Of late, the singing craze seems to have caught on like wildfire. Real singers, bathroom singers, wannabe singers , even superstars ( a la Shah Rukh Khan with his latest singing video on Instagram) have emerged out of the woodworks and started unleashing their creative singing prowess on the unsuspecting others. If the others aren’t doing so themselves!
It so happens that i am part of a band called “Aagazey Tarannum” which belts out Bollywood numbers, in style.. Don't ask where we go the name from. