Visuvanadan

Ilayaraja, Farming, Engineering

[Sridhar Ravi @SridharRavi90]

/ Ilaiyaraja's music became monotonous in the 90s. /

People embracing a new soundscape doesn’t mean the existing music has become monotonous. It was primarily the industry that became monotonous, not his music. Ilaiyaraaja consistently delivered what each film demanded.

Despite composing for numerous village-based films, he created extraordinary music for films like Chembaruthi, Michael Madana Kama Rajan, Pulan Visaranai, Kalaignan, Kaalapani, Guru (Malayalam), Hey Ram and so on. The list goes on across diverse genres.

When you consider the sheer number of films he scored and the musical depth he brought to them, Rahman’s entire filmography doesn’t stand up to comparison.

[Sridhar Ravi @SridharRavi90]

இளையராஜாவின் musical relevance ஐ சினிமாவில் பெரிய பட்ஜெட் படங்களில் மட்டுமே தேடும் elite மண்டவீங்கிகளுக்காகவே எழுதப்பட்ட அட்டகாசமான article.
Link below 👇

[Sridhar Ravi @SridharRavi90]

The one who came to redeem us.
@ilaiyaraaja

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

Dusting off this tweet from April because this gap in shared understanding of LLM capability is *widening*. It's now less "two groups of people speaking past each other" and more a sharp funnel.

- Napkin math somewhere around 6B people (~75% of the population) have barely come in contact with LLMs at all.
- Around 1-2B (~20%) are casual and infrequent users of free-tier ChatGPT-like products. This group sees derpy chatbots and treats them a bit like a better Google search, a writing aid, or etc. Maybe an agent tries to book you a flight. I have non-tech friends who (reasonably, imo) say they have not much use for it at all. Even many professionals outside of math&code are in this tier. For example, execs and many other functions spend a lot of their time talking to other people, so while they understand what is happening intellectually, it is still second-hand and a bit abstract.
- Now we get to professional use of frontier-grade LLMs in math&code. Somewhere around 20M people (0.2%) see first-hand that large, complex projects that used to take them weeks/months can now be completed by agents with a prompt. Building apps, copying apps, translating apps, decompiling apps from binaries... This has all happened very quickly and recently - less than 1 year ago, I was writing code manually by hand, typing memorized computer code commands into a code editor character by character, occasionally pressing Tab to autocomplete a little chunk of code.
- And finally we get to the ~5,000 people (~0.00006%) with access to frontier-grade systems internally. The external world has seen the preview. It looks like swarms of thousands of agents collaborating over weeks on software mega projects: minting zero days, running cyber attacks and defenses at machine speeds, discovering new science, advancing the frontier of mathematics. Things that would have taken top professionals in the industry years of work. Meanwhile, human review and comprehension are starting to fall behind. For example, people are still involved in the "archeology" of the OpenAI-HF incident from many months ago. Mathematicians may be poring over the 722 manuscripts on frontier mathematics for a while.

The funnel is driven by a combination of factors:
1. The impact scales with ambition, problem size, and horizon. A question with a paragraph answer barely stresses the system. You need a reservoir of big, difficult problems that you really care about. This aspect drives the consumer / professional dimension of the funnel.
2. The jaggedness of the system (which I have written about a lot separately). Capability peaks in domains that are digital, verifiable and economically valuable. This is because LLM capability emerges from reinforcement learning on verifiable rewards on a curated environment mixture driven by revenue potential. This aspect primarily drives the area (e.g. math&code) dimension of the funnel.
3. Access. Free-tier, paid-tier, internal.

So this is the weirdness of the moment. The general public has mostly not interacted with these systems. When they have, it looks like a derpy chatbot. The majority of professionals still see only a modest uplift. And a small sliver of professionals are experiencing the vertigo of the curve going vertical. And it is all happening at the same time.

[ஆனந்தி @gmuruganandi]

Chandan from Gondhal
@ilaiyaraaja 🫶

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Interesting piece from CEO of Microsoft

[Sridhar Ravi @SridharRavi90]

Another example of why Raaja’s music shouldn’t be interpreted while performing. His compositions aren’t just melodies with someone else handling the arrangements and orchestration. Their core strength lies in every single layer.

Ani plays the melody but seems to have deliberately skipped the original chords, perhaps because they don’t follow conventional progressions. Playing it without the original arrangement killed the song.

Here’s how the chords travel through the melody, leaving no room for arbitrary reinterpretation without losing its essence. The deliberate absence of chords at “Kaadhal vaazhga” is a testament to Raaja’s genius.

E major – Kaadhalin deepam ondru
G♯ minor – Yettrinaale en nenjil

E major – Kaadhalin deepam ondru
G♯ minor – Yettrinaale en nenjil

B major – Oodalil
E major – Vandha
F♯ minor – Sondham

B major – Koodalil
E major – Kanda
F♯ minor – Inbam

E major – Mayakkam
A minor – Enna

No chords – Kaadhal vaazhga

Raaja Vaazhga 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

[Sridhar Ravi @SridharRavi90]

This song is trippy af! It would eat 100 Muthumanis in a row.

[Sylvian @Sylvianism]

As everyone knows, I begin and end my day with #Ilaiyaraaja. This morning’s work listen was a surprise from my player. It’s wonderfully sung by Madhu Balakrishnan and Swetha Mohan. The Sathyan Anthikad - Raaja combination is truly something to cherish.

[Navin Mozart @NavinMozart]

Can you Believe, this was done 50 years Back when dholaks and Violins are Prominent in Indian Film Music.!!!!

[Baradwaj Rangan @baradwajrangan]

#GuitarPrasanna: #Ilaiyaraaja wants to put his stamp on a film where music is not just a layer beneath the film but runs in parallel. He put his form above function and got away with it. He's in a constant state of artistic high, just as I imagine Muthuswamy Dikshitar would have been.
https://t.co/YsSZTmOtND

[Anand Ranganathan @ARanganathan72]

Yesterday @GoogleDeepMind made a toxin-degrading enzyme from scratch. Today @OpenAI solved 370 of the most difficult mathematical problems.

AI has removed intelligence as a differentiator between humans. We are back to living in (modern) caves gazing at stars with nothing to do.

[𝗕𝗮𝗹𝗮𝗷𝗶 𝗦𝗮𝗻𝗸𝗮𝗿𝗮 𝗦𝗮𝗿𝗮𝘃𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗻 @vbss75]

@Shruthi_67 Me Before You இல்ல ?

[Goutham @mahtuog_s]

"allegedly"

[sagi @_0sagi]

“Why they are no better than each other” 90% of the content was about Raaja’s methodology and the incredible output every single time (almost) and this is your reading? People who put both of them on the same pedestal are far worse than the ones who prefer one over the other.

[End Wokeness @EndWokeness]

Philadelphia's Mayor Cherelle Parker put on a hijab to visit a local school

This picture is worth 1,000 words

[Navin Mozart @NavinMozart]

பாம்மே தீம் முயுசிக், செல்லோ சேகர் வாசிச்சத எடுத்துட்டாரு பாய்.அப்ப பாம்பே பாட்டு "ஹம்மா ஹம்மா' முழுசும் பண்ணவரு ரஞ்சித் பரோட் தான்.இதை விட என்ன Proof வேணும்.Bass line மட்டும் வெச்சுட்டு முழுசும் பண்ணி கொடுத்துட்டாரு ' இசைப்புயல்' ரஞ்சித் பரோட்.