9/29/05

H1BEES News

Last week H1BEES the music album was featured on the Aaj Tak Hindi news channel, India. They featured the release function and my interview in their weekly program called “duniya”. The program was produced by Vidhushi Sinha of Voice of America/Aaj Tak.

Indian Express carried the Washington post article all over India.

TV Asia, USA featured the CD release in their community round up program. They covered the entire evening program along with my interview and interviews from others artists who worked with me in this album.

Urban India a magazine based out of NYC has a 2 page article on H1BEES.

Vatsa [Co-Producer] and I gave interviews to the NPR/BBC and few popular POD cast shows in the east coast. NPR Washington, DC had requested a copy of the CD; they might soon do a feature on the CD.

CDs available at:
  • www.h1bees.com
  • TamilOviam.com
  • DVD Unlimited Online
  • South Indian Specialties,Oak Tree Road, Edison, NJ 08820
  • DVD Unlimited Stores - 1734,Oak Tree Road,Edison, NJ 08820
  • BombayBazzar,NJ
  • Malabar Indian Mart, Gaithersburg, MD
  • 9/28/05

    Introducing The EyeWash...

    The best remedy for Catch22 syndrome


    "Side effects Warning"
    1.Coach can be branded as a "fool" or a "liar"
    2.Gloom feeling in the dressing room will continue
    3.Poor and pathetic performance by Gangully will go unnoticed.
    4.Team-India can be called as Scheme-India.
    5. Distort the world cup dream

    9/26/05

    தேவுடா தேவுடா

    The Chappell’s email that was leaked to the press has created some serious controversies for Indian Cricket. I am not supporting Gangully or the coach here because I am confused to take sides.

    Excerpts from the Email
    1. At no stage did I ask Mr Ganguly to step down from the captaincy of the Indian team. But my confusion reaches it heights when I read the following lines in the email

    On the basis of this and other observations and comments from players in the squad about the unsettling effect Sourav was having on the group “I suggested to Sourav that he should consider stepping down from the captaincy” at the end of the tour in the interests of the team and in his own best interests. Don’t you feel these lines contradict his first line of the mail? So I am really confused to see the culprit.

    “The next day I enquired with a number of the players as to what they had thought of Sourav's retirement” , People, why in the world a coach would worry about captain’s retirement and his provident fund balance? It is for the Board to worry right? Makes me feel Mr. Chappel over did his portfolio. Chappel also goes on further and trashes the former coach of the side. “John Wright obviously allowed this to go on to the detriment of the team. I am not prepared to sit back and allow this to continue or we will get the same results we have been seeing for some time now.” Here is new coach, who is yet to prove his capacity goes around asking about the captain to other players and comments on his predecessor performance. When Mr. Chappell walked in, did he not give a clean chit on Gangully &Co? What happened suddenly?

    The dirt pot is stirred further now; BCCI officials have started to finger point each other. Mr. Dungarpur complains or may be revealed yesterday that John Wright stepped down as India's coach because of Ganguly and Mr. Dalmiya's high-handedness. Wright spoke to him in private it seems. Duh! Why in the hell Mr. Dungarpur did not call the press and reveal this before? If Mr Dungarpur’s intention was to improve Indian cricket, why was he waiting for a favorable position to score points? The team manager Mr. Chowdhary for his part has a little statement supporting Gangully. He claims points made by the coach on Gangully missing the net practice was incorrect. BCCI apart from this mind blowing issue, they have their own internal problem in picking their office bearers.

    Today, after the strong email dose from the Coach, the world knows how the Indian Cricket team and its board work. This is totally pathetic, BCCI apart from themselves being a bunch of jokers now have paved way for the players and fans to be called as jokers.

