Karthik Raaja Lounge...

articles

3 roses - behind the scenes: an interview with karthik raaja

saregamaremix - 11 jan 2003 - karthik raaja lounge...

the songs of 3 Roses, seem to be inclined towards a techno/dance/club genre. your comments, as in - was it required by the producer, it was your liking etc.

yes, the songs are inclined towards dance/techno.The producer just gave me the sequence of songs and I did plan the type of songs. I wanted it to be more youthful and energetic.

which song would you say is the pick of the album ? and any reasons as to why ?

my pick of the album would be oh! dil se pyaar and oh oh sexy, sexy baby!

oh! dil se pyaar because of the arrangements and also the intro which came out really good. More care was taken in the recording this song,because the melody line is very simple, and I did not want my arrangements to spoil it in anyway. I also like the 3rd BG as they call it here, It's actually the 2nd bridge music before the 2nd charanam, because there is some really good chord progression and is suddenly reset to the song.

oh oh sexy, sexy baby because of the melody line.

from your songs, there is evident indication, that you have a liking for solo violin, especially for interludes. Your comments and also, who played the violin composition in the interlude of anbaal unnai velvom ?.

Embar S Kannan is the violinist in this song!

I do have a liking for violin interludes, but not to the extent that I want to use it in every song. It so happened that I thought of using it here. I am pretty bored of flute interludes and the same style of playing in most of the songs we hear today. It gets on my nerves, and I completely stopped listening to indian film songs or watching indian movies with the same concepts.

in the same context, what are your other favorite instruments ?

My most favourite instrument is the Piano. Flute, actually was my favourite instrument, but all the music directors here copied my dad's style and used it everywhere and in every song which made me hate that instrument.

In sevvaai desam, the last piece of vocals mimicking the earlier sample of '..call again later' in an accented fashion, was pretty funny. Any comments on this...

That was really funny while recording, it is on the mallu accent and pretty much making fun, but definitely not on the mallu's.

in this album, for the male voice, singer Karthik has been consistently used. Did this just happen or was it by design ? any additional comments...

Karthik is a good singer. He has classical background and also keen on learning. He is inquisitive about the compositions, enquiring about the chords in the songs etc.The songs for 3 roses were recorded early last year when Karthik as a singer, was just growing. It would have been better if the audio had been released earlier, but that is at the discretion of the producer. It so happened that he had sung for a lot of movies after that and those songs got released earlier. i hope that he doesn't do too many songs too soon, which might result in the audience getting bored.

you have also been introducing new talent for playback singing. any comments about Shweta and Rohini ?

Shweta is singer Sujatha's daughter and she is really good, but needs to gain a lot of experience. Rohini is also good and is just learning music.

for all the songs were lyrics written to tune ?

All the songs were composed to lyrics, and some words were changed after composing.

cultures and languages have evolved a lot by being open minded about respective boundaries. tamizh filmdom too seems to have accepted this, with the naming of recent tamizh movies in english, like RUN, 5 Star, 3 Roses etc. Lyrics in 3 roses songs, have lots of english and even some hindi like,oh dil se pyaar, meri pyaari lollipop etc.

Your views/opinion on this trend ?

It is neccesary to keep up with the trend but not at the risk of losing our own identity, culture/tradition etc. We have used these because the words evolved before the tune did and the concept even before the words did. We had planned everything before they were done here.

Can you mention the impact of websites ripping and hosting the complete audio of movies for listening and mp3 downloads,on the tamizh movie music industry ?

It is like ruining someones life to be exact. Using someone else's product without giving respect for the material, distributing something which is not yours. I think these are the mottos of our dear friends who are trying to put songs, which don't belong to them, on the websites(mp3's) and providing them for free.

I wish that they help us sell music by just providing samples of less than 30 sec. This will also help the producers make some money.Imagine them toiling day and night and not getting paid at all. This is the same case for us too. Our music selling values decrease because of the people doing stuff like this.

I would request them to help us and also get benefited!