#
Maybe a bunch of words come into our head and sound good together.
#
Maybe it's a tune, just a lick perhaps that we imagine or that we play.
#
Maybe we create some art, something that looks like it stands out from the world.
#
That first moment of inspiration has such purity in it.
#
We create for the joy of creating and then other stuff happens to that impulse.
#
We want validation and we want others to admire what we've come up with.
#
Sometimes we want that validation so much that we allow it to drive what we create.
#
And sometimes after creating something, if others like it, we become prisoners of that
#
We want to reproduce the applause, so we reproduce the creation and don't keep evolving.
#
It's like a band that plays the same song in concerts for 20 years because that's what
#
We could be trapped by what other people want of us.
#
We could also be trapped by the ease of creating one thing over and over again instead of getting
#
out of our comfort zones.
#
It is natural for us to go in all these different directions.
#
These impulses are hardwired into us and they're also rational.
#
That's why we need to be aware of them and be clear about what we want.
#
If you think of yourself as a creator, sit down and ask yourself, what about the act
#
of creating do you find joyful?
#
Ask yourself that and never lose that joy.
#
Welcome to The Scene and The Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral
#
Please welcome your host, Amit Verma.
#
Welcome to The Scene and The Unseen.
#
My guest today is my good friend, Gaurav Chintamani, who is actually also the editor of the show.
#
Gaurav is a man who wears many different hats.
#
He is a musician who is known for playing bass in the band Advaita.
#
He is a composer and producer who has written hundreds of jingles over the years.
#
He runs the audio program and teaches sound at the Sri Aurobindo Center for Arts and Communication
#
People joked that 90% of the audio engineers in Delhi have been trained by him.
#
He's also a blues guitarist who thinks out of the box, as you'll see from his solo project,
#
The Dirt Machine, which I've linked in the show notes.
#
He owns a studio, Quaternode Studios, where I regularly record in Delhi.
#
He also has a lovely Instagram page, so one could argue.
#
It's actually his son Ishan's Instagram page, as that's where videos of Ishan singing covers
#
during Covid went viral.
#
Gaurav's latest project is producing Raman Negi's new album, Raman's First, after leaving
#
the cult brand The Local Train.
#
They came to Mumbai to do a concert together, and I took the chance to invite Gaurav over
#
to my home studio to record with me.
#
I've been wanting to do this for a while, as Gaurav has a quality of self-reflection
#
and thoughtfulness about his craft that I find pretty rare.
#
In this episode, he talks about his life in music, what he has learnt about playing and
#
composing and producing and being in a band, what he has learnt about the creative impulse,
#
and also the importance of going to first principles while learning anything.
#
I love how he connects food to music in this episode.
#
Gaurav also happens to be my cousin, though we discovered this just last year, well into
#
our professional association and our friendship.
#
But when you listen to this lovely conversation, which I enjoyed so much, you will agree there
#
Now let's go for a quick commercial break.
#
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In the course itself, through four webinars spread over four weekends, I share all I know
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There are many exercises, much interaction, a lovely and lively community at the end of
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The course costs rupees 10,000 plus GST or about $150 and is a monthly thing.
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That's indiancut.com slash clear writing.
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Being a good writer doesn't require God given talent, just the willingness to work hard
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and a clear idea of what you need to do to refine your skills.
#
Gaurav, welcome to the scene on The Unseen.
#
I'm still wondering what I'm doing here, but yeah, thank you for having me.
#
So how was your concert last night?
#
You were performing with Raman in Parel and unfortunately I couldn't make it because I
#
was out of town, but how was the show?
#
It was great given the set of parameters that can go wrong at a gig of this scale, like
#
He's got a, he's got an interesting small army of fans building up who are walking away
#
from his, you know, the image that they think that Raman is.
#
And yeah, some issues, but it was good.
#
The interesting, the most interesting thing that happened yesterday.
#
So the gig gets over and I'm a stickler for like packing up as soon as possible because
#
I don't want to forget shit and all of that.
#
But anyway, I'm packing up, I'm wiping the sweat off the guitar and this couple walks
#
up on stage and they're like, you got it right.
#
So my initial reaction was a little bit of like, obviously, now I'm announced and you
#
watched the gig, I'm assuming.
#
But I was polite and I said, yeah, I am.
#
And I was ready with my thank you for making it here and I appreciate all of that.
#
And they said, we are massive fans of the scene and the unseen, but I don't know how
#
I just like, I started laughing, it's like, okay, I, you know, I thought I said, you know,
#
you know, I'm not Amit, right?
#
So they said, no, no, no, like, we know off you only because of the scene and the unseen.
#
It's the first time ever in 20 years of playing music that I've been in a spot to where because
#
of something else that I'm involved with, people have landed up at a gig who may or
#
may not have been fans of his music in the first place.
#
And they started chatting about the show, they said how their conversations are basically
#
based around the episodes that you drop every week and they're obsessed with the show.
#
And they spoke to me for a couple of minutes and I didn't, they did not talk about the
#
They didn't say like they like the show or they like the music and all that.
#
They just kept talking about your thing.
#
I was like, this is the first, but I'm so sorry, I forgot to ask them their names.
#
And if you're listening to this, you should tweet to Amit and yeah, you should drop in
#
But yeah, that was the, that was the most interesting thing that happened at a gig ever,
#
But, but yeah, the gig was fine.
#
Like we, we've, we've done two quick ones.
#
We were in Pune the night before last and Bombay yesterday.
#
So just warming up to this new thing that I'm trying to do with him.
#
And yeah, besides that, I'm getting Bombay'd, you know, I, I think I've done six hours
#
on the road already in one day, which I don't know how the city, how people in the city
#
Like coming from Delhi, like because the traffic is pretty bad, but at least it moves.
#
Then thank you for coming here also.
#
And for my listeners, when Gaurav landed up, he said, now I know why you like to stay
#
at home and you don't go out much.
#
And actually, I don't think in any city I would really go out much because I'm just
#
kind of, I like to stay with myself.
#
Just like Satra said, hell is other people.
#
And this has happened to me.
#
This happened to me yesterday also, I was coming back from Jaipur and someone stopped
#
me at the airport and said, are you so and so, and you know, thank you for what you do.
#
And I did ask his name.
#
And so thank you, Ravi.
#
And that's happened to me actually three times of the last four that I've been inside
#
And it's quite wonderful, but what is also wonderful about it in a sense is that everybody
#
else all around is completely clueless of what the hell is going on as they take a selfie
#
or something, which tells you that, you know, in a small, you know, one has sort of dedicated
#
listeners, but it's a small band of people.
#
And for the rest of the people, as I think living in Vasova, I know you're kind of,
#
parents, we are, you know, I'm traveling with my son, so I had promised him that whenever
#
I go on like a couple of cities, like a short tour, I'll take you along.
#
And we can chat about it later, like, you know, how he's, I'm trying to like show him the
#
working and the little bit of the amount of effort that goes into putting a show together
#
But we were, it was a few days ago, we were leaving from Delhi and he's got a little presence
#
online and he got recognized at the airport.
#
It was almost like, you know, that I'm going with my father and my father is going somewhere
#
to do some work and he got recognized at the airport.
#
In fact, at both in Pune and in Bombay, like we, like, he's standing with me and people
#
are coming up and trying to take snaps with him.
#
So it's, yeah, it's weird, like, which is fine now for me, that okay, his presence is
#
a certain way, but you should be getting mobbed, man.
#
You know, you are going, like, you're going straight into the heads of people for eight
#
hours every week, like, yeah, that sound, that recognizable voice, like, you should
#
No, thank you so much, and I'm grateful for the little bit of appreciation I get.
#
I mean, recently I've been sort of thinking about why I'm doing this and just wondering
#
and just wondering if there are maybe diminishing returns, not diminishing returns in terms
#
of validation of money or anything like that, but, you know, just kind of what's the point
#
But that's a larger existential thing, I guess.
#
So you know, I mentioned coming back from Jaipur, and there's a question I want to ask
#
you and I'm planning to make a video on it for a YouTube channel I'm going to start,
#
so that stuff should be out there before this episode is.
#
But in case it isn't, you'll know, okay, he's procrastinating again.
#
But the question was, so when I was driving through Jaipur, right, and there are parts
#
of it which are, you know, clearly touristy, they're meant to be places where tourists
#
go and there are parts of it which are not so much.
#
But in both those parts, there was a lot of pink.
#
And of course, Jaipur is known as the pink city.
#
And so I looked up the history of that on Wikipedia, apparently in the late 1800s, there
#
was a visiting English monarch to be, he was then a prince, and in his honor, for whatever
#
reason, they painted the city pink.
#
And I thought of the possible self-perpetuating effects it could have if you get known as
#
a pink city, because then it becomes something that tourists and travelers expect when they
#
And so, you know, more of the city will turn pink, perhaps, especially the touristy parts
#
will all be basically pink.
#
And even those who rebel who are nonconformists will be few.
#
And they will only nonconform as long as people are conforming to something.
#
So the dominant theme has to be pinkness for them to move away from pinkness.
#
But the danger there is, and I'm using this as a metaphor, but the danger in the immediate
#
sense is that Jaipur becomes pink, and because it is pink, it is not as much of other colors
#
And in I think of this in the personal realm, that where, for example, as a musician, you
#
could choose a particular path, let's say you start playing a particular kind of music
#
or even you know, you might be good at four or five instruments, but you start playing
#
one instrument, or let's say you join a band which does a particular kind of music and
#
then you're married to the band.
#
And you've, in a sense for yourself, chosen a kind of pinkness, a dominant theme, and
#
other themes then kind of get washed out.
#
And because the one thing of which you cannot get away from the scarcity is time, you know,
#
if you're going to practice, you're going to practice towards that end, you know, everything
#
kind of goes towards that and context of music, I'm sure you can identify with, but there
#
are various other contexts this could be in if you're a young girl growing up somewhere,
#
and you are praised for your feminine values, you know, like I forget which of my guests
#
it is, I think maybe Shanta Gokhale, you listen to the show as much as I do, so I'm sure you
#
might remember, but you know, she I quoted from one of her books where somebody was praising
#
her daughter and saying, oh, she's just like a cow, you know, and the thing is, if you
#
then get your validation for one particular aspect of who you are, then that can become
#
your whole personality, because obviously, you want more of that validation.
#
So if you're a young girl growing up in the 60s or 70s, or wherever at any time in a patriarchal
#
society, and you're expected to be a particular way, and you get praised for that, you mold
#
yourself in that image, and then there is, that is all you are, and the multitudes that
#
are otherwise within you kind of go unexpressed.
#
And this is something I certainly think about in terms of every path chosen as a path not
#
chosen, it is, you know, it is a pinkness. What are your sort of thoughts on this?
#
So there's the obvious thing of comfort, you know, and I'm going to approach it from the
#
point of view of practicing towards a certain goal. But like say, when you pick up an instrument,
#
or when you start playing music, you're imitating a certain set of sounds, a certain set of
#
let's call them phrases, or like you're joining the dots in a very familiar way.
#
And I think that's a way, there's a reward over there. And that reward is, it grows with
#
each practice routine, practice set, and you're getting better at executing the same set of
#
ideas. And everything like the reward, that validation of being able to pull off a sound
#
in your head, and now you're, you become your first audience, right? You're hearing yourself
#
pulling it off. Then there's that second tier, where you can present it to other people,
#
other people who may or may not have a similar idea about the first year of the goal that
#
needs to be achieved. And then there is this collective, ki kya baat hai, you know, bah
#
saitha. And out of out of that, I think like stems this commonality of people that could
#
possibly be in a band together, where you say that, okay, these are your set of, and
#
I'm talking about maybe like a very ideal situation that this is your strength. This
#
is my weakness. And you just land in this situation where you realize that somebody's
#
strength camouflages the other person's weakness. And your weakness becomes almost like a sense
#
of strength in the other person's presence. I'll give you an example, like say, like say
#
an average bass player, and I include myself in that list, an average bass player can just
#
sound way better playing with a drummer who is just like feels time better, for example,
#
and I'm to use that, that the pinkness idea, like I think like there is, there is, there
#
are a set of finish lines in every endeavor, which need to be ticked off before I think
#
like further exploration can happen. I think what you were, what you were wondering about
#
and what I'm also thinking about now is that, is it okay just being pink forever? You know,
#
just find that pinkness and just be there. And the market is going to keep growing.
#
The music is going to reach more people. If it reaches the set of people that you have
#
checked off your list, you can obviously start looking for more people. Like, you know, that
#
you can present that music to new people, like infinite number of audiences. But I think
#
like looking inwards to grow that, that pink needs to change. You know, that pink, that
#
pink is a trap. And I, and I feel like it's the easiest thing to applaud yourself for
#
the least amount of effort. You checked off a certain amount of things to do. You reached
#
a certain point in your ability to execute an idea. You can execute the idea now and
#
that idea is getting applause. It's very easy to get like trapped in that, they know that
#
applause and like, you know, the echo of it and like feel good. But I somehow feel that
#
that is exactly the pivot. You know, once you can, once you have your, whatever you
#
want to call it, like your audience, your tribe or your band of brothers, like whom
#
you're with, with whom you're executing a certain kind of music. I feel like it's, it's,
#
it's critical to now start like just changing that weight. You know, I'm, I'm standing at
#
this tripod right in front of us and I'm just wondering like if, if, if one was to lean
#
into one angle a little bit, you know, and then if one was to lean into this side a little
#
bit, like it's almost like, it's obvious, like, like the weight on the other two changes.
#
And then what does that mean? Like let's say musically. So for example, if you found comfort
#
into the blues, yeah, it's never going to leave you. It's never going to leave you.
#
And we could, we could talk about this later, I guess, like I have a solo project in which,
#
which I, which I was really like the, I started with the question, like, you know, key, okay,
#
key, key blues cow Maryland care, you know, I can't just, I could sit and blaze through
#
a solo play, play some known cliches and phrases and all that. But like, that's just like
#
a set of ideas, which I've put together. I'm not claiming to be like exceptionally or like
#
original in that idea of what I pulled off, but I thought I just tried to answer that
#
question. Like, what does the blues mean to me? And in, in, in that sense key, this, this
#
idea of key, you have arrived at that, I'm just going to call it the pinkness. Now you've
#
arrived at that pinkness and that's the plateau below, which you will not fall as long as
#
you maintain a certain amount of dedication or practice or whatever you want to, whatever
#
you want to call it. Some people decide to stick with that and that's absolutely fine.
#
Like they become victims of their own, like set of goals and that's cool. Like you can,
#
I think you can pretty much milk a career out of like doing the same shit again and
#
again and what he care. It's also a thing once, once you get lesser, say like exponential
#
level of applause for some efforts that you've put in, I mean, why will you give that away?
#
You know, you have to be really bold or stupid. And I don't know what the difference is between
#
those two to, to be able to start going into directions where you expect the people to
#
follow with the applause, you know, and I guess it's a whole different set of problems.
#
I might be rambling over here, but it's a whole different set of problems about when
#
you do take that left turn and it becomes a little obtuse and the applause doesn't
#
follow you and your own ability now just fails you, you know, because you realize that it's
#
a whole new set of whatever, like maybe technique based problems or other things that you need
#
to deal with before you can get to another level of pinkness. But yeah, I think at the
#
core of it, it's a trap, but it's a trap. It's almost like, you know, it's almost like
#
the layers of the Chuck review concept. You need to be able to be completely okay and
#
familiar with the trap that you're in. And only then you can just like go okay. Yeah.
#
Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if that makes sense, but yeah, yeah, it makes it. It's sparking
#
off a lot of things I want to double click on. And one of them is this. I was, I was
#
just reading this blog this morning by said Gordon, where he was talking about, yeah,
#
where he was talking about hard work and long work. Right. And I'll talk about the distinction
#
he makes. We might argue about whether these specific terms apply to the concepts he's
#
talking about, but I want to talk about the concepts more. And to him, long work is like
#
when you do one thing again and again for a long period of time. For example, you're
#
a typist in an office and you go there every day and you put in your eight hour shifts
#
and you do your typing or you're working in a factory and you go to your sewing machine
#
and you put in your shift and that's long work. It's not leading to any growth necessarily.
#
It is probably making you better at that particular craft. It, everything becomes more reflexive,
#
but even there, once you reach a certain pinkness, it is sort of where you are. And hard work,
#
the way he defined it was that there's more mental effort in terms of the example he used
#
was you take five different ideas and you synthesize it into something completely new
#
and you do it in five minutes and that can qualify as hard work. Now, some people would
#
say right now, the earlier one was hard work. This is smart work, whatever. Leaving that
#
aside, there is a distinction, I think, conceptually in one kind of work and another kind of work.
#
And I'm just thinking aloud here that if you are a cricketer and I use this sort of analogy
#
a lot in my writing course about the importance of practice. If you're a cricketer, you want
#
to play the perfect cover drive. You've got to play 10,000 imperfect cover drives before
#
you get to that perfect place. But when you are there, it is what it is. It is, it is
#
what it is. It is, if it is pink, it is the only color that matters. You've gained excellence
#
in that. There is no place to grow. But one could argue that even there, cricketers can
#
get trapped in the notion of a certain conventional way of playing. Like, for example, ABD Viliers
#
10 years ago and perhaps Suryakumar Yadav today play shorts that are inconceivable, that
#
people do not practice in the nets and they did not get trapped by a notion of what is
#
correct or what is doable. And they kind of went beyond. But essentially, most great batsmen
#
are simply great batsmen who haven't, you know, gone beyond that pinkness, but who've
#
just done the basics better than anyone else. Right. And this is not what music is. Right.
#
Like, I mean, the two ways to think about it is one, if you think about music as something
#
mystical, then what you're conjuring up when you compose a tune or when you, when four
#
people sit together and you jam and something comes out that none of you has heard before.
#
It's almost like something has been fashioned out of thin air. And that's one way of looking
#
at it. And there's another way of looking at it, which is that everything that we do,
#
we everything that we enjoy, whether it is musical or smells or whatever, is because
#
certain neurons in our brains are firing in certain ways. This group of notes together
#
is producing this soothing effect on me or this exciting effect on me. And everything
#
is like that. And perhaps our understanding of the brain and the science of it is not
#
complex enough to be able to understand it fully or to automate it as I think at some
#
point is inevitable. But that's really what's happening. It is at the base of it. It is
#
a mechanistic process where certain inputs from us in terms of the sounds we play are
#
having an output in terms of the effect in a person's brains because of the neurons that
#
they are affecting. So even if it seems like magic, you know, the thing is that there is
#
a craft behind it and it is implicit. And most of what you have learned, you can't even
#
put it into words, but you kind of know it is like a lot of the comfort food for you
#
in terms of music. I would imagine those cliched phrases that just put you in the vibe and
#
just kind of make you happy or whatever are that way because you know, the first time
#
you heard them, you felt a particular way, neurons that fire together, wire together,
#
you know, so it takes you back to that comfort zone and that's why you're playing that.
#
And then it takes an effort to go beyond that because once you're comfortable, why should
#
you stretch out? And it's a different kind of pinkness from what I referred to earlier
#
in my question because that was sort of an intentional pinkness where Jaipur decides
#
it is going to be pink and individuals decide they're going to be pink and it goes that
#
way or a girl decides that she's going to smile every time she talks to someone because
#
that's expected of girls. But whereas this kind of pinkness as it were is more a comfort
#
zone kind of thing that you get into a groove and then you're sort of in that groove and
#
there's no reason to kind of get out of it. Like as a listener of music, I am certainly
#
in a groove that I'm not in as a watcher of cinema or as a reader of books, but as a listener
#
of music, I'm in a groove where I don't really care about discovering new stuff. There's
#
a bunch of stuff that is comfort music from when I was a teenager and a young man and
#
I just play those and otherwise I play background stuff while I work, but that's really it.
#
So in terms of your relationship to music and what you've seen other musicians go through,
#
is that something that you need to watch out for? Because one argument would be that, yeah,
#
you find your vibe, you find your groove, you become great in that. You don't need to
#
go beyond that. But whereas the other one could be that the more you sort of expand
#
your horizons in terms of what you listen to and what you play, you become a different
#
person each time you expand a little bit. But bloody hell, that's a lot more work. In
#
fact, what said Gordon said about hard work, perhaps applies there. It's a lot of mental
#
Yeah, heavy question. There are two things cropping up right now. One is the individual
#
effort, which is reaching a certain point in your ability where you can align yourself
#
with other people for a particular set of listeners, deliver basically. And I'll digress
#
for just a second. This thing about music being just like you're grabbing it out of
#
thin air, right? I've really thought about this because this, I haven't reached an answer
#
and all that, but I really questioned the thing about like you originally. Like honestly,
#
there's no two people, no two people here audio the same way. I just cannot, it's not
#
possible. Like just the sheer, like just if you talk about the biology, like the shape
#
of your ear is as unique as your fingerprint, you know, like it's just the way sound enters
#
your ear. It's just not going to be the same for two people. It's not possible. Starting
#
from there, right? Like the balance of, and it might get a little geeky, but the balance
#
of like this frequency to amplitude to the tamper of the sound and when it hits you.
#
And then there is this entire open field of like everybody's experiences are different
#
reaching up to the point of where they are when they listen to a piece of music, right?
#
And I'm talking about like, it's just like people in the band, like it's a set of people
#
who are playing together in a jam room. Somebody gets an idea and they play this and somebody
#
reacts to it and they bring in their own set of experiences, their own, whatever level
#
of pinkness and they bring that. And then somehow for a brief second, it has to collide
#
in a way that neurons that wire together, but these are now in separate bodies, you
#
know, like they have to align and this just keeps getting like exponentially complex when
#
you add members in the band. So like my main act, my main band, there were eight people
#
in a room, like, you know, like this tweaking an idea, nudging it into shape and you realize
#
that it's a process of subtraction that you need to let go of a certain set of your own
#
expected reaction. And he will react this way because can't you hear what I'm playing?
#
You're supposed to play that groove, but you're playing something else totally. So people
#
are hearing audio differently. People are feeling time differently, you know, music
#
made, there is a thing of like one land on the one, so everybody has to feel the one
#
that's actually like the basis of like funk music and all that basis count. So it's a
#
basis of all music except the really mathematical proggy shit, which just goes like past me
#
like if I want to see virtuosity, I will see like, I would rather see somebody plate a
#
beautiful dish than listen to like mathematically perfect music or whatever. But coming back
#
to this, like that brief moment where everybody has to feel a certain set of commonality and
#
like in their energy reaction, all of that. And then it has to, then it has to be played
#
in. Like how much did you prepare to arrive at this point where you can execute somebody
#
else's idea to the emotional level that they are expecting you to. And then that whole
#
thing of strength and weaknesses, you know, that corporate thing, like you fall back,
#
somebody's there to catch you. Like somebody will cover up, you know, so it might be as
#
simple as like, say the keyboard player will play a voicing, which is not impossible, but
#
like it just doesn't feel the same way on the guitar. So maybe the chords that were,
#
or the harmony that was written on the guitar now needs to be played on a keyboard because
#
the guitar is not the instrument for it, which takes us into a totally different territory
#
that your idea of those musical intervals being played together in a certain division
#
of time, is this the right instrument for it in the first place? And I'll, you know,
#
you had the conversation with Warren, which trigger, which is set off from the Beatles
#
and you know, and if you think about the Beatles, which, so my, my, all references of my music,
#
uh, the questions that I need to be, that need to be answered, they either lie in food
#
or in the Beatles. Like, you know, like I start and stop over there and 20 years, they
#
have found all the answers that I needed to look for. So the Beatles stopped touring,
#
right? And they get into the studio and they're like, okay, we don't have to tour. So we
#
can use other instruments, which we will not, we don't have to play this shit live ever.
#
You know, so start, they start doing some really experimental things and you suddenly
#
realize that just because you're a guitar player, because this is the only instrument
#
is mechanics. So then does it really make sense that your music needs this sound that
#
opens a can of worms, right? Key now, how are people going to not only react to these
#
musical intervals that you're presenting to them in a sense of time, but also to the sound
#
with which you react because somebody's, I don't know, cutlery on a, on porcelain or
#
chalk on a blackboard is somebody else's like, Oh, like, yes, not a level of like calm has
#
made, you know, I, I, that's the other thing that key that's, that's, I think the thing
#
key, like you cannot win all, you forget about listeners. You can't even win everybody in
#
the band. Well, possibly in here. So you are trying to figure out the, the most ideal combination,
#
which, which gets triggered because of one brief second or like 16 measures of playing
#
something in a jam room, which just felt right. And I've really thought about this, you know,
#
like, and I'm repeating myself, because for example, we used to rehearse twice a week
#
for three hours, like your fixed, fixed up, you know, we would meet, we would rehearse.
#
We would meet at our keyboard player's house and he had a small room of which eight of
#
us would cram ourselves in and we would play. Now, before life overtook us and we had like
#
other shit to take care of and practices started becoming lesser and lesser. One thing was
#
that, you know, Delhi work in progress, construction happening, flyovers being built and all that
#
and our, our keyboard player stays in CR park. So almost all of us had to, except a drummer
#
had to cross this thing called the Chirag Delhi flyover. Now that is like, it's either
#
death or like, you are just key. Let me remember this moment for the rest of my life. It did
#
not suck my life out of me, you know, and we would start landing up at rehearsals and
#
nobody acknowledged it. But now when I think back, like, I think we just like pissed off
#
at like the other things happening. Now, the thing which is supposed to bring you joy,
#
the repetition, which initially bought you joy now just becomes like mundane, you know,
#
and the same set of notes you find yourself trying to remember the moment when you made
#
it, when the track made sense, when this thing made sense, which is actually a great thing
#
that happened to us because our practices got lesser, but we were like, you know, that
#
opened up a different thing. I've digressed and talking about it, but that opened up this
#
thing about what is that song really, you know, that version that was captured and it's
#
on record or it's one thing in time. It now it doesn't belong to you. It belongs to other
#
people. You know, it's tied in with the emotion that they felt when they first heard the song
#
or when what they felt when they saw that song live. And it becomes such a trap because
#
you're supposed to now you're stuck with it. You're stuck with the weight of this moment
#
that you created for other people and you are now just presenting it for them again
#
and again. So I think the bold artists and I don't know if I would put like the band
#
in that category, we reinvented our tracks, we reharmonized them, we rearranged them,
#
you know, we wrote new riffs on them. Core structure because the song will remain the
#
same. You know, you can imagine like Vande Matram or National Anthem like a trillion
#
different ways, but that melody will remain the same. So as long as that melody gets
#
across to the people, which is what Bob Dylan is doing right now, right? A few of my friends,
#
sorry, this is going all over the place, but few of my friends like who've seen him live,
#
they're like, you just have to pinch yourself and say that that's Bob Dylan because the
#
song he's mumbling out right now, that's not like a Rolling Stone. That's not blowing in
#
the wind. That is not like Ballad of Julius Priest, Frank Lee and that is not the song.
#
He is just doing whatever he wants. Like he's changed harmonies. He has changed melodies.
#
He, now the only crutch that you have are the words, you know, because it in me way
#
was written for me when I had that breakup, but now that melody is totally different.
#
So I don't know, like this idea of, I think he's on that quest, you know, and I think
#
what all of us are on that quest, kya kuch original karna hai. But that original is such
#
a, that's a, you're just chasing mist. You're never going to catch it because I think the
#
only original thing is the moment at which, at that point when it was created and you
#
are just feeding off that memory. That's it. You're just feeding off that memory of let
#
me remember that and let me just constantly try to project that. That's it. And I, I,
#
I don't know in the sense of the artists, I think the only, like the practicing musician,
#
the only joy, like I, I know it sounds weird, but like I feel, I don't know joy ka matlab
#
hi kya hai, but like, I feel more at peace practicing alone than playing in front of
#
people, like playing with a band, because I feel like more, whatever these words mean,
#
like innovative and fearlessness and all of that happens when you're practicing and you're
#
deep in practice. Like I'm not saying this will happen in the first 20 minutes. It'll
#
happen probably past the two hour mark, but the past two hour mark, like something gets
#
unlocked. And then this, you experience that brief state of flow for a little while, which
#
I rarely happen at gigs, you know, because you're, it's like a, yeah, it's like menu
#
is fixed, setlist ho gaya. Unless and until you're doing like some jazz, which, which
#
I, which I don't and, but I don't know. I guess I rambled there for a bit, but it's
#
just, it's just this thing about you're trying to constantly remind yourself of the set of
#
parameters within which a certain idea was created. And you're trying to remain true
#
to that idea as it remained true to what's happening right now, you know, at least in,
#
I want to say like 99% of the genres, unless and until you're doing like something really
#
experimental and let's just use the word jazz for that really experimental thing. No, like
#
unless and until you're doing that, it's yeah, you are just feeding off like this balance
#
of muscle memory to emotional memory to other things. And I can totally understand why after
#
a certain point, like the owner shifts and you want your audience to grow because boss
#
I'm growing. I really want to move, you know, I want to move to a point where hopefully
#
you will find comfort in my next tune. And it might not be the greatest, like Seth Godin
#
says this, no, like, uh, is it him? Was it key? Just in, in reference to writing, they're
#
like, just keep writing. The bad writing will get out of you, you know, so maybe I did,
#
we did a tune, which meant something for you and maybe the next 10 tunes will not mean
#
anything, you know, but like, wait for the 11th one. And I feel like I don't know digress,
#
like that, that owners has then shifts to the audience that follows you. So that 102
#
France might trickle down to one, but like that guts of like carrying on. I don't know,
#
like I don't have a finished line to this, to this thought.
#
Yeah, lots of good stuff to double click on. And, uh, you know, I'm reminded of that famous
#
quote of Heraclitus that no man ever steps in the same river twice. And an artist in
#
a sense, your work, your art is like that river, which is constantly flowing and evolving.
#
You're never in the same place. Right. But everything is nebulous, but you are tied down
#
by the forces of commerce and validation and all of those things. You know, just reproduce
#
that like, I think Raman at some point has expressed frustration that his crowds always
#
wanting for Chulo, which he wrote in his early twenties and it's not, you know, and it's
#
a great song. I love that song. When I discovered his music, I just loved it. It's such a superb
#
songwriting, but I can also equally imagine that, you know, he's tired. He's moved on.
#
He's not that person. Yeah. Yeah. It's so weird that, you know, like you, you write a
#
song or you, an idea is take shape at a certain point in your life. Now all those factors
#
of when it gets recorded, the quality with which it's recorded, whether it checks all
#
the boxes you want or not. And we, as like, as Advaita, we are notorious like of Khatam
#
i nahi karte hum log, you know, we've recorded, we've mixed the same song like seven times,
#
but wo khatami nahi hora because it just, it just has something missing. And anyway,
#
like it eventually reaches the audience at a point where the artist has moved on already,
#
but now he has to serve, you know, he has to serve that song and which, which Advaita,
#
which every band in this country, or I will say like, like every band in the world has
#
to do, like they have to do it. And I, and I guess like, uh, again, like Beatles, right?
#
Like he, they, I think they managed to do their most productive work because they stopped
#
touring and they didn't owe anything to the audience anymore. They could just do whatever
#
the hell they wanted and lap it up or don't like, it doesn't make a difference to them
#
at all. I mean, post revolver is really when their legacy gets established, but like wo
#
ho chika, even if they, even if revolver ke baad they would have stopped, I'll say it,
#
I don't even think that they needed to go till Peppers. They would have stopped at revolver
#
itself and it was fine. But, and who would have thought like the good stuff was still
#
to come, you know? And, uh, but, but we, like you are just serving the idea of like, okay,
#
this means something for them. And you're just stuck in that time warp. Yaha pe of course,
#
like it's, it's a different thing because you, if this is putting food on the table,
#
then you do what you have to do. You will have to keep serving that beast and you will
#
keep have to like, keep presenting that song again and again, but I don't know, it'll suck
#
the life out of you. It'll suck the life out of you. And probably that's why I'm saying
#
that key for me, I think the bigger joy isn't just the sitting and discovery to like your
#
own practice, you know, as opposed to putting, putting the same menu out in front of people,
#
like day after day, day after day. And after, after the point, it just becomes key. Okay.
#
Like, and especially if you're trying to present new music, like say for example, the case
#
of Raman, uh, he, he wrote these tunes. And when he, when he came to me in last, last
#
year, when he, when we spoke in April, I had just one question, like this, like I could
#
hear in the demos, like, okay, these will, these will be great. Like there's a, there's
#
a earworm quality in every song of his that he writes. And, um, I asked him ke yeh gaane
#
tera liye hai ya unke liye hai, you know, because agar yeh unke liye hai, toh then you have
#
that band, like why, just stick, just keep presenting the same thing. And like it, it'll
#
be like, people will lap it up, you know, and, uh, but no, he told me like the songs
#
are for him and then it becomes interesting. Okay. Like you give me, okay. And it becomes
#
easier also because you have this clear direction. And in fact, like that's one thing that bands
#
do all the time. Like there is a clear direction. I've just three, not three sixties, like ulta
#
murte hai, you know, like, like, let's go in the other direction and see what happens
#
over there. But again, it comes back to the point of like, and, and I keep saying this,
#
I think like, you know, the growth of an artist is, is also dependent unless and until you're
#
getting some sort of patronage, you know, kahin residency mil gayi hai, like some sort
#
of a generous stipend is coming your way. Like you're taken care of, like ki you do
#
your thing. Like give us, give us X amount of content over Y amount of tracks over Y
#
amount of time and all that, and just do your thing. Like rest is taken care of. Then you
#
can truly create. Otherwise, if you, if, if all these factors of commerce and other things
#
and like abhi to wo bhi ho gaya hai ki like not making music is the easiest thing now,
#
you know, making music is really the easiest thing because after that becomes, starts the
#
entire like painful trek of, okay, you have to now become like marketeer for your music,
#
you know, this music has apparently taken on this image and you have to become that
#
person of that image for the, for the audience. Otherwise they will say these two do not connect.
#
Like you're, you know, I remember when, when I, when I joined Advaita, I like, I, I don't
#
have anything against wearing kurtas. I think they're great, but I can't do it. I cannot
#
do it. Like I can't wear a kurta and play a gig. I just couldn't imagine myself doing
#
it. So I, I, I remember telling the guys like, yeah, kurta nahi man sakta hai. And they were
#
like, you know, it's zaruri nahi hai. Because Advaita had that image for me, you know, like
#
people used to like, it was a very Indian fusion thing and all that. Now when I look
#
back, like it's such a stupid thing to say, like I will not wear a kurta and all that,
#
but I was also 20 back then, 20 something. So, I mean, what else do you do when you're
#
20, except stupid shit. But yeah, like this thing of ki your music is like this and now
#
you're supposed to present it in exactly the same way. All the visual end should tie in
#
together. It's just, is this too much? Is this too much work which takes you away from
#
I think the real work of refining it, making it even better, making it even better and
#
getting opportunities. Like I don't think in, in this music thing, you get opportunities
#
to let the bad writing out. You just don't do it. You just don't have the opportunity
#
because it is, I don't know. I'm trying to think like, what's the blog post equivalent
#
of like, like a track that you could do something, get away with it and people would be okay.
#
You know, like I, yeah, I don't think so. Maybe you don't release it, but then you're
#
defunct. You're not, you're just not productive enough and active enough for people to be
#
on their timeline. You know, like it just, yeah, I don't know.
#
So I have a couple of thoughts and I'll refer back to the creator economy because that's
#
what I've thought about a lot in recent times. And one of those comes from this conversation
#
I was having with a friend, like I'm planning to, among the things I want to do on YouTube
#
is a show with my friend Ajay Shah. And the two of us were sitting and chatting with a
#
group of people about it. And one of them said, what you need to do is you need to look
#
at all the analytics from the first episode to see how people are reacting. And I said,
#
that is the last thing I will do. And the reason for that is that if you start chasing
#
validation and figuring out what works for the largest number of people, it's a race
#
to the bottom, right? And you can lose individuality that way. You are, you are then always second
#
guessing ki kya kaam karega, what will the algorithm pick up, what will the audience
#
think and all of that. And I think this is a danger that creators fall into and many
#
creators are recognizing this, that they get into a groove and that groove works for them.
#
And then that pinkness phanda, that it works for them. And then they are stuck in that
#
groove and they are sort of going with it. Sometimes it is a groove because of revenue.
#
You could be a travel blogger, you get into this revenue group that you know, you're getting
#
sponsors easily who are funding your trips and you're going to places and all of that.
