Mavrix

Tag: playlist

  • Manna Dey – The Playback Singer Who Was Too (Classically) Good For Bollywood

    Manna Dey was born Prabodh Chandra Dey on May 1 1919, in Calcutta. Growing up, he was mentored by his uncle K.C. Dey, a popular singer and composer. He also owed his solid grounding in Hindustani music to Ustad Dabir Khan. When K.C. Dey left for Bombay, young Manna accompanied him. His first break as…

  • How Can I Contribute To MySwar?

    Every once in a while, people ask us, “How can I contribute to MySwar?” and we offer piecemeal answers each time. Of late, we have been asked this question a lot, and it makes sense for us to give a holistic answer. In most cases, the people who ask this question have already contributed or…

  • New, Improved Song Recommender on MySwar

    By Abhishek Gupta On MySwar, every song has a Similar Songs section that shows songs related to the one you’re browsing. Our earlier system used a basic static algorithm where similar songs were pre-generated for each track. This meant recommendations were often stale and inflexible — any change in the logic required regenerating the entire…

  • The Evolving Lexicon of Hindi Film Songs

    I have always been fascinated by the changing lexicon of Hindi film songs and how it correlates with changes in popular culture with time. To explore this phenomenon, I compiled a list of all unique words used in the titles of Hindi film songs – as documented on MySwar – and determined how many times…

  • Poetry In Hindi Film Songs

    Hindi cinema has a long tradition of tapping into India’s rich literary history for its songs. Since it is customary to attribute the lyrics of all Hindi film songs to the all-encompassing role of “Lyricists”, music listeners do not realise at times that some of them were not written for cinema. Sometimes, song lyrics are…

  • Important Changes In MySwar

    Hello friends, It has been nearly 15 years since we launched MySwar. It has been a labour of love, and I have enjoyed every moment of this journey. I have been gratified by the help, encouragement and support I have recieved from many Hindi film music lovers during this journey. In the last few years, one…

  • Hindi Film Music Inspired By Rabindra Sangeet

    This post lists the Hindi films songs or background themes that were based on or inspired by Rabindranath Tagore’s music or poetry. Related read: Hindi films inspired by Tagore’s writing. These lists were compiled using official credits to Rabindranath Tagore on MySwar, text search for ‘Rabindranath Tagore’ on MySwar, and inputs from Archisman Mozumder and @GuzzlerBear.

  • Tag Search – Hindi Film Songs Based On Raaga

    In the last post, I talked about a new feature on MySwar to search for Hindi film songs featuring specified musical instruments. In this post, I talk about looking for songs based on the usage of raagas. I have only superficial knowledge of Indian classical music and raagas. I did, however, have an inkling that very…

  • Tag Search – Hindi Film Songs Based On Musical Instruments

    We added two parameters in the Tag Search feature of MySwar – Raaga and Instruments. I’ll talk more about Raaga in another post. In this post, I’ll focus on the ability to look for songs based on the musical instruments used in them. The Instrument Tag Search allows users to search for songs containing a…

  • New Feature to Extract MySwar Data

    A significant number of MySwar users are not just music lovers but also data/analytical geeks. While they enjoy MySwar for the level of detail it provides and the many ways in which it allows them to explore Hindi film music, many have expressed an interest in extracting information from our database so that they can…