On the 17th of May, 2018, Neil Gomes and I got the opportunity to conduct a workshop at the True School of Music. It was a great opportunity for the both of us. This would be a good way to practice our set and prepare ourselves for the 3rd June show at Raasta Khar. We also did a QnA session with the students where we spoke to them about our experience collaborating with each other and also about our collaboration with Erik Truffaz in December 2017.

This QnA was a lot of fun and the students asked us some really interesting questions.
Question: How do you deal with people thinking that you are not doing anything much while performing with a live musician? Everyone will always think the live musician is doing everything and you are pretty much not getting any credit for your work. How do you deal with it?

If I paid attention to what people said or thought about the kind of music I made, I would have had to give up on my musical dreams. Everyone has an opinion, everyone thinks they know what you should do, how you should do it and they seem to have all the answers. It is important to respect other people’s opinions but it is more important to know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. I’ve also learnt over the years that there is no point getting affected by things that are not in your control and people’s opinions is something that you have ZERO control over. You’ll be judged no matter what. If you keep this in mind then it’ll help you a lot in your life in general.
Question: How did Neil and you end up collaborating?

While collaborating with Erik Truffaz, I was asked to find a couple of other musicians who would add a unique musical element to the project. It took me a total of about 10 mins to figure out who I wanted to play with. Anand Bhagat who is a dear friend and also a super talented percussionist was first on my list and Neil Gomes who according to me is one of the most talented musicians I’ve met was the next one. For me the first factor for collaborating with someone is that they need to be good people. I can’t sit and vibe and create music with you if I don’t get along with you. After this tour, we were both programmed for the same day for a gig and we just called each other and decided to collaborate and jam together. The only time we’ve had to jam together is during sound checks so we’re looking forward to sitting together and working out the set in more detail.
Question: What gear do you use?

I use a windows laptop (Asus ROG), a sound card (Focusrite Scarlett 8i6) and the Maschine Studio controller with the Maschine software. There was a fixed budget that I was working with and this fit in it and then I just got used to the workflow and I wouldn’t change it for anything else. A lot of people use Ableton for live but I think the Maschine 2.0 software works perfectly for me. Windows laptop was again a budget thing but personally, I prefer Windows over Mac and so far I haven’t faced any issues while performing live.

We spoke to the attendees about some experiences we had during our December 2017, Erik Truffaz tour. We also spoke about sound and how we approached playing together, how I start making the set and what do I keep in mind while creating a set for a collaboration. Neil and I had a fantastic time doing this at The True School of Music and I hope that I get to do many more such workshops.