#
And you get into only that groove. But the thing is that if you are a travel blogger,
#
what made you a travel blogger is not simply the love for traveling, which is one aspect
#
of it. It is all these other things like, you know, being curious about places, being
#
curious about new things, being curious about people and all of that kind of dies because
#
you've gotten into a groove. And that's a sort of one danger that I think creators face
#
in the pinkness. Now the other, now the other point that struck me about the creator economy
#
and goes exactly to the heart of what you were saying is that whole thing, you know,
#
you came up with that great quote about you have to keep writing so the bad writing gets
#
out of you, right? Now what I also teach in my writing courses, the important thing is
#
to build a habit. If you have a goal, like kitab likhunga, PhD thesis likhunga, whatever,
#
then it becomes really difficult. But if you have a writing habit ki roj itna likh rahe
#
hai, har hafta itna likh rahe hai, the goals fall into it. They become much easier because
#
you've got that kind of groove going. It's like you don't just sit with a guitar when
#
you want to write a song, right? You're playing it every damn day. And then when you actually,
#
sometimes song comes as a matter of course, and sometimes when you get into an intentional
#
effort, it is still much easier. And there I feel that it is particularly difficult for
#
musicians because I can, for example, you know, if you're a vlogger, you can iterate
#
endlessly. Koi aap se expect nahi kar rahe ki aap kal wahi video banao jo aaj banao
#
hai. Yeah, sorry. You know, et cetera, et cetera. You know, I don't have to like imagine
#
if my show was Groundhog Day, every day I talk to a big random guest and every episode
#
is the same thing. No, you've got to get out of the comfort zone, do different things evolve
#
and creators have figured that out. And what happens is the evolution seems slow and almost
#
unnoticed when it is happening. But after a certain chunk of time, they'll be like,
#
fuck it nahi badal gaya. You know, the same funda in a different context of the days are
#
long, the years are short. You know, I usually use that in the context of how fast time passes
#
and we get older, but also in this kind of context of how change happens. And I think
#
in that sense, musicians are therefore kind of screwed because like you said, when you're
#
alone and you don't have to cater to anything, the constraints within the group because they're
#
all individuals and there's only a certain set of things you can do, there's a path for
#
you laid out and otherwise it won't fit or what the audience might expect. All those are
#
constraints are stopping you from growing. When you're alone, maybe you can grow. Now
#
if there's a musician vlogger who every day is putting out a different song or he's jamming
#
with his friends and it's on camera, I can imagine you might find your thousand true
#
fans and they don't really care. They don't want the same damn thing because the joy is
#
in the jam. But the point is most people, you know, unless you're a fan of a jamming
#
group, like a Grateful Dead or you like jazz or whatever, you want the songs that trigger
#
certain feelings and memories in you, you want them played again and again. Like I'm
#
sure when Raman is 70, there will be some idiot at his concert still shouting for Chulo.
#
And it's not that idiot's fault. Like I could be that idiot. I love the song, but I keep
#
telling him, you know, that he's touched. Yeah, literally. And this is exactly the frustration
#
you just expressed. So it's not even a question in that sense, but and it's something that
#
I guess all musicians face. So what do you, what jugars do you do to get around this?
#
Like one level of your dedication to music is ki theek hai haar hafta band milega, do
#
gante ke liye practice karenge, we'll come through whatever flyover and if we get there
#
alive, we will somehow play. But is there then another personal kind of jugar which
#
you have to do where you say that some of this time I have to devote to myself to kind
#
of going beyond this. Like it's a question I've got from, in fact, two of my writing
#
students in the recent past, both sports journalists saying ki ya day job mein poora
#
din likhte hain, thug gaya ho, you know apne liye mera, you know, what do I feel like?
#
Everything's coagulated. Maybe to concretize it, maybe if you can think of people who manage
#
to move past it or... Yeah, which is what we're doing, right? Like we're always looking
#
for references and just a quick hug back to ki original kya hi hai, like, you know, let's
#
just draw the ideal set of things that work for me and all that. But a couple of things
#
like when you were, when you were talking with this, this thing about it's unfair for
#
musicians, no? And it is because I somehow feel that, yeah, and probably not going to
#
sound right. I don't know how to phrase it. I think that there is a lot of weight in trying
#
to... Wait, let me phrase this properly. So you come up with an idea. It's a basic hook.
#
It's a basic melody. By itself, no, it doesn't mean anything. Like it's not about, it's not
#
about just getting like one hook. There is this entire aspect of usko tarashna hai thoda
#
hai. Like what happens before it? What happens? What, like, how does it go into the next bit?
#
Is there a next bit? You know, one good thing that has happened in this new post-tick tock
#
world is that somehow 20 seconds idea, like, like a reel, for example, is valid enough.
#
You know, usme bhi hai. But it doesn't mean anything for people like me who have been
#
in this. And I'm sure for like a lot of my, a lot of my friends and peers will like have
#
echoed the same sentiment is like yeh yeh 20 seconds hai kuch nahi hota. You know, like,
#
like intros need to be like a minute long or something. Like it doesn't mean anything
#
to come up with something. But you can get away with it in this, in this day and age.
#
That's what I'm saying. Now yeh, I somehow feel that this idea of creating content or
#
creating tracks or creating music that gets past this pole, you know, this, this, this thing of making
#
it to an audience and it gets presentable and then it gets judged and reactions are there
#
and so on and so forth. It's a, I think the hack is to divide the practice up. And this is
#
what I've like, I was looking for answers, you know, in the, in the routines of other people and
#
all that, that, that you write every day, right? I keep telling my, so I teach, I keep telling my
#
students that you get paid to perform, not to practice. Okay. But you can come up with this
#
idea of paying yourself to practice, you know, and I'll elaborate on that a bit. Like certain
#
part of your practice routine has to be, I record everything. Like whenever I practice,
#
even if I'm playing like, like basic like warmups and all that, I'll record everything. The
#
idea is that if you give it this kind of weight that it is getting captured, right? Then this
#
pressure of this constantly trying to create something and not having enough of a bank when
#
you are, when you want to pick ideas out of like that process gets sorted. It's almost like writing,
#
but not posting about it. You know, it's, it's maybe like journaling audio journaling. So I did
#
this thing a few, few years ago, I think around 2015 where I, I was not finishing ideas, you know,
#
unless and until there's a deadline by a client who's saying that you have to give them a jingle and all
#
that. And then there is incentive that, okay, the money will only come when you finish it. So what is
#
that equivalent of like in your own practice routine? Like what is that money? When will it come?
#
After I finish it. So I figured that, okay, what I'll do is I will find some source of inspiration.
#
So I obviously went to the lowest hanging fruit is like a book, just randomly open a page. And
#
there has to be the first thing that you read, take a picture of it, and then I'm going to react
#
to it, you know, and I'm not going to judge myself. But the key is that I have to finish this in an
#
hour. I used to give myself like anywhere between 30 minutes to two hours. It has to be an idea.
#
There is no limit on duration. There's no limit on key. This cord doesn't feel right. Like I will
#
just blink my way through the system. One thinking like, you know, he sees that through key. I'm not
#
going to judge it. I'm only going to judge it when it is done. I've hit command B. I have rendered
#
the file and I'm not going to hear it. I would hear it like the next week. So I, all the ideas
#
that get made in week one and I, and I managed about 20 weeks, you know, all the ideas that
#
would get done in week one would only become a playlist in week two. And I would just hear it.
#
And, uh, because I had the files with me and all that. And then I realized that key, huh,
#
B, something key, uh, coffee ideas and all that. They were some really good ones. And I realized
#
one thing that it just kept getting better and better. Now the metric for getting better and
#
better is what like this tune is better than that tune. I don't think so. I don't think that means
#
anything. The Germans have the saying that there is no bad weather. There is only inappropriate
#
clothing. Like I love that idea. Just the way that it is being done right now is probably not
#
ideal to step back and what would you do? So maybe, like I said, you know, like this chord doesn't
#
need to be played on the guitar. It could go on a keyboard. Okay. What sound on the keyboard? Is
#
it a piano? Is it this blah, blah, blah, that is endless. What you will end up with is a version
#
of something that first you need to validate yourself. And I, there is a, I don't know if it
#
makes sense, but there's a side of it like the constant stepping between I am the person who's
#
making this idea to I am the person who's listening to this idea. And I need to be, I don't need to be
#
harsh on the guy who made the idea, you know, like, because that's the simplest thing, you know, that,
#
that, that, that, I don't know what you call it. Like it's a meme or whatever. Like you start off,
#
it's awesome. It's great. Where is this going? It sucks. I hate myself. You know, where is the
#
nearest bridge I can jump off of? And then it becomes like awesome again. So that cycle of like,
#
you will end up being okay with what you're making. I don't put myself through those spaces.
#
I didn't put myself through those spaces when I was executing this exercise that I am paying
#
myself to practice, you know, and the only way I'm going to get this done is if there is a product
#
that when I hit space bar or whatever, I hit play, like it will play back and I will hear it.
#
And I will not judge it. The other reason to do it is that I will not judge it because I have to
#
give myself the credit as an artist. Otherwise I will like, I'll go mad. Like I have to give
#
myself the credit that I am different today from last week. So maybe I was not, maybe, you know,
#
like if this is not working, why wasn't it working? Like, you know, it can't be equipment or
#
cooling or whatever. Like it can't be my whole, you know, I have to bring them all. So then the
#
process, and I will sum it up. I guess like the idea of the process is to minimize the number of,
#
you can call them distractions to variables, which will make you stray from your idea of like,
#
what is the finished product? You know, and then having the, that's the gutsy bit, I think, which
#
I don't know how other people tackle it, but like just having this thing of this is good.
#
You know, I, but this did not exist. It might be like a mix of 20 ideas I've heard, like my forefathers
#
never picked cotton, but if you ask, give me a guitar, the first thing I'll do is like a player
#
blues lick, you know, that's just the thing. So yeah, I can't judge myself, you know, that's the,
#
that's my entry portal into like, okay, the doors are opening for the guitar. After that, like,
#
I will start doing other things. So what is that idea which, which you start?
#
I don't think that's important enough. I don't think so. Like the, the idea with which you start,
#
it could be anything. Like you could read a book. And like I said, I've done that. I've read a book.
#
I've, you know, read a para and in fact, I'll, I'll, I'll mention this. So place where I teach
#
one of the exercises we do is we come, we pick a line of text. We have this like Google form
#
process and all that. And everybody votes in for a line and that whichever one gets the most,
#
like you just end up writing, okay, this is the line you write a piece of music, right? So I took
#
that exercise that I was doing to my students and I was like, let's try this out. It worked for me.
#
And I know that I am not unique, so it has to work for like majority of the people, like, you
#
know, like, so we started doing this, a lot of interesting ideas were coming up and I remember
#
the first year of the lockdown of one of the lines that got picked up, it had something to do with
#
feminism and like the, the power is bigger than like, I forgot the text, but I was, I was sitting
#
in my room. This was two o'clock in the morning, maybe one or two o'clock in the morning. And I was
#
like really stressing, and we had, I had told the students, so next morning, like we are supposed
#
to play ideas for each other. And so anyway, so we, I'm staring and my kids are sleeping,
#
my daughter sleeping, I'm on night duty, so she's, she's there. And I noticed wall ke side pe nah,
#
like there is this seepage ka patch, DDA construction in Delhi and all that rain is hammering us for a
#
few months. And I noticed like the seepage thing. And I, you know, like, I swear, I, I, like, I had
#
not seen it before. And maybe it was the lighting in the room. Maybe I was sleep deprived or I was
#
sleep deprived, but I just felt like it was getting bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger,
#
getting bigger, bigger, bigger, right? So I say, okay, fine. So something that's, so I take that
#
line, okay, power is within you. Maybe, okay, let's say, okay, water droplets. So I immediately
#
opened my laptop, I start logic and I import the sound of like, just drop a water. Okay. So I'm
#
like, okay, this is the smallest thing. What's the biggest thing that can, okay, tsunami. Okay. I need
#
the sound of like waves crashing against. So I go on, I look at my sound back. I don't find anything.
#
I go on YouTube, I get a sample. I'm like, okay, I know finish line care. I know starting point care.
#
Now I need to come up with an idea, which has joined these two together. And I don't know what
#
happened. Like the minute that happened, like it was like flow state immediately. And I think like,
#
because I'd done those 20 weeks because I'd done X amount of practice. And I guess like the practice
#
is not just on the guitar. The practice is also on being able to take the idea out of your instrument,
#
put it into that. And I'm pointing towards your laptop, you know, ski and then have it come out
#
of speakers. So the next thing I know, it's 4.30 in the morning, you know, but I have finished,
#
I have finished a five minute idea, right. And which actually it's a track, which I mean, came
#
and it sank without a trace and all that. But I got Amartya to write on it. And he wrote like this
#
post-apocalyptic, like crazy set of words. And that just become that like one thought of like
#
a student suggesting a piece of text, me seeing a spot of seepage on the wall ended up being a song.
#
You know, so for me, like that is the win. What that song does, what, where it goes and all that,
#
wo ho gaya. And this is where I admire, like I really admire your process. I remember when we,
#
when I started, when I came on board and I started doing the edits for you, I asked you like,
#
what do you want to do with backups? And you said, delete them. And you were the first guy ever in
#
20 years who has said, don't keep backups, you know, and then you said, yeah, I've moved on,
#
you know, and you happen to mention it on, on so many of your conversations with your,
#
with the people you're chatting with, that when once you've done the conversation is out of your
#
system. Like now it's onto the next one. But I've, I've rambled here, but I guess the, the,
#
the point I was trying to make was somehow find a way to think that your practice is being paid
#
for by you. And it will, for me, it makes sense when there is a finished product at the end of
#
it. This can be a 10 second hook, which you can Tarasho later, or you can make a 10 minute prog
#
rock anthem, whatever it is, but like could do something substantial that you can feel angry
#
with whatever later, proud of later, whatever, but has to finish. If it doesn't finish, it doesn't
#
mean anything. And I guess that's the only way that audio guys, music, musicians can make it
#
easier on themselves, which is that every idea doesn't need to be a song, but every idea has
#
come to you for a particular reason, you know, like have a go at it and like, just finish the
#
thing. Because next thing you, next thing, you know, is there is a, there's an entire album in
#
just one riff you wrote, you know, like, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm convinced about it. And there is an
#
entire encyclopedia of music, which is, which is often one lick, like you could start up, you
#
could play a blues lick and now you can like, just hit like the algorithm will take over and play
#
like, I don't know, hundreds of years of blues music with the same three chords.
#
So, and, but it's, it's fine. Like, it's just like something tangible, substantial to end this,
#
you have to close the loop. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's, that's inspiring. And, and I think that,
#
you know, what I said about, you know, once the episode is out there, delete the backups, delete
#
everything is kind of what I think would be, though I arrived at it in my own way, but it would be a
#
credo of creators today that you got to keep moving on. You know, don't look back at the last
#
thing you did. Like when friends of mine will write a book or make a film and they'll be obsessed
#
about how it's being received. They'll be obsessed for years, right? There are people I know who've
#
made something in the auties and they're still angry and bitter because it didn't get the reception
#
they feel it deserved. And I'm like, nay, you got to just keep creating, just move on. It doesn't
#
matter. You know, it, it, and a lot of the joy is in the creation. In fact, you know, just a couple
#
of digressions now into AI that, you know, I look at what AI is going, I think of what AI is going
#
to do with text and what it is already doing with art and what it, I think we'll do about music.
#
And we can talk about that in detail later. But one thing is that in the short term, it will drive
#
all copywriters and illustrators out of business for sure. And in the long run, AI will write books
#
and create music as good as anything humans can do. And I don't think that that's a bug. I think
#
that's fine. I think that for an artist, the joy is really in the creating. You know, you create
#
something, you're happy that you've created something, something is expressed and that's the
#
joy. And a lot of the other things that follow, validation, fame, you know, people are listening
#
to tune made by machine. You know, I think all that is secondary. I think the joy of creation,
#
I think you're a true creator when you take joy in creating something, you know, that I've put it
#
out there. Like I did that episode with Shanta Gokhale, which is eight hours. Like I was saying,
#
I don't know how many people will listen to it, man, but I am so happy I've done it. It's out
#
there, it's there forever. It's there after her, it's there after me. You know, we won't be there,
#
but that something is there. And I moved on already, right? But it's there and there's a
#
satisfaction there. So I think that's a way to think about creativity, not in terms of, you know,
#
AI will do everything, so what will we do? But in that, if I'm taking joy in doing something,
#
it doesn't matter what's happening in the rest of the world, I'm getting that joy.
#
The other thing I'm going to double click on is, you know, what you said about originality kya hi hai,
#
you know, and I think about again to, you know, to use an AI term, LLMs, large language models,
#
right? So a lot of these AIs are being trained with large language models where basically,
#
for example, if there's a writing thing and GPT-4 will be way ahead of GPT-3, of course,
#
GPT-3 is just like a drop in the ocean. It's like an early mainframe computer with 2MB memory. You
#
can't judge computing on the basis of that. But essentially, you throw all the text that's ever
#
produced at a machine and it parses it and it kind of learns itself. And I'm using learns with,
#
you know, apostrophes or whatever. And it does all of that. And then it, whenever you ask it
#
something, it produces something. Now, one criticism of that is ki yaar, yeh toh copy paste hai.
#
But actually nahi hai, copy paste nahi hai. Because I think number one, what we do is we
#
overestimate human consciousness and human intelligence when we think that, you know,
#
as if we are something special beyond all of this. But actually, the way we learn about the world is
#
through an equivalent of the LLM, where, you know, whatever we experience or read or whatever,
#
all that is a database, except that our brain is incredibly inefficient at actually being able
#
to process it because everything is so complex. And then we seem to spontaneously come up with
#
words and tunes and whatever. But none of that would have been there if, if not for that large
#
language model. You know, like one example I often use with my writing students, where I talk about
#
the importance of reading, is that in a cruel thought experiment, imagine a kid brought up in
#
a room without language, where, you know, people may feel it and all that, but nobody speaks to it.
#
There's no television, there's no internet, it never hears anything. What will it speak like at
#
the age of eight? And the answer is unfortunately not at all, because you haven't heard language.
#
Hmm. If, if she only listens to her parents, there'll be a limited set of language that she'll
#
have. If she listens to her parents and neighbors, it's larger. Today, your people growing up, you're
#
listening to your parents, your neighbors, your peers, all of television, all of the internet,
#
everything is there. That's a large language model. You develop your own language. Now it is
#
impossible to say, you know, this particular phrasing of this particular guy or this particular
#
guitar player, where did it come from precisely? And it is also incredibly unfair to call it copy
#
paste because that's not what AI is doing. That's not what we are doing in a sense. So with that,
#
you know, sentiment of original, what is it? I think that is a call to humility, that boss,
#
you know, everything we are is kind of coming out of everything that is there. And then we are
#
making it, uh, making something out of it. And, and I want to also double down on what you said
#
about, um, sort of the importance of that practice that you did for those 20 days and the five minute
#
song emerges out of that 20 weeks and that five minute song emerges out of that. And I think,
#
you know, and I understand what you said when you said the finished product is important.
#
I think the finished product is important as a metric for you to figure out what is happening
#
in it. But otherwise, what is important is the 20 weeks. You know, I was reading somewhere,
#
I forget who wrote about it, but about getting lucky. Right. And, um, his core point was that
#
if you want to be a lucky person, you have to increase your surface area of luck. Right. So
#
if you're always, uh, let's say you're an unattached person, if you're always going out
#
and meeting people, you're more likely to meet someone who's right for you than if you just sit
#
in a room and whatever, you know, if you're an artist, you're much more likely to hit upon
#
something valuable. If you're creating all the time, create when no one's looking, you don't
#
have to publish, you don't have to do whatever, but just keep creating. One, you increase a surface
#
area of that luck, your algo will produce something to your algo of producing things gets better and
#
better. The more you practice, which is what I guess happened to you. Yeah. You know, this,
#
this thing about the LLM, the, I, uh, like the students, uh, so while talking to them and while
#
trying to, so I, I don't try to, I'll just speak about that for a little bit. I don't try to tell
#
them, you know, my line is, I can teach you how to write a book. My job is not to teach you a
#
Microsoft word. Please go there on YouTube or read a manual. Like, you know, it can't be that you
#
can't come to me or you can't go to anyone who you think can teach you. And I'm doing that in quotes
#
that tell me how you do it. So one common question across the 10 years that I've been
#
teaching is that how did this idea come to you? Right. And I'm not saying the ideas I get are
#
great ideas, but they seem to come pretty fast. And I was, and I, and I started thinking about it
#
because I, you know, the job I guess is to give an answer, a satisfactory answer and an answer,
#
which can unlock a door or at least take you to the next locked one. You know, like I take you
#
somewhere, leave you there, and then you have to figure this out. So my, so I, I started thinking
#
about it and I realized that I said that I just heard more music than you. That's it. Like there
#
is no, there is no, there is no bigger secret. Like there's no secret that I have something that
#
you don't have. That's just not true. Like I cannot give myself the credit of being unique.
#
It's not possible. You should have asked me this like 20 years ago, probably I said, yes, like I'm
#
special. I would have like, but then what do you do when you're 20? You do stupid things. So the,
#
the, the ego of being able to say that this came because I thought of it. No, it did not. Like it
#
just, you happen to be paying attention when it happened and nobody else was looking or hearing,
#
you know, you picked it out and you ran with it and you finished it and you got, let's just say
#
let's just say you got lucky and the surface area of luck was like, like it's just increased.
#
But I think it also increases with the amount of humility that seeps in, you know, but, but going
#
back to that bit, like I told the students, I have just heard more music than you. And that just,
#
that's this LLM thing. Like I just have a greater set of references, a bigger set of references.
#
My point of what could happen after this chord is just bigger because I've,
#
I've just heard more music. So when I tell these guys to practice and when I tell, but even now,
#
like I, I don't think that I don't consider that the fact that I'm sitting with a guitar and I'm
#
playing chromatic runs or whatever, like trying to transcribe and all that, that is practice. Sure.
#
That, that is, but that is just so that A, I can stay in shape and you know, the first, first 20
#
pushups are easy. The next 10 are slightly harder. And then like every pushups after that, like maybe
#
I should have said, I shouldn't have said 20, I should have said 50. But, but yeah, it's just like
#
the, I don't know, the 50 first feels like the first 50, you know, it's just so much tougher.
#
So you are doing that kind of practice only so that you can keep nudging yourself to get better
#
and like all of that. Now, obviously you can look at what sort of first year or whatever tier
#
finish line you want to arrive at. Do you want to be a performing musician? Then that's your thing.
#
Like sit and keep practicing the mechanics of the instrument. Right. If you want to be a composer,
#
arrange or whatever, like there are different set of tools you need to practice, but this idea of
#
listening to music, you know, like, like reading a book, reading a book I feel is, is practice.
#
Like I, I try to find and my, some of the, some of the guys like keep joking about it, but I,
#
I'm desperate, you know, I, I read that book 4,000 weeks, Oliver Berkman ki and I'm like, you know,
#
man, shit, this game is going to end. You know, this game is going to end. And first I used to
#
think, okay, I read a lot, but I don't, because I, I happened to meet you and then, you know, like
#
just like the pace at which you're reading, I'm like, okay, then I, this idea of like, there will
#
be so much music that I will not be able to listen to, you know, and like you said a few minutes ago
#
that you're not looking for new stuff. I'm the absolute opposite. I'm always looking for new
#
stuff because I just do the simple thing of look for the influencers of your influencers and like
#
that tree will take you back to some point. And it's a really cool thing now that they're literally
#
all of the music is available to you. We can talk about the commerce and the evil capitalism of it,
#
which has like, you know, yeah, that's the word for it. It's evil. And, but, but just the thought
#
of just the idea of sitting down and listening to music. Like I treated like practice, you know,
#
that this is doing, and I'm not, I'm not saying that I can multitask. I'm sure everybody can,
#
but like, I can let the music play in the background and my ears are always ready for like
#
an event. And I think like music, like a track or audio is just like a set of events, which is
#
playing out with the really good ones have like two to three standard events in them. You know,
#
it could be based out of virtuosity of the performer. It could be based out of the virtuosity
#
of the arranger. It could just be a great recording, you know, or it could just be,
#
yeah, I don't know. And suddenly, I don't know why Bob Marley's redemption song popped into my
#
head. And I'm like, it's not virtuous. The recording is shit, you know, but there is just
#
something in that song. And now my brain is like flashing images of, have you seen that movie,
#
the beach, where I've actually read the book bearing of, you know, a friend and, you know,
#
and this guy on a guitar is just sitting in like hippie type dude and just singing that. And I
#
think like, okay, I'm rambling, but what I'm trying to get at is that this, everything is going into
#
the database, you know, and tomorrow when you are recording a track and this idea of the most
#
pristine, whatever that word means in context of whether it could be fidelity or intent,
#
you know, trying to capture that and put that across, you have a database of errors,
#
which made it through, which have become the soundtrack of people's lives, you know,
#
which has become more relevant than what the creator would have or the artist would have
#
thought that this is going to be, you know, it's like Bob Marley saying that line, you know,
#
in an interview, I think he was asked, I'm paraphrasing over here, but like you're rich
#
and all that. He's like, what do you mean? What do you mean rich? This is the time when like,
#
I think 50, 60% of the exports of Jamaica were his music, like the revenue was his music.
#
And he's like, that's not rich. You know, it's the riches, the stuff that you've created,
#
which has gone to people and all of that is happening. Also, it came at a point when
#
capitalism was not ruining music. Maybe it was, but this thing of it is, I want to circle back
#
and just this idea of that music, every time you listen to it. And now you can get like John KG
#
about it, you know, kya hi hai music and where is it you're drawing inspiration from? This happened
#
during the first COVID, Krisha Shou came on your show and I had bought his book and I started
#
cooking and I'm like, and I realized one thing that my production workflow, my just workflow
#
as a musician on it, it became better because I was cooking, you know, because I suddenly realized
#
I came across that idea of first principle se tor sakte ho, you know, so there has to be a
#
first principle thing in music also. And then I realized, okay, melody and rhythm, and maybe
#
there might be like some jazz based like Berkeley return, college of music return type subdivision
#
of this, but I'm not interested in that. Like, I think like you, it either serves that function,
#
melodic function or rhythmic function. So, okay, fine. So now as I listening to my entire catalog
#
of music that I've already consumed, I started listening to all of it in the sense that I don't
#
have to go through the entire track. I can play it back in my head, you know, I can just like
#
have a soundtrack of, I don't know, zeppelin over the hills and far away playing in my head right
#
now where the two of us are chatting. And I realized that, okay, fine. That what do I remember?
#
Do I remember the melody of the riff or do I remember the rhythmic intent of the riff?
#
And when I'm now presented with an idea of that, the muse of the universe presents to me, okay,
#
yeh kya hai? So it's just two, one of the two boxes it has to tick. And once it ticks that,
#
you know, I'm like, okay, it doesn't, does it need more of this? Does it weight in it? Does it need
#
less? And then I started analyzing the 20 weeks of work, which I had put together and all those
#
ideas got like a new meaning, you know, I started looking at, okay, I am overloading it with this
#
kind of information because that is me, that is the thing that I'm good at. So I'll do more of it.
#
So suddenly that context of, okay, you know, food may like, one of the hacks know which,
#
which like, I don't understand it, like recipes, for example, like, you know, I'm trying to read
#
them and I'm like, Namak Swadhanusar. I'm like, what does that mean? You know, how can the most
#
critical thing, which binds that sodium chloride, which binds everything together, like, how can
#
that be Swadhanusar? Like there has to be a ratio of something, like a pinch, a pinch of what?
#
And then Christian is focusing, you know, like he, when he mentions this bit about, and I think he
#
spoke about it in the episode with you also, that how, when a lemon the size of this much or, you
#
know, like, what does that mean? So in audio, what is that? You know, what is Swadhanusar?
#
Kiska Swadhanusar? Audience ka? Then you're jacked. You're screwed if you're trying to make it for an
#
audience, you know, because going back to the first thing, I guess, like we were talking about, or
#
what I, what I said was, no two people are hearing audio the same way. No, it's a losing battle,
#
you know, in fact, right after finishing your writing course, I, the first thing I wrote,
#
and I'm practicing every day, you know, I do the 200 words, but the first thing I wrote was like,
#
it was just this thing, like it's a losing battle, like you can't win it. And if you can't win it,
#
then it is liberating, ki merko jeetna hi nahi hai audience ko. It obviously comes with a certain
#
amount of like luxury, you know, because if you're desperate to win over the audience, then it's
#
tricky, but then there's a hack in that also, if you're desperate to win over the audience,
#
you just need to see what are they consuming and the parameters are there, whether it's the
#
melody and the rhythm function or whether the verse arrangement or the chorus going into this
#
transition of that. And then you can zoom out and become macro about the entire thing. And you're
#
like, oh, so genres ki baat ho rhi hai. So I just need to do rock of this and blues of that and jazz
#
of this and prog of this. And then I get like this thing. And now I have the audacity to call it
#
original, you know, but I've, sorry, I've like rambled all over the place, but I just feel like
#
ki consuming that, that LLM, like that is the key thing. And I think this AI, and I'm beginning to
#
like look at tools for it because why not? You know, why not? I feel that AI will make music.
#
Yeah. And we could talk about like maybe like this evil capitalist idea. Like I don't see
#
why Spotify would not try to train AI modules. And I'm just using Spotify because that's the
#
first name game to me, but like, I guess everybody will do it. Try to train AI modules to make music
#
in the style of ABC artist, right? And kal ko kya farak padta hai, like consumer ko ki ABC ne
#
banaaya hai or kisi some smart AI ne banaaya hai. Farak Spotify ko padega, because unko royalty
#
nahi pay karni padegi. You know, they won't have to pay the program that they made. So artists are
#
going to get defunct in that, but you know what? Artists are not going to get defunct in it's in
#
the presenting the experience to the people. Like I don't, I don't, unless and until there's some
#
Kubrick and shit in the future that is going to happen, I don't see people going to see like a,
#
you know, like a giant screen of like some sort of a computer performing. That's what's going to happen.
#
Agar Modi ji hologram use kar sakte hai.
#
Where I thought of, yeah, I thought of this, like maybe, you know, like when this COVID thing was
#
happening, I was like, that's the only way to do concerts like in a disconnected world. But like,
#
yeah, we will, humariya toh wo technology aayegi nahi. But this thing, like, you know, like the
#
performance aspect, nobody's going to be able to snatch that away from us. But uske le toh fair,
#
I don't know, like somehow there's a lot of practice that you'll have to do. And then you
#
have to find a band of brothers that you can, that you can play that music with. And then that entire
#
cycle of like, I don't know, insecurity to like finishing an idea that starts all over again.
#
But I definitely think this, this, speaking a little bit about those AI, like for example,
#
it's so, it's looking at all and, and I don't know if I'll be able to phrase it properly,
#
but it's looking at this analysis of what we consider as emotional data as a, as a,
#
in a completely unemotional way. You know, like for example, I could say sunset,
#
right? And I don't know, I'm maybe nine or 10 people will play a minor seven chord. Okay.
#
Some pauchava gyani will play like a something 11th, sharp 11th, evo,
#
vagera, vagera, voicing change kar denge, some inversion, change the sound, invert it. Now, so
#
it, I am trying to give some sort of a meaning to that sunset, right? Now I don't know how this
#
I don't know how this LLM thing in an AI is going to make sense, but I think it's going to extract
#
the way that you perceive the sunset, as opposed to the way the sunset is being presented to
#
everybody and just give that a sound. I don't know if it makes sense, but what I'm saying is
#
it's looking at it from the other point of view. It's not looking at my reaction to a certain event
#
and me coming up with a piece of music for it or a set of notes that make sense for it, but almost
#
in a way that this is the soundtrack, which is being, which you are going to react to, you know?
#
Yeah. I'm still trying to wrap my head around this, then it really comes down to what is the,
#
if there is melody and rhythm, then what is the function of a set of chord sequences, a set of
#
musical influences. And you, and you see the same progressions, you know, dabbled in everywhere,
#
like all of jazz, like, and maybe some jazzers are going to send me like hate messages, but
#
all of jazz is like something you call the two five one. You can find it everywhere.
#
And yeah, but like still like the way it is presented there and it's wrapped around it,
#
it just, it just feels different every time. And I just, I just feel like these tools are there
#
for you to get to the finish line faster. And there is no way that our limited set of
#
2000, 4,000 weeks of experience is going to be able to add up to some,
#
something which is learning at that pace, right? The idea is to use it to present your idea better.
#
You know, in fact, it's, it's, we, we had a place where I teach in,
#
in Delhi, the Sri Aurobindo Center for Arts. We had this lady, Yuvanka from Berlin,
#
who is now dabbling into like, she's a, she's a songwriting coach. She's a, she's a artist coach,
#
but her entire presentation was on how AI to AI based tools can be used to make your music
#
better. And that's the key thing. It's your music, you know, because without your personality,
#
it doesn't mean anything. It just means one more artist at Spotify doesn't have to pay,
#
but like, it doesn't mean anything, you know, I don't know if that makes sense, but yeah,
#
it's, it's, it's, it's an exciting time, you know, it's it. Yeah. Yeah. I know all of it makes a lot
#
of sense. And before I start double clicking on things, I'll just point out that you really
#
should not apologize for rambling because as you well know, you know, you know, just as there are
#
cars in Top Gear, just as there is singing in Indian Idol, you know, rambling is my pinkness
#
of the show. That's a, that's a great title. Rambling is my pinkness.
#
Rambling is my pinkness. So I think just for a moment, thinking about the sunset thing,
#
that what will, what music will AI come out of if you just give it the prompt some sunset.
#
And I think part of it will be that it will very quickly, if it has a sum total of expressed human
#
experience to learn from, it will very quickly conclude that sunsets bring about feelings of
#
melancholy or reflection and so on within people and certain kinds of music are correlated with
#
that. And then it will kind of probably come up with music of that sort. Like one suspicion of
#
mine is that this is already happening on Spotify and YouTube because sometimes when I work, I like
#
to listen to music, but I don't like to listen to music with words because it's distracting.
#
So, and after looking at different kinds of instrumental ballets, you know, jazz, piano,
#
blah, blah, blah, I've settled upon lo-fi. So I'll have the, there are these lo-fi playlists
#
and I listened to one of them. And my suspicion is that, sorry, I know that cutting, cutting it is
#
a bad thing to do, but I'll tell you something. So here's my, I'm constantly looking for tracks
#
to play. Right. And my answer is white noise. I don't play music at all because my, my, my head
#
starts computing, but lo-fi. So my theory is that lo-fi music has basically low fidelity.
#
Right. So there are not enough high frequencies, all the transient information, which pokes your
#
ear and about 80% of your auditory response is like transient response. You know, it's, it's the
#
thing that you might be sleeping in the jungle, but like somebody's like a saber too tight, you
#
know, twig and like you will wake up because that transient will wake you up. And I can't believe
#
it. I just punched my face like, yeah, I'll have to clean that audio up. But, but, but yeah, like,
#
so, so, so since your transient response in your, in your brain is not getting triggered, like you
#
are not diverting your attention to that. So it's actually, it's, it's, it's built, built for that,
#
you know? So my suggestion would be like to check out some Brian Nino music for airports also,
#
anything which doesn't have transients in it. And the envelope is very slow. Like you'll be fine.
#
Like you don't get distracted at all. Yeah. The rain qualifies as white noise, right? So it's,
#
it's weird because the, like the, can you call it pittery pattery rain? I don't know. You know
#
what I'm saying? Like the rain on a tin roof kind of thing. Because I listen to rain sound,
#
rain playlists a lot because I find that that is, there's something there and it's soothing,
#
but it's not disturbing me. So I think because a, the rhythm is not predictable,
#
like your brain cannot compute where the next downbeat of the rain will land. You know,
#
unless, but like a dripping tap, a leaky bucket in the loo will keep you awake all night because
#
your brain will try to say, okay, it's going to fall now. And you know, it'll calculate the BPM
#
almost like it'll, you will start anticipating it. But rain has this thing of like not having a
#
predictable pattern. So there you go. So any, anything which does not have a predictable
#
rhythmic thing and serves no melodic function, you know, no pitch information to it. But like rain on
#
a tin roof, like the tin will start like, like you will hear a note, at least I do. And I'm tone
#
deaf. So I'm sure like other people are hearing it. Yeah. But I mean, I'm tone deficient, you know,
#
I'm inventing a new category over here. But, but huh, like Lofi has that, like, sorry, I broke
#
your thought, but like, yeah, the limited transient response, it just allows you to like zone in a
#
little better. Yeah. Wow. So I didn't think of the reasons, but like you, I like to go to first
#
principles and think about the why of things. So it's good to know, but you don't know, really,
#
my suspicion is that a lot of these could already be AI, because I don't see why AI should not be
#
able to create an unlimited playlist of lofi music. You know, just very generic stuff. And if you
#
really think about what's happening in the popular music scene, like, you know, I forget the guy's
#
name, but I think I'd mentioned him in my show with Warren, a songwriter who's written for all
#
of these major pop stars of today. And these are the chords which work. These are the kind
#
of ACID transition. Everything works. And so basically what you're doing is you're asking a
#
human to do a computer job, you know, and by computer, I mean, quote unquote, primitive,
#
actually computers are way more evolved than us in this. And I don't see why once you've,
#
once we understand these parameters and feed them in, why a computer shouldn't come out with equal
#
output, that whole mystical notion that beautiful tune is being created from somewhere, I think is
#
mystical because it's based in ignorance, because we don't understand the brain well enough to
#
understand how it's happening. But if we did, I think all art at some level would seem like craft
#
and therefore sort of doable by computers. And the final little nuance I'd like to add to your
#
description of evil capitalism. And of course, I know the sense you meant it in is that on the one
#
hand, it's true that like, I think, you know, capitalism itself is nothing. If you, what
#
capitalism does is it, when it is efficient, it helps fulfill people's desires. So the problem is
#
people's desires in the way that we are wired, right? That at one level, and again, I've spoken
#
about mimetic desire earlier on the show, at one level that leads to this phenomenon in the popular
#
arts and especially music, until recently, and in music, I think even now, that is almost like a
#
winner take all a very small percentage of the people will make most of the money reach most of
#
the audience people, everybody's listening to Beyonce or whatever the thing is. And artists
#
artists lower down the value chain are not making anything. And if you had to quantify if there's
#
an artist who is 9.8 out of 10, that person could make magnitudes of money more than someone who's
#
9.7, you know, or if the algorithm lifts them a little bit. Like I remember this experiment,
#
and again, I don't remember the details, but basically a whole bunch of people were given
#
an app with a certain set of music in it. And except that different, like different subsets
#
of these people had were told by the app that different songs are popular, they had their
#
existing whatever. And once it started going bad, I had the top of the pops charts as it were for
#
each of these subsets were completely different, which just tells you that you know, a little bit
#
there's so much luck also involved that an algorithm happens to favor one particular kind
#
of creation over something else. And then that can take off and the other one can just fall behind.
