Arangisai - FM Gold

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 24 Nov 2009, 09:53

balakk, this does sound like the age old AIR one hour concert format.

balakk · Post by **balakk** » 24 Nov 2009, 11:17

Quite possible. I'm not into radio that much - however the AIR concerts I found on Sangeethapriya do have a few longer songs.

vmr · Post by **vmr** » 24 Nov 2009, 11:32

As a rasika I feel the Radio programme can be effectively used by many artists to improvise within the time frame, for example the artist can choose 1 raga and render different compositions ( say 2 or 3 songs) in the stilulated time. In good old days when there was no TV or Internet, I remember Smt.DKP used to give such programmes like 1 raga in a AIR programme or 1 composer programme. Many students can be benefited by listening to such programmes.

Artists can also sing songs of lesser known composers. Or they can choose 1 diety on whom they can render about 4 to 5 songs.

It only needs some amount of thinking and preparation from the concerned artists to carry out such innovations.

sureshvv · Post by **sureshvv** » 24 Nov 2009, 15:01

Try 10 mins of any of the other fm channels... mirchi, suryan etc,, you will feel better about fm gold

rbharath · Post by **rbharath** » 24 Nov 2009, 23:24

sureshvv wrote:Except I wish they would not preempt regular programming with commentary on a cricket match or other sports fixtures frequently. Why can't they do those on FM Rainbow?

They broadcast it on Madras 'B' already, along with FM Gold. i do wish they dont touch FM Gold for the sake of cricket/any other sports.

FM gold always bears the grunt of any sport broad cast international, national, state-level, district-level, any sport tournament, they will have live commentary..

cacm · Post by **cacm** » 25 Nov 2009, 00:43

balakk wrote:
PS: Note to Dr.Narmada - I love your violin playing, but please reduce your violin volume a bit when you're accompanying.. Yesterdays program had the poor flutist drowned in your violin's boom! Not sure if it's your fault, but still.

YOUR comments are interesting as it brings out the TERRIBLE lack of knowledge- do not want to use the would EXPERTISE as it is an insult to the TYRANTS who are in chrge of sound systems in Chennai. In AIR for example the artists who are performing have NO IDEA of what is being broadcast etc & the accoustic deadening etc in the studiogives totally wrong idea of the sound levels etc.
IF you are serious about it you shd. start a campaign about the TERRIBLE SOUND SYSTEMS, TECHNICAIANS ETC. I used to when I used to live in Chennai 55 years back etc but find VERY LITTLE has changed for all the HYPE& HOOPLAS have matched USA levels. The accoustics is just awful in most places. Artists like S.Balachander, Jeusdoss & T.Sadasivam(for M.S.Concerts) used to make sure the audience hears a half way decent concert soundwise.........VKV

balakk · Post by **balakk** » 25 Nov 2009, 08:49

sureshvv, rbharath: Yeah, what's the deal with that? Not just live commentary, any politician(from the ruling party at center) can just commandeer the station any time they want, it seems. Add to this, they'll cover any damn sport they'll want to. Tell me, how retarded is radio commentary on a table-tennis match?

vkv sir: You're very right. Well let alone radio, even most commercial recordings of Carnatic music appear compromised to me; in comparison to the kind of work films and western albums get. Radio is pretty much a poor transmission medium, though FM is a vast improvement over AM. The artists and listeners seem to have sort of adjusted to it, but still some concerts are jarring on the ears.

sureshvv · Post by **sureshvv** » 25 Nov 2009, 11:39

balakk wrote: Tell me, how retarded is radio commentary on a table-tennis match?

Frankly not much more than the radio commentary for a 5 day test match

PS: Note to balakk: I love your writing but your font size is way too small for me to read. Please type bigger next time.

rajaglan · Post by **rajaglan** » 25 Nov 2009, 16:57

vkv43034 wrote:
balakk wrote:
PS: Note to Dr.Narmada - I love your violin playing, but please reduce your violin volume a bit when you're accompanying.. Yesterdays program had the poor flutist drowned in your violin's boom! Not sure if it's your fault, but still.
YOUR comments are interesting as it brings out the TERRIBLE lack of knowledge- do not want to use the would EXPERTISE as it is an insult to the TYRANTS who are in chrge of sound systems in Chennai. In AIR for example the artists who are performing have NO IDEA of what is being broadcast etc & the accoustic deadening etc in the studiogives totally wrong idea of the sound levels etc.
IF you are serious about it you shd. start a campaign about the TERRIBLE SOUND SYSTEMS, TECHNICAIANS ETC. I used to when I used to live in Chennai 55 years back etc but find VERY LITTLE has changed for all the HYPE& HOOPLAS have matched USA levels. The accoustics is just awful in most places. Artists like S.Balachander, Jeusdoss & T.Sadasivam(for M.S.Concerts) used to make sure the audience hears a half way decent concert soundwise.........VKV