    "தேவுடா தேவுடா ஏழு மலை தேவுடா....
    சூடுடா சூடுடா BCCI பக்கம் சூடுடா
    எங்காளு உள்ளங்கள் தகர டப்பாக்கள்
    நீ கொஞ்ஜம் பட்ட டிட்டடா..." [Repeatu]


    The following segment is
    sponsored by இதயம் நல் எண்னை,
    Cycle Brand ஊது"வத்தீ..."
    Ps:Kaif played well at number 3 position and was dropped; there are 2 major competitors for this position? If you know what I mean? “Which snake pit has what snake”, you never know.

    9/23/05

    Gangully a/c Dr - 2005
        to Chappel A/c -2005
    (Being the Account Settled)

    Greg Chappel comes out with a strong message through an email. It is speculated that he has written 6 pages about Gangully’s behavior, according to him Dada is not mentally or physically fit to lead India. Wow! that’s a bold statement for a brand new “foreign” Coach to make.

    Some might claim Chappel makes sense, my question to them but why there weren’t any issues with the previous coach? There was no complaining or even sarcastic hints from John Wright till date about Gangully or the team. Team performance was much better during his tenure. The whole environment was healthy.

    On the other hand the day Mr. Chappel stepped into the Indian side the team lost his focus and started to see only defeats. We lost in a sequence to every little team. There seems to be no harmony in the team, team selection seems to be haphazard. I feel going by past records, Gangully has been leading the side for quite some time and he did not have any issues with the magnitude Chappel complains. There were complains but were mostly by the media and from the commentators box, Australian media and their band wagon of commentators in particular.

    The BCCI, whose quorum can be termed as the world’s most unprofessional bunch, is clue less in this issue till date. They are busy fighting amongst themselves to pick their head. They will soon face the contempt of the court. Yesterday their AGM went into a dead lock and was adjourned ignoring orders from the Calcutta High Court. The board election was postponed to the year 3205. So we cannot look for proper or sane explanation from these people.

    I wish Sachin recovers and gets back into the team. If you see until Sachin was around, let us not worry he scored runs or not but others played much better to their potential just to match Sachin’s standards. Sachin was a catalyst in the team whose presence was vital in the team’s chemistry. This is what I feel.

    Gangully might be going through a bad patch or his final cricketing days, I don’t care, having been selected as the captain by the BCCI [or the bunch of jokers], it was not appropriate for a coach to ask the captain to resign just before the game. This was not a prudent move by the coach. This can demoralize the entire team and will power the opponents.

    Gangully on his side was also childish when he opened the can of worms about this incident to the press. Media seems to be against Gangully, his hundred in first test was termed as “painstaking century in the Bulawayo Test” where he took 240+ balls to score 101. In the next test Rahul Dravid scored a 98 in almost same number of balls. But media never cared.

    Having opened the can of worms Gangully has to face the repercussions, while I don’t trust Mr. Chappel’s claims about Gangully. Chappel is merely settling accounts with the Indian captain for his recent outbursts to the media.

    As of now Indian cricket is doomed.

    9/22/05

    Mixing a live Band -
    Part 2
    Meet the Vocalists

    The orchestra can be accurate, perfect and very professional agreed, but every thing counts only if the singers rise to the occasion. Rasika is also blessed in this area. Apart from having a talented and dedicated orchestra, they have exceptional vocalist who carried the show well.

    Priya Raman, this is the first time I am meeting Priya. She is a direct product from the 80’s and early 90’s era; Priya based out of NC, a senior member of the band gave a brilliant performance. Katril from “Johnny”, second song in the show was her highlight. She also sang perfectly my favourite song "pAratha nyabagam illaiyo" from pudiya paravai.

    Raghu, Carnatic musician trained under TNS captured the audience with his vocal acrobatics. The song “oru naL poduma” was his highlight. Sapna Kartik, another senior member, “pAdava un pAdalai” was done remarkably well by her. I was surprised when she hit few lower notes while singing the famous “apidi podu” from Gilly, Tonality in her vocals was very unique and distinctive. Composer Srikanth has already taken a note.