#
But again, I think what the good part of fulfilling people's desires, like I think the first part is
#
a homogenization, right? That some songwriter figures out that three chords always work or
#
whatever the formula is, they apply the formula, everything that is a hit sounds the same, much
#
like, you know, the Cavendish banana taking over bananas. But the next step that I think then
#
happens and is now happening in other fields is that you can cater to individual preferences
#
much better. Like there might be 10 lakh people who like Chulo and there might be 10 crore people
#
who like Chulo, but only one lakh people who like say what Raman is now doing, right? But he can
#
reach those one lakh people, he can monetize those one lakh people that one lakh he might find to
#
his surprise is actually 10 lakh, you know, and once he starts catering to them and following his
#
heart, his music can also get better because he's allowed by circumstances to actually focus on what
#
he loves doing and not have to play Chulo a million times, right? Which I mean, I wouldn't
#
mind Chulo a million times, but yeah, so yeah, I mean, I'm just kind of responding to the stuff
#
that you said and not actually. This evil capitalism thing. Yeah, I mean, see, I'm fully
#
aware of the fact that what I'm doing right now, it wouldn't have been possible, say, if I was,
#
I don't know, like 20, not even 20, like 30 years ago, you know, by possible, I mean, like there are
#
just so many, there's so little resources, you know, and that's been enabled, I guess, only by
#
like the market behaving a certain way, the audience wanting a certain thing, and that's
#
very primitive understanding of it, but I'll tell you something. So I remember when Apple music
#
started, actually the iTunes store started and I was at my parents place and we were
#
having dinner or lunch and I showed my dad. So my dad is really the reason like I am into this
#
thing, you know, that was, he used to strum a little bit of guitar and I picked it up from him.
#
I think a part of me was just like, let's impress dad, but I was, yeah, I got into the whole music
#
thing because of him and he, I showed him the iTunes store and his first reaction was like,
#
this is great, but he was like, you're doing okay? Like, how is the thing? So I was like,
#
where is this coming from? You know, like I'm doing all right, like I'm not complaining or happy and
#
all that. And so he pointed out that when he was, so he went to NDA in the sixties. So he finished
#
school and he went to NDA in 69 and 145 used to come for an honor or something, you know,
#
and iTunes store pay one track was 11 rupees. I see kuchh when I showed it to him.
#
So he's like, it, I don't know what adjusted to inflation, the rate might be, but he's like,
#
it's not that much different. Like it's music is really cheap. Like purchasing the music is really
#
cheap. I mean, obviously the CD is an aberration in this case because they used to be like 500
#
bucks or whatever, but it's really less. So you're right. Like there's a very small number of artists
#
that are breaking in the big bucks. And at that level, the difference between the two who are
#
right next to each other, like is massive, but, but it doesn't trickle down to the artist. You
#
know, it doesn't trickle down at all. Like I'll give you an example. When 2009, the, we released
#
our first album and a healthy chunk of change went in, like in, in fact, like we recorded here in
#
Bombay at Yashraj and we, we had to work at gigs for I think close to a year, like eight to nine
#
months to be able to pay the studio to get our track recordings. We had the money to pay when
#
you went in and then this material was just with them. You know, we couldn't get the material out
#
because we didn't have the money to pay for it. So we were hoping that say a record label will
#
take care of it, you know, but that's a trap, man. Like record labels are just like, like again,
#
now in that context, like the evil capitalist, you know, like the kid, the kid, the artist never
#
wins. And we got a pretty shitty deal and we were stupid. So we signed, we just wanted like,
#
like, we got stuck with that. And then the, the, the money just came from the performances.
#
It didn't come from anything else. It didn't come from the audience consuming the music,
#
which brings me to another, another point, like audiences don't get it, man. Like the, the idea
#
of, I'm so divided because of course I've downloaded music from Napster, you know, once,
#
more than once, I don't know, a few times. Of course I've done it. You know, of course,
#
people like the Delhi guys would know, and even some of the other city people would know, like
#
there was a store in Delhi called Clydes. It's in that underground park market called Palika.
#
And he used to, used to go to him and he would record onto cassettes and take a photo of the LP
#
and he would give you that for a hundred bucks and all that, you know, and because you couldn't
#
buy, like the cassettes were not available. And again, like, you know, capitalism is a rescue.
#
Like eventually it got better, but I don't know what I'm trying to get at is obviously I've also
#
indulged in some form of piracy for like, just to get my hands on the, yeah. But,
#
but I feel like when it reached a point where the access was available, you had access to it and
#
you could pay and you could get buying a ticket for a show, for example, all of that, like
#
eventually it circles back to if the artist, if the lower tier artists, the artists that say
#
you love, you know, and who are in your same city and who are in the scene, if they are not being
#
in the scene, if they are not being endorsed and if you are not the patron, then I don't know how
#
this, how this works out. Like, because then capitalism will remain evil because now it's
#
the other end of the chain doesn't seem to be working. Like apparently there's a demand for it,
#
but nobody wants to pay for that demand. You know, and I'm willing to supply, like, you know,
#
I'll do gigs as many, whatever I need to sing for my supper, you know, I'll do that. But like
#
who's buying the ticket? 15, 16 years of Advaitha gigging, we've done one gig where we sold tickets.
#
I mean, it got sold out and we did two nights at a theater and it was like, why this limited
#
number of seats? Why can't more people come in? We thought we'll hire a matinee show and all that.
#
But, but it's, that thing is just not there. Like it was, it was just not an option that we
#
could expect that people will pay to consume our music. And then I, yeah, I don't know how,
#
I don't know how we landed over here. My fault. But, but in that spirit of that ramble, like I,
#
that capitalism really needs to work both ways. Otherwise you're at the receiving end of being
#
like just hammered by it and you're not seeing the benefit. The benefit is there in the sense of
#
there is no gatekeeper now of, I remember you had to record your music and convince people to release
#
it. You know, now like the people who used to release music are begging you that you can,
#
you should give them their music, you know, because they realize that they want to just
#
hold onto the publishing or if they want to have some sort of a licensing deal and they will do
#
some sort of sync licensing and like, yeah, I mean, they just want their hands on that music
#
and you don't have to give it. You don't have to like my son, like he, I recorded a single for him
#
and I released it and Vijay Basru from, okay, listen, like sorted the entire thing out in a day,
#
you know, and back in the day you had to go take a meeting with a record label executive,
#
sit, make them listen to the music, convince them that, you know, please give me some money
#
so that I can put it towards production costs, something or the other, all of that has gone.
#
So there is like with that opening up and all that, some power has come, but all of, all of
#
this has been created for a consumer who I think is still like shirking the responsibility, you know,
#
I don't know if that line makes sense, but like there is an onus on the consumer to like take part
#
in this, you know, and I'm not, I'm not saying everybody doesn't need to be, everybody will not
#
get to the top tier, but there is a tier where that artist deserves to be and maybe I'm just
#
being grumpy over here and, but I mean, I'm like I said, this comes from a position of privilege
#
that I could find myself in a band that meant something for some people and that band had still,
#
I mean, we're dormant, but not defunct, but there is a stretch that we had, which was, you know,
#
like within the space of like three years, we released an album, which won us a few awards,
#
did the duress, coke studio, everything and then that translates to your performance fee going up
#
and all of that, but then you realize that there is a certain bit, of course, the possible charge
#
of not continuing to create is there. Yes, but then, but then yeah, like, you know, you make
#
something, which is, which I know has not reached everyone where it's supposed to reach, that comes
#
from how much money we can put back into this. If it's not making enough money, then what happens,
#
you know, like how do you, second album, like you're paying what 40,000 bucks a day at Yashraj,
#
you know, this is, this is when two of the people in the band own studios.
#
We still went because we were like band, you know, live, like we'll play all of it, we'll play live.
#
I don't know, like somehow like that wheel feels incomplete right now, like there is not enough
#
money coming back and if I have to now create content to become some sort of a, I don't know
#
what the word is, like person who is, I hate that word, like you, I don't think you're going to use
#
the word influencer, but like some sort of a person who is attracting more people to their real estate
#
so that that real estate becomes valuable and content over there becomes valuable.
#
That's a totally different game then, you know, now, because now there is a component of like,
#
I can't just be, I can't just be allowed to be a recording artist. I have to be a performing
#
artist and not just a performing artist, but I have to be a produced performing artist.
#
Like, yeah, it's, the other complaint I guess is like it is moving too fast to catch up with
#
by the time you get used to a certain version of delivery, a format and set of like things in your
#
press ticker, which needs to be sorted, like the game has already moved on, you know, I don't know,
#
yeah, that's a grumpy ramble. No, no, it's a great rant and I'll sort of join in the rant
#
by talking about what within capitalism is evil itself. Like when I think of capitalism and markets,
#
I think of them as basically enabling mechanisms for voluntary action within society, right?
#
Because everything is a positive sum game. You and I interact in various ways. It's all a positive
#
sum game. You benefit, I benefit, double thank you moments, blah, blah, all of that. But within that
#
there are, there can be efficiency problems. Like I think that the structure of how the creative
#
arts reach the people has been very problematic. And I think that's breaking down thankfully,
#
but we haven't made the transition yet. There is a lag in the sense that, you know,
#
without using the word evil, maybe we can use problematic, but I think that's also a problematic
#
word. But in the spirit of the conversation, I'll just continue using evil. I think the mainstream
#
is evil. I think record labels are evil, right? I think those kinds of structures don't really work
#
because they, there's too much friction between the creator and the audience. Like in a writing
#
context, what I often say is that if I'm a writer in the nineties, you know, either I go to a Times
#
of India and say, publish my 800 word article, or I go to a, you know, Harper Collins and say publish
#
my 100,000 word book. I'm limited by forms and we'll talk about forms later. But, you know,
#
they are my via, the means to sort of reach the audience. So Times of India will pay me 800 rupees
#
for a, or whatever they might have paid at that time. I never wrote for them in the nineties.
#
They'll pay me whatever pittance for a piece that I write. They'll accumulate eyeballs. They'll sell
#
it to advertisers. The tiniest chunk of that reaches me. Now today, a lot of that is breaking
#
down in the sense that the mainstream is gone. So your version of the Times of India, I guess,
#
would be a record label, your Universal or whoever. And those guys relevance is being diminished
#
because artists are reaching consumers directly. But the part that has yet to be figured out is a
#
mechanism for which how you can actually monetize some of that. Like for example, the people who
#
came and said hi to you at the concert yesterday, right? They value the show. And you know, they
#
value the show because they listen to it. Time is money. Time is these scarce resource, right? If
#
you're spending hours listening to shows of mine, you are paying for it. But there, and you would
#
happily, you would be very happy if some of that value came to me, but there's really no way of
#
you to do so that I have that voluntary thing on my site. And, you know, that keeps me independent.
#
But by and large, there's no way of doing that. You know, when they come to you in a sense,
#
they're coming and saying hello to say, you know, Hey, thank you for the work you do. But
#
there's no way of transferring that value to you. So I think that it's these ways of transferring
#
value that I think about, because there are some jugaru's ways, which are better and more nuanced
#
than the jugaru ways of the past. The jugaru way of the past was a T O Y will gather eyeballs for
#
you and sell advertising and you were a tiny pittance. Whereas today, if you're a YouTube
#
creator, you know, there's advertising happening, there are sponsors happening. Or, you know, you
#
can direct your people to Patreon and they can pay at Patreon and pay you directly. Or you do
#
another product like I do where I'm selling a writing course to TK. You know, the podcast gets
#
me reach the writing course gets me some revenue together. They kind of work in that way. But these
#
are fundamentally jugaru ways, you know, ideally in a world without friction, and I'm just thinking
#
aloud, how would it work? How it would work is that I, I listen to a song by you. And there is
#
a moment of pleasure for me, which is value, and automatically value gets transferred to you,
#
right? That is a frictionless thought experiment world. And I think we are far from that. But I
#
think the great opportunities of today are for people who solve that, you know, because I think
#
there is a lag between the mainstream dying and other structures coming up to take its place.
#
Today, you have the jugaru intermediary structures like buy me a coffee and Patreon and all that.
#
But there's got to be something else down the road, and maybe the technology just needs to
#
get there. But that kind of gives me hope because I really think that, you know, that most of the
#
people who value Advaita's music or who value your music or value my podcast or value Ramana Singh
#
would be really happy to express it in monetary terms because but there is no frictionless way
#
of doing so. You know, there was this, I forget the name of the company, but a streaming service
#
based out of the French somewhere in Europe. And what they were, so the way my understanding
#
is the way this works, the straight of the revenue from streaming works is that there are,
#
there is a tier of artists that will get paid because then they need to be kept happy and they
#
need to be, you know, tomorrow Taylor Swift should not say, I will not release on Apple.
#
So Taylor Swift will be kept happy. Apple will do whatever it has to do to figure that out.
#
But see, if you get X number of streams, that doesn't translate to Y amount of money.
#
It just does not. Like you just, you don't see it. Like I'm sure there are some, there are those
#
graphics which tell you that yes, if you do so many streams, you will get so much money and all
#
that, which is minuscule. Like it's, it's nothing, right? Because like you said, time is money,
#
right? So no wonder people are writing like 20 second ideas because hurry up. Otherwise
#
making people sit through five minutes of it and then doing a million of that, like, come on,
#
that you need some serious loyal fans. And, but the thing is that the, it doesn't directly
#
translate to X amount of money, you know? And what this company, I should have remembered the name.
#
If I remember it, I'll text it later. What they were doing was, okay, if you get a stream
#
and if you have clocked, like every time your track plays and I'll pass a certain duration,
#
like the money comes to you, literally the money comes to you. And they were trying this out over
#
there. And I don't know if other companies, yeah, like again, the name is Spotify. Like they were,
#
they're just too big and too evil to like not let this be implemented on the abuse. There's something
#
happened in the States. Like there was this entire thing about artists getting like a greater share
#
of the royalty and songwriter collaborators also getting paid and all that. The only streaming
#
service that's fought that was Spotify. They were like, no, we don't want to pay. Like they're just
#
like, they're like that. But, and I guess I'm using the rant of the name is Spotify because I'm not
#
on that platform. I don't use it, but if anyone's listening to this, take it from an audio guy,
#
YouTube sounds the best. Just be on YouTube music. It's the best. And why would you not be on it?
#
You get like YouTube premium free, but one of those two services is free, whichever you think
#
is subsidizing the other. But, but I somehow, I somehow think like this frictionless thing
#
should be there if people's wallets are like open, you know, like I still feel like there's a massive
#
chunk of the audience, which just wants it to be free. I don't, and that's a very, can I say it?
#
I guess I'll say it. That's a very Indian thing. I guess, you know, I, I don't have any other market
#
reference anyway, but like there's a very thing you like you free minute though, because it happens.
#
Yeah. Like I, I, I don't think I've ever played a gig where I've not got a call for like people
#
looking forward to buy a ticket and you know, like you will add people to the name of the guest list
#
and all that. But yeah, it's always there. Like it's that this thing of buying into the, the creative
#
life of an artist, like the creative course of an artist, like the, that runway to extend the runway,
#
like the audience has to chip in. Like my, my realization 2012, we released Silency and not that
#
these numbers should add up in any way, but we had like north of like, whatever, 60, 70,000 people on
#
Facebook, which was the thing back then. So we were thinking, okay, how much money should we put in?
#
So we went back to Yash Raj and my, you know, I was thinking, okay, even if 10% get this album,
#
pay for it. Like somehow the numbers make sense because I know what will happen when after 10%
#
of say of these numbers, like our album sales, the performances go up. So that's where the money is
#
right. Like more money is coming in from there. And that gives you, so 2012 ke baad, we haven't
#
put out anything. That's one of the other reasons like, man, come on, like who's funding it, you
#
know, because we did this thing in 2016, we turned 2016, we turned 10, no 15. I'm losing the math,
#
but, but we booked a theater and we were like, okay, let's go and play two nights.
#
Uh, we will rearrange the like, everything will be new. We'll rearrange the old tunes. We'll write
#
new tunes. So the eight of us got together and we were rehearsing every day. And here's the point,
#
like at the end of that stretch, we wrote tunes and we went and we did two nights and we, it was
#
an entirely new set. So the point I'm trying to make is ki music to ban jaayega, music bana ke
#
to bring it out and present it to people. Like that's a little depressing now, you know, like
#
ki ki ki all of that goes into a very, very short shelf life. Obviously like it is like, it is still
#
getting streams, we get royalty checks and all that. Now that system has worked in our favor,
#
you know, so some royalties come coming, but like it's, it's nothing and then money's nothing. So I
#
and I'm circling back to that, like, is somehow that frictionless bit also needs to stem from
#
an audience chipping in with willingness to be a part of that, you know, and I don't know like
#
whether, whether in the, say in any other, in any other field, like, I don't know in the writing
#
sense and all, like how does it work? Like do, do writers get the incentive to write more? You
#
know, we, I, I, here's the thing, I think we are doing it because hum kuch hao kare nahi sakte.
#
Like that's my logic, like what, what will I do now? Like I've never had a job, you know, I'm,
#
I'm 42, I've never, I've never had a job, like I can't go looking for, I was talking with my,
#
with my cousin yesterday and I'm like, he, he was thinking about like, he slowing down her
#
environment and I was thinking like, maybe should I really get serious and actually start working
#
because I've never done that, you know, but I, I don't know, like somehow that bit about being at
#
the adequately compensated receiving end of your efforts. Now wo kahan se aayega, wo pata nahi.
#
Yeah. This conversation is more like, like successive rants. Yeah. No, no, I mean, and these
#
are not even rants. I think it's just thinking about, you know, fundamental issues of the field.
#
So here's sort of my next question before we go in for a break and go in for lunch. And in a sense,
#
it's a question about lunch in a roundabout way that, you know, one, as far as monetizing
#
audiences are concerned, I think it also depends partly on like one that you're right that perhaps
#
particular groups of people may not want to pay, like maybe Indians don't like to pay for content,
#
maybe it is a scarcity mindset from decades past or whatever. I don't know. That's for other people
#
to think about. Partly is also the depth of engagement that, you know, one thing that I am
#
grateful for about the show is that whatever the absolute numbers are, and in podcasting terms,
#
they're pretty good, but they won't compare to a YouTuber's numbers, but whatever they are,
#
the engagement is incredibly high. So people are constantly writing in, they are signing up for the
#
course, they are, you know, that feeling of ownership is there. They're stopping you at an airport
#
and saying, hello, thank you for your work. And, you know, some things will be higher numbers and
#
lower engagement. And I think those will fundamentally be harder to monetize anyway.
#
I think higher engagement audiences will be willing to pay and are willing to pay, but how do you get
#
there? How do you even identify them? How do you even know kind of big questions? But my other
#
question is this, and this is a question that first came up, I think maybe in episode one of
#
the Seen in the Unseen about agriculture, which was that one of my guests there pointed out how
#
unfair it is that corporatization is not allowed in agriculture, because on the one hand, it's not
#
allowed because people say, oh, evil capitalists and all that. But the result of not allowing
#
corporatization is that farmers are also forced to be entrepreneurs. And in a sense, this is unfair.
#
I might be good at farming or I might have chosen farming, but now you're asking me to learn
#
something completely different, which is entrepreneurship. And why not let a specialist
#
in that take care of this aspect? And I find that the same thing is true with musicians,
#
with writers, and so on and so forth, in the sense that you're never going to make a living
#
from the music itself, right? So you went into sound and we'll talk about your journey after the
#
break and all of that in some detail, but you went into sound, other people might do things around
#
producing, composing, all of which you also do. And, and also there is a sense among artists
#
that people say that the revenue stream has changed. You know, it's not just about making
#
the music. So people listen to it. It's also about performing. And my question is, yeah,
#
that's bloody unfair. I could be a musician who just likes creating the music. Maybe I'm not
#
extroverted. Maybe I'm, I'm not, I don't want to go and perform on a stage per se. As you pointed
#
out, you're the Beatles best creative spurt happened after they left performing live and
#
they were just in the studio. And then one thing after another, and had they continued, God knows
#
where they would have gone. Right. So, and it, it feels unfair to me that all the time artists,
#
whether it's musicians or writers or whoever are being given a list of boxes to tick,
#
that you do this for Instagram, you do this on Facebook, you tweet too. You know,
#
uh, if you're a musician, live me pesa hai aap live perform aapko karna parega. And it seems
#
in a fundamental way, unfair, because all of these things are different. You know, there's a
#
different part of you that is sitting down and writing a song. A different part of you is
#
singing the song, you know, there's a difference there also, I'm sure. And a different part of you
#
is standing in an arena to people who want to hear the song played exactly the same damn way
#
you played it 15 years ago. And, um, and it's this sort of like, how do you deal with this?
#
Because for someone like you, you know, who's made a career in sound, uh, who I'm guessing
#
your own mind performing, right? So all of it is fine. You, you've kind of managed, but should you
#
have had to manage in this way? And what does the artist do who cannot do all of these things?
#
He may not even bother to try in the first place. You know, I, I use this term, like there is this
#
term that I'm a professional hobbyist. You know, man, I, I refuse, maybe it's a part of me that
#
just wants to say that I, I went through the 4,000 weeks without doing a job, you know, but, uh,
#
I'm also saying that because there is no, there is no, there is no sense of like, like a formal
#
industry thing below a certain tier. They just isn't, isn't, isn't there, you, you are expected
#
to do all of those things in the, in the chain, take care of everything. And you're right. It is
#
unfair. Like I'll give you an example. I, I don't have a Facebook account and I had to open one
#
because I had to advertise something. I wanted to see what happens if you put a little money to
#
boost a post. You know, I released this, I had released some music a few years ago, a solo venture
#
and, uh, in my mind, it was like, if 10 people hear it, it's a win. So picked up decent numbers
#
by that 10 metric and, but I put some money into it. And I realized that I can't just like
#
take this money and put it like, okay, I want people to in Berlin to listen to this music
#
between like the ad should run between like, that's, that's for my job. You know, so then I
#
started reaching out to people that can you help me with this? And the, obviously they agreed,
#
you know, because they were interested, but then came the thing about like the commerce.
#
That's the money that you need to spend. And this is the money you need to pay me, obviously,
#
like you're asking them for like professional services, right? So then you're like, okay,
#
how much money should I put in? And then the question of like, do I need to push this music
#
because my, my, my, my job was to just like get the music made and then finish it.
#
I don't even want this to be a performing act. Like I'm playing like more than one guitar on it.
#
I'm playing the bass. I got some drummers because I'm a drummer and hiding. And I,
#
all I wanted was the power to tell a drummer that the hi-hat will open. Like, you know, so,
#
but, uh, but I did that thing for a month or two. And here, like, it's interesting, like,
#
you know, like say Warren, for example, he, Warren puts out the music and now it's got like this
#
thing, like the runway is made. He just needs to, he's doing instrumental guitar music, you know,
#
like, come on, like it is such a small market, you know, either you have to be a guitar geek
#
to like his music and to at least like get introduced to the music or somebody has to push
#
you into hearing it. Once you hear it, you start hearing the tunes, you start hearing the music and
#
you're like, okay, there is form structure, all of that. And like, you know, his, it's like great
#
playing. So you get into it and it becomes a soundtrack of part of your life and all that.
#
But I don't think he's pushing it. I don't think he's like creating Instagram ads or whatever. He
#
like gets on Instagram and he'll play for a bit and all that. And that's, I guess, like a form of
#
marketing, but I don't think he's thinking from that point of view. Maybe that is the escape route
#
that you start doing the things without telling yourself that you're doing it this, for that
#
reason, you know, and then you'll be okay with it. And the pressure of being that kind of person will
#
not be there because at the other end of the spectrum for me, at least like there is a, there
#
is a weather, like when we were getting our website redone and the guys will hate me for this, if they
#
hear this, you know, which I'm sure some of them will, but I'll tell them the time code, here I'm
#
ranting about you. But like, you know, we hired like this Agatabli and Abhishek, his friend,
#
Dave, fantastic designer, you know, and we, we spoke with him and he was like, yeah, I'll do it.
#
He did the album art for a second album, fantastic album art, won an award also for it. And,
#
you know, we started sitting in those meetings, I went for one of them, that the website design
#
should be like this, like this is a functionality and all that and so on and so forth. And then I
#
realized that you're, you're asking someone professional to do something and then you're
#
getting involved in that, you know, just because it happens to be presenting your music or your
#
identity. I get it. Like it's, of course you have to do it because it is, you are the finish line
#
and you need to check, okay, this works for me. But I don't know what that point is where that
#
involvement becomes intervention and that intervention becomes impediment. And I think
#
like a lot of musicians, because their inefficiency to just step away from something that they think
#
is sacred and created, like, you know, like this music and all of that, they just impede, intervene
#
and they just become obstacles. And what ends up happening is that this, I think that's also partly
#
responsible for just almost like this informal, nobody is stepping in and saying that I will
#
fix this by supplying like say a social media manager who says more than speak about your day
#
or speak about your past, you know, like have some sort of an angle to your thing. Like we hired a
#
social media team once and we were told that we will do like a fortnight of nostalgia. I'm like
#
really, you know, like, okay, fine, let's do it. And then it was like, you have to post every day,
#
you have to blog every day and not blogs, but like something or the other, like you have to
#
keep creating content. Like, and I'm like, man, like this is not cool. Like, you know, when do I
#
and I'll digress for a second here. So we went, we went and shot this thing, The Durists, which
#
used to be the show where two musicians from seemingly different universes would get together
#
and like they would meet obviously like it's easy. Should I just do it? I'll do it. Like it's put on,
#
right? Like they've decided and the song hasn't been decided. We are writing the song together.
#
Sure. So we, we were, we were not in that space, like in the, not in the, not in the, on the radar
#
of that company that was producing the show. We happened to win the GMA, which is this thing
#
called the global Indian music award, whatever from an album we did. And we got the call the next day
#
that would you like to be on the show? Sure. Why won't we do it? Anyway, we go there and so
#
it's Advaita and there's another solo artist called Dualist Inquiry, Inquiry, whatever he
#
prefers, Sahej. So we go to Shimla, this nice setting, you know, we set up our studio space,
#
we set up our instruments, all of that is happening. And I'm like, okay, let's go.
#
But then you realize a show about music, right? And the show was great. Okay. Like this is a
#
Rigby disclaimer. All of that is given, but having said that a show about music, all of this, man,
#
we were there for four days. The music happened on the third evening. We're like, do you realize
#
there is no song? We need to make this like this is all of that content is being created around the
#
main thing, which will eventually get showcased. And that was kept. That will happen on the last
#
day. So some, and the song like, you know, we've never played that. We actually played that song
#
live once. We just like disowned it, you know, like accidentally swiped right on some Tinder date.
#
I have no idea what that means. I just wanted to say it like the current cultural reference,
#
but, but yeah, it was just about packaging of the entire thing. Here's the positive thing that I'm
#
trying to talk about. Like somebody thought of all of it before the music was made. Over here,
#
you make the music and then you have to begin to think of all of that. And that I think just
#
I think just keeps makes you distant from the track or from the piece of music that you create
#
from the album that you do, whatever. Like it just, it just seems so long ago because in the middle
#
of all of this, you're just constantly turning out a new twist or a new reel or a new post.
#
So when I guess that's a good thing that the finish line was the song, not the starting line.
#
And maybe that whatever pipeline needs to be inverted, you know, like all of that shit is
#
going to flow towards a track, which will get made. And then it begins to make sense. And I
#
think like when musicians, artists, indie, whatever, like we start thinking like that,
#
maybe it'll begin to churn the other way. And probably it will work. That's a big probably,
#
but like, yeah. Otherwise, there's no right. What's the word for it? Like I don't know.
#
It's some context, like a deadline of sorts, you know, like it's going to get over here.
#
You know, where is it going to get over at which post at what interaction at which Instagram live,
#
like at what point do you say, okay, enough has been made for this. Now I want to sit back and
#
see like it churn on its own and something happened. That's also the other thing. Like
#
you just don't allow it to sit and seep in. Apparently the rule of the game is that you have
#
to keep doing it. It's just exhausting. It's not our job. You know, it's not our job. And
#
I have been doing this music thing for 20 years, right? But this so-called whatever media
#
interaction, social media thing in game, like I can't even claim to play it properly.
#
You know, I'll do a repost here, a tag there and all that, but I don't understand like you,
#
what is it, what is supposed to be the, like somebody else has to do it. Yeah.
#
Well, I think a lot of it is you're just ticking boxes in the sense that by now template
#
bunge hai ki Instagram me yeh karenge, is me wo karenge and you're just ticking those boxes.
#
And none of it really is meaningful. Like I sometimes idealistically say that a good product
#
is the best marketing, but part of the reason I say that is one, I'm privileged enough to have
#
gotten lucky that my product did well enough on its own without me needing to market it. And maybe
#
it doesn't hold true for everyone. And perhaps I'm just rationalizing my laziness,
#
but I think it is unfair to ask all artists. Like every creator today is in a sense,
#
an entrepreneur of his own brand. And it is unfair because they may not have entrepreneurship skills
#
or branding skills and any work they put in for that is taking away from what they could be doing,
#
just sitting and creating, you know, which is why I don't do any sales for the scene on the unseen.
#
I'm just happy kind of going from one episode to the other and actually working on the recording
#
of the thing. And the other approach that I have towards Instagram and all of these is that if you
#
have to do them, don't think of them cynically as marketing, but think of it as a creation on
#
its own, right? So you put in that effort there and you never know, maybe that sparks something
#
and that becomes something on its own, but let every single thing that you put out there be
#
something that you're happy with as a creator. And not that this is, oh, you know, I've done a
#
10 minute YouTube video, I'll promote that with a one minute Instagram thing. And you should not
#
think of like that. I think you should think of everything as a separate creation. And it's good,
#
I think, for creators to sort of push yourself with new constraints and new formats and all that.
#
Yeah. It's the one last thought on this. You know, I, I somehow feel that, so I just lying,
#
that it's not mine. I'm sure I've come from somewhere. You know, and I somehow feel that
#
at the end of finishing, like a piece of music, which comes out into the universe and has now got
#
a life of its own, right? Unless and until you wait for it to impact the lives of whatever fan base
#
you have and patience is well, but unless you wait for it, like, it'll always be like, you've not
#
won. I don't consider myself like, you know, keep, keep, keep, it's not working out like it is. Of
#
course it is. But because they will always be a team of people or a team of critics or whatever,
#
like a bunch of people who will sit down and say, it did not work because he did not do a dozen
#
Instagram posts. You were supposed to do a dozen. You were supposed to release the video at six
#
o'clock. Why did you release it at four o'clock? Why didn't you get behind the scenes and figure
#
out like it is supposed to go out then? But that's the, that's the part I'm trying to make,
#
like there is, there should be somebody who you should be. And like here, here's the thing,
#
like if you, if you want to use that kind of service, you should be able to pay for it,
#
which means that you should be able to rationalize I'm doing this. I'm putting in the money because
#
it will get me to a point where I can charge more for whatever I'm doing, you know, like a performance
#
or like, you know, some sort of thing, but yeah, like there'll always be a reason. I feel like
#
you can rationalize why did it fail? You know, but I am now looking at it from the flip side,
#
that there has to be a reason that, that I've, that I've made that people like me with like,
#
who've been around for like 20 years and you're just doing it, you know, and you're doing it
#
because you get it done and you move on. And eventually that catches a life of its own and
#
it feeds into something else that you want to do right now. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe it goes to
#
that surface area of luck thing again, you know, it just has to, it's just becoming wider over a
#
period of time, but we have to give it time. Yeah. I mean, I think another activity where
#
something that is created with a lot of love just disappears into nothingness is lunch. So let's
#
take a quick commercial break and then we'll come back at the end of it.
#
Long before I was a podcaster, I was a writer. In fact, chances are that many of you first heard
#
of me because of my blog, India Uncut, which was active between 2003 and 2009 and became somewhat
#
popular at the time. I love the freedom, the form gave me, and I feel I was shaped by it in many
#
ways. I exercise my writing muscle every day and was forced to think about many different things
#
because I wrote about many different things. Well, that phase in my life ended for various
#
reasons and now it is time to revive it. Only now I'm doing it through a newsletter. I have started
#
the India Uncut newsletter at indiancut.substack.com where I will write regularly about whatever catches
#
my fancy. I'll write about some of the themes I cover in this podcast and about much else.
#
So please do head on over to indiancut.substack.com and subscribe. It is free. Once you sign up,
#
each new installment that I write will land up in your email inbox. You don't need to go anywhere.
#
So subscribe now for free. The India Uncut newsletter at indiancut.substack.com. Thank you.
#
Welcome back to The Scene In The Unseen. I'm chatting with Gaurav Chintamani who besides
#
being a musician and the editor of my show also happens to be as I accidentally discovered in a
#
strange way of speaking a cousin of mine, which was kind of bizarre because I was sitting once at
#
Gaurav's house after a recording or after a trip to Delhi and we were just chatting and he told
#
me about this cousin of his who sounded disconcertingly like a cousin of mine. So I
#
said what is his name and he took the name and I said oh he's my cousin also. So there was this
#
moment where Gaurav looked absolutely shocked at me like what the fuck are you talking about and
#
then we realized that his aunt married my uncle to put a long story short and their child was a said
#
cousin in question and also by the way a cousin that I met only in adulthood because the family
#
was kind of strange and estranged and all of those things so which is kind of weird but you know when
#
it's like cousins by marriage in this kind of long about way does it count? We'll make it count.