You are perfectly right. It is only our luck if we can get to listen a balanced sound ina concert hall. I used to wonder why MMI's recordings are
always so clear in his rendition and later read that he had one mic in his concerts. Wonder whether he insisted that in his
recordings too. I bought a CD sometime back of Sanjay , music season 2001, live in kalashetra. You cannot enjoy anything there except the
alapanas and in everything else, the volume of Mridangam is of high level.

isramesh · Post by **isramesh** » 25 Nov 2009, 17:46

Good sound or bad sound, interruptions and intrusions of cricket, etc, etc - whatever may be the problem, still Chennai & Bangalore are better. At least they have a somewhat dedicated channel to classical music. We in Hyderabad do not have anything like that.

cacm · Post by **cacm** » 25 Nov 2009, 21:03

quote:balakk

PS: Note to Dr.Narmada - I love your violin playing, but please reduce your violin volume a bit when you're accompanying.. Yesterdays program had the poor flutist drowned in your violin's boom! Not sure if it's your fault, but still.
YOUR comments are interesting as it brings out the TERRIBLE lack of knowledge- do not want to use the would EXPERTISE as it is an insult to the TYRANTS who are in chrge of sound systems in Chennai. In AIR for example the artists who are performing have NO IDEA of what is being broadcast etc & the accoustic deadening etc in the studiogives totally wrong idea of the sound levels etc.
You are perfectly right. It is only our luck if we can get to listen a balanced sound in a concert hall. I used to wonder why MMI's recordings arealways so clear in his rendition and later read that he had one mic in his concerts. Wonder whether he insisted that in hisrecordings too. I bought a CD sometime back of Sanjay , music season 2001, live in kalashetra. You cannot enjoy anything there except thealapanas and in everything else, the volume of Mridangam is of high level.

VKV WRITES: NOT ONLY MMI but PMI & SSI held the same VIEW. There was a period in which BOTH MMI & PMI refused to pereform with more than one mike. YOU are ABSOLUTELY right those concerts are Superior. However like people in Chennai are talking about how great their Bose Systems are- I wonder how many realise that they went to court to prevent their specs experimentally being published in technical reviews- just throwing names around.
Of course compared to the crap people are used to a modern amplifier with any decent speaker& mike will sound great in a subjective fashion. The problem of MIKES in sound reproduction has been around since they were used. The moment the proliferation started with 2 mikes for mridangam & a separate mike for each accompanist the CROSS-TALK cannot be properly handled electronically by the 1000 dollar systems. Actually the ancient Greeks had it right in their auditoria where there was NO artificial amplification; NIMBUS came with a mike that gathered the sound from a point but 360 degrees of it- There are CD recordings of U.Srinivas& N.Ramani that are EXCELLENT but it required amplifiers that cost 50 dollars more; That killed the NIMBUS System like Mid-Air Collision devices in aircraft which will cost the same 50 dollars!.....The current Famous Concert Halls like NY Philharmonic, Royal Albert Hall, Sydney Opera have close to a Dozen mikes+ EXCELLENT amplifier-speaker systems in hall specifically designed & built halls etc to come close to a Nimbus type greek theater experience......In short ONE MIKE for Indian Concerts is MAXIMUM that should be allowed ZERO MIKES are even better but not practical!....The cacophony masquerading as music which we tolerate only shows how much we are MISSING!.....VKV

rajeshnat · Post by **rajeshnat** » 25 Nov 2009, 21:23

vkv43034 wrote: NIMBUS came with a mike that gathered the sound from a point but 360 degrees of it

VKV Sir
When you say nimbus mikes , are they the same as what is shown in the image of this concert of SSI http://i3.tinypic.com/w9hgmq.jpg

For long I have been thinking of an idea:
---------------------------------------------------
1. Those days these kondai type mikes (that is how I call them as what is shown above) have a 360 degree sound , so you can hear at times the singers voice and all the accompanist voice , but as a drawback u also hear the first few audiences sabhash and bale.