    Singing accurately is 40% of the task. Meaning basics are to be addressed first however 60% of the effort goes to the emotion, pronunciation, brightness or feel [what ever you call] the vocalists could produce. The next man I going to talk about is blessed with plenty of talent. As far as Rasika is concerned, Suresh Ramachandran is a new comer, however knowing him well I was not really surprised by the energy he got on the stage. Suresh can carry any song to a different height by his natural emotions and his stage presence. The show opener by him, devuda devuda clearly marked the beginning of a great show and indicated what is going to follow to the audience. His medley with other artists was real fun. The way Suresh and Priya sang “vanitha mani” from Vikram,man this was out of this world. This includes the opening dialogues. I would say this was the best song of the evening.

    Kartik is a vocalist in the band, since Kartik is already suffering from heavy cold due to the intro I gave about him in the first part; I will let the album H1BEES do the talking about his singing ability.Prabodh, based out of Richmond, a naturally talented stage vocalist. He knows the knack to get the audience go along with him, though his Tamil pronunciations were questionable, he peeked well at the end.

    The band had a new lady voice this year, Uma Ravishanker, her vocal range was quite high. When ever she went on higher octaves I had do some manual limiting. A great find for the band. Apart from the above Rasika had few part time singers Aswin, the mimicry guy and Guru.

    Finally, I have to mention about the great “backing vocals” by Vatsa [Vatsa okva] . Vatsa was also the MC.

    9/19/05

    Mixing a Live Band…

    Yesterday, I had an opportunity to sound engineer an excellent live music show in Chantilly VA. “Rasika” the east coast based Tamil music band gave their annual performance for the charity organization OPEN at Chantilly High school auditorium. It was a full house; the hall was filled with 500-600 people. It was a great team effort, I was really happy to be a part of the evening or as my friend Vocalist Suresh rightly pleaded to everyone to adopt him into the band. I think I would also do the same; these guys are fun to work with and have plenty of positive energy around them.

    “Man of the match”, Kartik, yes the same Kartik who sang H1BEES title track.
    Few have confused him with Play back singer Karthick in my album. The song I recorded with Play back singer Karthick was for a different album [Yes! one more big step].

    If you ask me, Kartik is the first musician ever to play my compositions with full heart, soul and dedication. He made sure he got out all the nuances in my composition. The guitar solo in the 3rd section in track h1bees was played by him.
    This was a great effort because the note placement in the track was more suited for a keyboard player and it is very hard for a guitar player to get the flow. But patience and practice paved the way, he did it right. He lives 60 miles from my house, still in spite of his very tight schedule, he had patience to drive down to the studio with his gadgets and do this for me. Thanks Q!

    About 3 months ago, Kartik voted to get me on board into this wonderful band called Rasika, he requested me to join the fun and help them in sound modeling and engineering. Coming from a studio background, working on live mixes is a specialization on its own accord. Though I loved sound modeling and engineering I did think twice before saying yes.

    I did not want to do a MIC testing 123 job, I wanted to give something extra in the mix. At the end of the day their efforts should not go waste because of my poor handling of sounds. But with Katik’s trust in me I thought I will do it. To live up to their standards I took the job with real seriousness. When working on live mix, unless the sound engineer knows the music, he/she cannot mix the parts in the right proportion. Something like cooking, if you do not know the ingredients and its proportion, the output will suffer.

    Its my luck, 90% of the songs picked by the band were my favorites from the 80’s, I would quote my song 80s in Chennai “azagAna in isai isaigani thandida” So it was a matter of few hours for me to grove into this effort. In spite of my tight H1BEE schedule, I made sure I joined them in their rehearsal sections; took time to understand the chemistry behind the team.

    The Band has 2 excellent keyboard players, Vilon Vidwan turned KeyB player Sundu and Mirudangam Vidwan Turned KeyB player Ajith [every weekend drove all the way from Richmond]. Both of them are very talented and played every little lead and counter points composed by Raja. They did not miss or mess anything from the original composition.

