Joe on the E Preethi theme song!

Priya Bharati has finished shooting the Deepavali song. 3 days of sheer hard work, some interviews in the midst of it and some fun. It's a great experience watching the visualisation of one's song.
Today she is shooting the theme.
Sangeeta Katti comes in tomorrow or day after to sing the second female lead part of the song. Priya and her assistant Rajshri had taken some video clips and snaps of the string section. Will post them in a bit!

Here are some snaps while we worked on the song.

There's one of Nagendrappa, playing the clarinet for the song, Ram showing him the tune on the harmonium.

Another of Chaitra figuring out the tune, while Ram tries a chord and I try to capture the moment.

The male and female chorus lending substance to the festive song.

"E Preethi" started it's shooting schedule today. The muhurat was today morning. Ram, Gokul and I went over. We met the lead actors- Diganth, Tejaswini, Nina and Bharat. Priyabharathi Joshi is the director, storywriter and editor of the film. We'd met up with her 3 years ago in connection with another project. And the connection here is - The Music Mint is making music for the film!
Before the muhurat was the press conference. Gokul and Ram coolly looked the other way when we were called up to address the press.
The first song to be shot is the Deepavali song- Deepa deepa ve maathadu. Our dear friend (we used to meet in literary contexts before, book releases and stuff) Jayant Kaikani is doing the screenplay and the songs. Most of the actors have already heard the song and love it.
The arrangement is lavish with a vast string section, thanks Nelson, Amarnath, Jeff, Manoj, Praveen and the rest of the violinists. We also used clarinet, and a huge, huge section of assorted festive drums. Caleb has given us beautiful chords on the guitar. Ram arranged the string section most expressively and gave some old wordly phrases to Nagendrappa on the clarinet.
We had given Priya many tunes to pick from. I worked on 2 tunes on my veena. Ram too did two tunes. It's fun to access our common talent pool! Finally my tune with Karaharapriya strains went through. When Ram did the arrangement, he sprinkled flowery Kafi phrases on the string section and the chorus parts. It sound exotic and lilting.
The second song is in Natakuranji and a bit of other ragas doing guest acts! For this one, we needed special work. Sunil Chandy's choir was stunning and wow! Jayant is yet to give us lyrics for this one. We've got some sketches for the other three songs, but haven't done enough work on them yet. The "E Preethi" theme is to be dumped on to the Nagara( the spool recorder which goes to sync sound to the shoot) on Saturday. That's a fusion of Karnatik violin and rock band! Priya has even talked to a rock band to do the acting for the shoot!
More in a bit!

I'm putting down this post, mainly because, in a few days the sequence of events and our jam packed days will be superimposed by other such busy days and we will not be able to recall the fun we had with so much happening.
The film has its muhurat on the 23rd April. We started work on the film mid March. Things went along at a nicely busy pace. We did scratches of 3 other songs as well.
Then, about a week ago, 6 promos too had to be delivered. With the film, all we do is music. That is we think up chords, tunes, fills, bass lines, guitar parts, vocal parts and so on. Jayant Kaikini writes the lyrics. With the promos we shift modes. We think up scripts. With some humour, with some zing and of course the catch phrases. All the time, we also think of the genre of music which might work best for each promo. We told ourselves that we really can't do it.
As if to deny this feeling of breathlessness, we also had to oblige an old acquaintance, who wanted to us to compose a signature tune for a biggie politician, contesting the polls! So, now it was just too overwhelming.
We quietly sat down and started doing everything! We did 7 scratch tunes for the polls. Got huge stadium like crowds cheering for him on the recording. And finally, the client walked away pleased as punch. I just heard that both final signature tunes have had good response! We also worked on the promo scripts, got approval and are busy trying to produce the first cut for all of them.
Sunil, the choir director is leaving in 5 days time. So we needed him to finish our second song for the film. So, we put the lead singer's schedule for the Deepavali song on hold. We refused to worry about the 3 more promos we need to work on. Right now we are busy recording the choir. Thank god, when you listen to the lovely sounds of the choir coming together, you stop worrying for a while about all that you have to finish by the 24th of April!