Day 3 in Bombay

Yesterday was THE most tiring day during the entire process of making this record. Shantanu had suggested the day before that we should re-do the vocals for one song "hold me" ... So I reached the studio by 11, did the vocals in less than an hour ( Cheers to Eric Arcenaux's vocal warm up excercises ). Andrew had to come in to track piano for one more song, which he did and played to perfection. After that it was ALL me .... I technically tracked 14 songs, 1 vocal, 4 piano and 9 acoustic guitar. By the end of it , I was soooooo tired, it was unbelievable. Josh had reached the studio by 8 or so, was chilling. We gor done by 12 mid night. We were all very hungry so we found a place an had a less than decent burger an then sid and Josh headed to the hotel I booked or them and I headed to my aunt's place.

Next morning , I get woken up by both of them . They told me that Josh had a bad panic attack and couldn't breathe. Very scary .... He didn't seem to get better. So I brought him to the hospital. We won't be able to track drums today as he is not well at all. Since the album has 2 songs without drums, we'll go ahead and start mixing them and Josh can track the drums tomorrow when he's better ..... I'm at the hospital right now , waiting for him to come out. Hope he feels better.

Cheers

Rohan

Phase 2 of the record

I'm in Bombay now with one of my co-producers (Sidhant Mathur). We originally set out to mix the album and re-record piano parts for all the songs on a grand piano and re-work and record string arrangements which will be composed and arranged by an awesome producer named Andrew T. Mackay. But as we spent some time in the studio and started to record piano ... We heard the difference in the sound quality. This actually made us extremely satisfied as well as disappointed, because the drum sound didn't seem all that hot after hearing what it could have sounded like .... So we took a call and decided to re-record drums for all the songs as well and also re-record rhythm acoustic guitars sitting in the HUGE hall with top class mics. I know that means pushing the budget , but at the end of the day, it is going to be worth it. I'm so happy about the direction of this album ... It's really headed in the right direction and is gonna end up sounding awesome. It's gonna be something I'm going to be proud of my whole life. In one session at Yash Raj Studio , Andrew changed the face of this album. I'm loving the experience in Bombay so far. Can't wait for the mixing to start.

Hope you guys will like the album when it's out

Cheers

Rohan

Dad's birthday

Today is my dad's birthday. We had a great day. I got up by 10 or so, just ate a donut. My aunts and cousin brother came over and then we cut the cake. Went out to Machan in Taj Mansingh for some awesome brunch. I have some coupons/gift certificates valid till the end of this month. We ate some insane food ... Crab in Thai green curry and grilled lobster .... It was amazing !!!!! Popped open some champagne, ate like pigs and we were all happy !!! :D

Now we're back home. My brother and I are watching LOST. I had an insane day. Good fun !!!!

Cheers

Rohan

My BIGGEST Inspiration .....

I am a very obsessive kind of person. Dont really like too many things, but whatever I like, i can do that over and over again. e.g. Even though i'm a musician, I haven't heard soooooooo many legendary bands .... I mean ... Sometimes when people hear things like, I havent heard anything by Hot Action Cop, have heard only one track by the Bee Gees, chuck berry, Rush, Bill Withers (even though "Aint no sunshine" has been covered by soooo many people), they are just shocked. But the truth is that i just havent bothered to check them out. Couldnt care less about Alter Bridge even though I used to LOVE Creed .... Not that Alter Bridge may not be a good band, but I just havent bothered to go out and buy their record .... But for the bands I love, i could listen to them OVER & OVER & OVER again and really NOT get bored.

Believe it or not .... When i was a kid, I had never heard any artist or band except for Michael Jackson. I was so content with his music that I didnt feel the need to listen to anything else. I think someone gifted me his album "Bad" or maybe my brother went out and bought the tape and I just kept listening to it over and over, but I know I was about 4-5 years old when I started listening to MJ and believe it or not .... I actually NEVER heard any other band/artist till I was 9 .... I was actually content with those three records "Thriller", "Bad" and "Dangerous" .... Even my cousins were totally obsessed with MJ.

A HUGE part of why I became a musician was because, his music touched me in a way that no other artist's can. Even today when i hear songs like Man in the mirror, Give in to me, Dirty Diana, Black or White, Beat it etc etc .... I still get goose bumps. Even though i never pursued learning any instrument till I was 12, but I still had this inner dream to become a musician and make music that may touch the lives of other people someday. I dont know if ive changed anyone's life through my music or anything, but whenever my band (Cyanide) plays a concert and I see people in the crowd lip singing to ever word of one of our own songs, its an awesome feeling. When we played at Launchpad infront of some 5000 odd people, while playing "Untold Misery", I could hear the crowd sing with us, almost like chanting .... It was an amazing feeling to see something that you wrote through your imagination, being sung by a huge crowd. I seriously think that music is the BEST gift.

