Ramesh Vinayakam
| Picture Credit score: Johan Sathyadas

Quite a lot of issues can occur over a espresso break. In music composer Ramesh Vinayakam’s case, it definitely did.

On the Goethe Institute in Chennai, the composer was talking with Sebastian Grams, double bass participant, and Jeremy Woodruff, now in Graz College, over a espresso break when he launched right into a Carnatic kriti. He sang phrases from ‘Thiruvarul thara varuvai’ and requested if it sounded acquainted.

“It’s stunning. The tip sounds acquainted, however we are able to’t put our finger on it,” they stated.

It was a little bit musical puzzle that Ramesh had conjoured, and the climax blew the guests away. The kriti has the identical notes as Ludwig van Beethoven’s common ‘Fur Elise’, which they found to nice astonishment. “To me, it proved one thing I imagine in: the oneness of music,” says Ramesh, about his musical experiment, which he recorded and posted on YouTube not too long ago.

‘Thiruvarul thara vVaruvai’ relies on a raga that Ramesh calls ‘Beethovanapriya’ and is impressed by a easy concept: what if Beethoven was born in South India?

“This speculation lead me to ‘Thiruvarul thara varuvai’ the place I used the melodic components of the primary part in A minor and caught to it,” he remembers, “Beethoven was an incredible inventor and I reckon he would have been enamoured by the intricate microtonal gamakas of Indian music that beautifies his personal music in a different way.”

‘Thiruvarul thara varuvai’ was carried out by Ramesh throughout a lec-dem on the December music season quickly after its conception, however in 2018, Carnatic musician Abhisekh Raghuram sang it accompanied by Mylai Karthikeyan (nagaswaram) and L. Ramakrishnan (violin), an try that met with rapturous applause.

Ramesh has, in the middle of his musical profession, created ten ragas, together with Prathidwani, Madya Mohanam and Dwi Niroshtra, amongst others. He’s within the course of of making a raga that makes use of microtonal swarasthana known as Sruti Ranjani. “To me, inventing a raga is a pure course of within the evolution of Indian music. All of the ragas which might be in vogue now by no means existed on the very starting. We additionally have no idea how they advanced, whether or not as a scale or from a phrase or from an emotive lyrical thought that was expressed via a musical concept which sparked an growth right into a raga. So, a raga can’t be a discovery, as some individuals have assumed it to be,” says Ramesh.

Whilst he works on newer compositions, the composer is kicked about his ardour undertaking, the Gamaka Field Notation System (GBNS), a structured Indian music studying device that allows conceptual studying of complicated concepts. GBNS is on the core of Music Temple, a music know-how firm that IIT Madras has incubated. Ramesh, who can be well-known within the movie music fraternity because of hits akin to ‘Vizhigalil’ (Azhagiya Theeye), ‘Enna Idhu’ (Nala Damayanthi) and his work in Ramanujan amongst others,can be taking on extra movie music work. “I’m wanting ahead to doing much more motion pictures and create new music. I imagine that music is the manifestation of divinity that’s already current in man.”