    The guitar section consists Kartik [of course] Suresh, Pankaj and Sydney on Bass. Sydney pumped in breathtaking bass parts and was surprised when he told me that he has never heard some songs in the list. Suresh has a fantastic midi controlled electric guitar [Roland GTs], meaning he plays flute on his guitar, and he is a classical trained guitarists, even took lessons from my good friend Guitar Prasanna. Pankaj, he does not talk Tamil, but his guitar work was very honest. These 4 guys along with the Keys had worked for about 5 months almost every day to get the musical parts in place.

    Drum and percussion: Das, - very skilled Drummer on a powerful Roland V drums kit. I have not worked with Das before, this was my first time, I enjoyed it, and Das being a senior musician was very patient to take my inputs on the drum mix. Das along with his friend Shyam are working on Hindi movies and progressing towards Bollywood at a rapid pace.

    Next - Drummer Karthick – He plays Roland pads, and every other hand percussion including Bongos and “Tappe”. He rocks and makes merry. A very funny person filled with humor and energy. When he saw me at the rehearsals, called me "periya thalai is here we better do well", and I still think he referred to my age :) You got to listen to Karthick singing while drumming, yes! I heard it thru the over head mic that I placed for the cymbals. It was just fun talking and working with him. Just a note, Karthick’s wife Priya wrote the song Thedi Thedi in my album H1bees.

    Finally, On Tabla - Pro player Topo. The way he played for “poo vee sem poove” is still ringing in my ears; he was totally authentic and very impressive.

    The mix board that was given to me was a “Midas [Venice] 320” often used by pro bands like Elton John, NSync . It made me go WOW! When Bill, the sound guy told me that he was getting me a Midas.

    This is a wide band! Already 16 channels on the mix board,

    • 1- Bass
    • 2 & 3 : drum 1,
    • 4& 5 : drum 2
    • 6,7,8 – Kartik [Electric, acoustic, and 12 string]
    • 9,10 - Suresh [Roland GT’s]
    • 11 – Pankaj
    • 12 &13 – Sundu – kb [Korg Triton/Roland]
    • 14 – Ajith – Kb
    • 15 /16 Tabla


    With this I will stop it here today, I wish to write about the singers and then I will give a narration of how I mixed this live show.

    9/13/05

    Thanks to Actor Srikanth.

    Just few days before the release, popular tamil film star “Srikanth” visited Studio1234. He patiently heard all the tracks and congratulated all the artists. He really enjoyed all the numbers told me some of them were movie material right away.

    Srikanth had to leave to India for a film shoot; he was flying back when we released our CD. However he was kind enough to provide voice over promotions in various Indian languages for the album.
    Thanks “Srikanth” for your time, thanks for making it to the studio in spite of your tight Schedule. Thanks to Sudhir who made this happen.

    We have new promo clip uploaded in the H1bees.comwebsite. If you have not ordered the CD, I request you to place the order today, Click here..

    9/12/05

    H1BEES

    The Album was officially released by
    Mr. Jason Chung.
    Executive Director
    DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN RESOURCES
    Office of the Secretary
    Governor's Commissions
    Asian Pacific American Affairs
    The first copy was accepted by

    Dr. Pradeep Ganguly,
    Deputy Director
    Department of Environmental Resources
    Prince George's County Maryland
    President of MKK USA, Inc.



    Following the release Mr. Jason Chung presented me a citation signed by the Governor of Maryland. This was a great honor; I did not expect this. He gave me a big 11x7 certificate with my named engraved along with state of Maryland’s golden seal. This was amazing, I felt really happy that I made this far.

    Thanks to Mitra Kalitam from the wonderful article in the Washington Post. Our story also went on the Economic times and Times of India. Thanks to Mr. Chidanand Rajghatta. We are honored sir. TV Asia carried our interviews, thanks to Mr. Devasish Ray for making it for releae. Thanks to all the Bloggers who wrote about this album. Finally, thanks to everyone who made it for the release. Hope you guys enjoyed the evening.

    Wait, there one More big surprises to come, after the memorable CD launch attended by family, friends and the Media/press, I came home at around 10.30pm.

