The year 2020 changed the course of history and humanity. Things that seemed impossible to do took on a course of their own during this time. Traveling in general was curtailed, and meeting people, which we all took for granted, became a luxury. Due to COVID, meeting people physically was replaced by meeting them online, via WhatsApp, Zoom, Google Meet, Skype, and many other platforms that we might not even be aware of. Musical events, kitty parties, group discussions, and family events all took place online. Slowly, life came back to a new normal, where people returned to their workplaces, but not like before. It got limited to a few days a week, but online meetings were still going strong.
Can music be created online? Can people sit in remote areas of a single nation and still contribute to a musical composition and arrangement by that same artist? Yes, of course, it is very much possible. Where there is a will, there is a way. Where there is passion and love for music, adjustments come automatically without forcing them on people.
A message pops up in a Facebook group around May. A talented musician in Germany, whom we all knew, was looking for people to participate in an online musical project. I was intrigued and interested at the same time. The auditions happened on Facebook and WhatsApp, where interested people sent him audio clips of their favorite songs. Once the artists were finalized, a group was formed to streamline further communication. The participants were not located in one place, and the session had to be online to accommodate everyone. We were all excited and didn’t have the slightest idea of what was going to happen. But we all had a good feeling because we were all music lovers and wanted to create something special in that space, and we had full trust in the musician who was heading this project.
It was important to prepare ourselves for the recording that would take place in July. We started meeting online on Skype every Sunday for two hours. In the first session, the musician, Mr. Nishad Phatak, gave us an idea about the project. He had composed a tune for the Ganpati Stotra and wanted a chorus to sing certain parts of it. We all knew this Stotra by heart, and right from childhood, we were chanting it. We thought it was not an uncomplicated task to sing parts of this Stotra that we had been singing for ages, but soon our faith was shaken, and we realized that the pronunciation of this Stotra had been all wrong all these years. Nishad started coaching us on the correct Sanskrit pronunciation of each Stotra, especially the anusvara (nasal stress) on certain words. It was not easy, unlearning and relearning, but it was an engaging experience for all of us. After getting the pronunciations right, the shlokas had to be sung at a specific tempo. That was again a new challenge because we all had our own tempo and melody from childhood. The app Metronome was introduced to us in this process, and it helped us immensely to understand the tempo and sing on a particular beat. We were also introduced to the app Droid, where a tanpura played in the background at a certain pitch, and it gave us a good reference to start singing. The melody that Nishad had composed was extremely engaging and hummable, and once we could understand the tempo and melody of the Stotra, the shlokas started running automatically in our heads throughout the day, even after the session. For us to understand the swaras (notes) that were important to sing the lines perfectly, Nishad created a document with all the notes. He recorded his voice for all the chorus parts that we were supposed to sing so that there was always a reference available whenever we wanted to practice at home. The Stotra was divided into four parts, where the chorus would chime in, and we got introduced to a new part every Sunday. We also practiced the earlier parts while doing the new parts.
We made progress part by part and regularly uploaded the audio clips of those
parts to the cloud. Every participant got detailed feedback on how to improve
and what the mistake was. It was also encouraging to see that Nishad did this
for everyone in his hectic schedule, and in the process, we improved, gained
confidence, and got better and better. In the month of May and June, we got
introduced to the chorus parts, and in July, we practiced a lot and finally
looked forward to the actual day of recording, scheduled for July 22.
As specified
earlier, we were all spread across Germany, and it was decided to do two
separate sessions of recording, one in Frankfurt and one in Munich. Both
studios were searched on Nishad's own, at his own expense. One of the
participants in the chorus group went to see the music studio and sent us
pictures before the actual recording took place. Nishad had a detailed plan in
mind about how to go about the recording, and he had managed to get all the
necessary equipment needed to do the recording. One friend of his was going to
help capture candid moments while singing, practicing, and recording, and I am
sure that will add to the memories and charm of the song when it is released.
We were all meeting each
other for the first time in person. We all bonded like we had known each other
for a long time. We practiced together in groups, which had a very different
effect as we were used to singing online all this time. Meeting in person
seemed real and very endearing. We motivated each other to do our best and put
our fears and inhibitions to rest.
The day went by fast; we sang in turns, one after the other, and within 3 hours, we were all done. The time during which we were practicing all these months flashed before our eyes. It was over sooner than we had expected. The hard work and dedication of every person were going to get translated into the chorus parts of the song. The most important part was after our chorus recording, where Nishad had to do the back-end processing of the chorus parts that we had sung. He had the herculean task of mixing all our voices to sound like a chorus and arranging them properly in the final musical arrangement. He had his parts as well, which he had to sing, and there were musical pieces in between that needed to be arranged as well. He had to also do lyrical video preparation, and that would then be the final part of this musical piece before it was ready to release. The Indian drums used in this composition (Tabla, Pakhawaj, Dholak, Duff, Dhol-Taasha, Percussion, Cymbals) were played or recorded by Nishad's friend, percussionist, composer, and professional musician Prasad Joshi (Sound Vision Studios, Pune, India).
We were
finished singing our parts, but he had a lot of after-work work to do. And then the day came when the song was ready and he made us listen to it. We had no words, only
goosebumps and silence, and our eyes glistened. Our hard efforts were before
our eyes, and who doesn’t love their contributions and creation?
The amount of
patience and hard work that he had put in just for a 5-minute Ganpati Stotra
was beyond speculation. He was literally breathing this musical piece in and
out. It was like his unremitting mental contemplation, and he wanted to do
justice to this one too, just as with all his previous musical creations.
I am proud to
have witnessed this journey and to have been a part of this genius musical
masterpiece's creation.
Listen to the lovely composition here:
Shri Ganesh Stotra - a musical interpretation | Lyrical Video | Sep 2023 - YouTube
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