MUSIC MATES

Archive for the ‘Chords’ Category

Ilayaraja a great musician come singer from India composed more than 840 albums in film industry throughout his career of more than 25 years. He is famously known as ‘Isaingyani’ which means a musical genius in Tamil Film Industry. Ilayaraja was born on June 2, 1943 in a rural family in Panniapuram near Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India. As he was from a rural family he didn’t have good education but after recognition in Tamil film industry he did a course in Classical Guitar in Trinity College of Music, London. Ilayaraja got a gold medal in his course.

Ilayaraja‘s first movie was “Annakkili” in that he fused Tamil Folk Music and Tamil Film Music and he was the first to do that attempt and got succeeded. The National Best Film Music Composer award was bagged by him for three times and bagged many awards in regional level. Also he is the first Asian to compose a full symphony. He composed this to Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO). After his Symphony he was known to everybody in TamilNadu as Maestro Ilayaraja. His music was of great uniqueness as he blended Western and Indian instruments.

In his symphony for Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO), he composed Thiruvasagam, which is an old Tamil Literature. He did this symphony mainly to attract younger generations to India’s spiritual traditions. This was released on June 30, 2005 in a grand manner at the Music Academy in Chennai. The CD of this Symphony by Ilayaraja was also released in US in the Tamizhar Thiruvizha.

Ilayaraja composed this symphony with a high-profile team of musicians and sound engineers and they are Budapest Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Laszlo kovacs and Oscar winning Lyricist Stephen Schwartz along with five time Grammy-award winner for sound engineer, Richard King.
Ilayaraja is still composing music for Tamil films and he also composed many albums other than that of film albums which was also very popular among his fans.

If you have played other musical instruments like the Spanish guitar, you might know how tough it is to play the chords. You have to contort your fingers in strange ways even to play even the simplest combination of different notes. This problem is not observed in the piano, the layout of whose keys are arranged in such a way that playing most chords are extremely easy. While you are learning to play the piano you will observe that you need to synchronize the movement of both your hands. While the right hand plays the main tune, the left hand plays the accompanying notes which are made up of a combination of different notes played at the same time.

These are known as chords and it is due to them that one is able to obtain the harmonious effect in a song. While the complicated chords are made out of a combination of 3 different notes, the basic chords are a combination of just two notes which are known as the dyads or intervals. These basic chords are not real chords in the technical sense, but are the simplest way for the player to get introduced to the world of chords. If you are interested in playing harmonious music, you need to have an idea of chords which are the foundation stones of harmonic music.

It is at this stage, when you are learning to play the basic chords that you should also learn about intervals since they form an integral and important part of music. There are different types of intervals in the Western music scale and the smallest of such intervals is known as the minor second. This is constituted by playing two notes that are half a step apart, simultaneously. There are many types of intervals and some of them are minor second, major second, minor and major third etc. There are many sites on the net from where you can purchase notation books for beginners that will help you to learn more about the basic piano chords. As you use them along with the normal music, you will observe the difference they make to the overall harmony of the music you are playing.