May 10 2024

Yesterday was the first meeting of the Hoichoi Music team for 2024. I invited not the full team, but most of the team to discuss the concept and the music arrangement ideas. I must admit I was underwhelemed. This is also a learning experience for me wherein I have participated in this type of deal before in Singapore- which is to say working with a team on Bengali artistes to put on a show for a Bengali audience. The problem is I have only been a participant at best, and a relatively peripheral one at that. The last such format I was a part of was back in 2013 when I had played my Korg M50 Synth to a program of recitation and rabindrasangeet led by this one harridan Bengali woman whose name now escapes me. We had myself on synth, someone on Tabla and an ace on Sitar. The main idea was recitation performed by the lead herself- with a background score on synth improvised by me. Interspersed within this recitation piece were a smattering of RS tunes- if memory serves me right, I had accompanied this one lady who sang  “Aji Bijono Ghore”. The finale was “Ekla Cholo Re” which was played to a famous classical arrangement performed by Kishore Kumar that was the mainstay version of this tune until more modern recordings came about in the 2000s.  There were one or two more songs that we did that I cannot recall now. Overall it was alright, but it was too much work for too little output I thought. The advantage there was that the talent level was far greater than here. Still, the arrangements were a bit boring I thought. Now this time around, I am in the lead. So I have come up with my concept of a RS opera -which has 8 songs all in the key of Bflat Major. The idea was converge on a scale that somewhat mimicks a medley- keeps the overall mood consistent even though there are changes in tempo across the songs. The other idea I wanted to incorporate is to experiment with vocal arrangements.  Hence I have on board 2 female vocalists so far, 3 make vocalists ( 1 lead and 2 backup vocalists) and myself- for a total of 6 voices creating a larger canvas to work with than is usually the case in these type of performances. Today’s meetwas to explain all of this and align. I think the overall alignment of theme was accomplished, however Sowmya – after haggling with Tilo over which song to solo on, insisted on me moving to C Major scale for his solo. I tried my best to resist- because I really needed all the songs to be in Bflat for my theme to work. He would not budge either because he thought he sounded too low. The underlying narrative coming out for me was that he was only interested in how he sounded- he could not give a damn about the whole piece. I certainly did not want to refuse and piss him off or even let him go, because from my own experience in Singapore, I now know these things don’t matter and all it does is that it creates angst and animosity where none is needed.  So I have to figure out, for starters, where his C Major song fits in the sequence so as to sound as less jarring as possible. I am half-hoping that I will not be the only one to notice this jarring once we do all the songs in sequence and then we all force him to move back to Bflat irrespective of how he sounds. Even with this, already there is significant tension between Sowmya and Tilo- they have obviously collaborated before and there is history. From what I saw of Sowmya as he sang with the piano, I think his singing per se is ok- nothing outstanding but acceptable. But his beat sense is problematic. He is a track singer- that awful breed of the vast multitude of Indian singers (across languages, mind you) that cannot sing with a live band but are karaoke tigers. This will be a struggle and I am already thinking of mitigation plans wherein I will create a karaoke track with our exact arrangement for his song so that he can practice on it. This may help. But I cannot be sure- we shall see wont we. With Tilo I have no such problems- she sings in tune and in beat- no dramas. And to top this, Sowmya fancies himself as a singer of consequence and came across as somewhat demanding on day1. I wonder if my compromise for him will satisfy him or he will constantly be coming back. Aside of the Tilo and Sowmya lovers tiff, I also had concerns with both the guitarist Bappa and the Cajon player Atanu. Bappa and I were playing different chords-that was fixable. Also he was playing too loud and too much on some songs- I think this too can be fixed. Atanu was also playing too loud- but he was also going off beat and off tempo far too frequently for my liking. I am hoping it is not a symptom of a more structural malaise and that it can be overcome with practice. All in all, we did not sound in this practice like anything I had in mind. Which just goes to prove that I probably was being overly ambitious and also naïve. Now I have accepted that it is not going to be the piano oriented sound that I had in mind but rather a louder and more cantankerous arrangement- and one that was prone to go off the rails. I told Priyanka- how much easier it is to do a performance with only Tilo and my piano or guitar. So fewvariables to control and I control most of them. I am now busy preparing tracks on Garageband for all the 8 songs- one by one. And then I will forward to all to practice on these. Next practice on the 16th of May.