Mella Mella - My thoughts

It was March-2006 and I was listening to the tamil song 'Chennai Senthamizh' in repeat mode. That song gave me the inspiration to write/compose 'Mella Mella'.

Please don't laugh at me, I didn't even know the raaga of that song and I was ashamed to ask some of my friends. Finally my sister-in-law told me it was Raaga 'Naattai'. Wow what a raaga, I thought. I did some research and found that there were quite a few movie songs in that raaga.

This song is more closer to my heart than all my other songs for one reason. My mother appreciated it the very first time she listened to it.

Anyways, as usual, I sent it to JO and he liked it as well.

I was waiting for the orchestration and the final version. When I received the draft I was overwhelmed with joy. Anil the Magician had done a superb job along with the sweet voices of Jo and Vidyu who had sung it so nicely.

As you listen to this original version that I sent JO, you'll know how much of work has gone into the final version.

Jazzie Gift receives BlogSwara copy

[Anil BS presenting a copy of BlogSwara Version 2 CD to music director Jazzie Gift]

I met Jazzie Gift, the music director who made waves across Kerala and especially amongst the youngsters of Kerala with one hit song Lajjaavathiye from the movie 4 The People. I was totally amazed to see this man in person because, believe me, he is a very nice and down-to-earth person. I went to meet him with Anil chettan, who introduced me to him. I explained the concept of BlogSwara to Jazzie and he was very much interested in the concept and he put the CD of BlogSwara into his laptop straight away. He asked about how it is done and listened to a few songs from the album. He was excited to hear that most us did not meet with each other and he mentioned the same to his manager. He discussed about the orchestration etc with Anil chettan. He said he would listen to all the songs once again.

Jazzie and his manager mentioned that we should popularise BlogSwara through media so that it reaches to more people. Also he was so kind to say that he will mention about BlogSwara to one of his associates who are into promoting music etc and will see what they can do for us. I requested him to look into the BlogSwara talent pool whenever he need to find fresh new voices and he said he would do that.

I also mentioned about M-Pod, and expressed my interest in doing an episode with him and he said he will definitely find time for that. He is a person who is very much interested in the new things and new media technologies. No wonder how he has been a hot favorite amongst the youth, considering his youthfulness and enthusiasm towards everything new and good.

Jazzie was in the East Cost studio for recording his Kannada work and was kind enough to spare sometime for us. Listen to his latest Tamil song from the movie Veyil with Khailesh Kher set to tune by G. V. Prakash which has been released just a few days ago.

[Jazzie listening to the songs from BlogSwara Version 2]

What media and people say about BlogSwara V2

India's leading English newspaper The Hindu has a mention about BlogSwara in today's edition.

Slogan Murugan talks about the unity for music.

Krishna Kumar & Suresh Kumar have a detailed review.

Prabhu Karthik salutes the BlogSwara team.

All of these motivate us to come up with more power and more quality productions!!! Thank you all!!

Your comments please

Please add your comments & suggestions on BlogSwara songs in the comments section of this post. Thank you!

The spirit of PurpleX

We, the members of BlogSwara, have not enough words to appreciate the support that Connexions (a store in Chennai) extended to BlogSwara. Connexions Online continues to support to BlogSwara with hosting space!! Thank you Connexions for keeping the spirit of Free music alive!!!

BlogSwara 2 - Coming up soon!!!

This Fall !

The revisit of musical deluge !

Blogswara* Vol 2 !!

with new faces, talents and same spirit...

After having received 100+ comments and enquiries, 10116 site hits (since May 17, 2006) your support and feedback have served well as booster shots to make an effulgent trail of Blogswara!

With more experience, more hard work and added new talent, we hope Blogswara 2 would better Vol 1!

Watch this space for upcoming release and as always please provide honest feedback and comments so that the Blogswara trail may shine brighter with every release !!!

!!! United in Music !!!


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*Blogswara is a unique and pioneering concept wherein amateur Indian music talent from worldwide collaboratively work on creating full scale original music productions completely remotely. The music produced is made available free for listneing. Most of the artists involved have not met each other and some not even talked to each other over the phone, All artist communications are made possible using personal e-mails.

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SONG TEASERS!!!