#
That's the thing now like I have extended the circle of like who falls into the family like
#
based just based on this like you know man come on like that day was like I was
#
two things happened one was like I'm convinced now that everybody is supposed to meet you will
#
end up meeting them like nothing can stop from that happening and do such like what like what
#
was that connection also but yeah it's fantastic also you are the only player in the family who's
#
beaten me at chess so yeah okay so that is all the more reason I should not be counted as part of a
#
family right yeah no we'll play after this maybe I'm sure you'll beat me I'm not always good
#
and you were drunk that day I think when we played well I was a couple of drinks in and you were off
#
like you were you had just finished like that marathon bunch of sessions of the studio and
#
I think you were extra alert yeah I think the post recording crash of Epinephrine had happened
#
and like but but of course you're better when come on like yeah no I mean you had alcohol I had
#
modafinil so that does together I think amount to a lot of difference so you know you are possibly
#
the cousin of mine that I know the least about so fill me in a little bit like where did you grow
#
up what was your childhood like yeah well so dad's ex-army so the growing up thing happened all over
#
the country and I was born in Madras and my around that time my dad was posted in Jamshedpur if I'm
#
not mistaken Jamshedpur so we've done I've done Jamshedpur, Ferozpur, Divlali, Allahabad,
#
Gurdaspur, back to Divlali, Agartala and then Delhi so yeah like changed a lot of schools
#
never made any friends and never yeah I it happened after Divlali I think Divlali were the
#
happiest years of my growing up bit made a lot of I mean I didn't stay in touch with those people
#
but made a lot of good friends and from there I realized that when I was just settling in
#
when I'd finally cracked the like the social aspect of I don't know the like the constant army
#
moving thing and all and I was never friends with I could never find people to hang out with
#
in the kids of the officers that dad was working with and yeah from there we moved to Agartala
#
and it was it was miserable man like what I like I'm sure it's a great place now or maybe
#
it is a great place from a certain angle from which I never viewed it but yeah I was I was
#
miserable and before Agartala we were in Allahabad my dad's side of the family like they are
#
they had moved to Allahabad so my dad's grandfather my great-grandfather he he was
#
so he was from Vizag and he started writing he was a journalist and he was asked to move to Allahabad
#
by I might get this wrong but I think it was mother Mohan Malviya who had a paper and he asked him to
#
move so he went and he uh he took over what became the leader this newspaper and so that's
#
like the family has like a past in Allahabad and all that so when but anyway so we were in Allahabad
#
and Allahabad was miserable I wasn't convinced for a for a better part of the first few years
#
and I hated it I hated it like my yeah I have very very few memories and I don't think any of
#
them are happy it was just like there was this fixed thing of yeah I I remember seeing like some
#
really bad movies which are forced entertainment in government schools and I think Devlali
#
I shifted to a uh made some really good friends and uh started um yeah like just just uh started
#
being okay with like being in a place and then moved again Agartala miserable hated it and I'm
#
jumping through hoops here but Agartala there was a regiment banned and so my take on that became
#
okay if I'm stuck here I might as well make the most of it so that was always posted like he would
#
get posted but he would be moved to a forward area the army they have this thing like the family
#
stays back in peace areas and field areas are where the officer moves to so we were in Agartala
#
and dad was moving on in Nagaland and so whenever he would come back the little time that I would
#
get with him a lot of it would revolve around music and uh again I have very few memories of
#
growing up but I I remember the time like I heard uh hard day's night you know my dad played that
#
song and that first chord came and I was like yeh kya hai and uh hard day's night and uh thriller
#
Michael Jackson and Die Straits like it it was so I I started getting into that music because
#
because of dad and then like I said there was a regiment banned so I went in and I started with
#
the drums did a little bit of drums couldn't convince my parents to buy me a drum kit ki
#
ghar pe hoga show sharaba and then I figured like the easier way in is a guitar it's more portable
#
so I moved to the guitar and uh yeah after Agartala we moved to Delhi in 94 and uh we spent a couple
#
dad spent a couple of years in Delhi and then he got posted to Kashmir and obviously like again
#
that forward area field peace thing and we could not move we stayed back in Delhi and 94 say I've
#
been in Delhi finished the last four years of school in Delhi and uh now the guitar was in like
#
I was yeah in Delhi like suddenly it opened up I I got to meet a lot of people in the in the school
#
who were listening to like cooler music newer music like some shit like Guns N' Roses and all
#
the Pantera and all that started happening but uh but yeah 94 and 95 kya aspas uh I started uh
#
I was always good at studies I I could get by we were chatting about this about how uh we would you
#
could do uh crack stuff really easily like it wasn't hard like you know once you understood the
#
the system of like ki padhane hi koshish kya kar rahe hain like I could just get it
#
you know and I was initially I was one of those really irritating kids as my as my
#
my wife Priya calls me that oh you're one of those used to finish the curriculum in the summer
#
holidays I used to do that and just try to be like you know pale but I was one of those kids
#
but then eventually like interest just it leaned more and more towards music and uh I just yeah I
#
don't know like you know I did the there are two things that which can totally ruin you if you
#
start listening to the doors at the wrong time and if you read Ayanra at the wrong time and I think
#
I did both of those and I was very easily I think I was very ductile I just got you know I got this
#
idea of myself which was it's not really like it's made up and uh but between that the music
#
and a few other things like I realized that there is only one thing that makes
#
everything else just like they'll calm down a little bit you know like every time I would
#
sit with the guitar and I was not really good like I didn't have any teachers and all that I'm
#
listening to songs cassette player pe baar baar jaake and then I'm trying to figure out the
#
mechanics of what is going on so I'm self-taught in that way and um and yeah so school gets over
#
and I asked my parents for a year off because I was like yeah I can't do this is 98 I finished
#
school in 98 and yeah I can't I don't know what I want to do like I just can't jump into something
#
and the last two years of school were like all like seeped in music like I was just doing that
#
but uh South Indian parents not that they were strict enforcers or whatever but they said
#
ki degree le lo just do something and then you can take a year off so I enrolled myself into
#
two things I you know I was like I asked dad ki kya karo so he said computers kar lo mom
#
commerce kar lo so and I had sciences in school I had that I was like sure so I'd but my thing was
#
that I won't go to a college like I'm very introverted that way I don't I feel like I
#
I get sapped if I hang out with people out of like you know like forced interaction so I just I can't
#
do it so I didn't go to college and every every one of my like little people I used to hang out
#
within school all of them left the city and I had this blissful two years tinned from 98 to 2000
#
where I didn't know anyone in the city that I'd been living in for six years
#
I was amazing because initially I used to complain about you know like making friends and then moving
#
away and then having to start all over again and it felt like that like I could start all over again
#
and I chose not to like just hang out with anyone so I had this thing where I would
#
I was doing computers I would I would assemble computers for people just for like a little bit
#
of pocket money take that pocket money buy cassettes from Clydes and the odd guitar thing
#
and Delhi has that used to have that Sunday market Daryaganj market where there's a book
#
books on the yeah like the entire road would be cordoned off and they would do books
#
so I would go every Sunday and I would pick up books and just that's it like spend a week just
#
like doing a little bit of coding assembling playing guitar brilliant two years like I didn't
#
do anything else except that you know and at the end of the two years I like I have figured okay
#
this computer thing is not going to work you know like it's not conventional south indian
#
and the commerce thing also like I loved I loved the thing of like flipping from science to this
#
and then a part of me was just like hey why don't I do this in school like why did why
#
did I just assume that I have to do science and then I started hating the system even more
#
give where are the counselors where are the people who find who you are what you're supposed to be
#
and then then obviously like distilled down to like where are the teachers and I just started
#
hating everything about anything that is like organized this whole which is erotical because
#
I'm teaching right now but you can come to that later but uh but yeah I I finished college and
#
then I got my year off and I then doubled down on the whole thing of like up to like I will do
#
nothing so I was I was playing doing that whole sunday book thing and for a year I just did that
#
like I just played as much music I formed like a band and nothing like just meeting twice thrice
#
a week and just like playing tunes and even from then like the idea was okay these are a set of
#
tunes that all of us know if you can find like a common language in this like do jam based music
#
which is stupid because I mean none of us were educated enough to improvise with any sort of
#
skill we were improvising by just like you will land somewhere and I changed the kind of music
#
I was listening to like from I discovered blues and that's it like I remember the day I heard
#
just like the day I remember like I heard Beatles I remember the day I heard Stevie Ray Vaughan
#
and that first note like this just sliced through me and then I was just hooked.
#
It was this song called the sky is crying which is a his his take on the Elmo James classic
#
and that's it like I will like he satya hai you know because I don't know like there is obviously
#
like there is a there is a sort of um personality in rock hard rock metal all of that which just
#
doesn't you know it was I was convincing myself that I kind of like that music and people around
#
me are liking that music anyway so this this gets over and I figured that I need to find a way
#
to be next to this audio music thing I still didn't know like audio and sound is you can get
#
into it so I did a little bit of research found a place in Chennai and told my mom and she grew up
#
in Chennai, Madras so Bon brought up and I told her that I want to go to Chennai and study audio
#
I kept muted that and I said engineering zor se so she like yeah go go and my grandmother was still
#
living in Chennai back then so 2001 I went I did this thing in Chennai for a year and
#
yeah that was like the short version which I think are the only relevant version bits of landing from
#
all over the country to Delhi and then just like finding my way to like get closer to doing audio
#
and music yeah. You didn't strike me as a misanthrope all this time so you know the
#
fact that you were like in the city and not going to college because you don't want to meet people
#
and six years after six years you find yourself with having to make friends all over again is like
#
kind of very sort of interesting it reminds me of both of me and I think J R Jhun Singh also
#
in his episode yeah had a similar kind of not fitting in kind of story which which actually
#
makes it makes us all very lucky that we live in a time where we can discover friends outside of our
#
you know geographical constraints or whatever it is I mean if you weren't in Delhi if you were
#
in a smaller town maybe harder to get into music if I didn't have the internet I think if J didn't
#
have the internet if you know anybody listening didn't have the internet we'd probably you know
#
just be in a different world and part of different communities or circumstance rather than choice
#
yeah yeah I you know the I think I think a lot of people just who are I guess of this they have
#
this thing of like not like introverts you know like they it was crushing time to grow up in and
#
I mean it was good when you were really on your own at least like I I remember like you know
#
sitting with the book or listening to this music and all that and being very happy like and the
#
the pressure of just like meeting people and like you know striking up conversations trying to find
#
like middle ground or something and I remember when you moved to Delhi uh 1994 94 it was uh I
#
had the sentence exam to school and it was uh it was that Italy Brazil world cup final the way
#
Bajio missed the penalty kick and Brazil won I was up till like six in the morning or four four in
#
the morning the world cup was happening in America I think I was watching uh soccer and uh next
#
morning went and went to the school that I was I was going to join and uh massive school massive
#
school too way too many people and I just remember feeling like nervous and all that
#
it will be instead of feeling like there I will be able to like find like a tribe over here I just
#
felt like man to get lost in a place like this will be something and for the first I want to say
#
three months at least I did not speak to anyone I just go to school like do my thing and then come
#
back home and then just wait to get to like you know playing a little bit of guitar or just like
#
listening to some music or reading a book or something or the other but like I just
#
yeah it that time was just like very very difficult and I think like post the the internet
#
and being okay with who you are because I really think like this constant moving you have to be
#
really lucky like this this whole army kid thing and all that you have to be really lucky to be
#
able to find who you really are during the stage of growing up which it's supposed to be like right
#
it it never happens like it's you're always like in two years like you're thrust into a different
#
part of the country and some people really take to it I didn't you know my elder brother I guess
#
did in a certain way but I I didn't like I just I used to hate it and because the culture changes
#
and uh slangs change and the like everything everything just changes and you're also growing
#
up through all these times it's bloody difficult and I know like this is not the kind of at least
#
like late 80s and 90s and all that you can't I don't even think like I the thought crossed my
#
mind that I should go and you know ask my parents like what do you do like how did what happened
#
when you were growing up and how did you tackle this and all that and which I didn't and that
#
though was always like somewhere else you know but uh but really difficult time if this whole
#
early 2000 internet music thing had not happened yeah I'd have been a sad MBA somewhere yeah like
#
just taken some sort of a path which was said okay this is this is what you need to just follow
#
because I guess that that's what you end up settling for eventually okay okay if you can't
#
I'm not saying like I've charted some great course or whatever but like at least it's mine
#
you know so that but yeah it's it was really difficult time really I think one of the parts
#
of growing up and with some people it's not even something they reach into adulthood but maybe
#
later and some people perhaps even never achieve it is that going through that whole process of
#
becoming comfortable in your own skin right and and and before you become comfortable in your own
#
skin before you can get out of the anxiety of what others might think of you I think you also have
#
to discover what your own freaking skin is right because too often you know your parents will have
#
one expectation of you people around you will have another expectation you will have expectations
#
formed from mimetic desire as it were uh in the modern age I guess uh instagram can be crushing
#
for many young people because uh you know they keep comparing the projected lives of others with
#
the real lives of their own and that just can never end well I can imagine it has been crushing
#
and maybe it's like you said it's lucky for both of us that the internet was there that we had
#
access to books and all of that and we could at least come to a definition of our own skin or a
#
better understanding she might not have 30 years earlier so what were those sort of tugs and
#
pressures happening with you like I'm guessing that you feel kind of comfortable in your own
#
skin now that you know what you're doing and why you're doing it and you're cool with that
#
but what was that process like of arriving there I think uh I think the awareness of
#
making that kind of nudge constantly to figure oneself out was not really there
#
like it was just too much uh I don't know if pressure is the right word but I think it was
#
just too much of uh stimuli and being present like you just have to be you have to play a part
#
you know and I'm not saying that I I was expected to but but I was like like I said I was you know
#
I was good in studies and I started thinking that okay this is what I'm supposed to do
#
like this this I'm I'm I don't have the I don't think I understood the concept of like the job
#
or whatever but uh this is also growing up in the 80s and all nobody's telling you what to do
#
and this is equal measure like the lack of awareness on my parents generation like they
#
didn't know like I don't knew that the parenting was a thing you know so either that or like huh
#
I'll be like I'm not saying that they didn't pay rent but like there is no thing of key nobody's
#
telling you like this is the part that you're supposed to execute so I think like I ended up
#
saying that okay I have to do this like you have to be good at studies okay so dad goes to office
#
you know mom is doing her thing and I'm going to school for six hours so this is my job
#
so be good at this so I became really decent like I would do my thing like you know like study well
#
and all that and then uh there is like a ceiling to that also like okay oh so you you know some
#
4g party is happening and mom is like yeah he's the academic one and he's the creative one so like
#
referring to my creative whatever the non-academy studies which which is so much lesser pressure
#
like you know it's I feel like at least through the education system that the school that the
#
country offers us like it's better to be average than to be exceptional like don't peak so early
#
you know 85% rule or something but uh but I feel like I was constantly looking for what is
#
I guess answers for what is it that is expected of me you know because every once in a while you
#
get reprimanded like you say that's that's like commanding officer for a regiment for example
#
you know and you are you're a kid you're doing your thing and all that and then like this
#
jitter chatter starts around you like say your son is doing something and all that okay so
#
yeah I mean I'm I'm not saying that it's kind of shaping you but like you said okay fine like
#
there is a is there a part that I'm supposed to like execute pull off and there's no directive
#
coming from the higher authority there's no memo which is being shared and before you know it like
#
you know you you are thrust into like different schools where different where you're just trying
#
to figure out like who are the people are supposed to hang out with and what I'm trying I think what
#
I'm trying to get at is that there are too many roles and too many parts to play and that the
#
the nudges were now I'm thinking about it like thinking about it in hindsight like it's it's
#
just that I think I was at least me I was I was just waiting to you know way to get away from
#
having to deliver to other people you know whether it's my parents with my academic performance
#
or whether it's my school teachers with whatever or whatever and like is there a is there a defined
#
some sort of a thing or the standard that I can come up with and I can work towards that
#
and yeah I don't I don't think I remember a particular event or a process but it is
#
definitely like the like the thing that you know like music could be a thing like that and in that
#
like it's truly like whatever I'm doing whatever I'm playing and it's nothing it's like I'm trying
#
to play a cover I'm trying to learn a Jeff Bechti or something or the other but like this is mine
#
right now you know and it's and I ended up I think that's what I ended up doing I ended up using
#
that very feeble thing as a definition of like this is me you know because nobody is telling
#
me to play guitar but but people are expecting me to study or people are expecting me to do this or
#
experience so this is my thing you know I I think I got good at some sports for example and then
#
that comparative thing doesn't make didn't make like just didn't work it and I think like just
#
this finding a bit of playing a little bit of music and just figuring out my reactions to every
#
obstacle or every everything that I climbed over in trying to get better at a particular instrument
#
yeah I guess it's that cliche thing of like you left alone and over a period of time like you
#
just took the shape of the thing that you're sitting in you know like you're in the sense
#
like it becomes you like this there's no problem with being around here and this place is okay
#
okay and also it's it's only the sense of like playing a little bit of music which made it so
#
that I was fine with now being anywhere you know like I was completely okay with like not having
#
like people to hang out with initial parts of Delhi you know that's fine like you know
#
and once school got over and people hooked off in different places like a lot of them came to
#
Pune or went to Chennai and all to study and all that right after school it was fine like I'm just
#
doing this I think the the minute I let myself be okay with that I am not much to the disappointment
#
of a lot of people you know like you know I'm sure my mom was pretty disappointed because
#
serious a good academic you know in in this conventional school sense and oh you're not
#
going to do that and you know the doctor even okay or some shit like that like yeah but like
#
you are neighbor you know and okay it just felt like you're playing some parts but but I have to
#
say this like at least like dad dad mom both like our like okay it's your life okay this is
#
the expectation but figure it out that then your mistakes will also be yours you know so you can
#
crack crack that if you can if you can be okay with it and if you can crack that open and be
#
okay with that being exposed to all of that key whatever decision you're taking make it right
#
you know and make it right to the point where just it's there is there is no pressure and there is
#
no I'm not saying there's no support system but there's no yeah like the key key this is something
#
that you're getting into on your own account so sort that out and I think that's more liberating
#
than like pressure key okay I will take care of it like you know whatever happens yeah but
#
again like I don't remember that particular set of circumstances which which took me to that point
#
but I'm sure this is the soundtrack was you know out of tune guitars which I was trying to like
#
play so yeah and I guess that's also a pressure of its own or maybe then it's not because you
#
know today we can look back and you know that whole thing about owning your mistakes that your
#
mistakes are your own and today you can look back and say that okay I took this path and that means
#
I didn't take that other path and this is seminal it is a complete break you know it is what it is
#
and there's never any turning back once you take a particular road you're never going to go back
#
and become a doctor or an engineer or lived that conventional life and so on and so forth but you
#
know that now but in the moment I guess you're just kind of going with the flow doing what you
#
enjoy and you know all of that what what was audio engineering like because one thing that you've
#
expressed at different times is and even earlier in this conversation I think is about how
#
when you're learning something whether it's music or whether it's cooking it's it's it's it's it's
#
thrilling to go back to first principles and try to figure shit out from there to kind of understand
#
the why behind the thing is that sort of a trait of mind that you always had growing up or is that
#
a trait of mind that formed itself and you found something that you loved like maybe playing the
#
guitar or like maybe just learning audio that then it doesn't seem like work anymore then you want
#
to know more and and the why is you're going to get there anyway yeah I would like to believe as
#
the former but I definitely think it's the latter that you know I think this whole music audio
#
sound thing was the first time where so for me it I I'm very I was very clear I think about one
#
thing that there can't be life and work separation like it can't be that like I can't be okay now
#
I'm doing this and I need to stop doing this to be able to live my life you know that just that
#
arrangement just does not make sense to me so this whole thing of like this just to go back a little
#
and like talk about that whole school thing and like picking and the kind of pressure like you
#
know like I'm talking about 98 99 like the guy you know everybody like cut off list may everybody
#
the whole thing of pick now stick with it because you have to do it there is no other way and you
#
know the awareness like is not there and I too refuse to give in to that pressure I was just
#
like yeah I will crack man like you know and also I have done the contract of studying for 12 years
#
so I thought didn't even want to do college you know like I'd really I haven't gone back and
#
collected my degree also I'm like I finished it you know marks came I graduated whatever and
#
I haven't gone back and thankfully I've never needed a loan in which I have to show like I'm
#
a graduate or something but but I haven't because I was like that's the contract I finished it
#
you know now I need to really find what is it that I want to do which in which I will be
#
you know you can say either you're always working or you're always living like so for me I find I
#
know it sounds like I know cheesy or what the word is but like I find audio everywhere you know I
#
will yeah I will look for hacks of like say contrast around me and try to apply them you
#
know in a sense of audio so I it's become this like the only precondition to the entire thing
#
was that I want to do something which makes me feel and this is as early as 2000 like which makes
#
me feel like I am not like moving between different versions of myself like that is that
#
just sounds exhausting tiring and demanding and then add on to this a layer of eventually if you
#
if you if you find partner and all that and then like she will also be going through like her own
#
like her own set of like shifts and like what we are four different people you know and the
#
and according to the gospel it's two lost souls in a fishbowl not four so so if you're alone you're
#
two lost souls in a fishbowl already yeah that's the starting point so the main thing of doing
#
something which doesn't there's no line separating that this stops and that begins that's the
#
criteria and and the criteria is music but then you know like let's like increasing the surface
#
area so as to speak what is music and what are the different parts of it I was very clear as early
#
as 2000 because I looked you know you would never hear about like gigs happening that Delhi there
#
are there are concert venues or there's like a cultural thing where performing musician is a
#
thing there isn't there you know there is two I want to say the word there's there's parikrama you
#
know and I remember like sneaking out of the house like you know with a friend of mine his
#
dad's scooter which we pushed till like a certain point on the road ki hawaaz na jaaye you know then
#
we started and we went and it I remember this gig it was happening in a school in Delhi father
#
agnell school south delhi main and parikrama was blasting away I'm a kid I'm plus 12th like
#
yeah like final year of school and soli sorabji's house is pretty close by and he's having a dinner
#
he sent cops man like he really loved his music you know so like I'm saying that is that is there
#
are no clubs there are no pubs and the concerts are getting shut down by like soli sorabji yeah
#
people who's who was I think he was on the jazz yatra committee anyway like the like a lover of
#
music so as to speak but like he banned karwa so I was very clear that performing musician like I
#
don't know what that means you know and then I was very aware that I'm I'm not I wasn't at a point
#
where I could like say ki oh I am something worth like you know ki like hear me play like I was not
#
that good I was not so then I figured like there are there have to be these points which are
#
connected to the world of music and stepping away music becomes audio audio becomes engineering and
#
then I'm like okay fine what are the places where you can go so Chennai happened to be one place
#
bombay the other bombay seto bombay fti was one place but then it was very it was not about music
#
it was about like sound which maybe would have been a good thing but again I thought like he
#
bought formal entrance exam all of that and there was no way like you know like I just
#
didn't make sense in my head and so I went to I went to Chennai and I don't think I was taught
#
anything over there like I was not like again like it was it was just this yeah at least I was you
#
know I had been I had prepped myself at 12 years of disappointment in schooling anyway so it was
#
fine like it wasn't that great that that school was okay but what they did have was a couple of
#
studios and I happened to be one of the guitar players maybe there was another guy but probably
#
the only guitar player for like a for a short window of time but I ended up playing on a lot
#
of people's recordings so I just ended up being in the studio for a for a long since you know
#
and we were staying close by and uh yeah I just spent it so I just spent so much time in the
#
studio that uh that I've I started looking at uh how to connect these dots of like being performing
#
musician to maybe writing some music on your own to maybe just engineering for other people and
#
it did not it like nothing
#
nothing seminal and learns of like in time in sense of aha moments happened during the engineering
#
thing like you're you're too close to it you know you're just trying to like put in the hours and
#
finish uh assignments or whatever and finish curriculum and that got over and again the same
#
thing like of all of my so-called friends like just moving away that happened like people came
#
back to Bombay some stuck around in Chennai but everybody joined the studio and I wanted to get
#
the whole performing musician thing a bit you know like a chance game maybe and I remember I
#
came to Bombay my brother had some friends and who had some good through custom common friends
#
I met some people who who were like uh some were performing musicians some were just like
#
technicians engineers but like also play a little bit of guitar so I met a few people
#
and uh I remember I remember telling my like I met this guy called Floyd Fernandez
#
and he's from the city he's one of us like his level of his mastery on the instrument is like
#
scary you know and he doesn't care he doesn't give a fuck about it he's so good he doesn't
#
and he just you know he's not a professional musician in the sense like he's not performing
#
but he is uh he's always playing and I remember I met him and he's like oh yeah let's go home and
#
we went to his place and he opened his closet and there were black t-shirts and guitars that's it
#
took out a guitar he's chatting with me he's telling me about the city about blah blah and
#
he's a he's an engineer like he's a systems like a studio engineer not uh in front of the desk but
#
like maintenance and all that and serious electronic brain and all just talking away chatting or just
#
playing like ripping on the guitar in front of me while doing this also while talking to me about
#
the harsh realities of Bombay and all that this is my first time here and just like the center of
#
the industry and all that I remember going back like when I left his house and I remember telling
#
myself ki boss guitar bajake toh it's not good you're not going to cut it so you better find like
#
like what is the next knife in that so-called swiss army like bring that one out this is not
#
fitting in and then I just went all in on figuring out this whole production thing so I went back to
#
Delhi and I had a I had a couple of like just interviews lined up with like some studios and
#
all that I was like yeah I'm very lazy and we were living in Gurgaon my dad had retired uh from the
#
army so we moved to Gurgaon and this is Gurgaon in 2002 so it is it's a nightmare right now it
#
was a barren nightmare then it's just like it's nothing you know and anyways we're living there
#
and all the action is happening in a certain part of Delhi and by action I mean like minimal action
#
like it's not Bombay level at all but but yeah I figured ki yeh toh nahi hoga like I can't like go
#
on my bike and go to a place and sit in front of a desk and hit R you know like I can't do it
#
R for record but I can't and then I said kei theek hai like maybe I'm not the level of like a Floyd
#
Fernandez of all those people but I can play I know that much so started moving around in the
#
circuit a little bit finding look you know doing the hard thing of making friends and telling them
#
I'm also a guitar player and all that and I and there was this point from 2003 to 2006 where all
#
this was happening together like I would get a project like say maybe an odd jingle and I
#
started taking it to uh I took it to a studio uh which which is the one that you record when
#
you come to Delhi and this gentleman called Arjun Sen he was running a studio and I went in there
#
and the first project I ever did was uh people in Delhi will be familiar with this there's this
#
spiritual guru nirankar nirankari baba I did his anthem so everything from like KDSN rhymes to like
#
spiritual guruske anthems to whatever like corporate presentations and you'll be like
#
playing on them or composing I composed it I composed it and so nirankari baba's anthem
#
is composed by you ha at least the one that came out unless until they've changed it the one that
#
came out in uh 2003 yeah yeah kishore kumar's son amit kumar he sang it wow yeah yeah he I
#
remember we were doing the session uh Delhi in the same in the studio it used to be called sound
#
advice then now it's called cotton note so uh we were doing the session and he came in and he sang
#
his thing and he did a take he was in Delhi and he did this whole kishore kumar tribute night thing
#
the night before I remember I went to the so the director told me ki haan ko jaake de do
#
aur bataa do ki kya tune hai waagara waagara this kid I walk into the room and I'm like
#
I'm obviously halka sa enamored like I'm a fan of like kishore kumar who is it and this is his son
#
like he'll be as cool and he was I actually don't have any memory of him but he was okay he was not
#
rude or anything but he heard the tune and he said ki what am I supposed to sing this is just the
#
arrangement so I had so I played the entire melody on the guitar he said no no no no see he said
#
and then he just left so I said okay so I sat up the entire night and I sang and I can't sing I
#
can't sing two notes you know so I sang and I uh tuned it did other things dropped it off uh raat ko
#
so I like I was in three in the morning and I thinking that he will see it in the morning the CD
#
will be delivered to him and clear it obviously did not hear it but he came to the studio he did
#
a take he learned the tune he's like haan baho chahe baho chahe and he sang and he was very happy it was
#
a good take and I remember like I said I had was making notes you know I I have this thing of like
#
which everybody does like whoever is producing vocals ki the lyric sheet ki upar they'll be
#
making notes ki oh do this again do that again and all that so he said ki haan sahi hai like party's
#
over I said sir can we do again do some takes again and he's like you what do you mean again
#
like what do you want to do so I pointed out things to him and suddenly like the way it changed you
#
know and he was like oh this shit just became serious like you are also listening and you know
#
like he he was very he was very cool like he was like okay okay I see what you want and I'll also
#
deliver so that was the first session I ever did like you know and uh then Ajay Arjun Sen who used
#
to run the studio he's like man like kind of cool you know like you hang out if you ever want to
#
bring a project here your work here just forget it little did I know that Ajay uh I don't know if
#
you're familiar with this gentleman from northeast called uh Lumajow that society so Ajay is Lumajow's
#
guitar player he was a guitar player for Lumajow Ajay he's legendary right like he is um it's a shame
#
that like not enough people know about him and his music has not reached but he's he's the he's my
#
favorite guitar player uh country yeah and if not like also the list of like favorite guitar
#
players of all time anyway so we I started hanging around the studio and I would take projects over
#
there and uh one day I walked in and um Ajay was practicing with his trio and he has a band called
#
HFT uh which stands for high fucking time and uh fantastic music fantastic music and uh I yeah I
#
just I just started spending more and more time over there in around 2006 uh 2006 Ajay was like
#
he's had it he's had enough he's like he's done with the city and he wanted to move so he uh he
#
was giving the space up and he was moving to Himachal Bir and I said I will take it so uh I mean
#
I obviously did not buy the studio but like everything inside the studio equipment a little
#
bit that was put up I yeah I went to my dad and I borrowed a little bit of money I had some money
#
from the projects that I had done and I just bought the space with a friend who was my partner at the
#
studio and we ran the place together together in the sense like it was again like professional
#
hobby it's never a business but yeah 2006 I got the space and then I just started now by 2006 I
#
was just playing with as many bands as I could like I would get a gig I would just take it you
#
know I I played gigs I had two slip discs by 2007 well I played a gig with like you know sitting in
#
a like almost like a wheelchair thing I was wheeled up to the stage and I because I've committed
#
to it and uh yeah I was playing like three four sometimes five nights a week like wherever I
#
wherever I could find a gig and uh but this engineering side of it the I don't know that
#
I was not devoting too much time to it but I was I always always had it like a little
#
production work the odd jingles coming in you know and Delhi is very like corporate film
#
documentary film that kind of thing so started doing a lot of that and uh yeah 2006 I was
#
playing with this band called Artists Unlimited and Annette Philip the the girl who runs the
#
Berkeley India Ensemble so she started this thing in Delhi called Artists Unlimited and it was a
#
really cool thing of about 30-40 singers and the core band and you do everything you know from
#
gospel to R&B to Hindustani classical all that and we recorded an album and a lot of the people
#
in Artists Unlimited are also in Advaita so I met up just a circle of musicians that you're
#
in a meeting like just like you know they grew a little bit and 2007 I 2007 yeah around that time
#
I just there was a opening in Advaita like I heard that ki ki bass player ka spot available hai
#
so I went and I said ki like I will audition and I will if there's a spot open thankfully they
#
didn't ask me to audition because I didn't know how to play bass yeah I just figured like you know
#
ki I did the cheesy thing of like the stupid thing ki haan two strings kam hai aur ek octave
#
niche hai kya hi hoga bajalenge but but I was subbing with a few uh subbing you know doing
#
sessions with a few bands of playing bass you know it's a really cheesy joke ki this guy uh I
#
was literally that guy in the joke ki this this guy goes to a master you know bass player and
#
says ki can you teach me like how to play the bass he said yeah sure sure sure no problem so
#
his first lesson sits down he's like there are four strings these are the frets there's the notes
#
now memorize this and come back like you know in two days and we'll begin like two days later
#
he doesn't show up so he calls him he's like where are you he's like no no I'm playing a gig
#
you know so that's the thing of like bass ki haan bajalo root note and all that but anyway
#
Advaita happened and then I always manage to maintain this balance of doing production work
#
to live work like never make any one of them the staple through which like you know life will be
#
lived out and food will be put on the table and all that so not putting all the eggs in one basket
#
and being being as uh yeah as seriously like pursuing both of them so but but this thing of
#
like uh audio engineering and uh I still think like it's a it's a very uh like at least leading
#
up to leading up to the first few years of the of the working life I I really felt like you know
#
it's like learning on a job because you learn certain concepts in school which were not drilled
#
in properly and I think like the entire angle of the way it was taught in school also was wrong
#
like it's by wrong I mean like it's not it's not the right way to teach it and I think eventually
#
like yeah I'm jumping ahead but like that's what I like I figured like how would I like to be taught
#
and that's how I teach the production gig now but yeah that's how the whole engineering game played
#
right and I still have the studio it's still that basement in shivalik in malayanagar and uh yeah
#
it's like my hotel california I'm not leaving yeah yeah I'm glad you're not leaving I'm feeling a
#
little uh sort of uh I have great affection for the place and now I'm uh I also have a feeling
#
like I didn't appreciate it enough now that you've told me the backstory and who all played there and
#
uh what all uh happened I remember when I was in sort of Delhi last in August I was recording 12
#
episodes in 12 days kind of foolhardy so I don't know if you you were there for any of these
#
sessions because one or other of your assistants would also be there on the days that you weren't
#
but um the 10th episode I recorded on the 10th consecutive day was with Natasha Badwar
#
and that that started at 2 p.m and uh it I think you were there yeah yeah yeah yeah where you
#
discussed unschooling and so on so uh that started at 2 and ended at about 10 30 at night and we
#
didn't record for the entire period the episode is like five hours 48 minutes yeah Amartya messaged
#
me in the middle and said Amit doesn't want this to end again like it feels like that so yeah so it
#
was two to uh two o'clock in the afternoon we were there 10 30 it ended and the next day I had to
#
record with Suyash Suyash Rai and that was a morning recording because he wanted to start at 10
#
but he said that we have breakfast before 9 o'clock I said come to my hotel I'm not coming anywhere
#
so he came to my hotel but now because I had to do some prep for that he's not written any
#
books thankfully so no books but I had to read all his work and all of that so I woke up at four so
#
10 30 I go back I eat something I sleep I wake up at four I am immersing myself in his stuff and this
#
is now day 11 by this time and I'm totally sleep deprived and he comes and we start at 10 and we
#
ended at 6 30 in the evening and at one point in the middle uh at one point in the middle his
#
his face dissolved and the words turned into sound and I remember thinking you know everything was
#
like soup and I remember thinking at this point and for my listeners quarter note is the basement
#
and I remember thinking at this point that if I have a stroke or something how are these two guys
#
gonna get me up the stairs because Suyash is kind of plump and Amartya is kind of thin and yeah but
#
nothing happened I kind of kept getting back on track except after the recording ended like one
#
often has of traumatic events I did not remember a word of it so until you sent me the edit I had
#
no memory of what we have spoken about and the mistake there was obviously scheduling a session
#
in the morning like if you're starting in the afternoon every day I've learned just do it the
#
next afternoon you give yourself some time to kind of recover no but you also you are the first person
#
who's come to the studio and sticks in the recording room for longer than an hour
#
because so like the studio like most studios in Delhi like the whole central air conditioning
#
through the vent and all that is an expensive deal and you just put up like an AC to cool the
#
room down it makes it you can you can survive for like about half an hour and then turn it on again
#
between takes and all of that and then yeah you can spend some time but you like once you go in
#
you know like you have like that a classic thing of like time lapse you know yeah it's that so
#
so yeah but with the next time you come back like the is the cooling system in that in that room is
#
changing just to make sure that yeah you can sit for longer duration but huh those that was some
#
insane 12 days that was nuts I was actually wondering that later I thought it never struck
#
me at the time later I thought what was the basement I mean I have to listen I have to concentrate
#
I'm talking is there oxygen deprivation happening to me which would surely not be healthy having
#
said that what better place to pass away suddenly than a recording studio in the middle of a scene
#
in the unseen episode but not not fun for the guest I'm sure I remember when the when the
#
the last episode got over and then you came over for dinner and that's the day we played chess and
#
and I lost both games you know and and Raman was staying over that time and Raman told me later
#
so yeah it was uh yeah man I don't know how you did it yeah the the longest stint I've had in terms
#
of like being involved with so 2007 was the 150th year of the 1857 mutiny right so the
#
the there was this event happening at the Red Fort which was basically showcasing like this
#
cultural thing and all that and Royce and Abel was directing it and AJ came on board with the last
#
minute like to do the music for it and a friend of mine Bhuvan Sastewa with whom I went to sound
#
school he was well you could call it production so he got he we had actually gone into the studio
#
space together and he left to tour with a musical smart move and he did that when he came back so
#
he got me on board to do this so I went in with a I think it was a three 20 day thing 20 day gig
#
but the thing was they were putting an event at the Red Fort seven stages like some 2000 musicians
#
folk musicians from across the country and we had to AJ had to compose the soundtrack to the
#
timeline which Royston was directing which I had to record and keep ready for a playback
#
and which like it will be like Red Fort be set up and I'll hit spacebar and the music will go to
#
like seven different stages you know we were running like kilometers of cable and all that
#
and they they were rehearsing at the Indira Gandhi stadium so they gave that as like that's your
#
studio now so I did this thing for I think nine days eight nine days like I I don't think I slept
#
like I was also like 2007 like a kid and way out of my depth but just went with the flow and that's
#
the hardest I've gone at a gig you know and I remember the the event happened on what's that
#
date 21st May when the basically those people from Meerut landed up at Bahadur Shahzad first
#
thing and said he joined you're our emperor and so that's the day that the event was happening
#
and the gig got over and they had given us this control room at the just just under the ramparts
#
of the Red Fort and it was hot it's hot like in May in Delhi and the AC stopped working and we were
#
running two systems one backup and all that but like it's electronic equipment and it's heating
#
up right we were thinking that this will go, it will shut down, Sonia Gandhi is sitting there,
#
it will shut down, you know but anyway the gig got over and everything was done hit space bar
#
control S like we are done I stepped out and I think I think in a minute or so it felt like
#
that or maybe time slowed down I don't know but I had like 102 fever like I've I've had never
#
worked so hard at something so that thought of like working for like that for nine days and then
#
just looking at like you walking in and around say like eight hours conversations over 12 days
#
I'm like man you're made of something else yeah it is yeah it's not easy yeah no I mean I also
#
kind of I enjoy my work I mean I don't think of it as it is hard work but it doesn't feel like work
#
if you know what I mean it's it's it's uh so so tell me when this entire period where you were
#
sort of doing sessions gigs and polishing your chops as a guitarist and all that what's that
#
period like in terms of sharpening your craft because on one hand there is a thing that you're
#
playing all the time different kinds of music for different kind of people you're composing
#
some of it your chops are obviously just getting much better you're paying your dues as it were
#
the other side of it is that there is also this sublimation of the ego that is required that you
#
have to play a particular thing to for you know you have to play exactly what is required especially