When I woke up on June 25th, 2009 at around 8 am .... I just switched my phone on and checked facebook .... and all i saw on the home page was RIP MJ, You rock MJ ... RIP, Now playing: Beat it :( ... RIP ........ After seeing all that it still took me a minute to comprehend what exactly happened. I immediately checked out cnn.com, google news ... and both confirmed it "MICHAEL JACKSON - THE KING OF POP IS DEAD" ..... I just felt this weird feeling, it still didnt register for about 10 minutes or so, i kept saying "How can he be dead?" Since it was early morning, none of the news papers had printed it till the next day. I got out of my room .... my mom and masi were in the dining room , I quickly went and told them and they were really saddened by this news. When that man died, whatever was left of my childhood died with him. But he will still live forever through his amazing music. RIP MJ, you never got any peace on earth, I really hope you get some peace where you are. Thank you for your music and thank you for inspiring me to be become a musician, I cant see myself being anything else. You are without a doubt My BIGGEST Inspiration.

LEGENDARY Trip to mussoorie .... 2009

We left by train on 10th May .... I was so excited about this trip because it was after a long time that i was going to mussoorie in a HUGE group of family and family friends .... hadnt done that in a long time. So we all go into the train BARELY on time .... As soon as i got in, the train started moving and i realised that my dad and brother were still not on the train, so i looked outside to see that they were not even on the platform .... they had just about managed to get onto the train but a few blocks away .... so i walked across and finally found them with ALL the baggage (hehehehehehe, now when i think about it, its funny), at that moment i was so frustrated because I was sleepy and i had to carry all that luggage across two blocks (im forgetting what you call the train box where people sit) ... Anyhow FINALLY got everything into our compartment (oh yaaaa .... THATS what its called) and sat down, a few minutes later my mom brought the food out (she had packed loads of sandwiches for everyone) .... Ahhhhhh .... that sandwich was bliss !!!!! I suddenly went on a photographer and video taping trip so i started taping everyone who was sleeping .... Tessie and Nasreen were asleep and i started bugging them, it was REALLY funny :p .... After a long and FREEZING train journey, we finally reached Dehradun ..... got off to find no porters in sight .... anyhow, to cut a long story short , we drove up to our home in mussoorie in our own cars as they were waiting for us at the station as the drivers and servants and driven up a day before we did.

The weather was just amazing ... it is so quiet and peaceful up at our place, MUCH needed vacation. All of us just unwounded and enjoyed the awesome weather .... As usual, we stayed up till later playing "Monopoly" and quite obviously I won ..... "Cuz i am LEGEN (wait for it ... wait for it) DARY" :p .... I also take full responsibility for curropting the minds of the sweet aunties and the sweet barely legals by introducing them to the LEGENDARY game called "KINGS" .... :D

Every night we would stay up .... it would usually be Tessie, Nikki, Shiny and Nasreen chilling at night .... but one night ALL of us played Kings till about 2 am .... that was awesome . It was so much fun bonding with Tessie and Nikki, they are such awesome people, i feel blessed to have gotten the chance to know them better :) (PS: Tessie, if ur reading this .... Yes yes , i can be nice to you from time to time ..... hahahahahahaha :p) ... One night, Nikki, Tessie and myself stayed up the whole night .... hahahahahahaha, my mom couldnt digest the fact that we hadn't slept AT ALL .... but we were quite wide awake, we had a few cups of coffee and then when my mom woke up, we all went for a walk around sister's bazaar but the clouds were so thick that i could barely breathe so we went back up :(

We made a few trips to the mall also where we played some video games and oh ya .... we went to Jaypee 4 times on this trip .... we were just having a blast bowling and playing pool
Of course we made our usual trips to Chaar Dukaan and had the Bun Omelets and the LEGENDARY banana pancakes .... YUMMMMMYYYYYY!!!!!

Many nights we would stay up and watch "How I met your mother" .... hahahahahahaha which would probably explain why im using the word LEGENDARY so much in this blog post. :p

Hahahahahahahaha, I totally forgot, every morning i would bring my niece to wake up these girls while they are sleeping ..... it was so funny, this tiny little thing is running around the room waking everyone up :p ..... Oooohhh, one night pretended to be sleepy and said good night , but slyly i went around back outside their room and knocked on the window and all the girls SCREAMED their touches off ..... hahahahahahahaha ..... it was LEGEN (wait for it) DARY ....

