Recording

Oh my goodness, I once again had a surprisingly eventful week. I have been meditating a lot more and I feel myself definitely settling in here. Chennai is really starting to feel like home. It's nice to not have to think about how much you're spending, how much money is in the account, how much to pay for utilities and credit card bills etc. This is luxury. Who would've thought that I'd find myself in the height of luxury... in India... of all places. I even have a set schedule now. Things were just really crazy in the beginning because I didn't know what to do with myself when I wasn't teaching and even the school wasn't fully settled yet, so it seemed like there was just constant chaos. Now however, I'm starting to keep a daily routine that is delightfully boring. A typical day is: Wake up at 10, teach choir from 10:30 - 12 at KM, come back to the faculty house for lunch, give private lessons at KM from 1 - 4, go to yoga at 5, eat chaat standing up at the local stand near the corner store at 6:30, buy milk and come home and make chai at 7, do some work till 9, eat dinner, hang out with faculty till midnight and then go to sleep. I think I will miss this chaat stand more than anything else when I leave here. 5 rupees for a samosa and 10 rupees for samosa chaat. Yum. And eating it off of a dirty cardboard plate with a teeny sample spoon is for some reason wildly fulfilling.

Anyway, so two days ago I was going through my routine when Josh told me there was going to be a group meditation at this thatched hut near the faculty house. So I agreed to go. It's this random hut near the grocery store and everyone just sits and waits for the preceptor to come and once he does, he says "begin meditation" and then you sit with your eyes closed and clear your thoughts for a half hour. Straightforward enough. I had my phone on silent so I didn't check my phone until we were done and almost home. It was Faiz saying that I had to go to his office immediately for an urgent matter. I was like what's going on? Did something happen? Then when I got there, he called Rahman who I talked to for all of 2 minutes and he asked if I was available to record at 9 pm! So of course I said yes. I came back to the faculty house, ate dinner and went to Panchaton, his house/studio.

I went to Panchaton at 9 where Rahman showed me the basic idea of what he wanted, which he had already mixed and recorded on the computer. He played it for me a couple times, and then left to go have dinner with his family. But while he was playing it for me he kept talking about what he was thinking of changing, what was working, what wasn't working, what ambience he was looking for etc etc. And without thinking I started giving my opinion and talking about what he could do for the effect that he was looking for...... and then realized that I was giving A.R. Rahman advice.....and then felt really weird.....and then shut up. Anyway, he left and I sat for about an hour and just listened to it repeatedly until I learned it. Basically he needed ambient background music for an eastern European short film that he's doing the music for. So I learned exactly what he had recorded himself on "aaa" because I assumed that there wouldn't be any words if it's supposed to be ethereal. And then I waited and waited and waited for him to come back. That night was apparently a huge deadline for him for like four different projects that were all being worked on at the same time, so he was running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to get everything done because he had a flight to catch later. So I waited till about 1 am when he came back and said "ok, shall we do it?" I go into the studio feeling confident that I had learned it correctly, when he turns to me and says "oh, I just talked to them and they say they want words." Then he says "let's put Sufi words, but is it possible for you to pronounce them like German or Hungarian?" Um. What? First of all, I don't know what Sufi is. Second, how in the world does one make very arabic-sounding words sound eastern European? So he finds words to put together and scribbles them on the back of another piece of paper. He continues to work on mixing the demo so I go back outside and hang out with the others who are there waiting as well - the others being Benny (who sang in Jaane tu ya Jaane na and Yuvraaj) and Shrini (also in Yuvraaj). I'm sitting on the couch yawning and Benny laughs and says, "Ha! It's your first time, isn't it? You can't be yawning yet, the night is just beginning." What??? I go back into the studio and Rahman says "are you ready?" And I say, "Sure." I go into the sound booth, put on the headphones and look over the words, when he starts playing the music and... it's COMPLETELY different from what I had listened to earlier. Like, it could have been a different song. I think he saw my concern and said "don't worry, let's just take one phrase at a time." So I start singing and the reverb on the microphone is so intense, I barely have to open my mouth. As a western classical singer, we're just constantly taught to sing...OUT; with a full voice, full support, and loud. Rahman kept saying "could you do it a little softer?" and "could it be lighter... with more air?" On top of that, he wanted it slightly Indian sounding too, so I did my best to do the ornaments he was asking for. All in all, I think I did it pretty quickly, without written notation, and I think it was a success. He seemed pleased, anyway. The best part of the whole thing was that HE was doing all the recording and mixing himself. There was no one in the studio except for me and him. How crazy is that? I'm like trying to concentrate on what he's asking me to do, all the while having flashbacks of dancing to Chaiyya Chaiyya like 10 years ago and hearing Vande Mataram at the 50th anniversary of India's independence parade. It was just a surreal experience.

I finished recording in an hour and a half but he asked me to stay in case he still needed to record something. I was at the studio till 7 am. 7 am!

I came home and passed out with a satisfied smile.