A SOUND CAREER

A couple of months back, I remember sitting in my studio office and attending to my daily routine. It was in the afternoon, I remembered that I had promised an appointment to an enthusiastic singer to come and discuss about the options of a career in singing.

Though he is of youthful age, who can come on his own, I saw his father, mother and younger sister come along for this meeting. I was busy with some pending errands and they were all anxiously waiting in the waiting area moving up and down. After half hour, I could clear my pending errands and attend to them. He and his father walked in to my cabin for a discussion.

A couple of weeks ago he mailed me two songs; which he said were composed and sung by himself. They sounded above average and so, the appointment to assess further. The kid was enthusiastic to listen from me about my advice and the father was eager to know, whether they would do the right thing by allowing their son into a turf that is altogether alien to them.

I advised them, on what could go wrong and left the rights to be chosen by them.

The artiste can become a singer, a lyricist, a composer or a music programmer. He has a wide choice to survive and each of them is a real sound career option. It is up to him and his family to press the button.

In today’s scenario, any of the options may lead you to settle down decently, but there is one catch in it. You should have the aptitude to be one of them. Otherwise it is not a data entry job which, anyone can try to fit into. The first and foremost requirement is to have the god gift of singing, or an ear to music, specifically rhythm and timing sense. The second stage is to get trained to improve skills, by learning classical or light music.

Once you are ready for a professional bout, Singing requires success, whereas being a music programmer requires knowledge of basic music and software skills. If you do not get the magical break as a singer, you might have to settle down as a chorus singer or a group singer or a singer singing non film albums, devotional and folk numbers. Even this way a singer in local markets can earn a decent 30k per month and even more. Being a music programmer helps them to earn to the tune of 2 to 3 lakhs a month also. It all depends on the public relations they maintain and how they market their profiles. But scope is unlimited for those who have perseverance.

Being a composer is also a good way to settle if you have good contacts or the will to network in the music industry. You can hire music arrangers and programmers to do the orchestration and all you require is the ability to beat a rhythm on the table and sing aloud a tune that can impress a director. If you are lucky then you could walk away with a film contract. Well this is true, as it happened in many cases in tollywood as well as bollywood. Even the yester year greats such as music director satyam, was a dholak player who had a very keen rhythm sense, he used to make his director listen to tunes by playing basic rhythm. Many others must have got inspired by such all time great composers and have echoed, to use the table as a source to generate beat. They have been lucky enough to influence a handful of directors and producers, but actually that is not the right way to enter into any field. It would be better if you learn at least one musical instrument before you dream to be a composer. Even a one film old music director gets a fat sum compared to any other software IT professional.

Lyric writing is again a vast area, if you want to be a film writer, you should have good knowledge of teenage life, love, romance and mincing of words. As long as you can churn out new concepts of love you are always regarded as a successful writer. Even if you do not make it big in films you can write on god and faith, or you could settle as a jingle writer writing for product ads.

So be it a singer or a writer or a composer or a music programmer, do it only when you have a natural talent or the persistent passion to be one. Then it is a sound career.