#
when you're just playing the guitar and you're not the composer or the producer you're just
#
playing that little part and you're kind of going away and when you're young I think there is
#
this tendency and certainly as a writer I had it to a high degree where you want to show off
#
everything that you can do and you're not consummate in that sense so and that's probably
#
a separate question but as a guitar player was there sort of an issue for you in terms of you
#
know finding that comfort finding that ease that terror finding your own voice as it were and how
#
did all those sort of years of sessions playing contribute to shaping you as a guitarist and a
#
musician I you know I think I went through I got lucky yeah I went through a phase where it's the
#
it's a cliche like you it's it's what is expected like I think like I'm you know in the hot shit
#
I can play I could I had I had jam bands and I had like a quartet and a trio which we recorded
#
some songs I wrote some tunes and I was really like you know I guess like I could
#
I could hold my own let's just put it like that there were way better guitar players
#
and there are like just the I mean grittier guitar players you know who look at guitar
#
playing as a thing of like key and like I am I am always focused on it as a part of like it's
#
one of the elements in a set of sounds you know so I never looked at like like the getting at
#
the chops and like virtuoso like never I don't even have the patience to sit and practice like
#
that but how to get better in a group of people like I was always working towards that but I think
#
when I said that like I think I got lucky was because I met AJ like really early I met him in
#
2002 and man you have to hear his music like it is so I was chatting with him he was great society
#
right he he's playing rock and roll with like Luma Jau who's like the image of rock and roll
#
and I've played with Luma Jau like I'll tell you what I'll tell you about the gig in just a bit
#
but like they have you know like you're talking about touring the northeast where like you're
#
putting speakers and stuff in your van you're playing guitars which like like they can cut
#
your fingers they're so uncomfortable to play and like they have seen the grind like that's the real
#
grind and I met AJ in 2002 and man he's so generous you know I I went in with a little bit
#
of ego and like every session with him we would I was hang out at the studio at his studio and then
#
he would go back to his house and he would cook and he makes a mean you know poke and bamboo shoot
#
thing and he would cook and you'd sit and drink and he would just chat and he would keep playing
#
and I think that I realized one thing that
#
how should I say this that the same music will play as you are in the sense that you know first
#
you have to be a man you cannot even if you're playing covers even if you're playing whatever
#
like you're playing cheesy bluesy licks whatever or whatever you're doing your energy and your
#
personality and I'm not trying to make some this like some meta spiritual shit but like
#
you will come through in that note that you play so the the the tougher gig is not to like get
#
better at an instrument if you keep it's a function of repetition you will get better you're
#
bound to get better as long as you keep repeating with like focus and intent but like what is better
#
really you know like I don't think that getting better is being able to play something impossible
#
or like whatever like guitar player is considered impossible or musician is considered impossible
#
like dazzling somebody off with your chops and all that I don't think it's that I think it's
#
about like playing like being on this thing about what is the right thing to play right now
#
you know and that only happens when your ears open up and I think like just spending that amount
#
that you know like a bunch that time with AJ and AJ used to play a certain kind of guitar style
#
and there is a certain style of playing you know and he stopped playing for a while
#
and he went through this I don't know the reason behind it but but like he was he was discovering
#
like some new territory on the guitar like some new sounds and his band HFT to be honest like you
#
know I had never heard anything like that and I'd been like a lot of people say like
#
it sounds like what Jeff Beck does and to that I just have a note like everybody on this planet
#
who's playing guitar is doing something that Jeff Beck did you know so if you go back like there is
#
the trinity I you know unless until you're going to this jazz zone but like if you're going rock
#
blues like this side there is there is only Hendrix and Jeff Beck and I'm willing to sit across if
#
anyone's buying beer or coffee and argue this out you know I think everything can be traced back to
#
those two people but so a lot of people like say HFT's music is like that and all that but
#
Joby that's not the point but the way he found his own voice in a bag of
#
in a bag of cliches that are not cliches anymore I don't know how else better to put it like
#
people have to hear this music to to really understand what I'm trying to say but hanging
#
out with AJ I think like really helped a bit you know it just like you didn't even know it but the
#
balloon had been pricked you know like it's deflating it is it's it's like less less gas
#
now like there is but you are now on some sort of you're slowing down to observe what's around you
#
and I'm this thing happened where I figured that let it be a cliche but it's fine but I really have
#
to I started putting pressure on myself I guess like you know that thing of like I have to hear
#
it before I play it or I have to feel it before I play it obviously that didn't happen and I'm
#
still like struggling and it's like maybe some sort of unlocking or meditation thing that will
#
happen one day but what has started happening is that I definitely mean everything I play
#
you know that is for sure I don't know if it means anything for anybody else but it means something
#
for me and that approach coupled with the fact that I have this thing of I guess imposter syndrome
#
like all of all creative people have it and I'm just giving myself the benefit of being
#
being referred to as creative but I felt like I'll get caught you know so I should have the
#
right balance of like every you know like Akar Patel does this know whenever like there's a
#
government tweet about like something and all that so like about the failure of the so he tweets
#
replying is like oh dekho cheetah you know something like that so I had like a bag of tricks
#
that I could throw you know and like just and at the same time like that would give by me enough
#
runway to like do whatever I want you know play a note which maybe is not right or play something
#
which maybe doesn't make sense not for the intention of surprising you but I also want to try it
#
I also want to find out what is it that I need to get to so age is a big factor and
#
I just figured out that I need to be around people who are just way better than me
#
at their instrument maybe not better at like playing with like you know like a bad Real Madrid
#
team like just doesn't make sense together everybody's a superstar but they are all good
#
players so kabhi na kabhi toh click hoga and AU was one of them I was the weakest you know like
#
there is there is Anindu Bose who is Advaita's keyboard player he's got mutant ears you know
#
he will like he will point out in a group of 40 people who's singing out of tune
#
so he will he can easily like pinpoint yeah he's very sharp ears I was there was Clarence
#
Gonzalez he passed away but bass player he played with Anushka Shankar for a while and exceptional
#
ability to just hear music and immediately know where it is you know and like a bunch of musicians
#
who are really really good at their thing so I just started like I was the weakest link and it
#
made me just like try and balance out the the fear of being caught to actually making sure that I
#
don't get caught because I'm getting better and that I think led to the point where I started
#
looking at to be the guitar player but be a part of like the bigger sound so you fill in you don't
#
try to stick out you try to blend in you know and yeah like that that approach just changes the way
#
I look at the guitar for me like I I think every guitar player I've met is a better guitar player
#
than me you know guitar player but what role is this guitar supposed to play I think like I started
#
spending more time in investigating that you know there are tunes like I have like production tunes
#
for example you know like I will be doing jingles or scores and all that I go I might be thinking
#
on the guitar but I go maybe I like 20 tracks you know I haven't even played guitar on it like it
#
doesn't need it you know so I I think what it ended up doing was this this balance of hanging out
#
with the right people and playing with musicians who are just way stronger than you you know who
#
are just way stronger way better just it's it's a team gig you just sound better by being with
#
people who and then you you have if they are making you sound a particular way then your job
#
is to make them sound better also so if the drummer is doing a thing and if I could just nudge my
#
guitar part a little bit and make his drum part sound better little it I mean I didn't realize it
#
back then but doing all of these things just make you hear music differently you know and the
#
production jobs get honed because you start hearing what are people supposed to do in a like how does
#
the puzzle fit you know it's not the only way it fits but it's a way that it fits that it's fitting
#
that it makes sense to you you know like say even the like the the panels that you've got right
#
behind you I mean the reds could be black and blacks could be red that's a way to make it fit
#
but it's it'll still work so the way that it started making sense was all of these things
#
coming together and then the big thing I guess is also stepping away from the guitar
#
I had this thing like I was playing I was playing a fair bit and I had a blues trio and we used to
#
do I wrote some tunes some arrangements and we started we got into the studio and we started
#
recording it and I fell in for the trap like you know I had the sound in my head and it was not
#
coming I not as a guitar player but like as the band it was not happening like that's how I felt
#
like that's how I felt because I I had made it so in my head that it needs to sound a particular way
#
whatever long story short like it didn't work I disbanded like I broke the band up and I just
#
said okay let's leave the guitar now that's when I arrived at the point okay I want to play blues
#
but I can't play that like I cannot do it because there are people who are doing it there are people
#
who are doing it better and there are people who are doing it with with what I feel is meaning
#
you know so I stopped and this is around 2007 thankfully Adwaita happened at the same time
#
you know because otherwise I would be totally disconnected with music so I stopped playing
#
guitar for six seven years and I think it sounds like a weird thing to say but I think that is
#
that's the best thing I did like just stop for a while to really assess ki bajana kiya
#
because uske baad I started writing some tunes and all that and and I would it's not like I'm
#
not playing I'm practicing I'm doing I'm keeping muscle memory sharp and all that and and I like
#
I said I record everything I do so before I knew it I had like some work in progress folder populated
#
with some sort like 70 72 files you know like there are ideas so I was like okay these are ideas
#
which are which are have like a sense of personality have something or the other which is which can be
#
used in to make like a okay okay this picture makes sense and eventually it led to this thing
#
called the dirt machine which I have like which I wrote some tunes did some tunes guitar based
#
tunes around yeah but like yeah I think that's it like stepping away from the instrument because
#
just like creating some distance you know otherwise that ability to assess is is very tricky you'll
#
always be like you know riding on ego or seeing somebody weaker and saying that you're better off
#
or seeing somebody better and you're saying yeah we're very fragile people like that man
#
like it's it's very tricky but stopping stopping for a bit yeah it's it really helped it really
#
helped you know I think of that notion of distance as you're sharing it and it strikes me that
#
one that distance is totally important if you have to grow in any way and that right now two
#
possible ways of getting there strike me and one you know at lunch we were earlier discussing this
#
friend of mine who was so brilliant at everything he did that you know he would study for an exam
#
on the night before which actually even I did and yeah and could wing his way through everything
#
CEO at a startup in his 20s MBA at an ivy league university in the US joined a top consulting firm
#
and and then went to pieces and everything kind of fell apart in ways that I won't elaborate on
#
but part of the reason what somebody close to him once speculated was that he had his he had it easy
#
all his life he could just wing it which I have found in most contexts I can also sort of just
#
wing it whether it was studying in school or college or whatever whatever and therefore you
#
never really try you never put in the effort and when he got to this consulting firm everybody was
#
brilliant and everybody was working 25 hours a day and he couldn't wing it anymore and everything
#
kind of falls apart and and and that's as we were discussing a danger you know it's in that context
#
that you mentioned that when you were doing your college in your school and all that everything
#
was too easy the academic part of it was really easy there was nothing there and it's a trap and
#
you know sometimes you need to sort of you need to fail you need those setbacks and you need to
#
see people much better than you like maybe when you came to Bombay Floyd on the guitar or maybe
#
watching AJ do his thing and realize that it came from a place of such authenticity to himself that
#
you know as a young person in his 20s you could never have had at that point because you won't
#
even have known yourself and that's perhaps one way of getting the distance where you realize
#
that you are not there yet in fact you're nowhere you got to just work hard a lot so you take that
#
step back and you start listening and you start working hard and you like if you're playing in a
#
band then you start fitting in you don't need to do that hero solo you know you can just sort of
#
do what is required and that's one way to come at that distance and another way at that distance
#
and perhaps it's the same way in a sense is just sort of being part of that collective and realizing
#
what will make it work is that you know you take the spotlight of yourself in you this is lovely
#
quote by Stephen Covey on listening in fact where he says that we should listen to understand not
#
listen to respond yeah and the difference is the ego that you take the ego out of it that when you're
#
listening in a long conversation for example we have to take the ego out of it in terms of not
#
thinking about what is a smart thing i'm going to say next what is a great question i will say next
#
which will make the listener think wow what a good thing but instead you just listen and you try to
#
figure out where the person is coming from and kind of go with that flow so in a similar sense
#
i guess that's what happened to you that you know it's like a sublimation of the ego that you're
#
just sitting down and therefore you're paying attention to everything and because you're paying
#
attention to everything it makes you a much better producer because you can see where all the pieces
#
fit and maybe the causation goes the other way that because you're producing yourself you are
#
better able to see where the pieces fit and therefore your own part in all of this is this
#
stuff that you thought about then or can you put a frame to it in hindsight and see key you know
#
and could it have been different like what if you never met aj what if you think you're the
#
cat's whiskers what if you join a band and you're the lead guitarist in that or do you think that
#
because of the kind of personality you are you know the way you study stuff and the way you want
#
to know stuff that you would have got here anyway i i think it would have been much longer yeah i
#
i don't want to give myself too much credit by saying that i would have gotten here anyway
#
you know because i what would have happened let's just say that i wouldn't have landed in the
#
like landed in the studio that day and met aj and like you know just like okay first of all i'm
#
okay to listen to this guy to tell me what's what without him trying to tell me what's what like
#
you're just chatting right what would have happened i would have eventually run on a stream
#
but you know like i would have gotten caught so as to speak you know like then i would have had to
#
either reassess or like just stop stop growing you know i would have carried on doing what i
#
was doing and like you know there are a lot of people who who are good at that and i don't mean
#
it in a negative sense but it's because that they are very they're fine with being where they are
#
you know they are okay and i i don't think that i would have been okay with not getting like
#
depthier you know like that's a nightmare that's a nightmare situation for me and i'm i'm trying
#
to make it sound like i'm in the quest of something and all that it's not that it's not
#
that intense like it's just that key but now pointy care you know i it'll be groundhog day
#
in that sense like then then i know the part i'm supposed to play and i will execute it and like
#
i will take my paycheck and i'll go back home but then think about it if i was supposed to do that
#
like i should have done like some sort of degree thing job because then 10 bonus diwali bonus
#
casually you know like the just the because then it just makes sense to do that if if repetition in
#
that form is the key that's one dosa i also feel that key this happens to every creative person
#
every artist and if it's some people are lucky enough that they can spot it that it has come it's
#
it's asking you you know and some people are unlucky that they don't even it's not like
#
they don't have that moment it's like they can't acknowledge it you know it's gone and these are
#
i hate saying it but these but these are people like who get grumpier you know who feel like
#
they didn't get their due who feel like they they're worth much of course they're they're
#
you know their worth has not been realized and maybe you're undervalued and all that sure but
#
then when when it came calling like you didn't do your bit you know i'm i'm not for this i'm
#
not even for a second trying to suggest that i acknowledge that moment and i changed course
#
corrected and did all of that but i'm saying that i'm aware of the fact and i'm always i'm
#
keeping my eyes open you know my ears open rather i'm keeping them open that this can happen anytime
#
and i'm sure that this has happened like it's it's happened a few times and i have acknowledged
#
that and i've also missed the train a few times i have you know maybe it was because of just like
#
getting the like i will not be able to pull this off i will not do it so like i it's you know like
#
if if you're used to swimming in a in a in a pond i am not going to have the arrogance of saying that
#
okay drop me in the open ocean and like i'll make it you know i need to prepare so if the
#
the other flip side is like they'll say okay yeah this open ocean opportunity will not come
#
more of you know again so fine let it go either you go and mess it up totally or you get better
#
at getting to that open ocean but i'm saying all at at a certain level of being okay with who you
#
are it really requires that bad kid like to figure out who you are and i think and i think like the
#
biggest learning has come from points where music has not been involved because like i said you
#
know like i am trying to figure out this i this way of not having to switch lives not having to
#
change lives just be in audio and audio music sound all are interchangeable for me so just be
#
in that zone for as long like as long as it's possible you know not shifted so when so i'll give
#
an example like when uh when i started teaching right i i wanted to take a workshop uh at an
#
institute which uh the sriramundu center for arts in in delhi i was called in for a workshop
#
with the guy who was running the film division so i knew him and he said can you comment like
#
for the sound pay and i'm sure and the reception was good and my only thing was okay i need to
#
the reception was good and the director of the institute asked me that will you
#
design something for us you know so i asked like what do you need like please give me say what will
#
you do if you if i if it's a one-year program for example so then i had like a uh and i'll circle
#
back to the learning thing in in just a bit but then i had like a blueprint okay these are the
#
points that you need to cover but the criteria was key what is it that i missed out on which has
#
taken me like 10 years you know or seven years or whatever like to get to the point of understanding
#
a certain concept and all that so teaching the way i would have liked like to be taught right
#
the minute that line like you've heard that line in some like cheesy whatever like i haven't actually
#
you know like code type thing like we just hung on a wall in some yeah so but so i was like okay
#
okay the minute i took that and i started applying it to to music and just like changing teach with
#
like listen you know like so there have been bits but i've gone into rehearsals and i just
#
stand there and i do the bare minimum you know a bare minimum in the sense i will play a particular
#
pocket of like a particular chord change and all that and just just so that i can hear what
#
everybody else is doing you know just to not step on other people's toes just to not like overplay
#
and taking that and just concept and trying to apply to as many fields as possible like what is it
#
that if i was to be taught or if i was to be told that play this part like you know then then how
#
would i like to be told and i think like that beginning of like the teaching bit and the second
#
thing is like when you know the first kid was born like i was like now my value has decreased
#
like i now have i have to now figure out a way of getting uh like like you know the questions of
#
like like ishana asking me like like the basic the what why when you know why why like the why
#
never stops and being able to explain it which basically means that you understand it yourself
#
you know and it's going to be something as simple as like what does this word mean and i've never
#
really thought about it what the word means because i'm just using the word like i understand but like
#
now i need to explain it to you and i was like okay okay then what is it that what i'm playing
#
what does it mean you know and i'm and i'm giving it more weight because see the key i have this
#
line that i follow that you are the hero in your song and your kid is the cutest that's a given
#
okay so then this is about me like this is about my issues of not playing a certain way or playing
#
a certain way or playing these chords as opposed to those chords so these notes are supposed to
#
those notes so why am i doing it like i really need to understand it and this is the best i can't
#
answer this question so i started playing lesser and lesser and lesser and here's what here's the
#
cool thing like i figured that the lesser you play the more weight it carries i some i i just
#
i just think like it just makes so much more sense like to and this obviously does not apply
#
to people who shred and who like are like virtuosos in that sense but like it just became like each
#
note is carrying so much more meaning at least in my head you know it might be it might not be the
#
case for other listeners or people but that's fine but like this is the only way the world makes
#
sense to me like just slow down cut the excess and slow down cut the excess and now it begins to take
#
a shape which is recognizable within within which i can make a boundary and say okay like okay
#
yeah rules to me but these are the parameters within which like answers at this level will
#
be found and i i just i just feel ki if if the obvious steps of life like meeting aj and then
#
playing with all those acts to eventually get to a point where i you know find advaita and you are
#
now one voice in eight you know and that is assuming that you're counting the drum kit as one voice it's
#
not it's like four different the char limbs you know but you're one voice in eight and then what
#
do you say over there if all of that would not have happened i think it would have been a much
#
much much slower process and yeah there you go so then the luck factor just cannot be played out you
#
know but i but i think it's this balance of equal balance of being being a little afraid that i'll
#
get caught you know and really wanting to i don't know get better this sounds like such a cheesy
#
thing to say but like get more meaningful you know yeah you know one of the themes i kind of
#
think about is how the form of what we do can shape who we are in the sense that i do these long
#
podcasts so i do a certain kind of listening and then i take a certain kind of approach into
#
reading the books that i read as preparation for that and and everything is shaped by that and
#
because the content is shaped by the form and what i do is shaped by the content who i am is
#
shaped by what i do i think the form makes a lot of difference in the person i am and i'm wondering
#
if there's a connection that flows that way between what you were doing which is as like both as a
#
producer and at one point as either a sessions musician or a band member or a composer the key
#
thing that you're doing is that stepping back you know making yourself a non-protagonist for the
#
moment and just looking at that big picture and where the pieces fit right and i wonder if that
#
then plays into what you become as a person like i would certainly in my personal space want to be
#
more like that you know you want to be in the moment when it comes to enjoying the happy moments
#
and the small joys and all of that but you sometimes want to be less present when you feel
#
that you're acting by impulse you want to take that step back you want to think about how your
#
words may affect someone else you want to think about when you want to give the spotlight to
#
someone else and not kind of get in the way so and equally it can be that you are that kind of person
#
and therefore all of these fields all of these activities fit you well which is why you do them
#
so the causation can i guess flow both ways but i can't ask you to ascribe causation because that's
#
always obviously impossible to do but how did you how did you change as a person from say your early
#
20s or you're starting this journey to your late 20s by which time you were like well into other
#
weather and all of that was happening to perhaps now i think it's coming to realization with the
#
fact that i think the dream that you start out with dreaming of when you don't see it taking
#
shape the way you expected it to what can you do you can either double down and go harder you can
#
or like just adjust a little bit you know become aerodynamic with the issue and like it i don't
#
know like you know duck your head a little bit do something or the other like change
#
and or the other thing is like you see that maybe this like this version of the dream is
#
is like i don't know maybe it's not right so obviously like when you start out playing music
#
and all that you think that you're going to sell out stadiums you know sure why not who doesn't
#
think of that and then Farhan Akhtar came and spoiled everything you know and like this post
#
Ajay thing when Ajay moved right and Ajay was moving and he of Majao said ask him like you know
#
who is going to play in Delhi so Ajay recommended my name which was like wow like in my mind it was
#
like i will play with Lou Majao these are small venues but man these are some serious rockers
#
these people yeah like they have been playing since before i was born so i'll tell you this one
#
thing the first gig with Majao right like when Aj moves out and i get in touch with Majao and like
#
he's so will you send me the songs that we're supposed to do he's like yeah i'll send you the
#
song radio silence nothing so he lands up in Delhi and i'm like so should we meet should we rehearse
#
yeah we'll meet we'll rehearse like radio silence you know one day before the gig i'm like should
#
we meet so he's like yeah i'm in this guest house like this so i go there and there is Lou Majao
#
and Sam Shulai he just passed away a fantastic drummer he used to drum for soulmate also
#
and he was there he was doing the drums this gentleman called Lou Hilt he's this legendary
#
figure he was playing bass and i was playing guitar in you know with so i everyone sitting
#
there there are few bottles of vodka open and i mean a few you know and i started just like
#
i'm looking around like when will you play the song tell me which songs and all that
#
and i had heard the songs because right i think a great society so now where i've been at the gigs
#
and they nothing happens like it just does not like there is no talk of like the song that is
#
going to be happening being played at this gig which is tomorrow so i'm like okay maybe it'll
#
happen at sound check you land up at sound check everybody plugs in at the same time and just starts
#
playing the engineer just like through five minutes of palpitations like balances the sound
#
and all that and i'm like okay what is happening here so then Lou told me that every song Lou Hilt
#
he said every song that starts like you know i'm bass player so just look at me see the form
#
and then learn man that was a three-hour gig you know and i think that one three-hour gig taught me
#
more than i i can't even like i i don't phrase in this way like how do like what are you supposed to
#
do then i remember like the first solo is going on i had this like the first solo song is going on and
#
i you were playing and i'm i'm trying to learn the song like while you are playing it i remember
#
the i remember the song i don't know how to play it like right but i have to pick up like the
#
chord structure so on and so forth and it's a different thing when you're playing a song which
#
you think you know like i don't know how to explain it like suppose for example like i've
#
heard blowing the wind like a million times but now i've learned how to play guitar now i have
#
to learn the mechanics of oh this is the chord change like all of that like i'm doing this on
#
the fly right and i remember like this stuff Majao looked at me and he's like he nodded his head
#
kill your solo like play something so i'm laying back i'm holding back and you know like i don't
#
know if the solo has different chords like what if and when he walked up to me and he this gig's
#
going on like he walked up to me and he whispered like he leans in and he's like he said are you
#
going to play or are you going to wank about you know and i said and i was like okay now that's
#
good i just let i played everything that i knew you know in that first song and then it hit me
#
shit i have like three more hours of this to go like you know i've just given everything but the
#
the ability to but the the thing that you said to step back a little you know and just to see
#
what is happening that helps a lot but going back to that dream aspect i told myself man these
#
like these guys like Lu Majao right he's been playing since god knows when he must have had a
#
million dreams i am not for a second suggesting that his dreams did not come true i am not right
#
but what i'm saying is he must have had a million dreams and maybe a million dreams like
#
like some of them did not come true some had to take a left turn and the thing that i'm trying
#
to get at is that i started i had the unbelievable luck of playing with people who were twice my age
#
who were ahead in the game and though they're not selling out stadiums you know they are not selling
#
records they have never recorded like there is some bootleg cassette of some shit like floating
#
around and like mythical legend but they have they have never done this so i really
#
you know had to say okay please reassess the like these dreams that you have like
#
it's a different time now it's not the 80s right it's so and things are bubbling up slowly like
#
you know indian ocean has had candisa already so maybe the market has turned maybe people are
#
going to buy music now you know which obviously did not happen but uh but what i guess what i'm
#
trying to get at is that i i was fortunate enough to not get crushed by the weight of my own dreams
#
i'm very okay with like that fine line between success and ambition you know i'm like i i don't
#
think success for me would be like it'll be nice of course it'll be nice you said something about
#
a grammy earlier before we started this is this sitting here across the table like i'm chatting
#
with you like is bucket list item here come on i mean come on man i mean it seriously so like who'd
#
have thought i just to digress a bit like i i i've been listening to your show forever you know
#
in 20 years of like doing this gig you are the only person i have messaged and said that if you
#
ever need a studio i'm very start on twitter yeah and i said if you're in delhi and if you need a
#
place like please let me know i have never written to anyone with the intention of working with them
#
or for work never you know so from that to finding out that we are related in some weird way and
#
like here i am chatting with you like this is just for fun you know but i'll say this like like
#
success might like it'll be nice of course it'll be like you know why not and i did this like i
#
remember some random interview once like you know dream venue and all that sydney opera house why
#
not that might be fine like that's why i'm like that can go in the ambition category
#
like you know okay but i will not let it not i will not let it take away the relevance of
#
whatever i think like i am successful at you know i i come from this position of privilege that
#
key like i just happen to be getting lucky band after band project after project you know like
#
yeah and i cannot say that key kid that is not that's a great thing so for me like that idea of
#
like that success and now that applies to music also like advaita fine i could sit back and say
#
like a 2012 say we've not released an album we did a live album but you know i mean that
#
in for the band also it doesn't count but uh but yeah we played at the pyramid
#
you know we've played for presidents we've played uh venues across the world like
#
so what i'm trying to get at is i guess like i am not going to get crushed by some unrealistic
#
dreams that i have and you know and then like the grind is one thing but then there is life also
#
like it just cannot be about chasing some version of yourself that you think that you should be
#
you think that you should be because of now i guess like that term emetic desire can be thrown in like
#
it can't be that you know i'm and i'm so glad that i'm aware of that concept now and thanks to
#
like you know like you talking about it on the show also and then reading the book eventually
#
but but that thing like thankfully now somebody figured it out because oh that is the soul crushing
#
and i know one thing that once i get into the gig i will work you know and here here is the catch i
#
think i've told myself that the only thing i need to ensure is that my bare minimum needs to be
#
more than what the other party is putting in like i will always work i don't know like
#
longer is not the right word because i pack up at six o'clock but like i will i will always
#
yeah like i will just try to get better at that and in in that sense like i feel like all of us
#
are in that same trap key of dreaming the wrong dream chasing the wrong dream you know i won't i
#
don't know i'm not gonna fall and fall for that trap man yeah it's hard because who doesn't want
#
to sell out stadiums but yeah it's no it's it's not i don't think that's the way to be yeah
#
yeah that whole strain of emetic desire is actually almost a cliche on the show so
#
i had decided i won't talk about it but in case some listeners haven't heard it
#
before i'll quickly kind of recap it luke burges wrote this great book called wanting which i'll
#
link from the show notes where he talks about the philosopher rene girard and rene girard
#
essentially came up with this concept of memetic desire where he observes that in many of the great
#
works of literature people who want something wanted because somebody else does not because
#
uh it's intrinsic to uh them or who they are or whatever and and that's mimetic mimetic means to
#
copy and uh the the useful frame i picked up from there was of thin and thick desires with thin
#
desires are those mimetic desires kind of thing you know it's not intrinsic if you're a young
#
person in india you might be like get married have kids when you don't even really think about is
#
that what you really want or is that what you're supposed to want whereas a thick desire could be
#
something much deeper which did which is much harder to figure out and the thing is
#
the thin desires can be the most intense and the thick desires can be the most subdued
#
and even what you said about chasing the wrong dream is i think someone i mean i'd like everyone
#
listening to this really think about this because it's taken me a long time to kind of think about
#
that and and realize that not only have i mostly been chasing the wrong dream but that most dreams
#
in the way we think of them are wrong dreams yeah right we will we'll think about uh goals
#
and things to do and we'll say that if we do this we'll be happy you know if we earn so much money
#
we'll be happy or if we write a book we'll be happy or if we do royal albert hall we'll be happy
#
but the point is uh most of the time that shit won't happen or if it is modest enough or if you
#
are lucky enough that shit will happen but you won't get happiness because there'll be something
#
else beyond that and i think the key to happiness therefore is in not having a dream of something to
#
do but just deciding that this is how i want to live my life yeah and then being in the moment
#
that you can wake up in the morning and you can uh you know feel thankful that you are living
#
your life like i i i have a lot of self-doubt and you know thoughts about the work i do but
#
at the same time um you know and i i'm so thankful for where i am in the sense when i came back from
#
vacation i got into my little room with this setup that you see uh over here you know what else do i
#
need you know there is hot water in the bathroom there is ac in the room there are all the books
#
laptop shaptop internet there is mic check but it is extra but basically everything i want in a sense
#
is here there's nothing really going wrong per se and i think the trap people fall into is that
#
you'll look at what other people are doing always yeah you know or uh and various other things and
#
and here's the conundrum here that obviously it strikes me that the the way to happiness is
#
by being in the present and you know living the moment and taking uh advantage of the small joys
#
uh but equally that what this guarantees and this is perhaps a very morbid thought is that at the
#
end of their life everybody is unhappy at that last moment right it's it's a point in fact that
#
david sinclair makes in lifespan where he says uh is it him or is it some other book i forgot and
#
the books blend into one another much as faces dissolve but the point being that every death is
#
a violent death even for someone who's died in a sleep you know organs are failing or heart is
#
stopping it is incredibly violent so in that last moment you're always unhappy and but knowing this
#
this should not stop you from being happy in the present moment it's a very weird thing yeah i
#
you know i this thing about you said keep waking up in the morning you just like you came back from
#
a holiday and you enter this space and you're suddenly like the reset is such it's like a joyous
#
reset yeah you know and earlier in the like earlier you were talking about how like if you
#
would have said feed an ai with the images of a sunset and all that and some like you know like
#
melancholy like some sort of thing like like but for me like uh so i've been i've been getting
#
into like sam harris's waking up thing and uh this is also its intensified post like this
#
breeding four thousand weeks i'm like man this game is getting over at a faster rate my students
#
sometimes you know like they like i give like these really key charters are up there
#
but i you know i i've been getting up into this waking up thing and i'm still
#
i'm trying to wrap my head around it i've been trying to do the whole meditation thing for abate
#
and all that there are a few friends of mine the band's drummer for example aman he's heavy into
#
krishna murthy and you know we sit and we chat and he tries to tell me stuff and all that and
#
a lot of what he says like begins to make sense to me but but this thing of this thing of being
#
mindful and being present and he said this very interesting thing in one of the podcasts that
#
came out of i think it's in the app like in the theory bit he talks about a lot of people talk
#
about like you know and like musicians will understand this like a lot of people say like
#
playing music is like meditation and all that and it's not it's it's not and i would always
#
i heard him say it and i was like obviously sam harris has never played uh you know like a tune
#
so he doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about but then you say okay he's sam harris he
#
has to have an idea so let's investigate this thought and this idea of being present
#
and i'm rambling but i will join the two together i'll link the two together this idea of
#
meditating through music and all that because you know like musicians we are we are like either
#
you're executing a set of really practiced moves right with like the least amount of like you're
#
praying like some unexpected event should not happen or there's the other end of the spectrum
#
that you are improvising you're like please jesus like some unexpected shit should happen right now
#
you know so that i can react to it otherwise this is mundane you know so this thing of being
#
mindful like i feel like that's the job that's the work you know everything else i feel like
#
is happening around it and i know i'm like there are there this maybe does not make sense and i'm
#
like i said i'm still trying to wrap my head around it you know what happens on my way to
#
your place today i was meditating in the car you know because i was lucky it takes an hour
#
i can at least meditate for half an hour till the bumpy road doesn't get to me but like he said this
#
line you know in the thing today that you are not seeing things and i'm at bangalore but he said
#
that you're not seeing things in consciousness you're thinking seeing things as consciousness
#
you know like you can spend a lifetime just thinking about this and so then i then i started
#
thinking if you want to populate consciousness right like a lot of it is right now out of your
#
control and going back to what you said like came back you entered this room and there's a certain
#
sense of like gratitude and all that i think that's it you know the feeling of being where you are
#
and giving yourself credit that you have maybe you want to be somewhere else and that's the
#
version of the dream that you're chasing which maybe doesn't make sense but there is a dream
#
that has been lived out to the point of getting till here and being mindful here and being being
#
a little like grateful like just i have seen musicians like struggle and i have struggled
#
you know like the covid years have not been kind they have not been they have just wiped out a
#
revenue stream which was you know which was feeble to begin with but it was it was there
#
and then you know people also now you have to look inwards because there is no way to go and
#
hide in the crowd you're at home you know and you maybe you're using it you're using the time
#
to get better or whatever but like you are you're forced to be mindful you know you can choose to be
#
absent but you're forced to be mindful and you're better off like but just like looking inverse
#
right now and i i just feel that this thing of being being where you are man it might be like
#
like it might be like a little circumstance and all that set of circumstances that have gotten you
#
to this point but this is also planned and i think rather than at least for me like rather than
#
blaming myself from wherever i am wherever i am not right now you know like just stopping
#
and just saying yes here it's great this thing of the every morning like i've started this practice
#
of like as i was suggested to me by a friend of mine and i read up a little bit of a gratitude
#
journal and all that and it sounds very weird but just to start the day by just like writing down
#
a few things of that you're grateful for and i and i realized that like this the reset that happens
#
every morning and the reset that happens like this ai thing that is melancholy no it's a reset you
#
know for me at least and that circles back to this mindful thing that just sam harris keeps saying
#
like begin again begin again that's it like this is the joy of like you can start again now
#
you can start again and it just applies to everything i think at least for me like you
#
know in the teaching gig in the production gig or just like i could just hit spacebar stop
#
or take a pause stop or just take my hands off the guitar when i'm playing you know just not
#
do anything for a second like it just like it just adds so much more weight and so much more rest
#
there's another saying i was saying that miles davis once said you know the music is on the rest
#
so it's in between it's like it's like verandah sevak told vikram sathe during
#
you know the year end episode that the time when you get out is in between the balls
#
yeah yeah wow that's deep did you hear that i did i did i forgot it but yeah that's deep now like
#
in this context like you know sevak the philosopher but i remember the bit where he was talking about
#
ki you know when you when when david was saying like he's like deep breathing and all that he's
#
like but i don't know and like it's just about like i feel ki again that there's a fine line at
#
least in my heart maybe there are better words for it success and ambition ka thoda sa difference
#
but like just not being too harsh you know and eventually it will get to where it has to get to
#
but like if you just stop and look around you and look what other people are doing like in a music
#
sense or like with the questions they are asking and maybe maybe the answers that you give like
#
it'll just get you there faster i feel it'll just get you there faster this 4000 week gig is like
#
so much pressure it'll just but but answers will start unfurling a little faster i think like if
#
we just like stop and start listening a little bit especially in music so yeah yeah i mean the
#
4000 week funda for those listeners who might be wondering it's a great book by oliver burkman and
#
the central thesis is that we have 4000 weeks in our life so make the most of them or meri
#
toh i think 2500 khatam ho gaya ho gaya ho 1500 baaki hai though my good friend roshan abbas is
#
planning to add a few thousand hours to these 4000 hours so uh good luck to modern science and
#
let's see how that happens you know if i think of meditation as being a state of simultaneously
#
being hyper aware and also peaceful then isn't the state of flow that you talk about in music
#
isn't that meditative in a sense at least not for me it may be for some people but i think like it
#
it happens at a point where apne itna riyaz kar liye hai that bulk of the system is on autopilot
#
and you're only looking for the the you know like that halka sa like
#
the little bit of incredible to happen that last hint of saffron on the biryani
#
yeah just that halka sa opening through which like you can like it begins to make sense like
#
stuff begins to form and i don't think i've cracked the amount of practice that i
#
i need to or i should have done to get to that point where it becomes a meditative experience
#
it's not it is it is meditative in the sense that uh there is there is focus and that really is it
#
like every every say like three minute five minute song whatever you're playing and uh given that
#
you can hear shit which going by last night's gig was like you know like that you can't hear shit
#
man i don't know there is like there is a god that i've pissed off you know with the amount
#
of religious jokes i make because i so i don't believe in one so but i have some i've definitely
#
pissed off something because like i don't know why i have never had the same monitor mix between
#
soundcheck and the gig and i know it's a thing it'll change i get it i do but the degree of
#
change like so yesterday for the first three songs of the set i just had my guitar that's it
#
nothing else and then the focus turns real like i have to remember structure i'm standing really
#
far away from the drums so i have to now like look at get slightly closer to the drums without
#
changing the state setup and all that and anticipate okay this tempo is working take out one of the
#
earplugs so that i can hear the pa and quickly do some mental math of like what's the slapback
#
in this room so that like i am not playing with the slapback but behind the beat so that i'm
#
playing with the song at the same time here like okay this is the energy that we're trying to put
#
out so the first three songs which is like they like they had me i was exhausted we played 10
#
songs and after three songs i was like tired i kept trying to attract attention of the of the
#
engineer at the desk like give me something at least in my in-ears and but yeah but so that
#
maybe maybe that is coming from a level of focus and being mindful that i can focus on the present
#
moment with such intensity that i could make sense of what i was playing you know but yeah
