My ears and sound of many generations
Last day I was talking to a friend, a well-known playback singer in Malayalam films, about the metamorphosis happening to the singing voices because of the interference of the sound designers at different levels. It is almost impossible; of course there are exceptions, to listen to the natural voice of the artist in the end-product. Possibly, ‘natural’ human voice may not be that important when it comes to the end-product which ultimately has become a creation of the ‘song-designer’ these days. I am not complaining about this evolution as we know, music has undergone many changes after the introduction of a microphone between the singer and the listener.
I was reading an interesting article by Richard Barrett titled “A Century of Microphones: Implications of amplification for the singer and listener” and the essay handles carefully the development of electroacoustic technology and the changes in the landscape of the singing profession for both performer and listener. The article led me to listen to different renderings of a particular composition in Carnatic music in different periods and the music that I chose was ‘Intha Soukhyamanine’, a Tyagaraja composition in Raga Kapi. The renderings speak volumes about how most of our ears are now tuned for a studio, microphone-friendly sound rather than a sound which was trained in a pre-microphone era.
Intha Soukhyama- Kapi- Renderings from two generations
1. Madurai Mai Iyer:
http://gaana.com/song/intha-
2. K.V. K.V. Narayana Swamy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
3. N. Ramani: Flute:
http://play.raaga.com/carnatic
4. T.M. Krishna Raga Kapi 11’30”
https://soundcloud.com/bvb07/t
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