Hi guys,
My name is Surjo and I write and sing songs for a living.
Check out my new album here: https://www.oklisten.com/album/the_key_has_turned
(You might be hearing them right now from my reverbnation widget, if you like it, please go to the above link and buy the album for Rs. 100 and support my survival. )
I just wanted to share the process as far as I can regarding how the album came about.
One of the first things I knew for sure about the album was in fact the album name, because 'The Key Has Turned' isn't just a random choice of phrase.
My name is Surjo and I write and sing songs for a living.
Check out my new album here: https://www.oklisten.com/album/the_key_has_turned
(You might be hearing them right now from my reverbnation widget, if you like it, please go to the above link and buy the album for Rs. 100 and support my survival. )
I just wanted to share the process as far as I can regarding how the album came about.
One of the first things I knew for sure about the album was in fact the album name, because 'The Key Has Turned' isn't just a random choice of phrase.
I've always felt that my abilities as a student of music and as a musician in general were pretty solid, which I referred to as my engine. So my engine is pretty solid but my ignition key wasn't functional for a long period of time. But a series of circumstances finally led to the key turning and my engine revving on and now the album has been released and it's been well received so far. (Thank you)
One of the main factors of course was me deciding to part ways with Shilpa Rao. I've been playing shows with Bollywood singer Shilpa Rao for the last 3 years and I was managing her tours for the last year too. I gathered a wealth of experience and knowledge in the process, and I'd like to believe that I did fairly well as her manager, but the entire experience was altogether too time consuming and frustrating and the massive realization dawned on me that the many sacrifices I had made to be a professional musician were going to be wasted if I didn't have my own identity, and this wasn't the identity I wanted. Still get enquiries for her everyday though.
Another thing was some minor changes that I made in my outlook towards my life. The way I've been brought up has made me a guy who hates social visits and going out of my house in general, but then I decided to change that slightly so that I could expand my horizons a little bit. So I decided to travel small distances for pleasure, which uptil that point was a no-no for me, all my travelling till then had been strictly for work. So I would go out to Kolkata to catch some bands I respected and met people and friends and was amazed by their fantastic spirit. That inspired me enough to know that push had come to shove and it was time to put my money where my mouth was.
Being as inspired as I was, and this is late August, early September in the time frame, I decided to write songs in the manner that I had wanted songs to be written. I didn't have a band at my disposal so I decided to write an acoustic album, songs that'll work well with just an acoustic guitar. I also wanted to have a good number of songs, I didn't want a 6 song album or an 8 song album. I wanted double digits. And till that point, I just had one new song written and that was what eventually became 'Blank Page'.
The sudden desire to write and to ease up about my life in general led to me spending a lot less time obssessing about pure guitar development and more on songs in general and slowly but surely I started writing about events and topics that I had always wanted to say something about. Also, 'Scream' was part of the same mould of songs, so I knew I could put that in the album as a bonus track.
The entire album was written, recorded, mixed and mastered in 3 months. Out of that, the majority of the time was spent in writing the album and rehearsing the album, whether it be at home or at the shows I was doing at Cafe Regal before the release of the album. The final process of recording in earnest began on the 11th of Nov, guitars were tracked that day, then on the 12th the vocals were tracked and the two days for a combined recording time of ten hours or so. Then 12th night (Shakespeare reference??!!) and 13th morning, afternoon and evening were spent mixing, where my laptop decided to hang as often as possible to make my life miserable. Then the rest of 13th was spent setting up the album for OkListen while also preparing the physical CDs, which carried out into the 14th which was the day of the release. So it continued till 3 hours before the release that I stopped working to prepare the album and started prepping myself to head over to Cafe Regal for the launch and the show which I was supposed to perform.
I will be writing more about each song in detail in later editions of the blog.
Till then, take care.
