song, that is! ) !
I was just thinking of those good old days...and felt like blogging those old recordings, however bad the recording quality is (I trust it aint too bad, since they're all now made up and enhanced with....ahem....softwares (again! sigh)...

Some old recordings- done 6 years back :
Kannodu Kanbadhellam:
Jhoola bahon ka: Konjum Mainaakkale: Boondon se baatein: More recent ones: Thathiththom: Manam Virumbudhae: Sowkkiyama: Snehidhane: Kannamoochi: Chalo tumko lekar chalein (Jism) pal pal hai bhaari (Swades) Dil mera ek taara (December 16) Mausam ki sargam ko sun (with Deepthi Krishnamurthy) Jahan piya wahan main (Pardes)


6 comments:

Harshan said...

I really enjoyed chalo tumko le chale ....great rendition sounded like the original ...keep singing :-)

Prakhar Gupta(Praksi) said...

hi.....blog is good.....plz... tell me how u have put d songs on the blog plz......mail me at - prakhargupta93@yahoo.co.in

Meera Manohar said...

Nice to read about your recording experiences Sindhuja..

Guess all of us have gone through phases like these at one point or the other :)

Anonymous said...

Konjum Mainaakale was real good one. other I have to listen yet

Smrithi said...

hehehehhehehe.. also remember trying not to drown rahmans voice in dil se re :):):)

Sindhuja Bhakthavatsalam said...

Oooh, yeah! lol! :) :) Those were the days...