Cover of Shreya Ghoshal's chalo tumko lekar

I've always been a big fan of this song. Shreya who had just entered the industry was (and still is!) all the craze and sounded ethereal. My first take was on a casette with a karaoke track, back in the early 2000s soon after the film (Jism) had released. After all these years I got on Smule and this was one of the first songs I wanted to sing. Here goes - hope you like it.

 

E Shwasalo

"M.S.Shankar's Supremes" was a popular light music troupe in Chennai in the 70's and 80's, started by their lead drummer Shankar, and my uncle Devanathan who was the lead singer and accordion player. In 2007 the troupe revived its music and did a couple of shows- after twenty five years or so. One of them was in September 2007 at the Madras Music Academy, for an event put together by the Indian Telugu Association to felicitate veteran Telugu actor Chandra Mohan. I performed with them at the event, and one of the songs given to me was E Shwasalo. I heard the song and decided it was impossible to do it- given Chitra's pitch and the complexity of the swaras at the end. I somehow managed to pull it off there and got some good feedback too. (I imagine though, that people were probably just being nice to me :P)

I find a lot of similarities between this song and ThaththiththOm from Azhagan (what I recorded some three years ago). To start off, its the same team - Keeravani (aka Maragathamani aka M.M.Kreem) and Chitra. Also, both are classical/ raga based and both have very complex swaras at the end and both conclude with slow, soft lines. I have no words for Chitra's singing and this is yet another song that reinforces the belief in me that she is not human! I don't understand how a human voice can have this much breath control and flexibility and ease at such high notes. Like Murali was saying, music directors seem to have used Asha's, Lata's and Chitra's voices like a violin!

I stumbled upon a very good karaoke track for the song recently. Although am not exactly a huge fan of this song, I decided to try recording it just for kicks. So here it is. Obvious disclaimers apply :P
Also, this is my first song in Telugu, a language I don't know, so I apologize for any goof-ups in diction.

Song: E Shwasalo
Movie: Nenunnanu
Music: Keeravani
Lyrics: Sirivennela
Singer: Chitra

Sindhuja Bhakthavatsalam · E Shwasalo-Cover

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)