Identifying Musicians in Bollywood

If identifying music directors was easy. Then consider this. Identifying musicians !!
It is a highly "technical" subject. Only people close to Bollywood music industry can say with surety that a particular piece of music was played by such and such musician.
But I guess, there is no harm in trying. I claim that I can identify three musicians of Bollywood. Tony Vaz, Shivkumar Sharma and Hari Prasad Chaurasia.
This so called "technical" subject was learnt by me by reading and listening to interviews. Also from popular Radio Shows. Google and internet has also widened my knowledge.
However, there are some questions. Did Ramesh Iyer play guitar for other music directors apart from RDBurman? Did Gorakhbhai(brother of Pyarelal) play guitar for other music directors? What about Raj Sodha? Or Kishore Sodha? Or Nitin Shankar? And Sivamani of south?
Here is looking forward to evergreen music again and again from Bollywood. Goodbye !!

Music Directors of last century

I promised to write on adaptation of Hindustani taals on dafli theory, in one of the other blogs. Well, it is difficult to write down. As it is more of a practice.
Instead, I am writing down the steps to follow in identifying music directors. These steps are mainly suitable for songs of 60s, 70s, 80s and to some extent 90s.
First step is to make a reasonable guess. RDBurman, SDBurman, Kalyanji-Anandji etc. Recollect the movie name or the hero or heroines. This may help you in guessing the music director. If you cannot, then move to next step.
Second step is listen to the background score. Is it loud?(Shankar-Jaikishan) Is it very beautiful and has good dhol usage?(Laxmikant-Pyarelal) Is it very beautiful and melodious?(Ravindra Jain) Does it have extensive congo and bongo usage?(Rajesh Roshan)
Third step is to understand the rhythms. Beats. Does the song have fast tempo of rhythms though song is slow?(Khayyam) Does the song feel good with the word "tururak"?(SDBurman) Does the song have consistent glass-spoon, tabla rhythms? (RDBurman)
Fourth step is to understand the melody(tune/dhun) style. Does the melody have a Bengali touch?(SDBurman, RDBurman) Does the melody have the beauty of a muslim? (Khayyam) Does the melody have a Tata-Mumbai feel?(Rajesh Roshan) Does the melody have usage of music between two lyrical statements? (Kalyanji-Anandji)
Fifth step is to understand the connection between music directors, singers.SDBurman and Kishore Kumar. Madan Mohan and Lataji. Ravindra Jain and Hemlata. OPNayyar and Geeta Dutt etc.
Sixth step is to find the lyricist. Shailendra, Sameer, Majrooh Sultanpuri etc. Guessing the lyricist will be easy only for some. Anyways, if you have the aptitude for identifying lyricist, then you can identify the music directors too in some of the cases. Shailendra for Shankar-Jaikishan. Sameer for Nadeem-Shravan. Majrooh Sultanpuri for RDBurman etc.
60s, 70s, 80s and 90s are gone eras. So it is less sinful to post this blog post, I guess.
Mumbaikars, eat bhelpuri and have a happy new year. From a Delhi wallah (dil se !!)