Today, I got to perform at the Blue Frog with a bunch of extremely talented musicians. It was a great experience, although I was playing something that I don’t generally play – Soul/Pop. It was a fantastic experience and I thank each of them (Caralisa Monteiro, Beven Fonsesca, Ravi Iyer, Sishir Malhotra, Mabel Chan, Agnelo Picardo, Samantha Edwards, and Keshia Braganza).
Tonight, at a rehearsal for an upcoming Whitney Houston gig at Blue Frog, I witnessed the amazing progress of chord charts. From Real Books, to Fake Books, to Tablature, to iReal Book, and iPads.
Yes, two of my band mates were using iPads to write down chord charts for the songs. I am sure they will use them for their gigs too. If you are a hip musician, an iPad might just be what you need.
(For those who don’t know, iReal Book is a great app available on the Apple store [for iPhones and iPads] and the Android store for our favorite Android phones. It’s worth every rupee that you spend on it.)
Artists perform art for a living. Just like bankers do banking for a living, and florists sell flowers for their living. Don’t ever take them – well, us – for granted. Appreciate our art and remember that we also have to pay bills and mouths to feed.
(Photo courtesy FaceBook)
About a couple of months back, Shor Bazaar was invited to write a jingle and act in a video for a famous brand. The video shoot was last month, when Joe was here, and it was pretty cool. We were supposed to talk nothing about it or post anything about it. Today, this photo, taken after the video shoot, was posted on FaceBook.
So, this is the snippet. Wait for the full video soon!
Over the last year or so, I have had the opportunity of playing with a few bands and artists. I have enjoyed almost every time I have gotten on stage. Off the stage, however, things have not always been that great. Musicians have egos, probably bigger than that of average individuals’, and hence, the off-stage chemistry has been of variable quality.
Overhung has been an exception. Despite the musicians being seasoned pros, there are hardly any ego clashes and the off-stage experience has been thoroughly enjoyable. Fantastic individuals, all of them, and the jokes just keep on flowing.
I visited Delhi and Mathura with Overhung this weekend and experience was thoroughly entertaining. I look forward to playing more gigs with them. Here are some of my status updates from the time I spent in Delhi/Mathura, which truly depict my overall levels of enjoyment.
I sent my band mates at Bad Influence a few songs that I had written previously – the songs that are on the playlist on the right sidebar on the blog. They were happy with some of the songs and they wanted to take some songs and perform them as a band.
This inspired me. Or should I say “inspires” me? I had already taken up the assignment of writing one or two news songs for the band in two weeks time ending this Sunday. So, after work, I came home and I sat down with the guitar and I recorded two melodies/songs over chords on my computer.
Since buying my new computer, which has Windows 7, I have been unable to record how I used to previously – multi-track recording with Cubase SX. I only have Audacity to work with and I can’t record more than one track without latency issues.
I’m hoping to fix things up soon and record recordings whole songs on my computer. Here’s to the fruition of that plan!
My LCD monitor crapped on me yesterday. Today, I took it to service. They told me it could take days. In the afternoon, they call me back and say that there was a power issue and they had fixed it. The downside, I am 2K down. Yet, in the middle of all this, I go ahead an buy this beauty – the Tech 21 Sansamp VT Bass Deluxe!
Finally, I have some balls. For the past two years, I have been chickening out on investing on something. Now, I have turned it around. :) I have my monitor back and have the bass processor pedal in the market!
Shor Bazaar, Cirkles, Overhung, Bad Influence, and Ideat Savant – you guys are in for a treat!
Things are really going well with my music life.
This is a lot of music and I’m enjoying every minute of it. Wish me more luck than ever to manage my social and official life with all these six projects!
Being a musician, I find it natural to enjoy gigs of other bands. This is what I used to do before I had a band. I have not lost the slightest amount of vigor to be an excited music fan. But things are not the same with my band members I guess. Sometimes I feel it’s a mixture of pride and ego. Other times I feel it’s their innate tendency to be reclusive. I can’t take either as an excuse though, at least for myself.
So, I was at the branch opening of a famous chain of musical instruments retailer playing with Shoonyas. It was a cozy, in-house gig and we had a good performance. Even though the actual ingauration ceremony featured a performance by big-shots like the most famous percussionist drummer from India and the one of the most succesful music composer team from Bollywood, what attracted me was the band which was playing after us.
The band is called ‘Something Relevant’. They are pretty famous and have been around for a few years. They are somewhere between smooth jazz and big band. I had an argument with Rob the other day about the genres and I was startled to hear him ridicule my genre-listation. But anyway, they are very pleasing to the ear with their orchestration of keys, trombone, saxophone and percussions along with the regular mix of guitars, bass, drums and vocals.
But their most interesting aspect is the lyrics. They wrote about stuff like mosquitoes, traffic jams and other mundane things in life in a clever, captivating way and the singing was complimentarliy soulful. I enjoyed them very much; so much so that I was part of the entire group of people jamming with them with all kinds of instruments at the shop. I met with a couple of band members after the gig. They sure seem worthy of a listen. I would recommend them to anyone with a bit of class.
