SHIRREN VARGHESE
takes us through his association with Harman Professional , the products he endorses , his view on technology in music , changes he would like to see in the current scene and more .
You are part of India ' s first and only boy band . What were the challenges you faced at that point when you first started ?
When we first started we were handpicked for the chalk & cheese nature of our voices , which also meant that all of us had a distinct rendition style for any song , so one of the first challenges was to imbibe all our collective styles positively and make that into a single layered unison sound which then went on to become the trademark ABOB , 5 piece harmony sound that we are famous for . The secondary challenge in this was maintaining the balance of a main versus harmony on stage when each one of us rotated for lead parts . That combined with the high octane , choreography with barely any space to breathe did not help either . Having said that , the dull Nadeem-Shravan sound in Bollywood then & the booming wave of fresh Indi-pop that we caught at the right time , helped us catapult to being India ’ s first & still , the only boy band , singing & dancing into people ’ s hearts . Everything else since then has been a mindblowing experience !
As a musician , how do you see technology playing an important role in making music ?
In today ’ s date , I thank God that we have technology . There is a huge evolve in the quality of recordings which was not there earlier . The lack of a super fine capture of that era lent a certain restricted quality to the texture , presentation , arrangement & the sound of music . So it forced musicians towards virtuosity & the emphasis was on performance & performance alone . In contrast to which higher fidelity , multi tracking , layering , fusion of arrangements & sounds etc , has made the music of today unbelievably flexible in terms of producing , so the emphasis is no more on a single take delivery but on a higher production value . This also is a double edged sword as now a bedroom producer with a nagging hook could produce a hit record as much as a veteran chopping it with serious session players , at Yash Raj . Technology has shrunk the whole process of making music professionally onto a laptop , which also means than any idiot with a decent sample bank can produce music which probably will have no shelf life due to the voracious consumption of music in the world today , but for serious musicians who take time out to understand & study how an audio wave form was processed in Analog then & Digital now technology is definitely a boon . 20 years down the line we probably might see only laptop musicians .
If there is something you would like to change in the current Indie scene , what would it be and why ?
Music in our country unfortunately is only about Bollywood . The best of the Indie artists have had to bow down to this omnipresent devil , as Bollywood has created this
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