The Score Magazine September 2017 issue! | Page 45

mindset since the 60’s that if your song is not part of a film
then it’s not good enough. Right from classical exponents like
Pandit Ravi Shankar to rock musicians like Vishal Dadlani,
they all have dabbled in whatever satiates their soul but the
money-spinner is Bollywood. Bollywood also took the best from
Indi-pop and converted them. Sonu Nigam, KK, Shaan, Lucky
Ali, Adnan Sami & even A Band Of Boys are all examples of
it. Everything on television, right from the reality shows to
the soap operas, jingles, commercials are all hinged around
a ladder to Bollywood. Every musician has to succumb to
this archaic script laden, promotional vehicle method called
playback to fill the seats of a theatre with a sucking up to the
producer in between to boot. This song and dance routine
which was again aped from the west in the 60’s is still prevalent
in our films, forces musicians to write hooky songs with no
shelf life, whereas Independent music pursuing self expression
is not about pleasing anyone and a window into the soul of the
artiste, and that is probably the reason why the songs written
by all the Pop artists of the lucky 10 year batch in the 90’s, still
have so much nostalgia & recall value.
The current Indie scene is also very focused on only how to
play in a festival. It takes a lot to write material, which would
have enough musicality to stand out amongst the clutter and
most importantly be loved by the mass of the country. So I
don’t understand why is it that most Indie bands write in a
language, which is not their native tongue, and make audio /
video content which is so eclectic or angsty. The majority of the
artistes are either pushing electronica or a live band outfit &
writing songs about some ridiculous surreal moment in life &
then wondering why they aren’t popular. The very word “Pop”
is derived from “Popular”, so aping the west & calling yourself,
“Indie” which was previously “Indi-pop” does not really cut
it, if you can’t please the majority of your country with your
own music. Also a great contributing factor is that television
& radio platforms which used to give airplay to songs purely
on merit does not exist anymore, so a true mass populace
hearing an artist from YouTube & giving him enough gigs to be
comfortable on his own music is extremely rare. So to answer
your question if there’s one thing I’d like to change about the
Indie scene is that I’d like to kill Bollywood. Why, because I’d
really like to see what R.D. Burman would have been if he was
only a pop artist?
Tell us about your association with Harman Professional.
It’s been 6 months since my endorsement with Harman
Professional and my 2 studios are brimming with Harman
products. They say people make the party & this one’s
getting bigger every year. Right from the much sought after
prestigious gig for an artist at the Harman Live Arena, Palm
Expo to the supremely wide array of umbrella products they
have an association with, Harman Professional India is at the
cutting edge of technology and at the top of innovative quality.
Personally for me the people at this place, namely Prashant
Govindan, Yogesh Nambiar, Ashish Barje, Harish Nair &
Pallavi Gupta have been amazingly hands on with all my
queries, wants, needs & fancies!
What products have you used and tell us about the
unique features.
As we speak, I’ve unboxed the legacy products of AKG, the
C214 & the C451B condenser, which just came in yesterday
and tracked both of them for a jingle. The results are superior
compared to the Rode NT2, which I’ve used for a long time. I
get to hear brighter hi-mids on my voice now. Also the AKG,
D7 with the HT4500 & SR500 is my go to microphone for live
gigs & the quality I get from that is unreal. My sound Engineer
Nasan Fernandes, from SNL PRO is also extremely impressed
with the fidelity and he’s flummoxed that he has to do hardly
any equalizing on my channel. Plus what’s unique about this
product is it’s extremely low battery consumption. Also the
JBL PRX 800 wedges give me a distinct edge when used in
different rooms for rehearsals with the band as I have to only
recall EQ presets tuned & named in the past from the iPad app
for the same & I’m all set to rehearse in my Pune or Mumbai
studio on the flick of a button. This is a far easier & correct way
to control the boom or feedback that one usually incurs from a
10-12 inch driver due to wrong room reflections in a live band
scenario.
How do you think Harman's products help you create
better sound?
I’m a big fan of Live Electronica & I’m probably one of the
few singers in the country who carries a 20kg custom rig,
christened as “Trakelton” (Traktor+Ableton) ont o stage letting
me control the EQ, f/x, stutter, filter, delay, double delay, filter
delay, transpose and pretty much any studio gimmicks that
one can think of. This is so, cos my alternative act “The Liquid
Bass project” requires me to have vocals in live clubs & arenas
where the PA is not designed to handle live vocals. This pretty
much forced me to carry my own processing onto stage and not
rely on an engineer to control the FOH as most clubs would
not be able to afford a sound engineer, or a mixing console of
half decent repute & have only DJ’s spinning from CDJs. And
invariably I’d have to use the Pioneer CDJ 4 channel mixer
standardly available at all clubs for dishing out a performance
with music and vocals. This need for stringent near studio
quality on my vocals has reached an unparalleled quality since
Harman Professional India in my life as I’m now rehearsing &
gigging in a an environment, where the capture & playback are
all top notch compared to the mediocre quality earlier which
was filled with mediocre quality & latency issues in the past.
If there is one particular product of theirs that you
can swear by, which one would it be and why?
I swear by the AKG D7 cordless along with the SR4500. It’s the
best in which my voice has sounded over the years compared
to any microphone.
Tell us about your upcoming projects
Currently working on a brilliant set up with my live 5 piece
band to record, produce & perform Live Bollywood Dance
Music. I’m very proud of the musicality of this act as it’s
something, which I’ve fine-tuned over the last 2 years with a
Traktor midi-synced on an Ableton template, at the core of it.
The idea is to have long sets of “verse-chorus-drop” routines
with special emphasis on the band playing on top of a skeleton
minus tracks such that the full band can slam their parts live
without worrying about overlapping frequencies & muddying
the mix. This genre demands an intricate production approach
as Dance music of any form should move from song to song or
track to track harmonically & continuously with key and BPM
irregularities maintained. This involves a lot of rehearsals
& tracking as the bands parts have to affect a very tight mix
live with the track to sound fuller, complete with sub & mid
frequencies swinging. That and the servicing of the ad film
industry keeps me quite occupied. Also once in a while the
acting job also motivates me to leave the comfort of my studio.
Your message to upcoming bands
Find your own sound & follow your heart!
The
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