Lalith Rao: Captivating Swars [Rhythm House 240 339] a cassette recorded and released in India in 1984

A cassette from vocalist Lalith Rao recorded in 1984. An hour of very spirited singing especially suited for listening during an evening in the rainy season.

As always I very carefully adjusted the azimuth for the recording of each side. This makes an enormous difference to the higher frequencies. It only requires a small screwdriver (the kind you use to tighten screws in eyeglass frames) and at least one ear. If you don't know how to do this there are several excellent tutorials on the web.

An LP by Lalith Rao recorded at about the same time as this tape (1984-85) was transferred by the always reliable Tawfiq on his blog:

http://oriental-traditional-music.blogspot.com/2015/01/lalith-rao-raga-bihag-raga-kedar-thumri.html

Equipment used in this transfer:
Cassette Deck: Teac W890R (azimuth was carefully adjusted for each side)
Preamp: Parasound PHP 850
Recorder: Sony PCM-M10

Software: Audacity and xAct

16bit, 44.1kHz FLAC (362 MB)

(after decoding to WAV, suitable for burning to CD)

320 kbps mp3 (134 MB)

(highest possible quality mp3 file; 

suitable for listening on a portable player)

Lalith Rao [Swarashree LR 001] a cassette recorded and released in India in 1988

Here is another Lalith Rao cassette. This one comes from Swarashree via their licensing agreement with CBS India. The quality control for many in this series of cassettes is a bit shy of the very highest mark possible, but this one seems to sound alright, especially after manual azimuth adjustment.

It appears to be the last of my collection of releases by Lalith Rao, but given the current disorganized state of my music study room, there might possibly be more.

With kind thanks to my very good blogger friend "Tawfiq" and his magnificent blog http://oriental-traditional-music.blogspot.com which introduced me to this vocalist and many many other musical treasures. So many people owe him a great deal of gratitude, more than will ever be able to tell him. 

In illustration of this point, allow me to tell you an anecdote. After seeing a local concert by a guitarist from New Haven, Connecticut, I decided to talk to him a bit afterward. We happened to be mentioning music we like to listen to and after I mentioned Indian Classical, his eyes lit up with interest and he immediately told me in a very serious voice that I simply must check out his favorite blog, "Oriental Traditional Music." He was surprised that I knew the blogger and that I even had a humble blog of my own!  

Very interesting to me was that this extremely talented "fingerstyle" acoustic guitarist (think of someone a bit like John Fahey) went on to tell me that a recording by Shamshuddin Faridi Desai had completely changed his outlook on music. We are living in a pretty terrible era, on many fronts, but one bright aspect is the ability for musicians to listen to music that decades ago would have been locked up in people's houses and in ethnic grocery stores and record shops.

And on that note, let's take a look at this cassette.

Side one:
Raga Bilaskhani Todi

Side two:
Raga Paraj

(see the notes for details about the compositions)


Lalit(h) Rao: vocal
Gurudas Borkar (tabla)
Baban Manjrekar (harmonium)

Equipment used in this transfer:
Cassette Deck: Teac W890R (azimuth was carefully adjusted for each side)
Preamp: Parasound PHP 850
Recorder: Sony PCM-M10

Software: Audacity and xAct

16bit, 44.1kHz FLAC (351 MB)

(after decoding to WAV, suitable for burning to CD)

320 kbps mp3 (133 MB)

(highest possible quality mp3 file; 

suitable for listening on a portable player)

Lalith Rao: A Never Ending Journey [Rhythm House 240 366] a cassette recorded and released in India in 1987

Here we have another post featuring the delightful vocals of Lalith Rao, a prominent female exponent of the Agra gharana.

Click here to see past uploads of Rao.

The titles and performers can clearly be seen on the scans below, so I thought repeating this information would be unnecessary.

One interesting feature about those cassettes from Rhythm House which I have seen are that they have been manufactured using a process where the cassette tape master is played in real time (sometimes cassettes are sped up 8x or more to speed up the process -- adjustments in EQ have to be made for this and the quality is almost never as good as a "real time duplicated" cassette).

Transfer: Nakamichi ZX-9 cassette deck, refurbished to "better than new" state by Willi Hermann

Pre-amplification: Vintage refurbished Pioneer SX-780.
Recorder: Sony PCM-M10 at 24bit/96kHz resolution
Software: Audacity and xAct.
Monitoring: Focal Spirit One headphones

downloads:

24bit, 96kHz FLAC files (1.2 GB)

highest resolution files I am capable of producing - large file!

16bit, 44.kHz FLAC files (298 MB)

after decoding to WAV files, these can be burned to CDR

320 kbps mp3 files (134 MB)

highest quality mp3 files possible 

Click here for a good explanation of what FLAC files are and why you should be listening to them if you can.