Bala's norm collaborator Ilaiyaraaja was initially considered to be scoring the film, but the former chose his son Yuvan Shankar Raja as the composer; he felt that since Avan Ivan was a youth-centric film, Yuvan would bring the right feel to the music.[1] It is the second collaboration between Yuvan and Bala following Nandhaa (2001).[2]
Yuvan refrained from using Western musical elements such as synths and auto-tune, his usual style of compositions.[3] Instead he went ahead with ethnic Indian sounds, and further disclosed that the entire album and score was recorded live.[3] Yuvan recorded the orchestral portions in one take, after few rehearsals, inspired from Ilayaraaja's work.[4] On Independence Day (15 August 2010), he recorded an intense pathos song ("Mudhal Murai") with vocals by Vijay Prakash.[5] The following month, he recorded several different Indian folkdrums with 40 people.[6] Yuvan revealed that he was given over two months time for composing each song,[3] while Bala later commented that his work was of "international standard".[7] Na. Muthukumar penned the lyrics for all the tracks.[8] The song "Oru Malayoram" featured vocals by children Priyanka, Srinisha Jayaseelan and Nithyashree, who were participants in the second season of the reality-based singing-competition Airtel Super Singer Junior.[9]
Release
The soundtrack rights were acquired by Sony Music India.[10] Yuvan handed the master recording of the album on 18 March 2011.[10] The soundtrack album was released exactly one month later,[11] on 18 April 2011 by Bala's mentor Balu Mahendra in a grand event held at the Residency Towers, Chennai.[12][13] However, the songs had been leaked to the internet few days before the official release, after Sony Music had sent the master copies to abroad earlier.[14]
Only one songs from the soundtrack, "Dia Dia Dole", was used in its entirety, along with an altered shorter version of "Rasathi", parts of "Mudhal Murai" and a small bit song "Adi Kavakara Kiliye" as of 1 minute.[15] While "Avanapathi" and "Oru Malayoram" were completely left out from the film.[15] The film, however, featured two additional tracks, which not included in the soundtrack.[15]
The album received positive reviews from music critics. Pavithra Srinivasan from Rediff gave 3 out of 5 stars, saying "Yuvan has voluntarily tried to move out of his comfort zone, given up on his template and experimented, particularly with the instrumental arrangement and most times, it works."[16]Karthik Srinivasan of Milliblog wrote "Yuvan nails the sound perfectly in Avan Ivan".[17] Malathi Rangarajan of The Hindu called that "Yuvan's re-recording is a definite plus" except for the climatic sequence.[18] Reviewer based at CNN-IBN stated that "Yuvan Shankar Raja's background score is effective while his songs do not make much impact".[19]
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