#
for me it is not man like music doesn't feel like a meditation to me at all at all like i don't i
#
i like i can stay connected for longer hours i can stay in it for longer hours but that doesn't mean
#
that i'm always focused like no i think like eating is more meditative for me than yeah like
#
like like music are you mindful while eating oh yeah yeah yeah every every every i have been
#
practicing that more than i've been practicing guitar does that make you eat less as a result
#
it does it does and it also like it like i i think what it's done is again like i'm looking
#
for audio and everything you know i think it's made me a better engineer because i have started
#
understanding balance a lot more you know and i've i've started understanding the blend of
#
harmonic saturation a lot better because of just like what achar you take you know or
#
uh for example so like this thing about uh khichdi for example i have no personality like bite like
#
unless and until you have layered it with a lot of ghee and all that but if you take the right achar
#
like say a meat right achar like something different like the the way the way the khichdi
#
hits with the ghee with a meat achar is totally different from something like which you can say
#
bite into like a i'm thinking like say a garlic pickle you know which has like pieces of garlic
#
so there is like a bite to it so let's say in my mind it becomes like a certain order of harmonic
#
saturation done to a sound in a certain frequency range like say a squishy low midi sound will take
#
a certain sort of harmonic saturation a little differently than say uh like then say maybe like
#
then say maybe like a slightly higher mid sound like it doesn't work the same way and yeah like
#
like for example if you want to if you want to eat less i think like just the color of the plate
#
that you choose like say suppose you're eating um i don't know curd rice right yeah but serving curd
#
rice in uh like just a darker not a bright plate like nothing which fights the curd rice color
#
but like makes the curd rice pop out like you serve less you know because it just feels bigger
#
on that plate and uh yeah i've been like post your writing course like one of the ideas that i've
#
been like working with and all that you know so like i i think of like i i've been dabbling
#
with this idea of like i think the bulk of audio fundamentals sound fundamentals i think can be
#
i think can be understood from a point of view of a four course meal yeah i i think like in four
#
like a quadrant like i can divide almost all the fundamentals up the way it makes sense to me and
#
that's the way i teach it also you know that key if you if you always go back to these four points
#
and now you can look at the four like you know the krish's book has that fantastic thing about how
#
one flavor mutes the other and one flavor enhances the other and it's the same thing in audio
#
it's the same thing in audio but it just depends that okay do what you're catering to
#
so if you're catering to something sweet you need to understand how to mute the other flavors they
#
will not disappear you know and sweet cannot exist without the other three so like say something
#
cannot be loud because if everything is loud nothing is loud you know so now what is soft
#
and what are the ways in which it becomes soft does it become darker does it become literally
#
softer in amplitude does the harmonic balance change in the sound to make it appear softer
#
or are you changing its transient response so that your brain just cannot register it
#
like you just can't register the sound you know so yeah things like that like i so just eating
#
mindfully like does that to me like it just it has given me more ideas in production than like
#
setting and throwing things at a compressor i know it sounds stupid but but it's just reached that
#
point where i think like you know i don't know who's quoted was like but there's like it's just
#
everywhere you know it's just everywhere and like you can pick out a source of inspiration and
#
kya hi hai like a like a seepage blot on a wall is is is something that i can score too you know
#
and uh yeah i mean i don't have to explain the inspiration to me like i just need to get inspired
#
and i think food has that incredible ability to just like cut through because if no two people
#
are hearing audio the same way but kheer sab ke liye sweet hai ye what is like i i don't know
#
if this is this question is important enough to be answered by like some but yeah like how
#
does it work that everybody almost everybody has unless until you have like a very tricky sweet
#
tooth and all that like you just cannot handle kheer you don't like kheer but like sweet hits
#
everybody the same way you know why isn't like what is the key with which audio will hit everybody
#
the same way so yeah and then you can take it further and like maybe like there is music which
#
will hit everybody the same way and which is what you're really hoping for isn't it like ki metal
#
head ho ya jagran wala ho usko mera music basam dana chahiye I think in the broad strokes people
#
will like everybody will think the sound of an electric drill is noise by and large you know
#
barring some crazy japanese hikikomori outlier everybody will think the sound of an electric
#
drill is noise and i think everybody will find the sound of gentle tinkling piano to be soothing
#
maybe they won't like it maybe they'll just be fucking disgusted by it and whatever but
#
so it's so there's a track by jeff beck called dirty mind you know and the intro of that song
#
intro of that song he you know the guitar sounds like an electric drill oh okay yeah and it's the
#
grooviest thing you can hear you know and at at the same time like there is you're so right like
#
there is there is no right answer to it like how does it if no two people are hearing it the same
#
way then how how does it what's the common point at which like it will be acceptable to both parties
#
you know i don't know but like that quest makes this entire process of like making the audio work
#
making the sound work making the set of chords work like a little more exciting maybe it's just
#
a very cheesy way of finding meaning in what you're doing you know because during the covid
#
years like i reached out to a few people for some master classes you know and one of this engineer
#
by the name of joel hamilton he's based out of new york i spent a couple of hours with him more
#
than a couple of hours with him online and the first session was just like you know talking about
#
stuff like this like just key and key a sense of you know how deep is your red like if you if you
#
hold up like i do this in class sometimes you know i'll hold up two shades of color and like
#
one is not darker than the other but like just because i've biased you which one is darker
#
or elizabeth suggested it they start looking at it as like a slightly darker color and all these
#
concepts of like how bassy is the base or how poppy is the snare all of these things but the
#
point is key joel joel has this thing of like you know yes all this is fine but you have to make it
#
land you know i love that phrase like you have to make it land like this thing of these concepts
#
have to have like a practical way of applying themselves you know so in there lies i think i
#
guess the meditative form of all of this that there is there is a bag of tricks of concepts which you
#
know execute a certain set of illicit a certain set of reactions from people you know and that way
#
then yeah it's a it's a flight where the course is known this thing of like you know two people
#
are hitting it the same way but maybe there's some common line and yeah they and hopefully
#
they will they will hit play more than once on your track i think in a broad sense uh you know
#
we'll respond to certain things similarly like a drill or a soothing sound of the waves but all the
#
differences are in the narrow ways like the the the you know when you drill down a little bit or
#
drill is perhaps not the right word but you go around a little bit like what i keep thinking
#
about is that every time you know you'll do an edit and send me the episode and i'll often have
#
questions about the sound and i've come to the point where i can't really trust my own ear
#
because i've realized that something that sounds one way in the morning will sound a different way
#
to me at night yeah and i don't know why and maybe is it just me that there is so much variability
#
within one person that i'm listening to different things in different ways at different times or
#
like have you ever doubted your own ears all the time all the time see you your hearing is ideal
#
when you wake up in the morning but it is followed by how long did you sleep for how good was your
#
sleep sleep is basically the most important thing if you're not getting restful sleep every night
#
and that's what i keep telling the students also like you know that if you're not sleeping properly
#
then forget about it you cannot like forget about the fact of how you're hearing it how you judge
#
what you hear that is dependent on how you sleep so in the morning if it sounds a certain way
#
and then if you get dehydrated through the day because you drink too much coffee you don't drink
#
enough water you don't eat at the right time there is some crash happening in your you know
#
you're getting GI glycemic index still they're fluctuating frontal cortex like is hitting some
#
sort of weird zone you will not hear audio a certain way like soothing sounds can get irritating
#
you know it is just and like your your hearing system really has like a window
#
where it is the least fatigued to the most warmed up you know and that's the point at which to hear
#
it plus there are other factors there like so for example you're hearing it on headphones
#
you know i don't know how old those headphones are i don't know what's the isolation are the drivers
#
banged up you know is it that old that the cable of that quality has lost like high frequency
#
fidelity so it could begin to sound dull you know because like it's a wire like it will over a period
#
of time like the highs will die out so all of these factors lay in and that's why i said like it's a
#
losing battle now i can't believe anything i'll ever hear because headphones boss
#
no and see now you add like speakers right the minute you add speakers you think you're
#
listening to the speakers but no you're listening to the room you know so right now we're sitting
#
we're talking here like there is no you're not hearing the room you're just hearing my voice
#
but if you play back the recording you will start hearing the room you know because the reflections
#
your brain is nulling them out right now your brain is just like focused on the direct sound
#
a simple thing called haas effect right haas effect is basically like all this all the reflections
#
that are coming to you right now are within 20 milliseconds so your brain can't separate it
#
if it's stretches past 20 milliseconds then it becomes an echo you hear two distinct sounds you
#
know you will reflections flutters for example so right now what is hearing the reflection is the
#
mic and your ear is not hearing it but the minute you so when you play sound through a set of
#
speakers you think you're hearing the speakers but then the room reflections now come into play
#
so you take the same speakers into a different room it will sound different so now when i mix
#
a piece of music or i mix a piece of whatever and i send it to a client to hear it if he or
#
she is hearing it in the car and car me tweeters niya they will say dull lag raha hai and i'm like
#
you what is going on like i can see it on the spectrum everything above 10k is balanced the
#
way it's supposed to be and all that and it sounds nice and bright and i trust my ears
#
nahi dull lag raha hai kaha sunre ho gadi me sunre ho tweeter hai gadi me i used to do this thing back in
#
early part of the production gig days i would take the same file shit i can't believe what i'm
#
saying it here miss maybe somebody will hear it and be like you man i fell for that so i take the
#
same file and i would just make like a file a couple of db softer another file a couple of db louder
#
name it mix for blackberry mix for my laptop speaker and mix for hi-fi system you know like
#
just give them names like this just ask the client ki kaha kaha sunne wale ho and i would give them
#
the thing that i'm sending you multiple files please play this particular flag over there
#
and they're actually the same file they just louder yeah that's it you know because i'm assuming
#
that ki a hi-fi system for example can take a little more bass so i can and so i can make it
#
a little louder the bass will come up anyway that's the way the amplification works on the lower
#
frequencies and all but i would do this and a couple of clients would just like keep irritating
#
me and all that he was like yeah i'm making the changes and all that i'll change the file name
#
and send it back man like you know and they'll think yeah yeah you know in that same the vikram
#
sathe episode uh the bit where he talks about uh going for a gig and then negotiating his price
#
constantly and then he eventually says that i will do it for free just so that i can say that i did
#
for free but then they agreed and then i think in the drinks post the the guy said we just want to
#
win victory yeah you know so the other thing i tell tell the students and i follow it like
#
you know okay i'm like man i have no attachment to the idea zero i don't give a shit you know i
#
am lucky enough that i am being given the opportunity to shape this idea and over there
#
the control okay i have it i don't want to be an operator and all that the idea
#
so when the when the when i do a jingle and all that my thing is keep boss the idea is yours
#
i'm just i'm the conduit through which this idea is being executed like this this tune is yours
#
i have zero interest in it like you delete make me delete backups every week i am like he finished
#
this idea take it run with it i don't care but when it's a tune that i have written that i am
#
working on i will spend seven years tweaking the guitar solo till the point where like no i hear
#
it a little differently but seriously what's the what's the big what famous jingles have you done
#
famous to patani what love uh well there you go but like apart from that man i don't know
#
like i've just done i will send you a list which if you want to add in the show notes i don't know
#
why you would want to add to the show notes like it's like me deleting your backups you know
#
yeah but i i yeah i just don't keep keep a track also i'm if i were to went was to venture in
#
a number maybe i would say i had no between 500 to a thousand jingles i'm not attached to them
#
man at all yeah even one i don't care was there any that is famous in in terms of you know so
#
when the ip launched uh i don't know if it's if it qualifies a jingle also but when the ip
#
launched the first season and kingfisher was doing it kingfisher used to do ndtv good times
#
and good times reached out and they asked me to do a track and i did a track and they liked it so
#
much that they got their entire like crew ndtv crew and all that to mime it it became like
#
their anthem thing for like a good six month stretch uh yeah what was that just sing it out
#
i will not sing it out you mentioned you have such a great voice you've sung
#
you've laid down the track for amit kumar once no i i i have sung a track once but that was because
#
of budgetary issues but uh no it had the lyrics were like har short mein junoon hai har wicket
#
mein sukoon hai and all that sukoon hai i don't even live with the lyrics ya ye baazi aro khas hai
#
something but it was yeah i mean it it made like again like the jingle was supposed to be like a
#
thing that will run for a week they ran it for six months so my only memory of that is like i feel
#
cheated because i should have been paid more you know but uh i don't know man i just i i forget them
#
i just like khatam kiya, check liya and they're out of my system music gigs i can remember like i
#
remember like i remember bad gigs to good gigs to every gig ya i cannot even the yeah the gigs
#
where i've just where i've been told like ki arey bahut se tha like it was creative fantastic and
#
i'm looking at the audience and i'm judging them and like all of you fuckers are deaf
#
you know because this was horrible like if we didn't play it right how did it sound right to
#
you with me it doesn't make any sense to the gigs where i thought like we played like we played
#
excellent and it did not make any difference to anyone so yeah i all the gigs i yeah i have
#
memories of those jingles i i don't care but you know if any corporate people are listening to this
#
like i will i will do the jingle 101% but yeah but i i don't care for them and you'll send them
#
four files for all the different music systems like the secret is out yeah that hack has stopped
#
now that hack has stopped now but yeah it's it's it's so weird that that i feel like that uh what
#
what he was saying in the in that episode like a lot of the times it's just a like ownership of
#
the idea they just want to win victory yeah was there should be like this there should be merch
#
of like a coffee cup of like a drunk guy spilling how do you show a drunk guy but like just like
#
just like shouting victory in a very gladiator like way while dying yeah i don't make sense
#
i will present the idea to sathe tell me about tell me what advaita because it seems to me that
#
on the one hand you know being playing an instrument learning music learning how to play
#
is solitary in the sense that any artistic pursuit in a sense is solitary you're alone
#
with yourself you've got to figure your shit out and then when you play in a band suddenly there
#
is uh i the constraint the guardrail whatever i don't want to use a term that has a negative
#
connotation but there is the consideration of all of these other people like you said you're one
#
out of eight tracks um and there is a consideration of all these other people how they play you know
#
what kind of music they they play what they expect of you which might be uh completely different uh
#
how you fit into what they do and even just as people they might quite be different people and
#
there are you know uncertainties there to start with usually always so you said you knew these
#
many of these people before because you were playing with them already so what was that process
#
like because what then happens is that once you commit to a band like before this you were doing
#
your uh you know your blues three piece and your four piece and whatever and you were doing all of
#
these other things but when you joined advaita you pretty much committed to them right yeah and
#
and that's a really big deal because you've chosen pink yeah now you've chosen pink yeah right and
#
this is what it is and it can be liberating because there's a lot of funky things you can do with pink
#
but pink is just one color so how how was how was this you know how was this period of negotiating
#
with yourself what this meant and uh you know how was that journey of uh like was it all perfect
#
from the start where you felt that yeah this is right or you know was there a struggle there
#
so uh 2007 is when i when i joined them and uh we like i said the only spot open was bass so
#
we started doing a couple of gigs uh we started i did a couple of gigs and immediately it went
#
into this thing of like album recording so i knew the guys before so merely you know i think it's
#
very important that the people who like a band you should be able to man you should be able to
#
have a beer with the guy you know like you should be able to hang out like it's just not about like
#
it's yeah it's it's a little i i don't want to put it like not give the music enough importance
#
but it's about like being okay with each other like more than friends like it'd be and the other
#
guys like family you know like when i got married like chine was playing guitar when priya was
#
walking down the aisle and he was playing organ in the church and all that and like yeah so it's uh
#
the the guys in the band like kumar my drummer takes my son climbing every week like it's like
#
it's like family right but when we started out for me it was i i was in this space of all the
#
bands that i was playing with i i had the blues trio quartet yes but this is largely instrumental
#
music in a country like ours and uh which is connected like which has a certain sort of
#
positioning branding whatever you want to call it but like a sound which is unique like it's
#
it's an advaita like the initial few demos that i had heard and i had seen them at a gig there was
#
a gig that happened at bankadishra college and i forgot the year but i forget the year three bands
#
played i ended up playing for all three uh there's a band called level nine i played bass for them
#
artist unlimited i played guitar for them and then advaita first gig i ended up playing bass for them
#
also so like the songs were like you could see it like this they were just taking shape so uh i
#
joined and one thing the eight of us were very clear about is that there is no the the the sense
#
of virtuosity comes from the the arrangement you know it's about how everybody is fitting in
#
and i think like it's like i'm a fan of the songs that we have written you know it's it's really
#
it's every time you play a gig like it's really exciting to play those tunes and i like that music
#
it's so much that key key bass be here i want to like i just want to be a part of this you know
#
like around that time we we get slotted in the fusion category which i think is unfair you know
#
but uh i'm a believer that duke of lincoln's school of thought that there's good music and bad
#
yeah like good medicine and bad the initial bit was really smooth sailing i think that there is a
#
honeymoon period for every band you know where things are happening of like at a pace which is
#
faster than what you were expecting you know the gigs are taking shape like some sort of a fan base
#
is developing and money's flowing in you start thinking of songs you start thinking of albums
#
and we record yashraj the recording sessions are brilliant you know and the camaraderie is
#
really there and we are really like we are we are in it for the same thing let's put it like that
#
you know nobody's interested in their solo positioning or like branding above the band so
#
all of this is that that window from 2009 to 2014 was really interesting and good for us
#
because and as soon as grounded in space which is our first album that gets done we were already
#
working on we didn't know that this will take the shape of a second album whatever but we are
#
already working on it like there were songs being written like i said we had this rehearsal schedule
#
which was fixed which is really good for you know like getting it the band to a point where now also
#
if you meet it will take like a few hours for us to just like like it's like a crankshaft thing
#
like it'll just like get back to that plateau where it where we were so when i say when we meet
#
because we don't meet often enough to like to rehearse and all that and life has taken over Joby
#
but there was a phase during the during the recording of the second album where the it did
#
get a little like the like the rapids got serious you know if this was because of
#
of because of the style of songwriting that we started going towards also i feel like
#
people who were not as involved with the first set of songs they got a little more involved
#
and their personality came into the song so the the sound started getting bent a little bit in a
#
different direction but but every time you would play those tunes at a gig you know you know that
#
okay fine the the the form that we have found for these tunes also it it falls i hate saying it like
#
this but within the acceptable parameters of what Advaitha is and i think that's the trap that we
#
fell into what is it that is we you know we started i think play putting a really high premium on
#
Advaitha sound okay we need to we need to be either we need to be true to it at the same time
#
you know wait and like we started putting a little bit of extra weight on ourselves so because of
#
that like the songwriting slowed down a little bit and then also life happened i got i got married
#
at kids Ujwal got married and then Mohit got married and we just meeting up catching up
#
regularly just reduces a little bit you know it shows us still happening and in fact just before
#
the world came to a stop the shitstorm of COVID happened we were touring Australia and we had
#
uh i think four five shows i was fantastic like you know it it had everything like the gig where
#
everything worked the way it was supposed to a gig that almost got washed out to a gig where
#
our monitors failed from the first hit and we are like we are so well versed with the tunes that
#
Chayan, Ani and I guitars, vocals, keyboards and me and i like we just we had a click track and we
#
just played like three songs to that because we just knew okay x number of bars of playing here
#
yeah we just this was in Brisbane and uh yeah so that i think it it slowed down because of
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because of life really you know and i also feel that uh this is my opinion that there is not enough
#
money coming back in you know and there could be a lot of factors over here that it's a big band
#
it's eight people and we've always been uh we we've always been understood but misrepresented
#
and by that i mean like we haven't we've never managed to find the right management agency
#
to present us in a certain way so for because of that like our positioning has always
#
has faltered because i'm thinking the album karli chandek award jeet liye coke studio karliya
#
unplugged karliya dearest karliya ek film me gana de diya which amita bachchan sang ye sab ho gaya
#
bo sab ho gaya you know presidents ke liye bajal liya esplanade jaisi venues bajal liye
#
kyro opera house bajal liya college festivals kar liye almost got held hostage in the ad gigs
#
and uh got the respect of like a bunch of fans who are like this college kid to the slightly more
#
evolved listener classical form like what else are we supposed to do just for this thing to
#
i'm not saying that the universe owes us anything i'm not trying to suggest that but what else are
#
we supposed to do like which other box are we supposed to check before this becomes a
#
self-sustaining thing you know because it feels like constantly one has to put in too much effort
#
and that is that is the reality which all of us should should accept and should have accepted
#
and like kept at it but then we i'm hoping that uh this year because we sent we have that group
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and everybody was a happy new year and all that so first of all i said ki dhande gaardhenge
#
is all like you know that's my that's my inner jar talking and i'm very clear like we have to
#
like put out some tunes this year because they've been lying with us you know they did we just we
#
just have the tunes we've we've kind of have the rough structure and all that we need to finish it
#
and just like put it out and get it out of our system because i'm a firm believer until the
#
time it doesn't go the new stuff will not come and yeah somebody needs to kickstart that thing
#
i'm hoping that i will tell the people i'll tell the people in the band like the time code for this
#
so they don't have to listen to my ramble before this but they can jump straight to this point
#
and say like ki aap toh maine announced kar diya hai i i would do the opposite and make them listen
#
and not get to the time code i don't think they love me that much yeah i mean that's for the inner
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jar and you should want tell me what another facet of it you mentioned earlier about how you
#
know you can look at advaita either as a band or as a brand like both those aspects are there
#
and elsewhere also you mentioned somewhere that you go out of your way to limit the number of shows
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advaita does in delhi for example because you don't want to saturate the market you don't want
#
someone to feel ki aare inko toh agle maine sun lenge right and you do that because not because of
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what you do that because of the brand not the band yeah so how does one think about this because
#
now we've reached the space where the band is going to be all about music right the more you
#
play the better you are and blah blah blah just keep producing music and all of that don't worry
#
about the other stuff the brand is about other skills which you would have had to learn which
#
would not have come naturally you know where you think of marketing positioning blah blah this that
#
so what has that journey been like for you like are there people within the band who are just
#
bothered about the band and then therefore are there people who have to take on that role
#
and secondly your brand you take a step back there as well and you you know see this kind of
#
bigger picture and how has and how has that view of the bigger picture evolved along with the bigger
#
picture because in the time that advaita is around the world has also changed completely yeah yeah
#
no we've got uh as lucky as we've been uh that our music reached the number of people that it has
#
and we've uh i'll use the word like you know like a semi small cult a bit of following that we've
#
got which is great yeah when people come to you at shows and say scene unseen scene yeah there you
#
go but yesterday there were i think about five six people who walked up to me the first person was
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a scene unseen couple which now forever will be called the scene unseen couple and after that
#
everybody was just like i love your work advaita wow nice i was kidding obviously no no but having
#
said that like as lucky as we have been we've also been i think really unfortunate that we thought
#
that so so so when ground and space came out like there was not really like what i don't think was
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any i don't even remember if there was youtube 2009 i don't think there was there it was not
#
that relevant it wasn't big but it was there huh so yeah i mean it this online presence thing was
#
not a thing so we were still like selling cds you know when silency came out around 2012
#
there was this thing about and i was fighting the band and this was one of those could have
#
turned ugly things you know like i said why do we need a label why are we doing this why do we need
#
to license our music for five years to somebody for like a few lakhs of recoupable royalty you
#
know like why like and i understand the entire thing about like maybe a machinery is behind you
#
that will distribute your music and all of that but i'm not saying that i saw the writing on the
#
wall like these record labels will not will be pointless but i used to visit music shops
#
and i would see that they are more about like selling laptop bags now as opposed to cds which
#
are in a corner and then they're they're not even well lit you know so yeah like why do we need it
#
i lost the argument the album came out and it was it looks great you know and it like they've the
#
artwork that he did was fantastic all this and i was like okay this is also cool, it's not for sale
#
so money is being made from the show around that time one thing i started doing was we started
#
getting inquiries for is advaita interested in doing like production work you know say
#
from the corporate anthems to to a certain set of like we for example the the i forgot the i
#
forget the year but the paris climate summit the films that went from india the government of india
#
sent one film and terry they sent one film and we did the music for that so stuff like that started
#
you know we started doing all of that and we want to limit the number of gigs because i don't see
#
i don't think that i'm forever concerned with the fact that there is too much of a like presence
#
so it just becomes literally that thing that you mentioned you know i'll catch them the next time
#
around it's like having residency in a place which we never did and we will never do it
#
and i don't even know which bands do that but in india but uh but this thing of not being
#
accessible i think like also puts an automatic premium i just i just feel that and i feel that
#
internally also for us it gave us this thing of this gig means so much more you know so uh for
#
example the habitat center had uh the sign auditorium had a special event where they were
#
celebrating some landmark anniversary of the habitat and we played that event and you know
#
like it was curated a certain way we we wrote some special arrangements for it so i think that in
#
that sense each gig each gig becomes a little special and it just holds so much more value
#
going to the branding wall a bit one thing i'm one one thing i was i meant by that was key i think
#
all of us realized that advaitha se na choojaan nahi jalega aur hum jalana bhi nahi jaate like
#
we don't i we don't want our livelihood i mean we would like it but the reality is that our
#
livelihood cannot be dependent on advaitha you know it's a band which has eight people and when
#
we travel we have it's 10 of us at least if not 11 plus if somebody is claiming to represent us
#
or has got us the gig then there's finders fee and there is like their cut and all that
#
and when that's that slice is very like it's nothing you know between eight people unless
#
and until you're a heavy touring act so i i was very clear that this is not going to work in our
#
favor right like either we have to do a lot or do a different kind of gig or change the way we
#
approach it so i said i said it to the band there were a few other people in the band also who
#
who are mostly like you said you know there are some people who are just interested in like
#
music karna kya batau you know and there are some people who some of us who like initially when 2009
#
when we went down and we recorded the first round of payment like went out of our not the
#
bank kitty like we took our own money you know three of us we'd put our own money down
#
and uh but going to that brand thing i i feel that being associated with advaita has benefited
#
all of us to the point where it's uh that that it has added to our individual branding you know
#
like i i cannot i might be of this music producer person studio teacher whatever but i will always
#
be the bass player from advaita like that is it you know and uh the other guys also but uh but
#
yeah so everybody is doing something connected to music where the advaita branding just spills over
#
in terms of the band doing something like we tried this push of like creating small channels
#
of merch merchandise like it was some youtube presence and all of that but again it goes back
#
to the first part of the conversation where we were talking where we're like you need like a
#
uh you you need a separate set of professionals to do that for you one is willing to pay for that
#
but i don't think that there is that kind of there was that kind of uh depth i hate it i'm
#
saying it like this but depth of talent when we were looking for it maybe we were looking for it
#
in the wrong circles you know i don't know but uh but then i also like i'll say this much we
#
completely missed the boat on like moving to streaming our music came on spotify and other
#
platforms keep saying spotify something else but uh it came on other platforms i think only in 2017
#
2018 we were so lazy like so who will do it who will finish the paperwork which will take
#
that music online and all that and uh yeah we we missed like big chunks of things that you had to
#
do if you wanted to but what would have happened if you went on to streaming earlier no i'm saying
#
i'm saying that this taking the social media online game a little more seriously like creating an
#
online presence because i i feel that if you have enough of that you can continue to be like present
#
in the minds of people and relevant in the minds of people like abhi now i'm sure the assumption is
#
go is a whether the over like when was the last time they played and all that and that's fine
#
that's why i'm saying like it dormant not defunct you know like we haven't played for
#
we haven't the last game we played was last year jaipur lit festival which is exactly a year ago
#
almost exactly a year ago we haven't played since then and uh yeah so it's a it's a fair assumption
#
to make like is the is the is the band like around also so i'm saying if he had played the
#
online game a little better and hint hint chayan this is towards you because he claims to do all
#
the online things and all that but but yeah so yeah i just feel like it would have been
#
a i don't know it would have just been a little more relevant given the context of our times
#
like i don't think now you can you can survive without having an online presence like it and
#
we just don't like we made a youtube channel in 2018 you know that we were finally doing something
#
our somebody uploaded the audio for our second album whose views are like 100k plus and all
#
and who knows who is that like some random fan who's uploaded our music which we never complained
#
about you know because we didn't do it somebody else did it at least you know but uh we record
#
we have recorded almost every gig that we have played ever since like we started getting digital
#
systems uh at our gigs uh we you know we have material for so like between the two albums we
#
went to uh uh palampur and basically we rented a cottage we stayed there and we like
#
music is set up and we live lived there uh for about a week and we wrote some sketches like there
#
are a lot of ideas from there there is uh let me just call it documentary material you know there
#
is uh yeah we have cataloged we have documented we have just not used it i think you know one
#
throwaway suggestion is ki whenever you jam a camera laga do and put it up as a vlog and it
#
can just be one random camera somewhere like an insta 360 or even a gopro or a simple camera you
#
don't have to have five cameras which is the other thing we overthink yeah of what is content
#
so much i'll give so we went to play in calcutta and this was one of those festivals something
#
some auditorium gig was happening and we were supposed to play at four in the morning
#
okay our sets are at four so chai and ujwal did this thing of like they were bunking together
#
and they did this whole some sort of percussion like they are doing body percussion and like
#
just singing one of our tracks that thing raked up some ridiculous number of views right like
#
it went like north of like 100 000 200 000 and we were sitting there and we're like you man
#
zero effort yeah complete chill yeah yeah no no pretence you're sitting in your beds
#
you know there's no correlation quite often between effort and the response you get
#
what people want is intimacy what people want is they want to see people being themselves
#
ki kuch matlab ki kya hua ki wo nakab hit gaya na mukhauta hit gaya you know this is just who you guys
#
are this is not a produced act ki camera badlo edit karo aise ye karo wo karo it's just people
#
being themselves and there is nothing more addictive and endearing than content like that
#
so if you see if you just have a bunch of musicians being themselves and you guys are
#
musicians and producers you'll obviously get the sound right so i don't think the camera matters
#
we have in our heads like placed such high premium on the packaging
#
you know that we are victims of our own like you know like this weird bar that we've set it is i
#
don't know man like it's just maybe maybe we will come around to it and it's just this is what has
#
this is what happens when we get down to recording tune so like we have three songs which are
#
finished which have been mixed god knows how many times over you know and recorded kitna kar liya
#
usko like we've really recorded like parts in it and we are not finishing it because we've got some
#
sense of and by we i mean like all of us are guilty in the same way we've got some sense of
#
like this is supposed to be that and as opposed to let this version be of this particular time
#
that we put out you know but yeah we just we i don't know man we we just victims of like of
#
of our past selves where we've set this standard and we're not accepting
#
here's a sacrilegious sort maybe you need to treat your serious music the way you treat your
#
jingles and i just do it karo 500 karo yeah let's just do it put it out there do it put it out there
#
yeah you know the other the other day i was sitting with ujwal he was he was over
#
christmas dinner he hung back and we were chatting and i said what if we the material these three
#
songs that i'm talking about which is just lying with us i said we don't tell anyone in the band
#
we just release it what will happen we'll just fire us like what will happen like we'll just send
#
goons to our house the delhi people do this you know but like what will happen more than that
#
but uh but yeah maybe you're right like maybe it just needs to be taken a little less seriously
#
or maybe you just record a bunch of different versions and make it open source and let others
#
mix it that's a bit much that that that cosmic wave of energy has now gone and suddenly every
#
member of advaita in delhi is like getting hiccups and anxiety and they're wondering who's saying
#
what yeah no man the amount of control that the yeah that the band exercises is just is
#
just ridiculous it's which brings which you asked right like are there some people in the band who
#
are doing more than and and i guess like that should be the case that should be the case like
#
like again beetles right lennon writes a tune mccartney shuts up and plays this is paul mccartney
#
probably the greatest songwriter of i'll say it all time right he just shuts up and plays or like
#
peppers is happening where i think george harrison he played maracas on a tune you know like and
#
leading up to a certain point uh like for the longest time i used to think yeah revolver
#
taxman it begins and like that george harrison solo and it's only when you dive deep and start
#
researching and i'm like it's like paul mccartney played that solo it's not even george harrison
#
wow yeah yeah there's a book by jeff emmerich it's a fantastic book it's called here there and
#
everywhere jeff emmerich is the recording engineer of the beetles right of the most uh important
#
recording engineer of the beetles and the entire book like till a certain point he's just dissing
#
harrison he's like every time there used to be a harrison solo that had to be recorded like they
#
were just like yeah this is going to take time we are going to get late you know and you imagine
#
like that's the that's the best band in the world for like i mean ever there's a so when i was a
#
kid i used to think paul was much better than john like you know you always have the paul versus
#
john thing and obviously false dichotomy they're both different geniuses but i love paul more and
#
i don't know if i've begun begun to change that uh over the years but i've come to appreciating
#
uh lennon songs much more and there's this beautiful clip i saw recently where have you
#
seen it where paul mccartney is presenting his desert island discs i've uh the bbc yeah yeah yeah
#
and right at the end he says i don't want to play a beetle song or any of my songs i want to play a
#
john song and he plays beautiful boy yeah and just seeing uh mccartney's face while he's listening
#
today it was beautiful and it's such a lovely song that that you think about it that in a certain
#
kind of laid-back way john was like tremendous songwriter like watching the wheels for example
#
is one that's always been a song i love and uh you know you earlier mentioned redemption redemption
#
song bob marley's and i thought of chris connell's version of that yeah and chris connell also has a
#
great version of watching the wheels yeah and chris connell does a creator thing with covers
#
where he covers every song and does it brilliantly and makes it his own yeah it seems like he wrote
#
the song it seems like he wrote the song yeah and there's no overthinking in that he takes the guitar
#
and does it and goes ahead and picks up another song it's mind blowing for me like the beetles
#
when when songwriting talent i mean imagine a situation like i imagine a situation where
#
you write pennilane you know which i think is yeah i think it's
#
like how do you describe a song like it's perfect it's it's it's got like it's got every element
#
work there's nothing in that recording which is immaculate right it's perfect and then it's like
#
okay fine like you know that's a nice song now i'll write something else and that guy goes and
#
writes like strawberry fields like this and and george martin had that thing that the singles will
#
never be part of the album you know and like it is just each guy just topping the other person but
#
at the same time having the respect that okay this is your song tell me what to play by the end i
#
mean you know i used to but from a while listening to the white album i used to think like this is
#
like this is the album i'm really supposed to appreciate you know it's almost like saying
#
certain certain people who don't like say for example get radiohead no and for the longest time
#
i was in that category i was like no no everybody likes it i have to like it also like let let's
#
get on with this right and then now it's fine if you're okay with the bends being your favorite
#
album it's okay but but i used to tell myself like i have to like the white album like it has
#
been said but then i just couldn't get into that album and then the more you read about it and the
#
more i'm hearing music around it and then go back to the album and you realize that the white album
#
was recorded when those guys had just begun to start hating each other like you know they're
#
not talking to each other they don't for the first time ever they're not showing up as a band for
#
the sessions people are record abbey road the different studios have been booked they are
#
recording in different rooms and that's why that album sounds like completely like disconnected
#
like everybody is trying to write as themselves and not as or for the beetles and it begins to
#
just disintegrate well digressions apart but i feel like somehow like every band bands are
#
not democracies they can't function like that you know like you're lucky if you manage to get a song
#
done we as a divaeta as a as a functioning democracy whatever that means we managed to
#
get two albums done but i we had a meeting uh meeting as if you're like a bunch of corporates
#
really met up but a little while ago at my studio and i was like man let's let's do it like let's
#
just for the people who can put in a little bit of time in this and get a little bit of work done
#
like just sketch it out you know the other people will come and like lend personality
#
but who and who it's it's reality right like it's not 2010 2011 anymore like all of us are single
#
like we can meet whenever we want i've got two kids now you know so and i have a strict policy
#
like past six o'clock i will not work you know and raman when he when he reached out and he said
#
album i said just fine only two questions i asked like when do you want it he was the first guy who
#
gave me a deadline you know of all the bands and all that i've worked with like proper deadline he
#
said october end october it has to be over i missed it by one day because i was ill the last four
#
songs on the album five songs on the album were done in a week and i had the worst cold you know
#
i could i have relied i relied on meters and i just like i was constantly doing steam and taking
#
power naps and all that just to recover and and mix it but before we started the album i told him
#
i was like he's six pushing at 6 30 i cannot work past it you know because i have this thing of like
#
he you know kids are growing up like my daughter's growing up i have to make sure that i go back home
#
and i'm sure the kids will be secretly groaning why is papa always showing up in the evenings
#
yes no you know it's uh so i'm i'm here right now and ishan's traveled with me for these two shows
#
and uh my daughter i know that i have to go back and win favor she will yeah she yeah she will
#
she's growing up too fast man you know so i i make it a point like even if i'm working whatever the
#
work is and i i started this post uh 2014 ishan was born and i just stopped working sundays i don't
#
i think uh comping the episode on a sunday is the only work that i that i touch and otherwise
#
there's no work and there's no work post seven ke baat to matlab seeni nahi hai well thank you
#
for all the late hours and sundays you've kind of uh put in the family is the exception you see
#
family now i can i can uh take these privileges tell me about the gig with ramhan because you
#
know i i came across this old interview of yours uh not old but like pre pandemic where you're
#
talking about how much you admire the local train and they're such a good band they're living
#
together they're like the ideal of what a band should be and uh and then you're working with
#
ramhan on a solo project so how did that come about and how does one think about it because
#
on the one hand it is uh you know you're producing it you're playing on it you're doing all of that
#
but at the same time it's unhesitatingly his project right it's he's a guy he's a he's a
#
main character and everything else is around his vision and his his musical journey so how did that
#
work about like how important is the the sort of the personal rapport and then how does a working
#
go like how do you handle your ego in that whole equation and so on and so forth so i'm very clear
#
about one thing if i'm producing uh if i've been asked to come on board in that capacity i'm very
#
clear that uh this is not my project you know so when raman came to me having said that when
#
raman came to me in feb last year we spoke once then he i told him i need to hear demos
#
you know that's a process like i have key uh i can't it is in your head right now it needs
#
to come out of speaker to which i can react to and by demo i just mean like i just send
#
you the melody and all that so he he went into a studio in in delhi with a drummer uh who played
