February 7th, 2024

 Slowly but surely Tilo and I are making music that is generating a bit of interest. Although our repertoire is narrow and our audience is largely small, and fractionated heavily on the basis of multiple interests that often trump an interest in music or at least in an interest in our kind of music. We call ourselves "StandBy"- a duo with me on Guitar and Vocals and she on vocals. I did not think about this with any seriousness earlier but it soon became evident that because of the register that I sing in , our voices blended in a somewhat unique way. Not in the way of Roxette, or the various bollywood singing duos that belt our romantic numbers, but in a way where the voices blend without a big spacing in octave. You might be forgiven for thinking of us as two female singers. I take on the duties of the upper harmony which has to go much higher than her register ( which is already high as she is a female singer). She is trained vocalist so the melody lines coming form her are robust and full while mine are more like an icing or a shimmer, designed merely to enhance the overall soundscape. You do need some singing skills for this, but not necessarily ones that are borne out of traditional training. You need to hit the pitch perfectly  and the words or phrases  have to be 100% in phase with the lead vocal. This is only possible if the lead vocal sends out a relatively flat vocal line without too many frills, so that she can be as repeatably in her delivery. It sounds nice, but does not leave a lot of room for improvisation except in small parts where there is no harmony vocal. I can pitch, always could sing in tune, but have no embellishing skills and also since I typically sang backing vocals I was not used to singing loud.  The lead vocal has to be slightly louder than the backing vocal in the mix. When I sing solo, I always need to scream a bit, since mine is the only voice.

The signing is not interesting, not for me. I have been singing in harmony since 1992- and it comes naturally to me. Only on rare occasions is a harmony one based on an odd chord voicing and there to pull off the counter melody is a bit more challenging - but still doable for me. What is interesting is playing guitar and singing at the same time.  All these years, until 2020 when I first picked up the guitar, I always believed this to be a difficult skill to master. And then I started playing and realized this was entirely the case. Some songs were easier to do this on than others. I particularly struggled with pop songs because the rhythm on the record was always such that it did not fall in the required spaces of my vocal. If got the rhythm right, I would mess up the singing beat wise. And vice versa. And some songs were just tough because the vocal line did not start and stop with the right cadence of the beat. In all these cases, I looked up YouTube videos to see if there was any magic bullet to learn this. Turns out there isn't. Just practice. But this just didn't seem to work. One pointer that my guitarist friend gave me was to consider first learning each part separately and learning them intensely well. The idea was to perform these from muscle memory without thinking. So you play and sing, but don't pay any attention to your playing while singing. It sort of automatically falls in place by default. I tried this and got some success with the title " Locomotive Breath" by Jethro Tull. I still struggle with it but have gotten better. If I do the song 4 times, I might get one perfectly right. But it has been an enthralling journey so far, and it is really like magic when it all comes together. If you told me I'd be able to play and sing harmony with a partner and offer a performance that is half-decent in a matter of 3 years after picking up the instrument, I'd say you were mad. I have a lot more ambition now. I want to start playing notes. Some mastery of pentatonics will further embellish my playing- and will sound even more pro. It is not a must for the type of stuff we are doing gig wise. But what stops us from always trying to up the game of Standby. Frankly if we can  build a repertoire of 150 songs, we should be able to gig- maybe even for a fee. Even if note for a fee, I would really like to pull this off. It seems like this is what I was meant to do and although I will never get anywhere significant now, a little voice inside my head tells me almost everyday that I need to go as far as I can. This is the only way to treat this situation.

Aside of the "Standby" format, I will keep posting solo videos on YouTube. I have to figure out some way to improve audio quality. The other thing I want to get into . maybe gradually. is to perform some compositions. Maybe even as "standby"? 

While these are the plans, currently we have the following songs that are ready to be performed at any given time

1) Eita Tomar Gaan- Guitar- chandrabindoo

2) Halud Pakhi- Guitar- Cactus

3) Fernando- Guitar- ABBA

4) Firiye Dao- Miles

5) Prithibi - Mohiner Ghora

6) Rhododendron- Mohiner Ghora

7) Rivers of Babylon- Boney M

8) Shokhi Bhabonare- Guitar- Rabindrasangeet

9) Hai Bhalobashi- Mohiner Ghora

10) Suniyo Re- AR Rehman- Saathiya

Current 10, Target 150- boy is it a long way to go! 

One way is to convert some of my solo work to Standby. I already have done this with fire dao, halud pakhi etc