You know I used to be very obsessed about finding chords for a song and considered that as a severe limitation when I was not able to. I have grown out of that phase, but it did take me a long time. In fact, my only goal when I began playing keyboard was to play chords with my left hand and the main melody with my right. I am glad to say that I have reached there, but only to find that the goal itself was nothing great to begin with and I was obsessed about something silly. Harmony is what people concentrate on, not necessarily chords. For the early musicians in Indian Film music, who used a live orchestra to record songs, chords was a very simple way of adding harmony to songs, so you found them in almost all the songs that were recorded in the 70's, 80's and 90's. Since the advent of Rahman, musicians have pretty much switched to using synthetic instruments and the word recording took on an entirely different meaning. Now recording almost means that it is definitely not done live - to the extent that recording is the opposite of a live performance, where nothing is done impromptu. It's like switching to the abacus and then to the calculator to do the math though we all wonder how the hell the early men managed without these two!
I have also found that the harmonic content in Indian film songs have reduced in general. Musicians and composers are more concerned about churning out a peppy number with exotic beats, fancy synthetic instruments, etc. My evaluation of a song, for good or bad, begins with finding out whether there is rich harmonic content or not. If there isn't, then I don't consider it as that great of a song though the melody might be great. In my opinion, creating a great melody is something by itself, but having the same melody with an amazing harmony is a totally different experience. It's like if you have heard the best, why settle for something less. Indian Classical music doesn't have any harmony in it though there are accompaniments. Western Classical music is full of harmony, but it doesn't have the hundreds of scales that Indian Classical music offers. To me, both these represent the supreme forms of music. Everything has to evolve from here - otherwise they won't be called "Classical Music".
Without knowing officially what it is, I have always been appreciating harmony in Tamil film songs. At that time, when I was in my 8th grade or so, I had no clue as to what all went in making a film song, but since the day I have realised it, I've developed amazing respect for Ilayaraja. Harmony, in my definition, is two or more voices going together at the same time to produce a meaningful piece of music/sound. I think it is also the official definition. Now, lot of amateur musicians in India might think use harmony and chords interchangeably. But harmony in the song can be made up of multiple instruments, each adding one note to the frequency spectrum. The bass could give out the root note, a shrill violin could give out the 3rd and the cello could give out the 5th note and you would essentially have a regular major or minor chord except that each note is played by a differnet instrument. Now, bear in mind that the melody falls on top of it. So, if a melody note that is 7th from the root falls on this harmony, it might give the feeling of a 7th chord, like C Major 7th or Minor 7th. That of course doesn't mean that you have to specify CM7 as the guitar chord when you are trying to find out the chords for that song.
I used to be a big time visitor of this site - Guitartabs.net - it has quite an amazing collection of songs with the chords identified for them. I am assuming that some guitarist set up this site and various guitarists from all over the world have contributed tabs and chords for multiple songs. If you look for a similar Indian version, there are some sites also. I used to blindly follow the chords given by such amateur guitarists and always used to wonder at their skill/talent as to how in hell they figured out that there is a "Fsus4 major 7th" chord in a simple song like Pehla Nasha. The answer to that question is that I've been entirely naive and ignorant and innocent. If somebody had a skill like that, they wouldn't be contributing to some stupid geocities website, which has a lot of pop up ads and all that. They'd rather be making money with their musical talent and skills. I think amateur guitarists get excited sometimes and pour in all their guitar knowledge in trying to find out chords for simple songs. What these guitarists or keyboardists overlook is that the harmony could be achieved my various other means. No Indian composer goes about composing a song and specifically wanting a sus4 or aug9th chord in the 16th measure of their 4/4 measure song! That's not how composers work at all. It is possible that these amateur musicians/guitarists/keyboardists are learning to play a particular chord and desperately want to see it being used in some song and hence come up with all these 'show off' chord structures and post it on some websites. Most of them are wrong also. I have a strong feeling that they don't even listen to the original song all that much. They just pick up the melody and add their own chords as if the composer never took pains to add the relevant harmony to the song. They are very funny actually. There'll be chords where there are no chords in the original song, and to everyone's wonder, they'll also be changing the chords left and right some 4 times in a measure and all that! I bet they are doing this with an untuned guitar. Otherwise, why would a Cmajor feeling become a Cminor chord, particularly when there are no chords!!