#
on a couple of the first tunes on the album and he recorded this demo and he came and so we met
#
at the studio he played the material and it was you know it's incredible i uh we spent a couple
#
of hours before we got to auditioning the music we just spent a couple of hours chatting about
#
everything but music so for me on that rapport point like that's very very important you know
#
like i cannot work with what's the word for it an asshole like i can't work with
#
like i i don't want i want to work with a person not with the not with the ego like not with the
#
representation like some sort of you know like there is this boundary wall that you're dealing
#
with i don't i don't want that i want to get to like who is it and i treat whether you know this
#
is the most important song like that you've written like it it me if you i know how hard it is
#
to come up with an idea and play it for somebody else and ask them their opinion
#
and then ask them to make it better that's the job of a producer close the loop on decisions
#
it will make everything better right i know how hard that is and and and raman like i said you
#
know like you said you said local train i mean they were top of the indie pinnacle you know
#
that's probably the biggest indie band in the country and uh i remember raman was telling me
#
that february playing constantly playing they have you cross the threshold of over exposure
#
and you you reach the threshold of not enough exposure like you are always in demand
#
plus this very strong working ethic of every wheel uh moving at the same pace in the same
#
direction not you know nobody's fighting each other till the certain point till till the number
#
of albums that they did so for reasons for whatever reasons he left the band and then he
#
landed up my question to him was this only key like he how does this work like who are these
#
songs for he said these songs are for me and i was very clear that who are they for because if they are
#
for people then you play it you have local train like you have the biggest stage in the country
#
you don't need to shift but the covid year has changed a lot you know for him which is i'll just
#
digress like i a lot of the music that i that i hear now post the last two years uh the post
#
covid era like if if you're singing as if it is 2018 man like i don't know what kind of
#
yeah like what kind of lie you're living how has it happened that covid years did not change you
#
so i could see it in his lyrics you know his first tune mehroom like it is so his mother was down with
#
covid and it was she was in the hospital and a little serious i guess a little serious but
#
uh his mother like he told me this story he said like you know your mom said you write a hit
#
so he wrote mehroom that day you know for the longest time while we were tracking the album he
#
was he was living with us at home and he would uh every morning he would come out just like
#
writing tunes or a machine like he was writing and he was searching the songs so the process was very
#
clear like i told him okay fine these songs you need to like find the point at which these ideas
#
were you need to remember remind yourself of when you wrote these ideas you know and there is this
#
thing about like layering the track against like a metronome and all that so i didn't use a metronome
#
you know mehroom we were recording and i was like everything needs to come from you like
#
we will play around your feel so that kind of put him in like a he was talking about it with a gig last
#
night he you know he mentioned it almost every gig like he hated it because he was he the local
#
train used to play with backing arrangements you know and here i am i'm saying like let go of
#
everything and just like play the song the way you wrote it because i will leave it to me to put a
#
mic in front of you which will just capture energy because as soon as that energy is gone because i'm
#
your first audience now which is the way that i think i approach this project and every other
#
project that that if i am not reacting to it in a manner which i am expecting the people to react
#
to it it's not going to work so in that spirit like let's go Kubrick on this as long as we don't get it
#
we will keep playing it you know no matter what it takes and then we we worked for a few months
#
like five months on the album there were three unproductive days you know yeah that's it like
#
one day he just had like some personal things going on so he could not sing and i was like man
#
chill we don't need to one day technology hit us like for sound card drivers and all that
#
and our days were also placed in such a way that we would meet in the morning
#
he was staying in Noida he would land up at the studio and we would work for a couple of hours
#
then we would go and pick up Ishaan from school and drop him home grab lunch go back to the studio
#
do a few more hours you know we kept doing this it's tiring us out and i said come home
#
you know there's a room just stay there and corner not quarter note but corner note
#
so we did that like a lot of the album was stacked inside that bedroom studio in my
#
you know and i would take it back to the studio and work but throughout this entire thing my
#
i was very clear that okay and i really appreciate him for this he he was like you
#
look man i'm going to write the songs okay i have written the song this is the structure
#
etc etc you are producer you decide you know i would make him play takes again and again and
#
again like you play it right no this is not working you fix it you fix it you fix it and
#
it's not about because and i'm telling i told him one thing like forget pitch forget time
#
give the atmosphere you know that's not a plugin once you hear the vibe that i hear as a listener
#
which is working for me now you can execute with technique you know but we will it will take as
#
long as it takes it does not make a difference right but we will get the vibe right once we get
#
the vibe right we are gold and i want to say that the tracks i think except for one track on the
#
album which is Dasan Ishak every other track is like 10 to 12 hours work that's it you know he
#
would sing and we are okay with the take then we spend like a few hours on me throwing some things
#
at it and we tracked four songs in a go with the drummer so one day four songs and that's how we
#
and each song like he was going after like a video and all that but he gave me like full creative
#
control to the extent where it does not make him it does not make him sound like does not make
#
him sound knuckly you know and he was very clear like he also like during this covid time and all
#
that he got into the Rolling Stones so he kept talking about like Sticky Fingers and Exile on
#
Main Street and my dad is like full Rolling Stones fan he you know Sticky Fingers is one of my all
#
time yeah yeah it's the like the when that can't you hear me knocking starts like you know like i
#
can like it's the like immediately like every movie becomes like Scorsese movie and then like
#
every sound every scene becomes better it's a great album and he got into like this whole Charlie
#
Watts thing and i i guess like i was lucky enough that he that i had heard that music dad played so
#
much Rolling Stones at home you know like i got Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street like the
#
cassettes were crushed you know so much so that not only the highs disappeared but the pitch
#
changed the tapes were so old but uh so i knew what he was trying to say you know like what he
#
was and it it if you hear like Exile on Main Street for example it's and for the people who
#
might think like i'm comparing his music to Rolling Stones and all i'm not saying that yeah it's about
#
like a certain vibe it's about capturing something like there are inconsistencies
#
on on in in these songs but inconsistencies are inconsistencies i mean there are slight timing issues
#
you know but like you listen to Sympathy for the Devil for example you know and Jagger is
#
deliciously lazy when he says you know please allow me to introduce myself he's like there is
#
there is that urgency in the arrangement which he is just not respecting and he's like this just
#
lazy delivering it you know and we you listen to that and then you listen to like say Dastane
#
Shaka chorus delivery and you know and that's the thing like i'm like you man lay back a little bit
#
you know like that doesn't mean anything what does that mean lay back and then you start talking
#
about common references so which is the great thing about like that happened in the course
#
of working together with him on this that our reference is really aligned you know and he
#
and we're full credit to him like you know it's not easy man to write like
#
coming from local train and to write songs which his band kind of did not agree to do
#
like you know for whatever reason like you know the approach that he wanted to take and he
#
and his band didn't want to do these so he had written the songs and he had he had a he had a
#
well he had a sense of where he wanted to go with the songs you know like turn it into a little more
#
rock and roll like add some inconsistency to the mix you know add some chaos to the mix
#
and that's not the that's that wasn't the approach of whatever local train 1.0 so
#
and 2.0 didn't happen you know so when he when he came to me like i was full i was all for that
#
you know everything else is predictable but what is it that will happen when you do one more take
#
take and just addressing a bit like to the students also we talk about a lot about this
#
like i i spend the year talking to them about like what is a good take how do you decide
#
that is what you're being paid for that is it your forget what you think about what a producer
#
is supposed to do i'll i'll tell you you know my understanding of it is close the loop take a
#
decision make the call this is it you know then you have to be convinced that of of so many things
#
that you know that the artist a cannot do better and then now let's go into that here what does
#
better mean you know is it a question of ability or is it a question of time and place is can you
#
change like something in the room like make his mood lighter or do something or the other
#
maybe this needs a little aggression so i will not shy away from suggesting yeah
#
don't push up market can you deliver this take you'll be a little out of breath and you'll be
#
trying to catch the beat like i know you can sing irrespective of the situation because i've seen
#
you run on stage and sing so you can deliver energy that's what we're looking for you know
#
whatever it takes man whatever it takes there's a song on the album lullaby a lullaby for the
#
anxious ball lovely song i just love the soundscape of that yeah so that uh he was sitting in the
#
control room in the studio and uh he sang a scratch because what you were trying to do was
#
okay let me just record like a scratch vocal i'll put a mic on the guitar also and then you can go
#
and dub your vocal properly that guitar take is not great you know sonically speaking like there
#
are squeaks and there is a lot of questionable fidelity in it and it was not to a click track
#
that's the take on the album because we try to do it again and i was like man we are trying but
#
recreating or so we will just live with that you know we will make that work anyway because that
#
take is gold now you know and on top of that the entire track was built which took us now that we
#
have now that we know that and which is such a awesome thing now we know that this cannot change
#
so everything else has to work with this so then that soundscape just like went in that direction
#
automatically the only song on that album which uh which we which was in his head i had no idea
#
was uh the last track on the album it's called shagged blues and i had no idea like he just said
#
key 12 bar blues that's all he said and then we did this whole thing live and all that and it
#
turned out like that but just close it like he he had this key you i am hiring you for this close
#
the loop on everything tell me what works tell me what you need to change and uh i really admire
#
that you know the i because sometimes you are hired because you can get the job done sometimes
#
you're hired because you are the only person for the job and i think like this is this is a case
#
of the latter like i would really like to believe so i i'm i'm sure there are other people in the
#
country who could have pulled this off for him easy no problem but the fact of being being in
#
a space where the two where both of us had the same references for the direction direction which
#
needs to go to and whatever technical ability i have i could execute that for him and now
#
like i'm in that place where i have to like he was like he's okay you play lives i'm playing
#
playing bass with him i played bass for the first few shows and now i'm playing guitar
#
so yeah it's just that like i i think the entire process was just like he knew that i will know
#
when it's finished and the references will guide us to that point and the deadline
#
because if he doesn't meet the october deadline then you don't have enough time for the album
#
to work its way so that you can do gigs in january january to march will be the gigs so yeah it's
#
it's doing pretty decent like it's you know there are there's a there's a lot of like backlash from
#
his regular it's not regular but his old fans yeah the first video he posted like he got called a
#
traitor when he posted mehru mehru posted mehru that was great man there were people commenting
#
on that video and calling him traitor you know like this is some judas level bob dill and shit
#
like i called him i said yeah like how are you dealing with this shit you know and i it's not
#
it's got nothing to do with me one one guy one you know one of the songs like one so we went
#
and played a couple of duo acoustic guitar sets we did one in bangalore one in delhi
#
and after the bangalore gig he posted a video and somebody put up a comment that you know
#
i'm missing and he named his ex uh band member to your left you know and i was sitting on his
#
right as i commented back and i said let the guy be you know like because that's the thing like
#
you know he's and raman says this we were chatting about it and he said he wrote the
#
songs when he wrote them they became popular when a decade later he had moved on you know
#
and i think like that's the that's the true hallmark of an artist no like you
#
so we're already talking about like april april may like the demo should be ready for what will be
#
become his next album and hopefully we start recording in june but yeah to finally like to
#
close that point i am very clear that this is his project you know and to deal with the ego the ego
#
that has to be dealt with his mind i have to be okay with coming up with arrangement ideas and
#
parts and changes and then not claiming ownership and i'm absolutely fine with that you know i'm
#
like for me for me it's like the bigger picture is the music that is getting done and this again
#
like it's kind of similar to the whole advaita thing that there is no way i can come up on my
#
own with the kind of music that advaita does it's just not possible it's never going to happen
#
not even in a parallel universe it needs you know eight of us six of us eight of us who having done
#
like round in space and silence the silency it needs this this thing of raman to do his thing
#
for it to become what it will become in in my hands you know but yeah i am completely fine with
#
like the guy who writes you know this is this is not a lennon mccartney situation this is more like
#
a lennon and george martin situation so i am george martin and wow i am george martin and jeff
#
emmerich rolled into one oh this is like dylan and daniel lanois for time out of mind yeah yeah so
#
not that i'm comparing either of you to either of them yeah see i was telling you this is this is
#
the grammy yeah right so you know so in both of these in both of these setups you're not the
#
main act and one of them the whole band is a main act and the other one it's raman's vision which
#
is driving everything though honestly even for him it's an act of setting aside ego to say
#
that you produce it you you know and not kind of you know i'll do as many takes as you need but
#
you're the you're in charge of that and that also requires a certain maturity i think which
#
you know you have to pay your dues for many many years before you get there i would imagine
#
but when are you the main act like you've done the dirt machine stuff which i've heard which i was
#
which i love but which was so different from anything you've ever done that i've heard you
#
do rather before in my limited this thing so you know when you are the main act what's going on
#
like is there stuff that you keep working on which you don't put out there is there stuff that you
#
want to do you know what is that sort of like what's that journey like so uh i think that main
#
act definition in my head is very uh i don't know if it's different from the way like it it is
#
perceived in normal situation it's just uh the i guess the amount of creative control like an
#
exercise you know and i and i feel that every project i do like i i want to say nine times
#
out of 10 i get like 100 creative control anyway so in pretty much everything i do i consider myself
#
like this thing would not have made it past the finish line without me you know that's the only
#
bit of ego i've got but uh but on that note like the dirt machine is the the thing i am just not
#
consistent enough and i like it's just a question of like being lazy in parts and procrastinating
#
and also trying to do everything on my own which is something which is the only project where i do
#
everything on my own anyway so i won't let that go so the dirt machine sketches like i i wrote it
#
and then you know that what happened was with the first ep like i i was playing a guitar at a certain
#
level and as i became better as a guitar player i had to record it again then the recording engineer
#
was not good enough then i had to become better as a recording engineer then i had to become better
#
as a producer and i was very clear that i'm in no rush you know so i took there's a track on that
#
ep it's called blue cubes of ice i it is as i think it's as old as 2004 wow yeah that recording is
#
also from 2004 oh okay yeah so it was it was done uh i i retract the bass on it and i remixed it
#
obviously that is a live recording from 2004 with a trio that i used to have called blue breakfast
#
but i took the drum track and i read it some guitar parts and i read the bass and all that
#
and uh the opening track on that it's called it's about time that's something that i did 2010 so
#
it's spread all across uh like like across a few years but everybody in the chain is that
#
part every part is being played by me and i'm not getting better at equal rate you know so
#
so having said that i finished the four four tunes and i've got
#
five right now which i'm working on and in my head like that's the main item for the main act in the
#
sense it's never going to be a performing thing i i don't think i do i want to do it also like i
#
just yeah instrumental music of that kind it's a little obtuse and it's not going to work and
#
it'll be too much effort for too little return and return not in terms of money but also in terms of
#
like i yeah i i will i don't know i think i will need two more guitar players and
#
like it'll be a lot of work and i just want to don't want to do that so it'll be a recording
#
thing i've finished a track last year it's been mastered finished it's been lying on my
#
it's it's it's about 10 months and it's been there i managed to get a bunch of people to collaborate
#
on it i so covid happened everybody's at home you know i was like who's my favorite drummer
#
so the first EP is all drummers on i'm doing everything else but the collaborations with
#
drummers so uh there's a there's a drummer called keith carlock he is uh he's on he's steely dance
#
drummer and stevey wonder and john mayer and uh osnoe and uh so that's your grammy if you
#
i had written some guitar parts and i said what will happen he'll say no no so i reached out to keith
#
and i mailed him and i said hello guitar player from india and i and i've seen him live he came
#
with sting when sting came to india and he played in delhi so i mentioned all of that and i said
#
i'm just a fan man like you know like i have a tune like will you play on it he was so gracious
#
like he said yeah send it he heard it and man it was just like guitar parts with the metronome and
#
he could hear what i was hearing like the flow of the song and he took his time he learned the tune
#
he said i'll do i'll just get familiar with it and i will send it back to you so he recorded drums
#
on it that it sat and i was like first i have to like sit with this like keith carlock has played
#
on my track you know and uh then i then i said this i will try to write some vocals on this like
#
a vocal part and all so i reached out to a few vocalists it didn't turn the way that i was
#
hoping it would and then vasundhra with the lute v vasundhra v vasu so vasu is like i know her from
#
artists unlimited days like really uh close friend so she sang and then i was like okay this is
#
taking shape so then i got some horns recorded in london and it's turned into this whole funk
#
thing so i'm like okay should i write more tunes like this but uh but ha so then now there are
#
uh four like i said five tunes one is already done uh the second one is also finished i have
#
to just sort of play a little bit of bass on it is cheesily called buppy gets the blues
#
you know and uh i had this thing like early 2000s i had done some arrangements of bollywood tunes
#
you know like jane wo kaisi log thein ke pyaar ko like slide guitar thoda sa like bluesy
#
arrangements oh lovely these are on youtube no so i i i wrote the parts and i rehearsed them with uh
#
with a few guys and like intihaan ho gayi intizaar ki the sharabi tune and all that i wrote them and
#
i actually reached out to the label you know uh hmv if i'm not mistaken ki yaar rights lo
#
you know because i thought like i'll do it properly like i'll just release it you know
#
you can't uh claim to have written it but anyway they who am i they never got back like kitne mails
#
dalay and all that i could just put it out on youtube but uh so i've taken the taken some of
#
those ideas and made like i said like you know a set of tunes called buppy gets the blues wow
#
and that's going to be on the same thing as keet karlok kvala track and i'm writing three more one
#
of them i'm hoping will feature a rapper you know i'm just writing like the sketch for it and i just
#
want to get like some it's not hip hop but like rap thing done on it so that is it like that is
#
the outlet with that's the main act like that's my thing but if you ask me what my what my preferred
#
gig is it is just playing guitar behind my son that is the thing that i love the most so mele
#
yeah like i mean i would rather consider that as the only thing and i'll be more than happy but if
#
but dirt machine like yeah this year at least five more tunes like i was hoping to do three
#
tunes every year but i but yeah i i've just i january 1st i said i've go to work first day of
#
the year i have to learn the superstitions about it so i went and i've just like told myself that
#
this year 25 tunes i have to release you know and i'm and i'm like saying it here also but i
#
i so i told raman that's your turn okay please write an album and 10 are yours i will take care
#
of the other 15 but uh but yeah that's the plan so i will do at least five tunes and hopefully
#
that will happen and yeah that will get give me some more like you know runway open up some
#
creative space and then some maybe some new tunes come up whatever so we will come to your preferred
#
main gig but before we talk about how ishaan's sinking took off and all of that tell me in
#
general about covid like like you said but that if you know if someone writes songs like it's 2018
#
they don't you know they've missed they've missed something big right uh and you've spoken about how
#
covid changed even changed the way you look at music uh can you elaborate on that like if you
#
think about those two years and a certain amount of time that we just spent being locked in yeah
#
just locked in and i mean i don't want to state the obvious key like everything as you know it
#
changed all that was up here but i don't i can't think of a single person who did not have some
#
form of grief touch them you know like my band like my my my drummer aman he lost his father
#
to covid my uh mohit rx tabla player he lost his mother and uh i'm just saying that there was this
#
thing of grief and like this this weight and like life hitting everybody and then when stuff opens
#
up you know and this desperate attempt to just not acknowledge i'm not saying that start writing i
#
don't know what you know like these songs which reflect on those times or i'm not i'm not saying
#
that i'm there needs to be some sense of something hit you you know like there needs to be some change
#
in of course there must be relief that you went back to life as it was and you there must be a
#
sense of like okay this this desperate attempt to like try to recreate as it was but you're writing
#
people are writing songs and i won't take names because i this is in my opinion like maybe like
#
it'll come across as like yeah i don't like their music anyway but yeah maybe i don't but
#
but there is no sense of like like there has to be some you know that japanese saying that
#
don't be afraid of moving slowly be afraid of standing still it's it's it's almost like it's
#
almost like a lot of artists i know who post the covid years it's almost like they have they are
#
still there you know i'm not saying everybody should become serious but it's so if you are
#
if you're glad that the world has opened up again you know then this introspection of like
#
how do you reflect gratitude in music i i don't know is it a chord progression is it is it is it
#
is it a different set of lyrics because singer-songwriter ka zamana hai na so everybody
#
is writing yeah everybody is doing that so like then so then how is it that everybody is feeling
#
the same way you know it's almost like a word cloud of emotions where different emotions is
#
just taking turns to become like slightly bigger and as they become bigger and that word comes at
#
you inside that word cloud you can see the faces faces of like four or five artists who represent
#
that emotion in this present time and it goes back and then another word becomes bigger and
#
this word could be a part of a lyric or the general genre or whatever and it's the same artists faces
#
you know i'm saying i'm saying that it feels like key instead of acknowledging that maybe
#
that life experience that life-changing experience was i don't know good bad i don't know what that
#
means but instead of acknowledging that life experience there's like this complete denial of
#
it in like i could not i could not go back to even as something as simple as like playing guitar
#
and maybe this is just me right maybe nobody else feels this way but i could just not go back to
#
playing the guitar and playing of the same things while like during the covid years like i started
#
doing those small videos with shan and all that and maybe there was some sense of relief and some
#
sense of like you know that was my packaging of happiness for myself and saving my sanity by doing
#
some sense of music some amount of music but my the track that that that i could only that i could
#
complete during the covid years was that thing kleptocrat and that's like you know that's the
#
end of the world man the other track i worked on with amartya only it's his track it's called
#
my funny quarantine you know and it's i'm yeah so maybe it comes across this thing that all of us
#
should be feeling like the end of the world thing but i'm saying that there is there should be one
#
piece of music one piece of your art with one piece of your craft something which should
#
acknowledge that those years happened they hit you they hit people around you and you were not
#
in hiding or in denial and then get back you know then get back to your regular schedule
#
but what what happened to that interruption like why is it yeah like you know you remember natasha's
#
episode when she spoke about like we will get to know later so maybe maybe in a few years from now
#
when there is no more running away from what the covid years did for us maybe then like some music
#
is going to come out from some people who i hear their music and i'm like this is this amount of
#
lying so i can't do i mean i can't i don't know how you're doing it you know but i don't know if
#
this is making sense or if i'm like i'm just trying to wrap my head around that how does
#
a once in a lifetime event like that not do anything to you except make you double down
#
on denying it even more with the one thing with which you can express and sure your music brings
#
a lot of joy a lot of happiness to people and i get it like a lot of people are doing that but
#
but don't you think like don't you think like something should something should fundamentally
#
shift like a seismic shift should happen happen like you know so i'll just think aloud
#
in amitabh kumar's episode you know we refer to this book where we refer to his experience
#
where he visited this village in eastern up or wherever where there had been this riot in a village
#
or people from outside had come and they had killed all the muslims there except one guy
#
he went somewhere else to hide everybody else ran into the fields they were slaughtered
#
including his wife and including his kids and seven years later amitabh kumar revisits
#
that village if i remember correctly and that guy is now there uh with a new wife new family
#
and he behaves as if nothing ever happened right and the thing is how do you deal with grief
#
you know you can't you can't uh you you can't make it a skin for yourself you can't live in
#
that grief all the time maybe it's a natural human reaction to completely be in denial no sorry so
#
sorry to cut in but i think i think by not dealing with it it'll always be a part of you
#
sure so so as an artist as a musician as a songwriter whatever like you know as someone
#
who has a way of expressing uh through something through yeah like that's your release no you that
#
makes it leave you normatively i agree with you uh descriptively i'm saying it can be different
#
for people and i'm trying to understand why like uh and also i don't like of course if you don't
#
deal with it it stays with you but it stays with you even if you deal with it but um uh the thing
#
is for many people like denial i think is inbuilt into us it's hardwired into us denial of various
#
like denial of our mortality is hardwired into us otherwise how would we find the will to live
#
how would we find the will to live right and therefore we have to so there can be other denials which are part of the package which uh uh kind of come into that uh and and you know like in the case of that guy
#
where where i'm sure he can have a happy life with his new wife and where i'm sure that he doesn't
#
think too much of what happened once in a while the thought will come to his head
#
and it will be so horrible that he can just brush it away and and i think what happens and on a
#
separate track i think what happens with many people is that you can you know progress in one
#
of two ways and one way is that your art is a really uh in a sense a superficial thing it's
#
something outside of you it's a superficial thing and you practice your craft you do what pleases
#
people and you continue doing that and that's uh sort of the whole game and you don't really grow
#
beyond that and there will be others who will grow regardless of whether anything tragic happens in
#
their lives or not they will grow anywhere there will be a certain kind of uh uh teraf that comes
#
in there'll be a gerai that comes in and that's going to come in with time which is why you know
#
when i look look at the stand-up comedy scene i would not i think it's very cruel to compare the
#
stand-up comedy scene in india with that in the u.s because to me the the greatest stand-up comedy
#
has happened by people in their 40s and 50s when they have that lived life behind them you know
#
most people in their 20s are really callow the the indian scene is too young you know if i want
#
some of these kids to get to 45 50 experience heartbreak death loss grief and then see the
#
kind of work they do and in that context um the people who are going to change and get more
#
gerai would do it this in spite of covid not happening yeah and the people who are going to
#
stay on that shallow track because they're all who are not given to self-reflection at all will
#
remain not given to self-reflection and covid won't affect them so in that sense for somebody like you
#
and me uh you know covid change many subtle things which i agree with natasha maybe it'll take me
#
years to kind of articulate what the period meant and very hard to disentangle the pandemic from the
#
other shit that's happening around you also yeah where there is a lot of other shit happening and
#
how do you kind of disentangle that so perhaps you really can't perhaps you just move on you know
#
you delete the backups and so sure maybe you know maybe i'm being too harsh but uh
#
uh yeah it's also stems it also stems from the fact that uh the kind of music that i want to
#
listen to uh you know 4000 weeks there's only so much music in here but the kind of music that i
#
want to listen and there's 2000 left for you yeah there you go yeah uh i want it to come from a place
#
of like it can't be wallpaper you know like i i just can't i i don't understand because
#
okay like in in the larger spirit of things i guess like these are these are trends which will pass they are
#
artists or craftsmen or just executioners of certain ideas who will always remain shallow
#
sure but i what i somehow feel just that uh that it's a it'll probably come out the wrong way because
#
i won't be able to phrase it but it's almost almost like kid key every opportunity of a life
#
experience there is an opportunity in that life experience to like translate it to something
#
and you know and i'm not i'm not saying key key you should put yourself key obama is
#
is experience about me gonna look i'm not saying that but there needs to be a did i i i expect
#
there to be some sort of a change towards interacting with life itself which only gets
#
reflected because i mean i see it through your art only you know and when i see this after what
#
happened like i'm i'm not saying like after some life-changing event like it cannot be joyous and
#
and you can't be filled with gratitude or all that i'm not saying that but like but i don't know i
#
feel like they are stuck and maybe you're right maybe you're right that like it will it will just
#
it will just remain there and sure you know it it will remain there but it just feels
#
it just it just feels weird to be you know on the same playlists with certain people
#
or on the same bill with certain people or on the same key yeah like you oh
#
you know this is yeah because you can investigate this a little more i don't know maybe i'm just
#
trying to add more value to stuff that that probably is not possible that you'll get value
#
from it but that is that is a negative thought and i'm like i feel really i feel really weird
#
for having it also because i'm like yeah these people by these people i mean like a certain
#
artist maybe maybe this is this is the edge of their like ability to extract from experience
#
and sure but yeah i think my my credo here kind of is that and this is something i've
#
thought about and done for myself recently is that i don't want to criticize other artists
#
and creators like my way of thinking is
#
stop consuming it nobody's forcing you to listen or read or you know whatever the particular piece may be
#
and the other thing is yeah we are creators ourselves here
#
if you feel that there is something missing there something that is not being expressed something
#
that we would want to connect to yeah yeah yeah it's just visual thinking thing with through
#
which i'm the lens through which i'm looking at this but like maybe maybe uh you're right like
#
yeah yeah yeah tell me about the good thing that happened during uh uh covid in the sense that you
#
started putting videos out with your son and and before we even get to those videos with your son
#
tell me about how fatherhood changed you because in a sense it's almost like joining a band or
#
taking a production in the sense that you have to subsume yourself you have to like take a back seat
#
and observe and not be the main character and so on and so forth so tell me a little bit uh about that
#
about that yeah man so you know i like i was mentioning like how while growing up like
#
i don't think the parents generation was aware that they needed to pay rent so uh
#
which also which came with the benefit of like a lot of freedom also like no one put down the
#
rule book so i just thought in my head kiyaar you know you're a dad now like where's that
#
where's the instruction manual on this thing you know what am i supposed to do and i was really
#
like skeptical i'm not i'm not saying that ki i'm not like every day it's like kiyaar ki am i doing
#
this right but uh it's one thing i remember like i was so one thing i done was like i was in the
#
labor room when he when nishan was born as soon as he born i had music set up in the labor room
#
as soon as i was born i had play like beetles played you know yeah i had set that up it was at
#
was at uh which song so a day in the life oh yeah it was set and when my daughter was born
#
Stevie Wonder so so so yeah it was Stevie Wonder for her and beetles for him but uh and i held him
#
you know for the first time and i i swear man i my brain melted like every every i think every
#
neuron fired like this thing of like this like like i have never felt joy like that and then in a
#
split second it turned to like this incredible feeling of fear that keep
#
fuck now you know like now it starts now it starts and i i think the change at least me has been um
#
i i don't think there is a single part of my personality which has not
#
which has not been touched by the fact that i have now got to because i i i when i started out
#
and i'm still thinking like it should if i'll fail you know and what does failure as a father
#
really mean then you start thinking about that and that's a spiral down which you go down
#
and yeah that's not a pleasant place to be in but uh but it's definitely made me
#
enjoy every every little thing like this whole uh maybe it ties back to the whole mindful game
#
like i am really uh i really i desperately try to be present in all the moments which is something
#
that i would i don't think i had in me when i was like when i was not a dad like i did not like
#
there was a version of it i was practicing it but just like now it's on steroids you know like
#
i'm really focused in on it also i think like i'm watching um seeing him grow and seeing him like
#
like get these facets of personality i realize that that i know he's malleable but i should not
#
be trying to force change on him so it's made me into this person where i i don't know if priya
#
will agree with this or not but i definitely think like i've got a little more like i'm not trying to
#
enforce the law i don't know how to put it like i'm not which i used to be very keen you know now i'm
#
like you know okay so like for example so uh like say even if it was something as simple as like
#
meeting a bunch of people you know like uh meeting a meeting a bunch of people hanging out with them
#
doing things like i would not do it if i did not want to like i would just plain and simple no now
#
i know that there is this person who needs or like okay that's an example like meeting people
#
but like still just in general experience like going to a place like just to have him also
#
experience this thing you know like it doesn't matter if i want to do it or not it does not
#
matter like i will do things for him now for the longest time before the covid years and now we are
#
going back to that routine we used to have this thing like sunday sunday would be his day with me
#
like i would anyway finish work early and go back and make sure that i do story time and all that
#
joey but but sunday would be his day with me like we would step out uh we would uh we the two of us
#
grab lunch together i let ishan order like interact with adults you know like he will
#
pick the restaurant he will read through the menu he will order whatever he wants
#
you know and he will make sure that that yeah he does does that for the table and he deals with the
#
with the staff and the when the and the host and uh so we would finish that and then hit a bookshop
#
you know and buy whatever you want as much as many books whatever it is take it and he's got
#
more books than me i think in the in the in the house so it's a constant thing this this change
#
of like just you know i need to spend every and this is because my dad had that job where he could
#
not where he was not around when i was growing up like really i i i'm gonna digress for a bit but
#
uh i told my dad a few years ago you know like i have very few memories of like dad being around
#
when i was growing up you know just little done and i and i told him once like you know yeah i'm
#
puncturing my memories i'm just injecting you in them i'm just doing it like you know and uh
#
then 20 2016 2016 we finally took this call i told dad okay you and i so we were never like
#
we never went on family holidays but dad was always busy so mom uh my brother and i were like
#
we would travel to my nani's place and all that in madras we would spend some holidays there once in
#
a while we used to come to delhi and uh but dad was almost never there you know like just always
#
busy work work so 2016 we took i said okay you and i we'll go for pick a place you know and uh
#
my dad's a world war buff and i also like you know i'm also interested so we'll go to germany
#
and he's he was teaching himself spanish so he said we'll go to spain also so we did
#
germany spain and then from there he's like i will speak go and speak spanish to the other
#
bunch of people so he went to mexico yeah so i i spent like uh 10 days with him traveling
#
you know and so coming back to ishan like that's the other thing i want to do like i just want like
#
all these to be present and to do all these things with him you know like have this because he will
#
grow up very he's growing he's almost nine you know he'll grow up and i don't even know like if
#
i'll be needed you know he'll be this independent person all that so that changed like i am desperate
#
for to like now to be like this part of his memories and i i think like as a person like i
#
think i'm i'm a lot more patient than than what i was like i think you just need like superhuman
#
abilities of patience if you want to deal with kids the right way there is a wrong way of dealing
#
with kids you know not being patient with them that's my assumption if i'm thinking it wrong
#
then sure i can i don't mind being corrected but patience like i don't think i had that at all
#
like i was i was not confrontational but i was i was i don't think i was like patient enough
#
for like to for it to resolve patience definitely i also think like uh i've got this
#
i've i've now started placing a premium on every moment like every moment is precious and uh i i
#
really think that you know like i i keep thinking back on on my childhood every once in a while and
#
uh like this thing of like puncturing my memories with my dad in in them and all that and i have
#
like this these fleeting i remember fleeting instances that's it like you know like maybe
#
like maybe i'm i'm i'm giving a soundtrack to them i'm filling in the dialogues i remember like
#
just the catchphrase of each memory like it's very bleak and very faint and i don't know why
#
the purge happened and when the purge started happening that i just like i'm not i don't
#
i just don't remember that so i i'm lucky i don't know why those memories were important
#
and why do i remember them so we just the beginning of the year we took a break we went to
#
we went down south we went to pondicherry for 10 days and one of the one of the things i had
#
bachpan mein was going to mahabalipuram with mom you know and i took both the kids i said this is
#
going to be a painful experience of like indian holiday but jaana toh padega like we are going
#
to go there you're going to sit in the exact same spot when i took a snap with my mom when i was
#
eight years old and like so but you know i'm just treating each moment as precious i'm thinking this
#
game of like i already feel like i've lost way too much time with the shaan that i did not capitalize
#
on yeah that placing the premium on like this moment is special you know like this is it this
#
is it and like that it's it's amazing it's amazing this constant thing of not harking back to the
#
past or like expecting something out of the future like it's this i don't know man it's really cool
#
state to be in and i wonder if it would have happened if i had not been a dad and i don't know
#
yeah i don't know i can't imagine that what-if scenario so i remember in my dad's last months
#
in fact pre-covid when i remember i was sitting with him in chandigarh and and he had what we
#
thought was Alzheimer's and coming up but later we were told it's Parkinson's or whatever but he
#
was losing a lot of his memory and memory loss like that typically what happens is that the edges
#
stay sharp so you'll remember what happened yesterday and you'll remember what happened
#
when you were 10 but you forget the middle so at one point he said he had no memories of my growing
#
up so he said can you tell me stuff you know almost like the second-hand way of getting
#
memories of something he no longer remembers himself and that was sort of very poignant and
#
maybe it's a good thing sometimes you don't have memories of some things but but yeah memories also
#
complicated and and the act in the presence of cherishing what you know will be a cherished
#
memory but cherishing it now it seems like really interesting i think abhishek upamanyu has a stand
#
up act about people who are constantly trying to capture everything that this is an instagram
#
moment and you know i get why he was lampooning that but this is almost something different that
#
you're making sure that there are that you know there is a sort of depth to the current moment
#
that would not otherwise be if you were just going with the flow and not really paying attention and
#
yeah also i don't know how how it ties in like this this massive change the other thing like i
#
put my i'm like i feel everybody should be in therapy you know so i i'm doing that like i
#
i have said i i do it because i i feel like my baggage cannot get transferred to my kids man
#
you know and i'm sure i have baggage everybody has baggage everybody has issues and if you are
#
in that position of privilege and luxury where you can afford to take some time off and deal with it
#
you must so i did that like and it's it's a it's a thing that it's a thing that i don't take
#
take lightly at all like i think like everybody needs to work on themselves and i i've been doing
#
that for a few years now and i can see it like i i can see the change that if i i can imagine
#
that if i had not been through the paces of the the sessions of therapy that it would have been
#
a different relationship because i would have been a different person and i don't think that
#
that that should be like why should the kids wear that baggage you know it's
#
it's on us to like it's on me to fix myself you know and because i i don't know like i'll be
#
doing those things which which will which will be noticed by them you know which will be noticed by
#
him and i'm not saying i'm i'm like i'm not messing up like obviously like i scream every
#
once in a while you know and maybe too often in his book uh but uh but yeah like
#
tomorrow when he screams like he expected it from me it is i'm going to say that like i'm
#
going to give myself the credit and the blame so if you are taking credit then you will have to take blame
#
so so philip larkin has these great lines in the context of having children where he says
#
man hands on misery to man it deepens like a coastal shelf and that's practically my favorite
#
line in poetry it deepens like a coastal shelf wow yeah this is beautiful uh tell me about the
#
singing tell me about how how that kind of uh started yeah so you know when the lockdown
#
was on and uh so so priya sings like she she has the ability to stretch notes together she's got a
#
great voice she doesn't uh she doesn't take it seriously enough but uh but yeah i was i was just
#
fooling around with the guitar in the house there is this luthier by the name of karan singh builds
#
these fantastic guitars his name is his company name is bigfoot guitars so for my 40th priya got
#
me a guitar and it's this and i got my hands on it just before the world shut down this is like
#
early march and 23rd 24th march was the lockdown first lockdown and i got my hands on it got back
#
and i was fooling around with it playing and then nishan would just like walk around the
#
the house singing so as a as a baby uh there is this program called music together it's not a
#
music course not nothing formal but it's this thing where weekly weekly sessions once once a week
#
just these kids get together one of the parents one of the parents has to accompany them and
#
priya would go for most of them and uh she so there are just these modules which are you know
#
like nicely called like flute or bongos so like there are 20 tunes on it really cute tunes which
#
have been arranged with a thrust on percussion or a thrust on like silly wind instruments
#
eight modules and he just sat through that and there's a friend of ours simran she runs this
#
program in delhi and a lot of people run it but we went to the one that she does and uh so the
#
first few modules he would just sit quietly you know but the third one he just started humming
#
all the tunes you know like he was just like it's almost like he's soaking them up or something
#
so he finished all eight that's the only like i wish i want to call it music education that he's
#
got he just went like for a weekly session where he would just be singing but yeah so then we know