Song: Ente Manassilum
Lyrics: Indu
Music & Orchestration: Nishanth Mani
Sung by: Divya S Menon


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Song: Hai Junoon
Lyrics: Praveen Kamath
Music & Orchestration: Nandu Mahadevan
Sung by: Ramesh Chellamani


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Song: Mella Mella
Lyrics & Music: Narayanan Venkitu
Orchestration: Anil B S
Sung by: Jo & Vidyu


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Song: Ooyalaadunni
Lyrics: Indu
Music: Jo
Orchestration: Sam Kolli
Sung by: Meera Manohar


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Song: Hai Mera Dil
Lyrics: Ajay Chandran
Music & Orchestration: Pradip Somasundaran
Sung by: Pradip Somasundaran & Swati Kanitkar


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Song: Thoduvaanam
Lyrics: Arul Veerappan
Music & Orchestration: Mux Narasimhan
Sung by: Mux, Anitha & Meera


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Song: Ennaachu
Lyrics: Udhaya Kulandaivelu
Music: Prem Abraham
Orchestration: Ajit Gopalakrishnan
Sung by: Meera Manohar


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Blogswara Stats - Diwali Dhamaka

That's some great news from Jo that Blogswara 2 would be seen and heard soon.

Here's some current Visitor Stats...Notice the whopping 96 GB Bandwidth ? :-)

Audio India - A directory for audiobloggers

Guys,

When Murali came up with the idea of a directory for audiobloggers I couldn't resist because we see an increasing number of audiobloggers recently. Considering the acceptance from the netizens for the existing audiobloggers and the impact made by the BlogSwara project, more and more people are joining in the audioblogosphere.

The new directory is named Audio India. Please visit and let me know your suggestions. You can see all the existing audiobloggers with their name and URL to their blogs. Please let me know or email me - jocalling (at) gmail (dot) com - if I have missed out any URLs or if you want me to include your audioblogs into the listing. The listing is in alphabetical order.

This directory blog is only for the India audioblogs, as of now. This is because I think there are not many audioblogs (I should say music blogs here, because all audioblogs are not music blogs) in rest of the world compared to the Indian audioblogosphere. I checked with Technorati to see this. So please correct me if I am wrong in this assumption. And when I say audioblogs, please consider "musicblogs".

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Vaazhvu Chezhikka - Nandu's mix

Here is Nandu's version of Vaazhvu Chezhikka. Please let us know your comments.

Song: Vaazhvu chezhikka
Lyrics & music: Narayanan Venkitu
Orchestration: Nandu Mahadevan
Sung by: Jo

And guys, we are not just sitting idle. We have already started working on a second version of BlogSwara. So wait for that! :-)

When Blogswara Artists Met!

Yesterday was a very happy day for me. Jyothis (Shaniyan), Anup, and Jo came to my home and we had a mini Blogswara meet! Umechi also joined us for a brief period. Anup is getting married on September 9th and Jyothis was also in a hurry since he had his friend's marriage the next day. But we had a very nice time talking and was great seeing each other in real flesh and blood since we all know each other only throgh the internet! Let's wish Anup a great wedding on 9th.

Pradip

Inthiathai (Mother India)

Here is another of our collaborative effort for a very special occasion, the Indian Independence Day. Hope you all enjoy the song.

Artists : Krishna & Prem

Hi-Fi



Low-Fi

Oru Kunju Swapnam - In Vidyu's voice

You have already heard this song, a wonderful poem by Jyothis, in BlogSwara first version with Kiran's voice. As the composer of this song, I was/am very happy with Kiran's rendition and we recorded this song together when Kiran was here in Keralam. Please listen to Kiran's version in the songs page.

And then I thought why not have a female version of this song and I asked Vidyu if she could lend her beautiful voice to this. She was so kind to agree to sing this song and I must say she exceeded all my expectations! I am lucky to have these wonderful talents to sing my composition. Here is "Oru Kunju Swapnathin" in the amazing voice of Vidyu!

And special thanks to Pradipettan for mixing this song so nicely.

Enjoy guys and kindly let us know your thoughts. Thank you!

Song: Oru Kunju Swapnathin
Lyrics: Jyothis
Music: Jo
Sung by: Vidyu



***Download MP3 from here***

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Writer Sujata on Blogswara !!! (Vikatan Excerpt)

Celebrated tamil writer and intellectual - Sujata, has a word of praise for blogswara in the popular tamil weekly vikatan. Thanks to my friend Balaji Srinivasan who sent me the reference !!

Sujata explains how the songs are usually made in the film industry. The music director sends the tune to the lyricist thru an assistant. The lyricist writes the lyrics and sends back thru the assitant. The assistant makes several trips between them and finally when the music director is happy with the lyrics, he starts working on the complete song. The singers or the choir people are summoned even in the mid-night if need be and the songs is recorded. The music director keeps poking at the track for embellishments until the final (DAT) stage.

Sujata also explains how Blogswara has achieved it through internet obviating the need for any assistants (well..we cannot afford it in the first place ! :) ). He also notes that, although the quality of the songs may not be uniform he is impressed with the innovativeness of the concept.

