Bijibal, the best music director in malayalam movie industry has been drawing me into his mindspace through various songs that he has been delivering. His down to earthness and his ability to stay connected to the truth has also been inspiring me.
When I hit on an album song that Bijibal music directed, I saw my school friend Mithun doing the guitar in it. Mithun had also figured a few months back in an 'ilayaraja medley' ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj2K-lT2EgU ) that I had listened to atleast two hundred times and is the song that my son has listened to as his lullaby most. I had considered getting in touch with Mithun then and had not. As he figured with Bijibal now, I decided to connect with him.
Mithun had sent me a facebook friend request years back. My facebook had been deactivated for years now. I got it reactivated and contacted Mithun through facebook and he sent me his number.
As he is essentially a busy celebrity, I cut through the crap of 'It has been twenty years since we spoke' and started off right from my school days' memory of having been to his artsy home with beautiful pillars. We had a very close half an hour conversation that was so intense in information that I decided to capture it here.
Mithun-Bijibal : Bijibal has been Mithun's senior at St. Alberts college. Mithun reaffirmed my belief in Bijibal's class. While Bijibal was still a student at St. Alberts, he had done an album which clearly established his class as per Mithun.
CN : Can Bijibal become as good as Johnson?
MR: Johnson had much better cinematic situations to work for. Bijibal hardly has as much opportunity. Current movie situations are not as aesthetic. Bijibal is more about carnatic music and if he is given an opportunity, he is going to prove his class, no doubt.
Mithun as music programmer : Mithun has done the entire programming for the song 'Paapaleela' , one of the classical numbers from the national award winning movie 'Kaliyachchan'. All the sounds that you hear in this song has been programmed by Mithun. These are not done using the real ethnic instruments. These are just mixed in tracks from a huge repository of sounds. Mithun uses windows and not mac for his programming work. The industry prefers mac but Mithun has not had issues with PC yet and has been sticking with it hence. For mac, the common softwares used are 'Logicpro' and something else I don't remember. The insight I gained here is that to have a full fledged song, all you need is a singer and a music programmer. If you can get good enough at both, you can create an entire song yourself.
Bijibal would instruct how the feel of the music should be like and Mithun would choose and orchestrate sounds against those instructions. Mithun has worked with Aashiq Abu in all his movies except 'Gangster'.
Mithun's studio :
He just has put thermocol to absorb sound in one of his rooms is how he described.
Mithun's cinema connections :
Mithun's career has been about music programming for movies.
For the last two years, he has been working with the band 'Thaikkudam Bridge' and hence has not worked with Bijibal in his recent films.
Clearly, Mithun would serve as a wonderful source to answer all my questions regarding music. No flak , easy to get to the truth. Also, I see that he is really busy. He explained how during his days as music programmer, he would spend his entire time inside his music studio. Also, how he needs to travel to perform shown once every two days for 'Thaikkudam Bridge' now. Since he is doing stuff that I really respect, I could not keep the interaction completely as being one between classmates. Somewhere, I felt like a fan talking to a celebrity. Anyways, excited to find him and hope to take these interactions to a more meaningful level.
When I hit on an album song that Bijibal music directed, I saw my school friend Mithun doing the guitar in it. Mithun had also figured a few months back in an 'ilayaraja medley' ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj2K-lT2EgU ) that I had listened to atleast two hundred times and is the song that my son has listened to as his lullaby most. I had considered getting in touch with Mithun then and had not. As he figured with Bijibal now, I decided to connect with him.
Mithun had sent me a facebook friend request years back. My facebook had been deactivated for years now. I got it reactivated and contacted Mithun through facebook and he sent me his number.
As he is essentially a busy celebrity, I cut through the crap of 'It has been twenty years since we spoke' and started off right from my school days' memory of having been to his artsy home with beautiful pillars. We had a very close half an hour conversation that was so intense in information that I decided to capture it here.
Mithun-Bijibal : Bijibal has been Mithun's senior at St. Alberts college. Mithun reaffirmed my belief in Bijibal's class. While Bijibal was still a student at St. Alberts, he had done an album which clearly established his class as per Mithun.
CN : Can Bijibal become as good as Johnson?
MR: Johnson had much better cinematic situations to work for. Bijibal hardly has as much opportunity. Current movie situations are not as aesthetic. Bijibal is more about carnatic music and if he is given an opportunity, he is going to prove his class, no doubt.
Mithun as music programmer : Mithun has done the entire programming for the song 'Paapaleela' , one of the classical numbers from the national award winning movie 'Kaliyachchan'. All the sounds that you hear in this song has been programmed by Mithun. These are not done using the real ethnic instruments. These are just mixed in tracks from a huge repository of sounds. Mithun uses windows and not mac for his programming work. The industry prefers mac but Mithun has not had issues with PC yet and has been sticking with it hence. For mac, the common softwares used are 'Logicpro' and something else I don't remember. The insight I gained here is that to have a full fledged song, all you need is a singer and a music programmer. If you can get good enough at both, you can create an entire song yourself.
Bijibal would instruct how the feel of the music should be like and Mithun would choose and orchestrate sounds against those instructions. Mithun has worked with Aashiq Abu in all his movies except 'Gangster'.
Mithun's studio :
He just has put thermocol to absorb sound in one of his rooms is how he described.
Mithun's cinema connections :
Mithun's career has been about music programming for movies.
For the last two years, he has been working with the band 'Thaikkudam Bridge' and hence has not worked with Bijibal in his recent films.
Clearly, Mithun would serve as a wonderful source to answer all my questions regarding music. No flak , easy to get to the truth. Also, I see that he is really busy. He explained how during his days as music programmer, he would spend his entire time inside his music studio. Also, how he needs to travel to perform shown once every two days for 'Thaikkudam Bridge' now. Since he is doing stuff that I really respect, I could not keep the interaction completely as being one between classmates. Somewhere, I felt like a fan talking to a celebrity. Anyways, excited to find him and hope to take these interactions to a more meaningful level.
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