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A: It seems that arrangement has now attained an universal acceptance in the modern music. Since in India we do not have any institution to teach composition or orchestration no scientific method has yet been established. However, may talented instrumentalists are very much interested in this. It would be wonderful if we can bring these people together to discuss and exchange ideas at a place like our Academy.
Q: How have you used the Indian classical music or the folk music in your compositions ?

A: I had to acquire a reasonable knowledge and expertise in Indian classical music - although I never had any proper training. I had to break its melodic structure repeatedly - and due to this I had to learn what exactly I am breaking ? You may know that “one who doesn’t know the grammar can not break the grammar”. The main point is it is not the purity or the structure of a Raag or a folk song - if one can understand their pattern or the melodic style then one can create something original.

Q: You have also composed many background music for films, ballet and plays. Can you please comment on that ?

A: Whenever you need to interpret a scene thru music, make the scene more effective or powerful one needs the background music. In our country there is an increasing interest in this but believe me around 80% of the film background music covers basically a fighting scene or a chasing scene or a chasing scene. To get their background music,the film editors are working with such labels. The producers consider the whole thing about background music a waste of money. Usually at the end of a film shooting the budget is depleted so they need to complete the  recording of the whole films background music in one or two shifts. So, one can see that this way you can not be very creative or can get much satisfaction.
Composing the background music is a big challenge to a composer but what I have seen in the past was kind of mechanical transformation - like someone turns his head and you hear a crash or someone slapped you and you hear cymbals.
Now of course we look at it objectively and also with subjective feeling. Consider for example Hanns Eisler (Austrian composer). He composed the background music for a film based on the second world war. There was a scene - where someone from the enemy camp (the Nazi army) has been captured and is mortally wounded. They are trying to revive him by giving him blood transfusion  in a dilapidated building. In this scene Hanns Eisler has used the melody of the victory march. Although visually it doesn’t appear to have any relation with the scene, the composer really understood the inherent meaning of people's victory and that is why he could use such music. These are subjective interpretations. THese days we are also seeing mixed interpretations.
This is an extremely creative side of composition - but no one is really trying to nurture it. Pune Film Institute in fact had designed a course on this subject and I have given lectures there a few times - sadly that course has now been discontinued.





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