College festivals! It's time for the competitions to become idols of the current year.Wow! The inspirations are innumerable starting from Sonu Nigam and Shreya Ghoshal.
You know, there are three main rounds.First round is your own choice of songs. Next is the tough one that is changing the rhythm. Last is the toughest one that is changing the pitch and singing without any faults. Totally one has to prepare for five songs. And the number of contestants? One hundred and fifteen!
The information sounded very much interesting when I heard it from my daughter.But the reality started biting after some time.They have to sing to the "Karaoke" and all the singers, I don't know why, sang in such a high pitch that it was nice only to listen to the karaoke and just hum the song in "samvadi" pitch ( parallelly lower) and the rhythm always a drawback when she sang along with the karaoke.
Then emerged the problem called the lyrics of the songs. Some of the new film songs had preethi, prema, love, iniya, pranaya themes which irritated us too much and these songs were kept away.For some good songs of the present days, karaoke was not available. We sat together and decided on five songs which she can render with ease and elan.When she started singing we came across another problem with lyrics. Somehow we did not know the full songs. There was a frantic search for the wordings. Phone calls, messages to friends and discussions over e-mails were fruitful. My friend told,"Aiyyo! Adakkene--You-Tube". I was totally depressed. "Yeah! I am Tube (Dull-headed). Tell me where to get the songs?". "Eh! log on to You-Tube. You will get everything. Even English translation of the songs".
Fine! It worked. When we logged on to you-tube the lyrics of the songs were available. My daughter started her practice. But my golden memories of the 1970's started parading in my mind. Books containing the story-line of the film along with the lyrics of the songs were a rage in those days. These were titled " haadina pustaka" or "chitrageethegalu". The cost would be from nakane to entane ( 25 paisa to 50 paisa). We would consider ourselves fortunate if we got those books as gifts from the uncles or aunts who took us to watch the movies. Sometimes, to get these books, we would walk the distance of 3-4 kilometers( from Vidyaranyapuram to Shantala talkies).These books were sold near the movie theaters and some reputed book stalls also. The cover page would have beautiful pictures of the heroes and heroines. And very costly book(75 paisa to 3 rupees) would contain colour photos of the stars. The composer, writer and music director's names were given neatly and the lyrics followed with illustrations called Pallavi, and charanagalu or nudigalu. These books were our pricest possessions. There were moments of joy, and tears of happiness if a friend or cousin gifted one or two such books.
A stressful walk of a couple of miles, a two rupee note which was a saving in the piggy bank, a starry smile on the face with the "cinema haadina pustaka" in hand, everything is now vanished and the mouse of the computer is watching mechanically and waiting for us to click for more and more songs.
You know, there are three main rounds.First round is your own choice of songs. Next is the tough one that is changing the rhythm. Last is the toughest one that is changing the pitch and singing without any faults. Totally one has to prepare for five songs. And the number of contestants? One hundred and fifteen!
The information sounded very much interesting when I heard it from my daughter.But the reality started biting after some time.They have to sing to the "Karaoke" and all the singers, I don't know why, sang in such a high pitch that it was nice only to listen to the karaoke and just hum the song in "samvadi" pitch ( parallelly lower) and the rhythm always a drawback when she sang along with the karaoke.
Then emerged the problem called the lyrics of the songs. Some of the new film songs had preethi, prema, love, iniya, pranaya themes which irritated us too much and these songs were kept away.For some good songs of the present days, karaoke was not available. We sat together and decided on five songs which she can render with ease and elan.When she started singing we came across another problem with lyrics. Somehow we did not know the full songs. There was a frantic search for the wordings. Phone calls, messages to friends and discussions over e-mails were fruitful. My friend told,"Aiyyo! Adakkene--You-Tube". I was totally depressed. "Yeah! I am Tube (Dull-headed). Tell me where to get the songs?". "Eh! log on to You-Tube. You will get everything. Even English translation of the songs".
Fine! It worked. When we logged on to you-tube the lyrics of the songs were available. My daughter started her practice. But my golden memories of the 1970's started parading in my mind. Books containing the story-line of the film along with the lyrics of the songs were a rage in those days. These were titled " haadina pustaka" or "chitrageethegalu". The cost would be from nakane to entane ( 25 paisa to 50 paisa). We would consider ourselves fortunate if we got those books as gifts from the uncles or aunts who took us to watch the movies. Sometimes, to get these books, we would walk the distance of 3-4 kilometers( from Vidyaranyapuram to Shantala talkies).These books were sold near the movie theaters and some reputed book stalls also. The cover page would have beautiful pictures of the heroes and heroines. And very costly book(75 paisa to 3 rupees) would contain colour photos of the stars. The composer, writer and music director's names were given neatly and the lyrics followed with illustrations called Pallavi, and charanagalu or nudigalu. These books were our pricest possessions. There were moments of joy, and tears of happiness if a friend or cousin gifted one or two such books.
A stressful walk of a couple of miles, a two rupee note which was a saving in the piggy bank, a starry smile on the face with the "cinema haadina pustaka" in hand, everything is now vanished and the mouse of the computer is watching mechanically and waiting for us to click for more and more songs.
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