    Jamillah Knowles , Producer BBC Radio 5 Live called me to check if I would be available for an Interview on BBC Radio 5 Live, she gave me 10 minutes. I was thrilled! Accepted the call right away; It’s the BBC! , do you believe it, I was on air talking on the BBC!; the channel I am been hearing for past 30 years. I was on it!, they asked about my background, the album, the guys around me, and why did I make it to music apart from being a software engineer. It seems Rock music and Software engineering does not go together. They asked me to sing 5 lines of track from the album, I managed it to sing! They seemed impressed.

    I am very happy today that we are getting lot of press. The album does deserve it, my team of musicians has worked along my side with their heart and soul.

    Thanks guys!

    Photos by Mr.Raman.

    9/10/05

    H1BEES! On "The Washington post"

    H1Bees made its way to The Washington Post.

    CLICK HERE.....

    Few weeks ago, reporters/photographers from the post visited my studio to interview me and my artists. Mitra Kalitam was the lead reporter who visited my studio twice. She interviewed me and my gang of musicians and producers. It was a great pleasure talking to her. She patiently heard our story, including how I was able to gather such a wonderful set of talent.

    Jennifer Crandall from Washington Post dot com also visited and spoke to us about the album. She enquired about my studio hardware with great interest and was surprised to see me work on state of the art technology like Pro Tools etc. She was instrumental in making the slide show along with the post’s photographer Preston Keres with whom we had photo shoot that evening. When talking to him I came to know that he was from Davenport IA. We lived in Davenport around 1998, where my musical journey in this country picked up the initial pace. Mr. Keres served in the Navy for twelve years before joining post in 2003. He is a also the prestigious winner of Department of Defense’s Military Photographer of the Year for his coverage of Navy operations in Guatemala, Ground Zero rescues and the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake for DoD athletes., It was a real honor to work with him.

    How in first place the album got their attention? ,
    Apart from a catchy name H1BEES and my music, 1st - thanks to my little friend, Swathi Raman. Swathi is a very interesting personality. She is an aspiring classical vocalist, classical dancer and a “want to be” journalist. Swathi subscribes to an email group run by SAJA.ORG. She sent a lovely little email describing about this album to the Saja group. Mitra Kalitam [a member in the same group] got the email and called me at once, to keep the story short, Thanks to Swathi for talking time to help me.

    Thanks to the Post and its reporters for this coverage. I have come a long way with my talented team, Thanks Kartik, Alisha, Swathi and others for working patiently with me, finally Thanks to my producer Vatsa who trusted my talent. Thanks Buddy!.

    Guys we rocked! The world famous “the Washington post!” has covered about our album….Congratulations!

    9/2/05

    H1BEES SAMPLE CLIP!

    H1Bees Sample clip
    now available!


    Click here..

    9/1/05

    Wish us good-luck

    I am finally free, because the album post production work is complete and we are all set for its launch on September 10th. I have convinced my producers for a low price $5.99 + [applicable Taxes] + [applicable Shipping] for the album. This low pricing should enable more people to listen to this album.
    Once the CD goes on sale, you can order the CD directly from TamilOviam web store. TamilOviam.com will be our online agents. For people in DC/VA/MD/NJ area we are still working to get it across to local stores around your area.

    Please wish us good-luck - we just have about week to go for the product release.

    TamilOviam.com has introduced a new webpage called Music, in which they have featured most of my songs. This is the first time you get to you hear all my song by a single click. Even my website does not have such features. Please visit this Blog Radio in TamilOviam. Thanks to Ganesh Chandra [GC] for taking pains to put up this page.

    Finally,Congratulations to Arun. ManiaTV will be playing Arun’s short film ’Brailliant’ from September 16th .This will be featured in their show titled “Too short for Hollywood”. I did the back ground score for this funny little short film. This short film has no dialogues, and the plot is unveiled by clever shot placements and of course my background score. This was my first venture with Arun. Frankly, the honest effort put forth by every one has started to reap its benefits. Way to go guys.