Home   Forum   Wiki   Notes   Register   FAQ   Sitemap   About Us   Contact Us  

Song classification and other technicalities

Topic started by Ramaswamy Gireesan (@ m42.m59.big.ac.at) on Wed Jun 10 19:34:37 EDT 1998.
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.

Hi!

I have a strange problem now, or rather two problems, I should say.

1) you might be aware that I have a homepage hosting about 150 songs, mostly compositions of IR set to carnatic ragas. Now that I have received a biiiig load of cassettes, from which I might be uploading at least 75-100 songs (mostly songs of mottai) a new problem arises. Till now I have had just three pages, one for Classical Ilaiyaraja, one for Rare Ragas of IR and the third page for the non-classical compositions (or songs which cannot be defined as any particular raga/scale) The pages already have upto 40 songs each, and I feel the listings are getting rather big.

Hence my question :

Would you suggest any new classification scheme for all the songs?
a) Songs listed by the raga name (Abheri, Atana, Bairavi.... and so on)
b) Songs listed by the melakarta raga (and their derivatives) - starting with melakarta raga 1 and its derivatives etc. (Might be a bit confusing for beginners to carnatic music)
c) Songs sorted by the 1st line (might be ambiguous for some songs?)
d) Songs sorted by film name (some of the films have only one song listed in my collection)
e) Songs sorted by the year in which the respective film got released (this info might be a bit difficult to gather :-( )

Of course, once this sorting order is finalised, I might have to split the entire list into smaller pages. I want to maintain the carnatic based songs separate from others, as that was my original aim in creating this page.

I can certainly have a central repository of all songs, and replicate the links under various classifications, so that a song may appear simultaneously under various classifications, but then I am afraid this might become too difficult to manage. I would appreciate any tips and suggestions from the TFM fans out there.

2) My second question is rather trivial. I have noticed that there are some sites out there which have been setting links to the songs in my collection directly (I prefer not to name those sites :-) ). Though this doesnt bother me directly, what irks me is that some of these sites are of commercial nature and they are using the songs in my collection for luring more visitors. And the last straw is that they dont even bother to acknowledge the source of the song etc. I feel rather dejected to see the amount of work I have put in to upload the songs, and the amount of server space I have managed to acquire being exploited by others. Of course, some of them have a better interface (Java, CGI scripts etc.) that enable easier surfing, but I feel it is unfair to exploit services like ours. (I am sure Chandra Gobichetipal, Neethan Namchivayam and others also feel the same way). What do you feel about this in general?

The worst thing I could do would be to shut down the site, or add my voice to each song, announcing where the song comes from etc. but I would hate myself later for taking either of those steps. Or is anybody aware of a better technical solution (using a real audio server, using some CGI script to screen the referring URL etc.) that might curtail the commercial exploitation of my services?

Thanks for any response/advice. TFM admins, if you feel that this topic does not fit in the DF, pl. feel free to ask posters to this thread to mail me directly.

Thanks and regards

G.Ramaswamy

---

Responses:

• Old responses
  
• From: Srikanth (@ 68.minneapolis-07.mn.dial-access.att.net) on: Wed Jun 17 08:13:00 EDT 1998
  
  Hi Guys,
  Let me know if I could do anything for the Database..I am ready to help.
  Srikanth
  
  
• From: Ramaswamy Gireesan (@ m42.m59.big.ac.at) on: Wed Jun 17 14:48:16 EDT 1998
  
  Thenraja:
  
  I thought of doing that. The only problem is that I would need Real Audio Plus for recording portions of the broadcast directly on to my harddisk. 'Ezhai mANavanaiyyA, Real Audio Plus eppadi vAnguvadhu?' :-)
  
  The 2nd possibility is to record the broadcast on to a cassette and then encode it again. But this will lead to loss of quality. Another difficulty is in the hours of broadcast, I dont think I can always be there to record the program when it is being broadcast. Any other suggestions?
  
  Regards
  
  G.Ramaswamy
  
  
• From: Karthigeyan A Premakumari (@ 208.142.52.125) on: Wed Jun 17 17:41:07 EDT 1998
  
  Hi Sathya!
  
  This is a new comer to this site, karthik. I want to make a correction to the info given to you by Ramaswamy Gireesan. He's wrong about the MD to the film 'Parthiban Kanavu'. It's indeed Vedha! Though Vedha was known to copy Hindi film songs he's also given some beautiful songs like 'chinnappen oruththi sirikkiral' (from 'Adhe kangal' - I believe this song is his original composition). There's no doubt about 'Parthiban kanavu'. There again, HMV's listing of names and singers and the years is not always correct. I've checked on them and found them to be incorrect many times.
  
  
  
• From: Ramaswamy Gireesan (@ m42.m59.big.ac.at) on: Wed Jun 17 20:08:38 EDT 1998
  
  Thanks, Karthik. I will correct the information on my page right away.
  
  Regards
  
  G.Ramaswamy
  
  
• From: Sathiya Keerthi (@ synergy.nus.edu.sg) on: Wed Jun 17 20:52:55 EDT 1998
  
  Ramaswamy G:
  
  enna Sir! vEdhA kashtapattu original-aa compose
  paNNa oru azhagaana paattaiyum avarudaya credit-ukku
  kodukka maattEngireengaLE? I am glad you finally
  agreed.
  
