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Pitts & Wits |
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By Chandrasekar - Page 3 |
| Dinner
was ready by then. Delicious PavBaji, rasam, rice, raisin filled curd
rice. We finished dinner and went to Sorga vaasal -
Srikanths' Recording Room. The room was filled with cables, mics,
recording equipments, computer etc. Srikanth is introducing (?)
RJay as a singer. They had recorded first four lines of
Bharathiyar song, Senthamizh Naadenum pothinilae before my
arrival. Srikanth played that recording.
Wonderful. RJay had beautifully emphasized "Sakthi" when
singing the line "oru sakthi pirakkudhu moochinilae".
The tune was set in Tilang and the guys were working vehemently towards
flawless recording. Sriki then showed Khadal Paadhayil penned by
BB sung by RajaG, MS and Mani Sastri. He played each and every
track of the song. He took extra care in softening certain areas
and the final output was awesome.
Srikanth then showed some of his earlier compositions, one in Sri Ragam, other in the blend of Shanmugapriya and Simmhendra madyamam. I could sense his power in rhythm arrangement. He has wonderful collection of sound samples and applies right stuff at right spot. I then asked him to play Abhogi on his Korg triton keyboard. He showed Carnatic, Jazz, Rock, Blues styles in abhogi and composed a tune instantly with a simple 4/4 beat cycle. He brought Kadhri Gopalnath on the keyboard by pressing few buttons. Balachander's Veena and Ravishankar's Sitar were brought out nicely. He rubbed a certain part on the keyboard to bring Veena gamakam. Korg triton is a perfect slave to his master and it does whatever Srikanth says. (innum konjam sollikuduththaal kitchenukku poyi thaalichchu kottina rasam vachchuttu vandhdum andha keyboard! :) It was wonderful to watch Srikanth's work. The time was one hour past midnight. We came down and saw the kids still playing and the ladies still talking in the kitchen. As I was tired, had to drive for another 30 minutes to go back to hotel and on the way to collect my wife's handbag, we took leave and this time RJay wrote a clear directions for us to return safely without getting into downtown roads. The handbag was intact and we thanked the lady at Wendy's who safe kept for us. On Sunday, June 10th, we got ready by 9.30am to go to the temple. Temple is only 4 miles from the hotel. We didn't want to have any breakfast. Sun (Ravi Sundaram) called me on the cell and asked what my plan for the day was. I told him that we intended to spend the morning at the temple and to go for some attractions in the afternoon. He suggested few places and he felt very sorry for not accompanying us to these places as he had to drop someone at the airport. We decided to meet each other in the evening and he told me that his wife would be at the temple that afternoon for his daughter's dance class. Then we proceeded to the temple. This temple was built with the help of volunteers and Thirupathi Devasthanam. The hilly driveway to the temple mimicks Thiruppathi. There were lot of devotees and after few minutes we could get a parking place. I was not privileged enough to get a glimpse of "aadhiseshu" which Srikanth witnessed there. |