Original Article by E. Vijayalakshmi for The Week Techno-brat seeking soul - H. Sridhar, who won the national award for sound engineering in Dil Se, talks about the Rahman he knows.
I had known Rahman for many years before I started working with him on Roja. While he was doing jingles, we would often meet and compare notes on music trends and synthesizers.
Rahman’s biggest asset is that he treats each song as his first song. He prays before each session. I believe there is some power in his God, faith, and religion. I can give you countless examples of when he became so inspired after his prayers.
When we were working on Bombay, the mixing was held up since the background score was not ready. For three days, Rahman sat in his studio from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., but nothing would work. He needed to deliver a score that would bind the film but was having a creative block. There was some tension. He tried fiddling around with the theme he had composed, but nothing worked. So we would sit and chat for hours about things other than music.
We decided not to work on the fourth day. At 10 p.m. he invited me over to his place. We sat chatting again, but this time I felt there was something that had not been there on the other days. He said, “Let’s go into the studio.” The theme was played again. He said, “Let’s put lyrics into it, and let’s have a song.” That was absolutely brilliant. We had a lyrical rendition of the background score. Rahman must have been truly inspired to do that.
He is very open-minded about what a song needs and gives each song a completely individual taste. It is the way he soothes you into a song that I call his signature. There is a visual texture in his mind when he composes music. When you see the song picturized you can immediately connect. The Dil hai, Bechain hai song in Taal is a perfect example of this. Even as you hear it, the scene unfolds in front of you, the fog lifting, the girl appearing….
I remember another instance connected with Bombay. We had recorded Hariharan for the Uyire song picturized on Arvind Swamy and I was mixing it. As we had used a lot of electronics, I was cleaning up the track of all breathing sounds and ‘dirt’. When Rahman heard it, the first thing he said was, “There is something missing.” I told him about my cleaning exercise and he said, “What the song needs are a lot of air.” So I put all the ‘dirt’ back, and truly the song had much more life especially since it was picturized against the beautiful forts and sea. With my cleaning, I had taken the life out of the song! Even now I get goosebumps when I think about it.
Rahman allows musicians to be themselves. He understands their soul. He also has a fabulous way of getting notes out of a musician without telling them in so many words. Time and again I have heard him ask a singer, “Why isn’t there pain in your voice?” and instinctively the singer understands what he is referring to.
Rahman and I have a fine understanding; I may not be with him when he is composing a song, sometimes in the middle of the night. When he puts on his headphones and seems deep in concentration, I know I should leave him alone. Otherwise, we keep dabbling, fiddling, and ripping apart every instrument we get! We experiment with new sounds; he has a thirst for creating new rhythm tracks. We ask questions like, “Why can’t a sitarist play with a rock guitar,” or “Why can’t a jazz guitar be teamed with the south Indian violin?” His search is endless.
Rahman never ceases to amaze me. He is such a fine musician apart from being a music director; his strength is fusion. He is also a techno-junkie. If you give him a set of headphones he will most probably rip it apart to understand why it works so well! I sometimes say that we are techno-brats. But Rahman knows that a song shouldn’t speak the technical language but should have a soul.
Rahman is humble and very generous with money. He hates to see people suffer. I think his philosophy is that people should derive happiness from his music, even if it is a sad tune. He has this tremendous need to be perfect. Of course, we also differ in our views; I criticise his music if I feel it lacks his signature and this irritates him sometimes.