  Actually, vEdhA had a strong carnatic
  base and also the ability to give good original
  tunes. It was the Modern Theatres people who
  forced him to borrow the Hindi tunes.
  
  Karthigeyan A. Premakumari:
  
  Thanks.
  
  p.s. unga peyarai konjam surukki vaiyungO please. :-))
  
  
• From: M. RAMACHANDRAN (@ ) on: Thu Apr 6 08:56:51 EDT 2000
  
  Hello
  I am posting this message not to participate in the above discussion. In fact I am posting this for Mr. Ramaswamy Gireesan. By accident I saw his website consisting of 100's of film songs. I found one song I have been searching for years. "Kalyana Ramanukkum Kannana Janakikkum..." after so many years. So I was wondering whether He also have the song "Kaadal Kaadal enru sonna Kannan Vandaana" from the same movie, I suppose. I am not able to get his website. This is not available.
  Please respond.
  
  Thanks
  M.R.
  April, 6th 2000.
  
  
• From: sk (@ beacon-ext.nus.edu.sg) on: Thu Apr 6 10:28:44 EDT 2000
  
  MR:
  
  You can listen to 'kAdhal kAdhal endru pEsa'
  in the PPP-RA site..
  
  http://www.angelfire.com/pa3/ppp/
  
  Go to 'Songs from Sridhar's movies'. Note that
  this song is from the movie, 'uththaravindri
  uLLE vA'.
  
  
• From: rjay (@ brkfw0005.navistar.com) on: Thu Apr 6 15:30:46 EDT 2000
  
  The idea of classifying songs is a good thought.
  I suggest a simple classification could be
  along three dimensions:
  Solo, Duet, Group
  Upbeat, Slow
  Male, Female, Child
  
  Thus
  the song "ponal pogattum poda would be
  a "Slow Male Solo". And
  pudiya vaanam pudiya boomi would be
  an upbeat male solo.
  Kappaleri poyachchu would be a
  upbeat group song.
  
  I was thinking up this classification to help
  me find similarities in songs, and saw the
  thread. Any ideas or similar efforts?
  
  Thanks
  RJAY
  
  
  
• From: M. RAMACHANDRAN (@ 149.123.110.57) on: Fri Apr 7 12:56:32 EDT 2000
  
  To SK
  Thanks for the information. But my question is " What is PPP-RA site?"
  Thanks
  M.R.
  
  
• From: hihi:-) (@ psiphi.umsl.edu) on: Fri Apr 7 14:05:05 EDT 2000
  
  PPP-RA = pazaiya pAdalgaL pakkam (with) Real Audio (songs)!
  
  
• From: Krish Chandra (@ usilesi2.cai.com) on: Fri Apr 7 15:07:57 EDT 2000
  
  One more way of classifying songs is to group them based on heroes(Kamal, Rajini, Prabhu, Karthik, Ramarajan), or by heroine or directors(KB, Mani, etc)
  
  
• From: sk (@ beacon-ext.nus.edu.sg) on: Fri Apr 7 18:53:58 EDT 2000
  
  aruL:
  
  Thanks.
  (innum andha "c" versus "s" funda enakku
  neenga explain paNNalayE! You can send me an email.)
  
  M.R.:
  
  Did you try following the link and get to the
  song that you asked for?
  
  
• From: Meera Ramachandran (@ 149.123.110.57) on: Mon Apr 10 08:45:41 EDT 2000
  
  To SK
  
  Thank you very much.
  
  I did try and also got the site. But I cound not make it play. I do not know whetheth my real player can't play or I have to upgrade it.
  I definitely want to hear all those songs.
  Is it worth to upgrade the real-player.
  I need some advice
  M. R.
  
  
• From: RAM (@ ) on: Wed May 24 13:08:02 EDT 2000
  
  To Mr. Gireesan
  
  Do you still have the song "Kalyanaramanukkum kannana janakikkum" in your list.
  
  I wish I could hear the songs you listed in my computer (Real player upgraded).
  
  Keep up the good work. You are doing great.
  
  Thanks
  
  
  M.R.
  
  
• From: Krishnamurthy (@ esboaah.ceatlabs.okstate.edu) on: Wed May 24 13:45:11 EDT 2000
  
  Good Topic! Will stop here often
  
  
• From: RAM (@ 149.123.110.57) on: Thu May 25 08:57:13 EDT 2000
  
  To Mr Gireesan
  
  I did listen to the old songs. Your collections are wonderful.
  
  May be you could add to your list the following:
  
  Srirangam Gopalarathnam, Madurai Somu's other Tamil songs, Mayavaram Rajam, Ayiloor Krishnan, Pinakapani and Voleti Venkateswaralu.
  
  You seem to be travelling to India more often, so it may be possible.
  
  Thanks.
  
  M.R.
  
  
• From: Nagarajan J (@ nas-82-5.houston.navipath.net) on: Sun Jul 30 18:28:16 EDT 2000
  
  Hi,
  I just read your questions. I din go thru all the mails or responses. From browser's perspective, its better to have more than one way of getting into a song. I may come here to get the raga of the song, which I know or I just want to know a song tuned in a particular raga. In either case, the page shud support the browser. Thats what I feel.
  Ignore my message if I am out of sync.
  Regards,
  Naga.
  
  

---

List all pages of this thread

---

Back to the Forum

Post comments