2. Then came our modern day mikes where I am assuming it is more sensitive to a small radius within the microphone , so musicians when they sing straight to the mike it picks up wonderfully. However because of low range of sensitivity now we have a seperate mike for violinist , vocalist , mridangist etc...

I think a clever solution is to have a 180 degree mike of what is shown, in the sense just have one before the vocalist and another for violinist where the sensitivity range is 180 degrees taking sound only from the performer side, it should not absorb the audience facing sound of 180 degrees. So in my opinion this antha kAlathu konda mike with just 180 degree sensitivity will be perfect . Is that ever possible to design like that?

cacm · Post by **cacm** » 26 Nov 2009, 00:59

Dear R,
The AIM of sound systems has always been to REPRODUCE to the best the 3-d nATURE of the sound from the stage which reaches both ears thru' 360 degrees. Lets confine ourselves to just the mikes which pick up the sound for starters.(the various aspects like surround systems that take care of time delays to both ears come later. Here I am only considering the collection by mics of the sound emnating in STAGE.
The Greek Theatre is so far considered Ideal as the entire stage is roughly the focal point of sound emnation as the audience is out at a distance; The Nimbus approach tries to approximate this- its impossible because of economics to cover the emnation from more than just one point- by trying to capture the sound thru' entire 360 degrees at a single point by a mic which looks like a single mike but internally electronically functions like close to 50 mics in some instances& then is decoded by appropriate electronics.
The 1 to 10 degrees-UNIDIRECTIONAL( can be usual kinds of mics are typically unidirectional which pick up roughly 5 degreestho' 1 to 10 degrees are easy to design) or the kind you are talking about(condenser types that can cover 120 degrees typically in a polar sense- a tear drop shape the tangents being 120 degs etc).However angular esponse will vary fro hall to hall & the reflectivities of walls, seats etc. Thats why designers of mikes look to Class "a" amplification-zero distortion- & the FACT it possible to recreate in a 8X10 feet room where the recordings are typically heard using Surround amplifiers etc using the fact that reverberation times can produce exactly sounds one would hear in any SPECIFIC HALL(say music academy or yankee stadium etc) by varying 54 parameters- YAMAHA used to build an amplifier wher you could electronically vary the 54 parameters. I can explain ythis in person VERY EASILY.
BUT just the one time listening experience in a large hall depends now a days- at least in USA- reduces to the IDEAL SPEAKERS and the rest of the chain is pretty decent. To answer your question MICS can be pretty much designed to any SPECIFICATIONS. Its a matter of COST
iF ITS A QUESTION OF SAY MARS etc ACCURACY is paramount! In music it is not just a BRAIN phenomenon but a Brain-Mind situation.....
NO AMOUNT OF design can replace the human ear listening to something with anything inbetween(transducer). Its more than computing power& resolution....Hope I clarified without confusing. VKV

balakk · Post by **balakk** » 26 Nov 2009, 08:39

Today's Arangisai at 7AM was one of the better concerts I've had a chance to hear - veena recital by Bonala Shankar Prakash, supported by Trichur C. Narendran on the Mridangam and Vaikkom R Gopalakrishnan on the Ghatam.

This artist seems to have heard our plea; only two songs, and a small tukda to finish off. First up was a krithi in Vasantha(I think) - I don't know the song name. Elaboration was nicely done, and at 7:14, he was into kalpanaswarams. I was thinking it would be the usual quickfire, rounds of cliched swaras, and finish it off in 3-4 mins. He did play them, and at 7:17 there was a pause; then our man dug in, and pulled out a bunch of nice swarams, and played another full 10 mins! Round of applause. Then I realized, why people dont do elaborate renditions - it's damn hard work, and the chances of mistakes are high. The geniuses make it look easy; they're pretty much in a different plane I think. It's far too easy to breeze through 5 or 6 songs, and grinding the already ground dough.

Next up was the contentious Meenakshi Memudham

I was longing to hear a veena Tanam in purvikalyani, but nope

Anyway, there were some good swarams, and he gave a full 5-6 mins for Thani. Last was Tamburi MeetiDava, a Purandaradasa devarnama in SindhuBhairavi. All put together, a good effort from the artists.