Blogswara lives on

I think its high time we had an update here :). The buzz created by release 1 of Blogswara was fantastic and the visits have not stopped, as more and more people are coming to know of our humble contribution to music lovers. I am proud to be part of this, sharing this wonderful experience with so many talented people. I think this journey has only begun and there will be many more Blogswara songs. With the introduction of more and more talents to audio blogging, we can only go from strength to strength.

Haseen ittefaaq, ye mulaaqaat
terii aawaaz, mere alfaaz
(A beautiful coincidence, this meeting
Your voice, and my words)

Breaks for three talented singers - Pradip, Jo and Harish

Three very good singers seem to be on the verge of a break.

1. Pradip Somasundaran has got an invite from Sandip Chowta to sing

2. Jo has got an invite from M.G. Radhakrishnan to sing

3. Harish has been invited into Airtel super singer contest finals as a special participant where if he wins he gets to sing with Harris Jayaraj

The first two have achieved this by power of audio blogging. Wishing all of them good luck !

BlogSwara invites you to join us!

If you are a singer, lyricist or composer, we are inviting you to join the BlogSwara team. There is no language/country/region barrier. So just write to us, submit your work samples, and our moderators panel will check it and get back to you.

So don't just sit there, come and join us, if you think you are the right person for this!!!

Update: You can email us at theband(at)blogswara(dot)in

Unai Paarthadhaal - The Origin

As I listen to this song today in Blogswara, I am simply astonished. From the original version that I sent to JO last year to what it is today, It's an awesome journey indeed. Never in my dreams did I think that it would finally end up the way it is today.

I don't distinctly remember how this song really came up. All I wanted to do, was to write / sing something that everyone experiences in life ie. LOVE.

As usual, I wrote/sang it and sent my composition to JO and asked his opinon. He said he liked it and sang it a few weeks later. You'll notice as you listen, he gave a lot of life to that song. Very typical of JO.

Then came another wonderful musician AJIT GOPALAKRISHNAN. I had asked him if he could do the orchestration ( He was on his Summer vacation). Within a few weeks he came up with the orchestration and I loved it. As you listen to Ajit's version, you'll notice IR's impact on his music.

Finally for BLS-1, BARANI, ENCORE AND NANDU gave a new dimension to this song. As a composer and a writer I feel very honored by the final outcome.

So, here are the first 3 versions of this song. Pardon my voice as usual.

My Original Version



JO sings it and gives Life



Ajith adds IR's touches

BlogSwara in Radio Mirchi FM

There is a show in Radio Mirchi FM called "PettaiRap" on all Sundays from 3.00 to 5.00 PM. RJ Nachi anchors this show. This Sunday, 4th June, 2006, there will be a link about Blogswara in the show (A link is basically what an RJ speaks between two songs).

He will speak about what a blog is, how a set of audiobloggers have united to make a music album, abt the bloggers(their names) and he will mention about the songs also.

My special thanks to Poornima, who made this happen. (She is a good singer, check out her blog).

Dialup-users - Feedback please

Thank you for visiting Blogswara and our Blog.

If you are a dial-up user we'd like to have your feedback please.

We would like to know if you were able to download / listen to the songs.

We'll appreciate your feedback.

Thank you again!

Vaazhvu Chezhikka Varam - The Origin

Hi there,

I am 'Narayanan Venkitu' sharing my thoughts about my compositions.

This post is about the 'Origin' of the 'Vaazhvu Chezhikka Varam' song that I wrote and composed last year.

Wanted to share this with you.

It happened just like that, one evening when I was listening to a song 'Aalila Manjalil' from the Malayalam Movie 'Surya Gayathri'. I remember I was driving from Livermore to Fairfield, which is around 45 miles when I made this tune. I was impressed since this was my maiden attempt!

I went home and wrote the lines in a week. It was a hard week. I was extremely stressed out. As I was praying to the God Almighty for my stresses in life, somehow these lines came from my mouth.

Those days, I didn't even have a microphone. So I sang it via the telephone and used Audioblog to save it. I sent it to Jo and the rest is History. Jo sang it so well..that I took a day off.!! when he published it.

I didn't know the Raaga at the time. Murali and other friends later commented that it was 'Aabhogi' when Jo sang this song so nicely. I had tears in my eyes when I listened to my first composition.

I've posted my version of the song that I sent to JO !

Jo moulded the song so nicely and now..you know... how it is in BLS-1.

I'll write about 'Unai Parthadhaal' next week.

Have a good weekend everybody.