July 28, 2024

The day of June 26, 2024, should really be written about. Upon rummaging through the ad-hoc and inconsistent mess that is my blog currently, I realise that a month has passed since that date, and I have not mentioned the events of the day. As it happens, there were two major events on the day. The first one was the Hoichoi cultural program, which was to start at 1 pm. This is the event for which I had put in a lot of work along with my team. All was not rosy during the practice sessions, as tends to happen when you try to get multiple egos and sensibilities together to play ball. Let us say it was equally a test of my potential as an arranger of a music performance, as well as my emotional intelligence. I had a lot to do this day, I could not sleep well the previous night. I had to move my piano to the stage. The stage happened to be in a school which thankfully was nearby. The piano move went quite smoothly- I followed th movers to the venue and after some clarification with the security guard we were ushered into the stage which had real access via ramps. As soon as the piano was situated, I started calling the piano tuner- who was to meet at the stage to tune the piano. ( I had read somewhere that this was a good idea since the physical move could get the strings a little out of tension.) This was not a cheap exercise, but I had decided to go all in and so I did. The piano was soon tuned and ready and it was only 11.30 AM. I had asked my team to be available at the venue by 11.30 since I had surmised that it would still be empty at this time and as long as the sound guy was available, we could do a proper sound test and balance everything out. Once the other teams showed up, ( remember it was a variety enttertainment show which included music, theatre and dance), they would each want to grab the sound guy for their individual sound needs. Alas, my team was not present in time and someone else already started the sound work for their show. We were in queue now- which made me upset. In the end we would be scrambling to get our sound right- which we did. Moreover, the sound guy was not great. His name was Moin or Mohsin or something to that effect. He was a bit overwhelmed and did not seem very helpful. The show went on smoothly- and I did the little speech at the end thanking everyone. Seemingly, we had done ok as we had had a terrible previous legacy thanks to the poor performance of the music section in the last few versions of hoichoi. So an average performance would still have beaten market expectations. And when I heard the recordings I decided it was an average performance. There was a mistake I made in one of the intros to a song which I recovered from in terms of timing- just a few bum notes, but the singer, who was not experienced singing with live music, got thrown off and did not start at the right time. Thereafter, we managed to pull the song off but it had some bits not quite right and overall it sounded not that impressive. In some other songs, one the key singers seemed to be off colour. That is to say, the singing during practice was much tighte than during the actual performance. In fact there were pitch issues in one or two places, which was surprising. Finally the overall sound balance was not good enough. The octapad was blaring, drowning out the piano. Even when all the voices were full-on, it drowned out the piano. Most people in the audience seemed to have good things to say, so I’d say we got off cheaply. Because the middle class bengali audience is one of the most hostile crowds one can encounter. They will hunt you down for years after a bad performance and keep rubbing it in till you grave. That is what they did to the performers from two years ago. As I said, it helped that we had small shoes to fill, but even so I maintain that we got lucky. For me personally, there were many positives. I could execute something that I could call mine- although it was not that close to what I had originally had in mind. More importantly, I realised that dragging the piano to a performance with many vocals and with other electric instruments was not a good idea. For future, a keyboard had to be used. But if you used the standard synthesizers, the piano sound on them was thin and characterless. So then the only solution is to use a Pro-keyboard- in particular what I had in mind was the Nord Stage 4. This red beast was as close to an acoustic piano as possible but the issue was that it cost as much as an acoustic upright piano. But I have to ask myself if I want to do this again- it is a lot of work and takes from other activities in a big way- with no real upside other than the sheer joy of performing for the sake of performing.

The next opportunity was Durga Puja 2024- roughly in the middle of October. However, I would need to buy a Nord Stage 4 prior to that. Also, the level of musicianship here leaves a bit to be desired so even if I invest in high-end gear, it is unlikely to make us sound pro. There will be mistakes made, no one will practice enough- and will be happy to put out an average show. I have played earlier with Jhalmuri where the musicianship was a lot better. The drummer was solid, the bass player was solid, and the guitarist while not stellar played well within himself. Moreover the singer was excellent. No one made any major mistakes that could be picked on. But if life gives you a lemon, you need to get used to lemonade.

The other event on this day was the final of the world cup T20 championship between India and South Africa. It was game filled with all sorts of drama but in the end India came out on top which made for a grand party in the evening. All in all , an eventful day where most things went according to plan- although not all things. But even such days are a rarity so I took it happily.