For develop a deeper sense of harmony and see how chords can be effectively used in any song, people should listen to a whole lot of Western Classical music, particularly Bach's, Mozart's and Beethoven's. Of course any western classical composer has a lot to offer in harmony, but these three are geniuses, as everyone knows. What most people don't know is that there is another living genius that can combine complex Indian Classical Ragaas with the harmony a western classical piece can offer (hint: he is Ilayaraja). One could listen to his music also. I wish all the budding and trained musicians listen to him to find out what all he has to offer academically. They'll be blown away and that's guaranteed.
I have also found that the harmonic content in Indian film songs have reduced in general. Musicians and composers are more concerned about churning out a peppy number with exotic beats, fancy synthetic instruments, etc. My evaluation of a song, for good or bad, begins with finding out whether there is rich harmonic content or not. If there isn't, then I don't consider it as that great of a song though the melody might be great. In my opinion, creating a great melody is something by itself, but having the same melody with an amazing harmony is a totally different experience. It's like if you have heard the best, why settle for something less. Indian Classical music doesn't have any harmony in it though there are accompaniments. Western Classical music is full of harmony, but it doesn't have the hundreds of scales that Indian Classical music offers. To me, both these represent the supreme forms of music. Everything has to evolve from here - otherwise they won't be called "Classical Music".
Without knowing officially what it is, I have always been appreciating harmony in Tamil film songs. At that time, when I was in my 8th grade or so, I had no clue as to what all went in making a film song, but since the day I have realised it, I've developed amazing respect for Ilayaraja. Harmony, in my definition, is two or more voices going together at the same time to produce a meaningful piece of music/sound. I think it is also the official definition. Now, lot of amateur musicians in India might think use harmony and chords interchangeably. But harmony in the song can be made up of multiple instruments, each adding one note to the frequency spectrum. The bass could give out the root note, a shrill violin could give out the 3rd and the cello could give out the 5th note and you would essentially have a regular major or minor chord except that each note is played by a differnet instrument. Now, bear in mind that the melody falls on top of it. So, if a melody note that is 7th from the root falls on this harmony, it might give the feeling of a 7th chord, like C Major 7th or Minor 7th. That of course doesn't mean that you have to specify CM7 as the guitar chord when you are trying to find out the chords for that song.
I used to be a big time visitor of this site - Guitartabs.net - it has quite an amazing collection of songs with the chords identified for them. I am assuming that some guitarist set up this site and various guitarists from all over the world have contributed tabs and chords for multiple songs. If you look for a similar Indian version, there are some sites also. I used to blindly follow the chords given by such amateur guitarists and always used to wonder at their skill/talent as to how in hell they figured out that there is a "Fsus4 major 7th" chord in a simple song like Pehla Nasha. The answer to that question is that I've been entirely naive and ignorant and innocent. If somebody had a skill like that, they wouldn't be contributing to some stupid geocities website, which has a lot of pop up ads and all that. They'd rather be making money with their musical talent and skills. I think amateur guitarists get excited sometimes and pour in all their guitar knowledge in trying to find out chords for simple songs. What these guitarists or keyboardists overlook is that the harmony could be achieved my various other means. No Indian composer goes about composing a song and specifically wanting a sus4 or aug9th chord in the 16th measure of their 4/4 measure song! That's not how composers work at all. It is possible that these amateur musicians/guitarists/keyboardists are learning to play a particular chord and desperately want to see it being used in some song and hence come up with all these 'show off' chord structures and post it on some websites. Most of them are wrong also. I have a strong feeling that they don't even listen to the original song all that much. They just pick up the melody and add their own chords as if the composer never took pains to add the relevant harmony to the song. They are very funny actually. There'll be chords where there are no chords in the original song, and to everyone's wonder, they'll also be changing the chords left and right some 4 times in a measure and all that! I bet they are doing this with an untuned guitar. Otherwise, why would a Cmajor feeling become a Cminor chord, particularly when there are no chords!!
For develop a deeper sense of harmony and see how chords can be effectively used in any song, people should listen to a whole lot of Western Classical music, particularly Bach's, Mozart's and Beethoven's. Of course any western classical composer has a lot to offer in harmony, but these three are geniuses, as everyone knows. What most people don't know is that there is another living genius that can combine complex Indian Classical Ragaas with the harmony a western classical piece can offer (hint: he is Ilayaraja). One could listen to his music also. I wish all the budding and trained musicians listen to him to find out what all he has to offer academically. They'll be blown away and that's guaranteed.
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