Raju Singh: Musical all-rounder

He has worked on the background score of several hits, and loves to use paradoxical silences

Raju Singh, son of legendary musician Charanjit Singh, has been musician, singer and composer. He has created film and non-film albums, jingles, TV show anthems, remixes and film scores. But of all these diverse fields, he feels that film scoring is a clear favourite.

He says, “A film score, in the last two decades in particular, has evolved terrifically with cutting edge technology and sound like Stereo, 4.1, 5.1, 7.1, Dolby SR and so on. It thus serves to enhance the visuals and every emotion, be it positive or negative.”

Since ‘Kaarnaama’ in 1991, Raju has scored around 150 films including ‘Chandni Bar’, ‘Ishq Vishq’, ‘Masti’, ‘Zeher’, ‘Page 3’, ‘Murder 2’ and ‘Aashiqui 2. “This is a perfect time for film scoring, as there are so many ways of doing a score and so many music genres available. If a director knows exactly what he wants, and time is given, I can always come out with something new,” he says.

A golden rule Raju follows is to use paradoxical silences. “That is the peak part of a film’s sound!” he exclaims. “Today, more and more directors are open to it!”

Of course, there are professional hurdles, and the prolific composer declares, “When I watch a film, I give a director my honest opinion!” he reveals. “I have lost films that way too, but that’s better than just adding a film to my list. And while there are directors who are very specific about their needs, others are clear in their minds but cannot express their requirements lucidly.”

There is also the multiple-composer issue. “Earlier, I knew that a film’s songs would be composed by one entity, like Anand-Milind, Anu Malik or Pritam. My first rule is that I am doing music for a film, and not to show off. So my sound has to blend with a song composer’s style and even use riffs of his songs. So I would know what sound to give. So now, I tell my directors to get the mixing done from one person to get some uniformity of sound. This way, I know the sound spectrum.”

Raju composes on the piano or keyboard and largely uses electronics, but he does employ live musicians and, sometimes, singers as part of the backing vocals, besides using Indian classical raags. “Electronics are a blessing, but we should not overuse it so much that it does not sound natural!” he explains.

He gives an example. “For a hard-hitting subject like Chandni Bar, I created a theme for the film in an apt raag, and asked Shubha Mudgal-ji to record for it. I experimented in 25 different versions of the same theme, and her singing too automatically got modified. After that, I sat down and studied what to use.”

Raju stresses that both traditional Indian-ness and a contemporary feel in music are key. “Three facts underline this: one, that we still re-create our old songs; two, that reality show contestants still play them, and three, that even the West is relating to our music as proved by our recent successes at the Oscars! But it is true that we are moving away from our sensibilities by following too much of the West. So I try to strike a balance!”

Learning in music never ends is proved by the fact that Raju Singh, on the basis of his volume of work, was invited by USA’s Berklee College of Music for a series of masterclasses. “I was nervous about facing the students, but it ended up as such a fun session when I asked them how they would approach certain sequences musically. Even as I was teaching them, I was also learning from their views!”

Raju is also proud of the fact that today, a whopping 75 percent of youngsters scoring music in films and TV have been trained by him.