Sound

You might know that sound is created by vibration. Sound requires a medium for propagation. A vibration can be considered as a periodic back and forth movement of an object. The frequency of vibration is the number of vibrations that happens in one second. So if something vibrates faster, there will be more vibrations in one second and hence the frequency is higher. Shrill sounds are characterised by high frequency and deep sounds are characterised by low frequency. Human ears can hear only the sounds that are between 20Hz to 20000Hz, where a Hertz(Hz) refers to one vibration per second.

When air is pushed through the vocal cords it vibrates producing a sound. In many contexts, the words 'pitch' and 'frequency' can be used alternatively. Each object when vibrating in its natural form produces a sound which is called its natural frequency. Depending upon the physical dimensions of each object the natural frequency could change. During a simple vibration, the resulting sound would mostly have its natural frequency and it may also have sounds that are in multiples of natural frequency. An object can vibrate twice, thrice or a few times faster/slower than its natural mode, but its unnatural to vibrate in any frequency in between these values without a change in physical dimensions! The frequencies that are multiples of the frequency are collectively known as 'harmonics'.

Now take a deep breath and say 'saaaaaaaa...' and extend the 'aaa' sound as much as you can without any disturbance in the sound. Make the sound as natural as possible with least strain. Congratulations !! you just sounded in your natural frequency ! This can be roughly equated with the term 'kattai' in (carnatic) musical terms. This sound varies from person to person. In an adult male this frequency averages about 125 Hz, adult females around 210, in children the frequency is over 300 Hz.

what does it mean?

Many people asked me about this blog title. So let me start with a brief and then proceed with technicalities in the future posts.

By popular usage, there are 7 basic sounds('swaram's) that vary in their pitch and can be used to explain any musical note. They are 'sa ri ga ma pa da ni' (collectively sargam) in indian classical and 'do re me fa so la ti' (collectively solfege) in western classical. This blog's title derived its name from the middle one, 'ma' or 'fa'.

If you think a moment about this musical thingy, you may have a lot of questions about them.

On what basis are they classified ? Why there are only 7 swaras ? Why not more or less? what is an octave ? How many octave exists like this? What decides the sound of 'sa' ? Why does 'sa' comes again after 'ni' ? What if I sing an intermediatary sound between sa and ri ?!

I couldnt explain all at once in this post. But I will provide more details in the later posts.

Kanda naal mudhalai

"Kanda Naal Mudhalai Kadhal perugudhadi" - I have heard this song sung by Sudha Raghunathan earlier. And now its remixed by Yuvan Shankar Raja for a film with the same name. The sax and violin are played submissively without spoiling the original tune. Some credit should be given for introducing a new singer instead of using sudha, bombay Jayshree or Nithyashree.

Some other songs from that film are...
Erimalai nane - This song is like "Veerapandi kottayile"(thiruda thiruda), but only less interesting. The kerala beat is also used
Koo Koovena - reminds of "kokku para para"(chandramukhi) in some place but this is more of a teasing song. Unnecessary introduction of Jazz.
Merke Merke - sounds good but the background sounds very much like "Give in to me"(MJ). For a song that starts like this, I would prefer to hear it proceed like MJ, than Shankar Mahadevan.
Pani Thuli - Initially this songs reminds a number from 12B. But later on proceeds to a nicer version.
Pushing it hard - Yuvan tries to do the Afro-American style (like he did with 'raam' ).

Suggested listening:
Kanda naal mudhala
Merke Merke
Pani thuli