Anubhooti's very first attempt at an Original Composition

Ever since Anubhooti was conceived, we all had been planning on composing our own music. Even though we were pretty determined with our aim, unfortunately we couldn't find time out to work on it. Motivation came with ISA asking us to make an intro video for our act in India Nite. We brainstormed and came up with the present idea for the video with music in the background. Now what music to play? We could have used an original soundtrack from a movie or for that matter any band for the purpose. But being a music band ourselves, using a pre-recorded track for our video didn't sound wise. So we thought of playing the music ourselves, recording it, and then using it for the video. Somebody raised a concern that in doing so (and if we play it real well), we hold the risk of the audience thinking it to be the original track and not realizing that it’s played by us. However, after much deliberation, came the proposal of composing our own music. None of us was confident if we could do it, but we decided to at least give it a shot. Time was a major constraint, as Aravind was to leave for India shortly and wouldn't be back before India Nite.

As we had very little time, we couldn’t afford to sit and work on composing the music together. So we decided on a particular Raag (which happened to be 'Des Raag') and gave each other 3 days’ time to come up with some composition based on that Raag. We hoped that we should be able to mesh together different parts (as they all would be based on a common Raag) but nothing was for sure. As mentioned, we felt it was worth giving a try. The basic concept that we started with was to bring out every instrument and showcase something that is representative of the band. We worked individually and when we met next, and played our respective compositions to each other, we were all pleasantly surprised. Joy was noticeable on every face -the joy of one's composition being liked by fellow musicians and the joy of listening to the others' compositions. It was a serendipity that the compositions blended with each other perfectly, and the transitions were as smooth as we could have hoped for. When we started formalizing the entire composition, we realized that we were shooting way past the time limit of 1min 30sec. And then started the most painful part of editing the composition. Painful because now we were forced to scrap off many of our favorite parts in our compositions. We decided to cut it down to the time requirement and record it for the sake of the video, for now, but get back to it later, reformulate the entire composition and then record it with no time constraints.

The next day we started to record. We had only an evening's time left to record (as Aravind was leaving the next day). The fact that ISA rehearsals were that very evening effectively left us with only a couple of hours. We didn't have any studio with high quality recording equipment to do the recording. All we had was a mixer and we gave a direct line-in to a computer from the mixer. To add to the worries, we had only one mic. and so the track (with guitar, violin and the keyboards), the vocals and Tabla were all recorded separately. Aravind had to take all the separate tracks with him to India, and layer/mix them together (he’s the tech-guy of the band). However, during mixing, he realized that the tempo for all the recordings was slightly different (as we didn't have a metronome to keep a reference for the tempo while recording (neither did we have time to even think about it)). So, he had to use a software to change the tempo, which then led to a corresponding change in the pitch of the music. We don't know how he did it, but somehow he managed to match and layer every part. But as can be observed, there are discontinuities at certain places.

Although we were not happy with the quality of the recording, we decided to use it for the video, as we had put a lot of effort into it. Moreover, some of our friends really liked the recording and encouraged us to use it.

This whole experience served as a 'revelation' for all of us because none of us had probably ever tried to compose anything original. And that's why Deb names this composition "Self Realization"!

We don't know how good (or bad) it sounds to others, but at least we got enough motivation, encouragement and confidence to make more such attempts. And now the very next thing we would want to do is to get back to this half-done work, reformulate and then record it, and this time with no constraints whatsoever!