#
that he can we knew that he can uh if you play it enough number of times for him he could but uh
#
i was fooling around with like a beetles tune i was playing blackbird and he walked into the room and
#
he started singing that song and i was really shocked because i had never played it for him
#
i don't think priya had also played it but like he heard it from somewhere which is the thing like
#
he picked up the tune on his own and so where the singing came from maybe like the music together
#
thing helped but like he just big he just started understanding like intervals like the distances
#
between notes how he stitched it together with lyrics is i have no idea so he goes to a school
#
it's a free progress school and they're very clear about like integral education in the sense
#
that they don't they don't have a curriculum like it's open free schooling till class eight
#
but the point is that he they had not taught him how to read in school so the first few months of
#
lockdown and he started watching something on netflix i think like where just some animated
#
thing where uh each letter is a character and a combination of letters like begins to get like a
#
and the storyline is quite dumb or whatever but like there are these sounds which are being thrown
#
at you again and again so i think he associated the font type with the sound and uh
#
april 2020 he was just reading so he could put lyric to the melody so i gave him a priya gave
#
him a phone uh spotify house and spotify has that lyrics tab so he just started picking up
#
tunes which were coming easily to him anyway and he knew that oh this is the word
#
so i was singing it so he sang blackbird and uh so i told him that this is great like this gives
#
us something to do right you pick up a tune i'll learn it i'll play it for you and joe b
#
he started picking up tunes so fast like you know he went into this whole beetles thing
#
because anyway i'm playing it around the house all the time and he also caught onto it
#
maybe they're playing beetles in the labor room whatever inception happened but uh he was just
#
yeah he's just picking picking up tunes all the time and i was just keeping up with him so
#
one thing led to another and then i started posting it i was like okay let's do it you know i had
#
like i don't even call them like on that profile of mine like i really think they're his followers
#
but um but i posted some videos and then eventually one of them like a simon and
#
garfunkel thing like caught on and went a little i guess the word is viral but what it did was
#
uh it gave it gave uh i didn't show it to him but like i made like a youtube thing like a
#
private channel and i was putting it up on that and he would see it on like this television thing
#
or he could see it on the phone and he saw his performance back you know and the interesting
#
bit is i haven't tweaked any of it but he started i started asking him simple questions like you know
#
okay what do you think you could do differently and all that if you hear the song and if you hear
#
your thing so he started seeing these bits about like performance aspects which he could change
#
and i guess what i'm trying to get at is that he just figured out the singing bit so i don't know
#
i don't know when i will take him through the paces of like learning some technique and like
#
so that he gets better in terms of stamina and other things but um that's it he is just picking
#
up tunes all the time and obviously like once the like once this world opened up again and he had
#
to go back to school and then he's i mean he also has other activities that i'm putting him through
#
but uh but yeah the pace has slowed down but the ability to pick up the tunes is just there and
#
once the video started going out obviously the calls came in like you know jingle singing and
#
all that so he's done that a fair bit in fact there was a month during the lockdown phase where
#
he made more money than me so i was like okay this month's rent is on you but uh but that and
#
he sang for a couple of films also now hopefully they'll be out this year it's a thing that he's
#
doing so i you know priya and i always try to put him through like some sort of an instrument
#
learning process but it's just yeah he's i don't want to say he's lazy but i guess like he because
#
it comes a little the singing thing just comes very easily to him and and the other thing is like
#
he is always singing he'll be bumming around the house doing something or the other making some
#
lego or doing some coloring or jobi he is always humming a tune you know and it would it just might
#
be like some like it's not a recognizable thing but he's just just he's just doing it all the time
#
so yeah i don't know where it'll go but uh now in like christmas last year we did this thing
#
where i where i said okay okay i wanted to do an album with him but i just didn't have the time and
#
yeah guilty but uh i did a single so chayan uh advaita vocalist he you know he's his favorite
#
uncle last christmas he gifted him a ps4 he became his favorite uncle this christmas he was like
#
okay okay like you know i i asked him like you know can you do a vocal arrangement acapella
#
thing of this so he arranged it took him to the studio and studio though he's already got that
#
experience he's you know he's sitting on uh on that swivel chair and he's like just like fooling
#
around between takes and i'm telling him focus focus you know like he be a pro and all that
#
but he yeah he sang that and then i got a friend of mine who does all the videos for raman
#
so he said i will shoot it so he came over with like full tamjam set it up shot it and i guess
#
what i'm trying to show to him also is like this this idea of like like the amount of work that
#
goes into having that product in your hand and then yeah like it's it's great like i don't think the
#
singing will ever ever leave him i just hope like i can i can make sure that it never gets
#
i don't even know very little boring for him ever yeah like it's it's just fun so
#
i don't find enough time to practice with him but yeah he's good with
#
like a bunch of tunes already like again like he's waiting okay when you have the time you'll sit
#
with me and it's weird like you know through the through the couple of years priya would keep
#
getting these messages of like people who were really yeah like there were some pretty intense
#
messages that she got you know like that like the sense of hope that he's bringing he he did
#
you know everybody hurts so when mohit my uh our friend like tabla player he lost his mother and
#
he was really close to uh to auntie and uh he picked out that tune and i we played it together
#
and like that kind of yeah it meant it started meaning a lot for other people you know and uh
#
yeah that between that and a couple of dylan covers and all that he did it like it it started
#
landing with some meaning for some other people so it's great yeah i hope he's i i hope he sticks
#
with it yeah and i'm glad that he got priya sense of melody and my sense of rhythm the other way
#
around we would be jacked yeah it would not have worked i suspect you might well be understating
#
your abilities in that department but who knows so tell me a bit about uh tell me about teaching
#
which is something i'm fascinated by because i think you approach subjects much in the same way
#
that i attempt to do which is you get two kind of first principles and you sit back and you think
#
about what you're doing and why you're teaching what you're teaching and how you're teaching it
#
and so on and you had like more than a decade of experience already right all decade and a half so
#
tell me a bit more about that teaching experience and did it make you look at music differently
#
and sound differently did it make you different in the way that you know you handle both of those
#
oh absolutely i i think that the only way to really learn something is to teach it
#
you know both of my i'm convinced like i like i said i you know that i had gone in for a workshop
#
and i took that workshop and then i was asked to make the program and i and i did a one-year
#
course and it's it's become like i've been making tweaks to it through the to the last
#
10 years or so and it's a pretty intensive course and not to speak about the course but the but the
#
idea behind it was that i i felt key why would somebody take their money and go to somebody else
#
okay so there is this one standard thing okay key you want you want that piece of paper which says
#
that you're qualified so let's get rid of that kitty that is not important so why would somebody
#
do it so key okay they maybe they can't figure out they think like there are some secrets which
#
are being kept from them and they can't figure this out okay so there is a section of like okay
#
tricks and hacks but that's not that can't be it so what is it that people are really looking for
#
so then i i know it sounds like a very maybe like a cheesy line to say but like i think people are
#
really looking for answers like to find especially in the pursuit of like craft no like they are they
#
are really looking for like key key who am i through this you know and that's the like between
#
that and i would like to teach the way i would like to have been taught it needs to be explained
#
in a certain manner that links it to an experience which is common to all of us that's why like at
#
least in my sessions like i try to find a common link to food like in just like like audio sound
#
and food in fact like food is more important you know because that's an experience that like i said
#
like it's just it's just everybody will react to a certain dish unless and until like in Krish's book
#
is mentioned now coriander tastes like soap or whatever yeah except that you as a south indian
#
i would not have expected you to call him Krish the correct thing is to call him Ashok yeah but
#
but uh but yeah i i just feel that the ability to explain it through the lens of a thing which ties
#
it equally for everybody you know and then you start investigating that okay fine if i was to
#
get the point across on those lines then what does it mean for me and that's where i think like my
#
approach to sound and audio like completely flipped so i was like it it cannot if it has
#
to really make sense and i'm not saying i've cracked it i'm still working at it and i'm and
#
i think another maybe another decade who knows it will be it it would be really like i will wrap
#
my head around being able to get the point across to anyone but i i feel that like that four course
#
meal idea i was saying that there are four pillars on which audio stands and these four pillars became
#
clearer to me only after i started thinking of it in these lines you know what else so for example
#
like a simple thing like say so like if you say food example makey you will bring the fat or the
#
oil to a certain temperature and then you will drop masalas in it because fat will absorb that
#
flavor right fine okay so then now looking at audio i need to figure out what is the thing
#
which will soak up the core and i know it sounds like i'm whatever meta shit right now but there
#
is something in this arrangement around which you could just keep bringing things and it'll
#
keep soaking it up and becoming stronger and stronger right so the i look at sound from the
#
lens of and and yeah it's like it's open it's an open secret right there is a sense of pitch
#
you could call it frequency there is a sense of loudness you can call it amplitude there is a
#
sense of the tone texture timbre right what separates an a on a piano from an a on a guitar
#
like how do you know that that timbre is of a piano and now there are millions of different
#
pianos or that timbre is of a guitar and there are millions of different guitars you know
#
so what is that timbre and the and what is the shape of the sound that i'm dealing with
#
so let's call it envelope right i feel that within these four you can figure out the
#
points of tweaking personality to character to everything of any sound and now the more
#
you stack up sounds in your arrangement it's just a play on this you know like you could almost
#
think of like say a bunch of people getting into an elevator you know it's only going to do the
#
trip once but it's almost like you need some people need to stand sideways some people need
#
to like lift a leg you know some people so some people might need to raise a hand some people
#
need to carry somebody else you know so in that sense so if i need to give you a sense of brightness
#
right so then is it about making the brighter things louder or is it is it about making the
#
bassier things weaker you know and if i what do you mean by weak does it mean taking away
#
transient information in the in the envelope does it mean adding harmonic saturation i could
#
get geeky about this but from the point of like heating up your oil to adding kada masalas to it
#
to in the end to plating it whichever way you want to plate it right and there's a way that
#
there's an idea of like dropping like say like ranveer does it know like dropping dhania on
#
everything yeah that green makes it pop right so what is it that is going to make like this thing
#
pop on like what is it that sits on top of everything so maybe it's the sense of ambience
#
maybe it's a sense of space so these four elements live inside what i call like the like
#
like where where are they living is it a small room is it a chamber is it a like hall like you
#
know like where is the space living so where is it where is it being plated on what it's being
#
plated so i keep drawing these analogies and i keep looking at it from the lens of
#
this can be explained to anyone who's ever had a meal you know so and we could we could run this
#
experiment you can you can be connected to audio or like analyzing audio every time you look at
#
the simplest things making it up so there will be something sweet salty bitter sour
#
you can run with that example and look at it and i'm constantly talking about food but it could mean
#
it could be something else for you you could have that so when i started looking at the teaching
#
aspect i i'm trying to do the least amount of talk about audio to make them understand audio
#
so you know because it's a given it's a like i it's the one sense which we can't turn off
#
you know like i cannot like i it's just not possible to not hear it is like an anechoic
#
chamber just sounds uncomfortable i've never been in one but i'm just i'm sure it sounds
#
uncomfortable like you know we are reacting to audio being hit by audio all the time and there's
#
a there's a possibility of like drawing from that experience and applying it so why why does
#
the sound distract me was it loud or was it a certain frequency thing why am i not liking where
#
i'm right now you know i have put the mic over here and it sounds a particular way
#
what do i need to change the mic the person the room i can't change the person he's paying me
#
you know do i change the mic do i i am i'm trying to simplify i mean just my understanding
#
to the least amount of variables you know because i think once we get a grasp on the
#
constant and i can deliver that in some sort of sense then i can start talking to the students
#
about the geeky nature and my understanding of this has become so much better that i i find
#
myself interfering less with the with the sound i find myself like being like chasing the idea of
#
the sound itself being as presentable in these four shapes as possible before i decide to
#
manipulate any one of them you know and i'm trying like with the students i try
#
with them i try to get them to hear these four and then the point is to take them to the
#
to the edge where i can't hear like you so i can't tell you what to do
#
now you need to take a call you know and trust me nobody's going to tell you it was wrong
#
at least i won't i never uh i like the feedback sessions that we have and when i hear the projects
#
and all they are not i don't criticize i don't think i do once in a while maybe like i'll let
#
some critic slip through but it's about i'm really interested in how are they hearing this
#
and i can ask the room and maybe like nine or ten people hear it like yeah for example why are you
#
not hearing it as well you know so if you're not hearing it as dull fine let's start with something
#
that is the brightest and build on top of that as opposed to saying that somebody told you on
#
youtube or some book told you that all mixes start with kick and bass you know that analogy of like
#
let's build the basement first and then build on top of it sure but like come on man that's not
#
right it's fine if it doesn't work for you so let's find the simplest amount of lego building blocks
#
or whatever you analogy you want to run with and let's find out what they mean for you
#
so my teaching approach is that and teaching approach for myself i'm just hoping like a
#
little bit of that like just like seeps through in the gyan i'm trying to give to the students who
#
sign up you know have you heard this cover of somebody that i used to know by mike dos where
#
he takes a guitar and he you know plays layer by layer as it kind of plays back and builds it i
#
think i have yeah yeah yeah so can so can you give me an example of a particular song which of course
#
i'll link from the show notes so people can play it as they listen to this uh and talk about the
#
different layers within it like these four aspects for example hmm let me think
#
it doesn't have even have to be a song you know yeah yeah it doesn't have to be a song let's
#
you could do this like where you're standing right now you know wherever you are if you take
#
if you're listening to this on headphones or wherever you are if you if if you just roll the
#
window down of your car and just stop for a second let's do the first exercise of what is louder than
#
the other thing that is not as loud as the thing that you think is loud
#
simpler way of saying it is like you just assemble the sounds in this order of softest to loudest
#
right take care of only amplitude around you you know so when you hear a song now for example
#
okay first step would be like let's break down the architecture you're appreciating the sound
#
design behind it so first step would just be to like assemble the sounds and what is the loudest
#
right and let's take hip-hop for example and you will suddenly realize that okay
#
the bass feels the loudest okay it doesn't even have to be a song i'm talking about a
#
genre like limitations and all and considerations but suddenly you realize that the lowest end of
#
the spectrum pay the bass and the highest in the spectrum pay the hi-hat hi-hat also pretty loud
#
let's take feryl williams ka happy i'm sure everybody's heard that song and if you haven't
#
like you know they should check it out the hi-hat in that song is bloody loud man it's really loud
#
i will argue that it's the loudest thing in the mix you know now this once you've played this
#
game a few ways around like you just hear sounds like and you assemble them in the order of like
#
say amplitude right this is the tricky bit try to just mute the sound in your one of the sounds in
#
your head obviously you don't have the open track so you can't just hit mute on a particular track
#
but let's say you're listening to feryl ka happy now imagine the entire song without the hi-hat
#
you know and if you've heard that song and if it's playing in your head right now you will realize
#
that the hi-hat in that song is the let's call it the timekeeper you know let's call it the
#
groove giver so without that subdivision that hi-hat subdivision ke bina the song just feels
#
let's call it different i mean it for me doesn't feel right you know it doesn't feel right you know
#
so and maybe that is because the first time you heard it you heard the hi-hat if you had heard it
#
so here's that's a good point and that's the point that the engineer who balanced it and the
#
producer who made it they took that call see when you look at a photo and uh like obviously
#
that's not the only point in space no but that is the point space was captured there was something
#
to the left of it you remember was it kurosawa kurosawa was asked once ki that one shot in some
#
one of his films like it's fantastic like how did you get it and it's like 17th century japan
#
i forgot the name of the film he said an inch to the left is a sony building an inch to the right is
#
a toshiba building you know so like there is a decision that was made to cut certain things out
#
so if you're going to give that kind of credit to like say a kurosawa or a cuprake ki you know ki
#
sab decide kiya hai this is what you're looking at you know i keep telling the kids like ki thoda
#
bugman ki tada socho ki patta bhi hil raha hai na there must be a meaning behind it don't think like
#
David Devon that somebody's just crossing the road and like it doesn't mean anything but the point
#
is ki you have to accord that kind of credit to the producer and engineer that that is the experience
#
they want you to have they want you to notice the fucking hi-hat like they want you to notice it
#
and they want you to feel what they felt when they kept the hi-hat that loud i have to give them the
#
credit so that's why you know like i don't criticize like anybody's any student or anybody's like mixes
#
what does that mean like unko acha laga yaar you are the one person who was not on the payroll
#
who's hearing this probably you're not even buying the music and i'm diagnosed but i'll just close
#
that loop ki there is a reason that they play place the hi-hat that loud so the the trick now
#
is that if you can take the hi-hat away like somehow just get to the point where you can bring
#
the figure of the hi-hat down in your mind you know and you hear the song with just like the
#
bass line which i can't sing and the groove is happening and feral is singing without the hi-hat
#
that you are crying out for like some rhythmic punctuation release whatever you want to call it
#
and when the claps kick in in the chorus you know the hi-hat level for you it drops but it's
#
but there is this release and that's the thing the entire thing in my mind is
#
being played towards that transition of like moving to the chorus so once
#
you play this game with amplitude right now you play with the game the game with
#
frequency that what's the lowest sound what's the highest sound next stage
#
would be mix the two up is the lowest sound the loudest is the highest sound
#
the softest you know and just start tweaking balances every time you turn
#
the balance around a little bit the emotional response changes see we are
#
wired to respond to what we call the mid-range right like that's our that's
#
the telephone thing also like you know the you can identify like the two
#
concepts over here that every sound has a fundamental frequency and every sound
#
has a harmonic series so the harmonic series is universal like it'll it'll
#
appear in the same order but here's the catch if you take out the fundamental
#
from any sound right and if you present a harmonic series to the brain your
#
brain can go back and create the phantom fundamental so like on a phone this
#
phone is not producing a kick drum it's not moving that kind of air but you hear
#
a kick drum know when you play a song on the phone also so the harmonic series of
#
the kick drum is is enough information for your brain to go back and like oh
#
that's a kick drum with the fundamental of that you know so this idea that you
#
can hear critical information and you can gauge sounds the way like the full
#
picture of the sound minus the fidelity on either side of the spectrum right so
#
we are wired to hear mid-range so with the mid-range if you if you just start
#
focusing on what is most mid-range like if you hear Bollywood music
#
all mid-range voices are given you know so like no matter what happens on any speaker
#
the voice will definitely be heard you know but other music is not made like that by
#
other music I mean a lot of other music is not made like that so you start
#
playing this game of the of course the envelope and the saturation things are a
#
little tricky you need to be a little geeky to understand what you're going
#
after but the simplest thing is this just like a frequency amplitude play you
#
know and the third thing like and what you can add in this mix of two
#
things the third thing you can add is like the just the positioning like if
#
you're hearing something and something's coming from your left just for a second
#
like turn your headphones feed left to right and right to left you know I can
#
guarantee you your emotional experience is going to change and then you will
#
start placing like you will start really start placing value on where the
#
producer or the mixer decided to pan a certain thing in a mix you know there is
#
a reason for it there is a reason for it and people thought about it you have to
#
give them that credit and like students who are getting into this production
#
game they have to think so deep because they can't go to every person who hits
#
play on their song and tell them the deficiencies in the song and tell them
#
ki aaye yeh usde ne aisa feel kar raha hai yeh usde ne aisa feel kar raha hai yeh as wo toh
#
possibly nahi hai you are you are it you are chopping chopping the experience
#
into this packet of data that they have to consume you know and hopefully they
#
will make it till the first chorus so mere hisaab se like the emotional
#
reaction is in your hands and all these these are your tools these four tools of
#
what pitches how loud with what envelope of what texture that is it is this your
#
framing or it's I would really like to think this is my framing but I'm sure
#
it's not the original kiya aaye hai. yeh go zada ho gaya be going back into the LLM
#
route but I don't know but this is the way I understand it you know this is
#
the way I understand it and once you make your piece with this know it
#
suddenly becomes it suddenly becomes so easy because the catch is right or wrong
#
you know right or wrong but there is a bit about experiencing it a certain way
#
hoping that the other people have the same experience and what are the factors
#
that you can control in getting that experience across to them where they
#
play the music how loud they play the music you know whether they play an mp3
#
or a wave you can't control all this so whatever you can control which is this
#
whole mid-range thing with a slight color on either side of it of the low end
#
of the top end that you control you know and now everything everything that is a
#
piece of audio these four rules are applicable and you can you can tweak to
#
like infinite possibilities because it's not only about four things
#
combination it's about which one you start with because now in your
#
arrangement if there are 25 tracks each thing comes with its own four things
#
and now you are really hoping that those 25 things will sound like one no you
#
know like when you're hearing for every limbs go happy now I've biased you and
#
you're hearing you're maybe you're hearing the hi-hat but like when you
#
hear happy tomorrow day after whenever if you ever hear it again you will hear
#
the song you know that's the idea the producer the engineer really want you to
#
hear the song only so I don't know man like I just understanding it from this
#
lens and trying to translate this idea because now you've gotten to the point
#
where you know what you can manipulate you choose what to manipulate and there
#
is no right or wrong because no two people hear audio the same way anyway
#
you know and there are two people like there's a 50% chance of like the it'll
#
be in your favor so just go for it man you want to make that louder make it
#
loud why not but realize that once you make it loud everything else becomes
#
soft you know once you pan it left everything else automatically gets
#
panned right you didn't touch it you know but it's panned right so it is
#
coming with a bag of like repercussions and repercussions is the word like ye
#
dekhlo that is in your hands on how you want to create and now with that spirit
#
like whether it's a jingle ki paye sector 56 mein apne apne sapna ka mehel or if it is
#
like you know Raman's album like these decisions like I have to get goosebump
#
and you know like this is my thing like when I'm mixing a mixing a track or
#
producing a track I have to get goose bumps once like that's the way I know
#
that now I can't now I can't break this song you know like it has now like
#
reached the point where there is some energy in it which is happening the
#
minute that happens no I save I make sure that that balance that version is
#
there and then I build from there till the time like I just I make sure that
#
that that will never be altered now you've got good air-conditioning in your
#
studio as well yeah to get the goosebumps yeah well but yeah like
#
anything anything to get a sense of that key as a listener I react like this so
#
what is it that you need to do to get the other people to react like that yeah
#
pretty much yeah and then it feels to me like a lot about the craft of writing as
#
well like if you're a casual reader you'll and the way we all start reading
#
you'll pick up a book and there'll be a bunch of words and you're just
#
following the story or you're getting entertained or you're passing an
#
argument but you're not really noticing the hi-hat you're not noticing the
#
amplitude you're not noticing all the tools that I used in the prose and what
#
I keep telling my writing students is that you might feel care it not extra
#
energy had to notice all the things that are happening but the point is every
#
piece of writing like every piece of music is a collection of choices and
#
every choice is going to influence the reader or the listener is going to
#
affect the mental state so you don't want them there to be to be there by
#
default we are not even thinking about them you want to put that effort into
#
each of them so there's a reason for everything the hi-hat as a hair key
#
how many comma ke jaga mein full stop dala you know there has to be a reason
#
for everything because you're trying to have a particular effect and you sort of
#
want that to come through and eventually over a period of time of course you
#
don't have to obsess over every little tool because you internalize a lot of
#
the good habits but what I would say therefore is that while different people
#
may want to have a different effect on the reader or may want it may read
#
something differently they would they could still nevertheless be a wrong way
#
of doing things like for example if somebody mixes happy with the hi-hat so
#
loud that you can't hear anything else at all then that's a problem sure sure
#
and you can get sort of you know to take it to writing you can get attached to
#
hi-hat sometimes so now just on that note I tell I tell the guys like you
#
know key yeah can't you so everything is subjective balance is not hmm and the
#
here's the kicker really is balances everything no that's that's it it's so
#
tricky like key key what is a mix really what is what is a what is a mix it's
#
nothing but a balance of okay I could go dive deeper and say keep balance of
#
frequencies to balance of our amplitude to balance of dynamics to balance of
#
harmonic saturation to all of that no it's just like he balance of all the
#
individual elements what is too loud is too loud you're keeping it too loud it
#
comes with a cost you know but this is it key syrup
#
it's my own which is my constant point of feedback
#
that key okay you want to keep it loud but don't you hear it's too loud but on
#
that note yeah a lot of many songs have been destroyed by a hi-hat they made a
#
full genre called trap music on it yeah trap music I just don't get it man it's
#
just like yeah anyway but yeah also you'll notice that you know sometimes
#
when people go to gigs they find themselves moving like different
#
positions like they go and stand in a particular pocket and then like because
#
the vocal is not pinching your ear or the bass is not eating up like
#
you're already that's EQ no like you're just EQing your body yeah that's it like
#
there's no option in here you know so I went to a Guthrie Govan gig in Delhi and I
#
had to find the spot where the guitar was louder you know otherwise like
#
it was just drums drums and finally I like who's mixing I looked at the
#
engineer and he happened to be a friend of mine so I messaged him please
#
like, you know, increase the guitar a little bit, but, but yeah, like you do this at venues anyway,
#
you know, like you are finding the spot at which, so which is what say engineers are doing inside
#
a studio, right? Like a particular instrument inside a particular room sounds a particular way.
#
There are different spots where it will sound a different little different and on top of that,
#
now you talk about if you have only one mic, you're lucky, but otherwise you might have
#
multiple mics. So yeah, it's, it's infinite man. That's why there's no right or wrong.
#
There is off that particular point and that is so liberating.
#
Yeah. Is it true that 90% of audio engineers in Delhi are your students?
#
My evil plan has been revealed. I am building an army of, you know, producers and engineers
#
and when they take over everything, then I will come as the unannounced king. So yeah, no, but
#
like, so I've been teaching for like about a, like a little over a decade now, and I've been
#
lucky enough that, that a lot of people who have finished it have found like a side of the
#
personality that they can, you know, that can help them carry, carry on in the gig. So yeah,
#
a lot of them are engineering and I keep bumping into them. Yeah. All over the place. So yeah.
#
I've taken a lot of your time today and unfortunately to my, and you, by the way, said
#
when I invited you here that, oh, we have an episode of 15 minutes. So now look,
#
it's fine. I think we've spoken for more than six hours. So I don't know what the final length
#
will be. And I haven't even, I had, I had some notes on Rome research, but we haven't even needed
#
to consult at the conversations float so well. So thank you for that. And I'll end in the most
#
predictable way. And you are aware of this matter, which is by asking you to recommend books, films,
#
music, which mean a lot to you. And you'd love to share with the world. And I, you know, I, what I'll
#
do is I'll definitely, I mean, obviously I'll mention a few, but I, if it's cool with you,
#
then I will put together like a YouTube playlist. For sure. Yeah. And I will share that with you.
#
There's just too much, too much music. You can share multiple YouTube playlists across genres.
#
Yeah. But if I was to pick just some of them, I would, I would pick the cliches, you know,
#
and they will sound like cliches. But for a moment, I thought there's a band called the
#
cliches. Like everything by Jeff Beck is, and this is the guitar player in me. Like I, I think like
#
he's the single most important, I know the school of Jimi Hendrix and the school of Pat Metheny,
#
all of that, but he's a single most important guitar player because, because what he did on
#
the instrument, like it, he has, he has stretched it to, he stretched it to the point of like,
#
like there are some notes that are only available on his guitar. He is something,
#
something else. Like it's, yeah, I think everything by him, but if you were to pick one
#
thing, there's an album called blow by blow. It's fantastic. And if you were to pick a song
#
in that, it's called Cosby and his lovers. Incredible. Everything by Miles Davis,
#
like if you're not into that kind of music, a lot of it will go above your head and it doesn't matter
#
because I don't think there has been a single wrong note. You know, we were talking about like
#
notes with what I think like weight and meaning and all that, everything by Miles Davis. But if
#
you were to pick one album, then it would be bitches brew, which, which will, which, which when
#
listen to the right, with the right frame of mind will change your life. There's no coming back
#
after that. Are there dummies guides to all of these? A dummies guide to Jeff Becker, dummies
#
guide to jazz, because quite often they'll be like once upon a time when I was new to jazz,
#
I didn't really understand any of it. And, you know, barring listening to a lot and letting it
#
seep in by osmosis. That's it. That's the only way. Because I think like the problem is
#
intellectualizing that music a lot, you know, and like there is a lot of it which goes over my head
#
and it should, because I mean, it will, because I have not really studied jazz that much. I
#
understand the building blocks and the, and the mechanics of that music. But if you're listening
#
to music from music, from that lens, then the appreciation of the performance and of the energy
#
that the music is trying to put out is not there. But let's just go with that jazz thing. And I mean,
#
everything Miles Davis would be one thing. I would say everything Pat Metheny, like he is,
#
he is just like that kind of productivity and that kind of just like range. It's incredible. I'm
#
going to go guitar player again and say that John Scofield, everything by John Scofield should be on
#
the list. But if there's one album you should pick, there's an album that John Scofield and
#
Pat Metheny did together. It's called I Can See Your House From Here. That's a lovely title.
#
Yeah. Fantastic album. John Scofield, Uber Jam, the album, it's a fantastic entry into his catalog.
#
And he's got this thing of, he blurs the lines between blues, jazz and funk,
#
but he's, I mean, if you want to slot, you'll say jazz, but he just blurs the line so conveniently.
#
I would pick S.D. Berman. I think critical listening, most of his tunes, like there is
#
just like this density in the songwriting and in the arrangement, which is, which has not been
#
like achieved. I stopped listening to a lot of like Bollywood music because I'm not being elitist,
#
but I just stopped. Like it doesn't do. 4,000 weeks, 2,000 weeks left. It's not good, but like
#
I like listening to music. But S.D. Berman, I would, I listened to a western classical. And again,
#
like, you know, the question that you had, like, is there a beginner's guide to, like, I was really
#
searching for all of that, but then I found the in-road through film soundtracks, you know? So
#
anything that John Williams has done, you know, anything John Williams has done, like it has just
#
like this, the hook, the main tune is so memorable and you can dive deeper and start understanding
#
the arrangements a little and why not, you know? Samuel Adler has a fantastic book called Study
#
of Orchestration and to transcribe that and then to see how those building blocks, like how those
#
elements are fitting together. Like that's a lifetime of learning. But I started from the,
#
started from this whole soundtrack entry. So John Williams, everything, there is, there is Ravel.
#
Yeah. I can't pick between Ravel and Debussy, but like Ravel would be the...
#
So there's a, there's a joke where maybe you heard it, where Sylvester Stallone, Jean-Claude
#
Van Damme and Arnold Schwarzenegger are in a room and Stallone says, hey, I'm going to make a film
#
on classical music and I'll be Beethoven. And then Jean-Claude Van Damme says, I'll be Mozart.
#
And Schwarzenegger is like, don't make me say it guys. I'll be Bach, of course.
#
Yeah. Sorry to interrupt you.
#
No, no. So yeah, there you go. Like Bach, right? Anything, but like, especially the cello suite
#
that Yoma has done, like that's, yeah, that's a great entry point into that. One more,
#
like a new artist, Thomas Dibdahl, this Norwegian artist, his album, What's Left is Forever.
#
Like that's a great entry point. And then, you know, two things, one, you should let the algorithm
#
take over from there and it's like, it's a rabbit hole for sure. But also the influences of your...
#
You mean the YouTube algorithm, not the Spotify algorithm.
#
Of course. Yeah. Even though the Spotify one is better, but that's evil.
#
But yeah, books, I feel like, you know, giving, like there are the cliches, of course, like,
#
which is, like for me, the Hemingway books are really, yeah, Old Man on the Sea is something
#
I really like. And Gatsby, I have re-read, I remember when Priya was pregnant with Dishan,
#
I would read Gatsby, you know, and he would kick. So I was telling Vasu, Vasundhara,
#
I was telling her about this, you know, I was reading Gatsby and he kicked and all that. I was
#
really pumped, like, and Vasu was like, maybe he didn't like it, you know, and he was kicking.
#
But yeah, I... There's another internet joke I now remember, this happens in the seventh hour,
#
where basically, I think this guy put up a tweet saying, I kicked a pregnant woman.
#
So everybody's abusing him and all that. And he says, it was my mother and I was inside her.
#
The internet, sorry guys. Yeah, I think the cliches and the classics, you know, I...
#
There was this question I was asking a few friends, we were hanging out and I was like,
#
what is that one book that you read? And after that, you know, there's no going back.
#
Like the world changes, like it just... And I don't think I... I still reread it a few times
#
to understand it and let it impact me more, but like Crime and Punishment, like I... Yeah,
#
that book does something, you know, it's... Raskolnikov.
#
And yeah, I've lately, I've been getting into these Oliver Bergman, 4000 weeks,
#
James Clear, Atomic Habits, those kinds of things, you know, like, is it a trap or is it a hack,
#
like, you know, finding that, but that and films, like I... I've really, I've gone into the whole
#
shows, TV shows, like films, but I was obsessed with Kubrick, all Kubrick, all Scorsese, like I'm
#
very cliched like that. When I'm feeling down and out, I will watch a gangster film.
#
Which are your favorites Scorsese films? So I love Goodfellas and Goodfellas and
#
Raging Bull, I can watch like any time. And I know Taxi Driver because of the soundtrack, Bernard
#
Herman, everything Bernard Herman did, like, I just love it. Psycho also. Yeah. All his films
#
was Hitchcock, like where he scored, like they're just fantastic. And yeah, so the Kubrick, the
#
Scorsese, I couldn't... I mean, I keep watching that. So Prano's, I don't know how many times I've
#
watched that show, you know, and a lot of the new TV shows, like I think like they're better TV shows
#
than films being made now. I don't understand films that much, but like, yeah, for sure. So
#
The Baking Bad, The Better Calls All, I don't think there's a better piece of TV writing than
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Better Calls All. Probably, yeah, in my books, the greatest show ever made. What incredible soundtrack
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also. Seven Samurai, I don't know, there's something in that film, like I'll, I can watch it anytime,
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you know, and new, but I haven't seen... That's really, you know, not to interrupt you, but,
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and I mentioned this, I think in the studio, when you, in your studio, when you weren't there though,
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with Amartya and one of my guests, Farah Bashir, when we had just finished, and then I mentioned
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it again in my episode with Jai and Subrata, that, you know, if you look at the schools of filmmaking,
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I look at everything as being on a continuum between Ozu and Kurosawa, where Kurosawa just
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choreographed everything. And Ozu, like Hemingway, will just let it be and be completely minimal.
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And the thought just struck me that in your guitar playing, like you said, that you kind of made the
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shift towards Ozu, where you're happy being minimal and letting each note speak so much more
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because there are so few of them. But as a producer, you're necessarily like Kurosawa.
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Yeah, yeah. Sorry, I had to... No, yeah, I'm so glad you said that. But I love that aspect of,
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you know, like every... Seven Samurai only, because like I think that's the first one I watched.
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And, but every... It's just so, like that leaf doesn't even move without permission.
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Like it feels like that. And I salute that kind of like work, you know, like that kind of
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control, that ability to extract this emotion from the viewer who's watching it.
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What's that David Lynch film? Mulholland Drive. Yeah, similar thing, like absolute control,
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but in the middle of total chaos. Like, I don't know how to explain it. So the Lynch stuff is,
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yeah, great soundtrack. Yeah, it's got Twin Peaks. I really love that. The TV show. Yeah,
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but I could go on and on. I'll make like, at least for the music, I'll make this YouTube playlist
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for sure. And films are just sort of cliches. In fact, on films, I'm thinking our tastes are very
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adjacent in the sense, I love everything by Scorsese. But perhaps, you know, the same way
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you listen, how you react to a piece of music, it matters where you hear it and when you hear it.
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So my favorite Scorsese films are really Taxi Driver and Life Lessons. Have you seen Life Lessons?
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That short film, part of New York Stories. And I just love the way, you know, Whiter Shade of
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Pale is used in that, you know, with that cigarette falling in slow motion and the shoe stamping on
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it. And it's just wonderful. My thing of like the gangster film, you know, like it's just that,
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like it's such a bag of cliches. Like, yeah, I just loved Mad Sopranos. Like, so I think I must have
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seen that show like maybe, maybe seven or eight times. And if I start it, I have to finish it.
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So I will, yeah, like the gangster of that film, that genre, the gangster film genre just has
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something. So Goodfellas, like nothing comes close. Like that beginning, every time it starts, I get
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like, I'm a little kid, you know, I get so pumped, you know, it has the same reaction. Actually, in
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that, in that way, like Casino is pure joy, you know, and it happened, he was in India when he
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was, I think, his movie, Kuntoon, when he had come to whatever, like research or whatever, he was
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in India for a bit. And my brother and I, we had gone to the Taj in Delhi and he was staying there.
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So the Taj for the Moria, I forgot, but we'd gone and we were sitting in the lobby that we will
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leave for Scorsese and we will just like, I mean, we will manage to meet him and all that. And my
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brother waited it out. Yeah, he ended up meeting him. Yeah, he got his copy of Casino signed by him.
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But, but yeah, I couldn't, but yeah, he's just pure joy, like, and especially like the-
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And actually the film I probably love the most of film is one I saw recently, Silence, 2016 film,
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which I thought is the terror of the, the Gairai, you know, the older man who's processed life.
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Yeah, so that and the one, the one whole magical, what was that thing?
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Those two, I just could not, like, I could not like get into it. Yeah, there were no gangsters.
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Yeah, yeah. Give me the gangster. I want my money back. Yeah, but, but yeah, that, you know,
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pick up every cliche and then a cliche for a reason. And yeah. Yeah, but like original kya hi hai,
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sab kuch toh cliche hai. So, so dude, thanks a lot. This is so great. You've been much,
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much less judgy about my home studio than I would have thought. So I'm sure you're being very kind
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there also, but thanks for coming, man. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
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If you enjoyed listening to this episode, check out the show notes, enter rabbit holes at will,
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lots of great music to listen to. You can follow Gaurav on Instagram at Gaurav underscore Chintamani.
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You can follow him on Twitter at G underscore Chintamani. You can follow me on Twitter at
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Amit Verma, A-M-I-T-V-A-R-M-A. And you can browse past episodes of The Scene and the Unseen at sceneunseen.in.
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Thank you for listening. Did you enjoy this episode of The Scene and the Unseen? If so,
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would you like to support the production of the show? You can go over to sceneunseen.in
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slash support and contribute any amount you like to keep this podcast alive and kicking. Thank you.