It was an awesome trip .... would kill to go there again with the exact same people ... Good fun.

But unfortunately i had to leave early because i had to come back to delhi to finish recording my album ..... the weather in delhi is horrible ...... I hate it

Anyhow, thanks for reading

Take Care

Rohan

Insomnia blues .....

Off late ... I've been having bad insomnia. Usually that would be a bad thing but I'm liking the end result .... I wrote two really awesome songs during my sleepless nights, although I won't be using them in "lead the way" as they are not faith based gospels songs. It's 'kindda' weird because I'm actually liking the fact that I can't sleep at night .... It's so peaceful and it's the best time to write songs when there is no one to disturb you . I quite like the direction that these songs are going in .... More mature, very different chord progressions , nothing like what you'll hear in "lead the way" but yet very melodic. Over the last week I wrote another gospel song "love of the lord" and a few other songs which I doubt will ever see the light of day ... :p

Anyhow .... I'm still waiting to get back to the studio ... I was supposed to be going to check out outdoor locations for the upcoming photoshoots but my photographer bailed on me :s . Will keep you guys updated on the progress

Cheers

Rohan

Awesome trip/gig in Banur

Hey guys,

I know im posting this about a week after our gig in Banur but i was really ill (bad asthma attacks) .... Sorry i dont have any pics from the trip, but there are videos:



Check em out

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We left delhi at 6:30 am , went in 2 cars, Gucci came along to do sound for us. Sri, Pills and Bindal went in Sri's car and Gucci and I in my car ..... Heheheheh, we spoke about everything under the sun, then Sri and I went into "Race Mode" and we were driving at like 150 - 160 constantly for a bit .... it was CRAZY !!!!! Stopped at "Zill Mill" Dhaba to eat some killer paranthas and omelet .... Anyhow, we reached by 11 am or so and were greeted by the organisers of the fest. We asked them the usual stuff, "Where is our room?? Where are the beers?? " We were escorted to our "Amazing 5 star quality rooms" .... "NOOOOOOOOT" ..... they are THE most hideous rooms EVER, but anyhow, we just had to kill some time as we had already decided that we aint gonna be sleeping there. So we kept chilling in the room for about 6 hours or so where the electricity was probably there for just 2 of the hours and that also not at a stretch. So we kept boiling our asses off, the ONLY saving grace was the chilled beer.

Time for sound-check came and by this time I had was feeling really sick, i could barely breathe ... I had already had about 4-5 puffs from my inhaler .... Anyhow, i just figured "it'll pass" .... We took about 15 minutes to sound-check as they were short on time and the competing bands had to get on stage .... We sat through about 5 bands as we were the judges .... and then FINALLY it was time for us to get on the stage .... by then i had already asked the students about a hospital near by and by the grace of god, there was a medical college/hospital next door .... it was HUGE. We got on stage, started playing .... we jammed on some punjabi stuff as well to get everyone even more excited then they already were. The faculty asked the organisers to tell us to end the set quickly as the buses had to leave or something, so we did .... we got off stage, had the organisers carry our stuff to my car ... then Bindal and I went to the hospital to the emergency room , he took care of the all the formailities and running around getting medicines, while I was admitted in the emergency room, the doctors put on a nebulizer and gave me an injection to allow me breathe again .... it was so bad. Sri was taking care of our payment and fuel re-imbursement etc ..... After about an hour and a half or so .... I was allowed to leave. Pills' dad hooked up a room for us in Chandigarh .... and the rooms were SWEET !!!! :D So finally we had a good night's sleep.

Next morning, we got up by 8 or so .... showered, had breakfast and left .... Inspite of all the heat and the emergency room drama .... It was an awesome trip. Chatted with Gucci alot about the music business and learnt so much about how a record company functions etc etc. Good fun!!!!


Anyohw .... So this is what Cyanide has been upto. As far as "Lead the way" goes .... the studio is booked for some other artist till about 10th or 11th of May, so i can only get back to recording after that. Till then, i'll be getting a few photoshoots done for promo material and for the website .... I have been working with Carl (Half Step Down) on my website as well .... the concepts are looking pretty good .... but now we need the pictures from the upcoming photoshoots .... So thats that .... will keep you guys posted on when i get back to the studio .... Thats another reason why i haven't released Episode 5 of the podcast as yet, cuz there's nothing to film ... nothing excited, im either chillin at home watching TV or at work .... But as soon as the work gets started with the photoshoots and i get back to the studio, i will be releasing the next episode for the podcast.

Take care

Rohan