Musical grooming and a recording session that welcomes amateur singers proved too much temptation for Yogesh Pawar to resist. Did he survive transition?
If you're the type that croons in the shower, imagining the sound of running water to be gushing applause from the audience, you'd think it'd be exciting to take this passion on stage or at least, to the recording studio. Yet, it is this very thought which has always left me with a hollow sensation in the belly, a supersonic heart beat (which can double up as an inspiration—you'll find out how), and a voice that goes inaudibly squeaky with fright. So when I heard that the unique pioneering initiative 'From Mug to Mike' was coming to town, I couldn't hold back and enrolled. Conceived by IT engineer and trained singer Sunil Koshy to "create a new world of opportunities for bathroom singers," the workshops are conducted along with his techie spouse Archana Hallikeri.
Koshy, whose brainwave has given a platform to 300 workshops and trained over 5,000 bathroom singers over the last four years across Bengaluru, Chennai, Kochi, Trivandrum and UAE,
says, "The concept is inspired by the millions who enjoy singing, at office parties or informal gatherings—those who would like to graduate from prop mugs to actual microphones, but don't have the formal training or the nerve."
The idea that we'll be recording in the state-of-the-art Enzy studios, where the likes of Sonu Nigam, Amit Trivedi, Arijit Singh and even the Oscar awardee A R Rahman have recorded, left all 14 of us (participants) at once excited and filled with foreboding. While there were several novices, like yours faithfully, some of whom had travelled all the way from Dubai and Abu Dhabi, two of the participants were actually trained classical singers. The youngest in the group, freshly minted Economics graduate Natasha Phatarphod, seemed to voice our collective anxiety when she told Koshy, "I hope this doesn't make us go infamously viral like Dhinchak Pooja!" Hallikeri reassured, "There's nothing like a bad voice. We can always work and train it to be able to sing anything. Each one of us is blessed with a special voice and working on its strengths makes it stand out."
An interaction with one of the music industry's most well-known names, Julian Mascarenhas, who is also the Chief Sound Engineer at ENZY Studios, helped dispel our residual fears. "If Salman Khan can sing anyone can. The person sitting behind this console can use the power of technology to create magic and transform a good recording into an exceptional one," he said. Koshy then put us through the basics of traditional training and also tips and tricks including voice culture, studio singing and other nuances of film singing, not taught in traditional music systems.
Though Koshy recommended that we have the lyrics in front of us, I wanted to sing something without looking at my phone/paper. So I sang the 22-year-old number My Heart Is Beating (penned by the late Harindranath Chattopadhyay) from Julie, one of my all time favourites.
Watch the video here
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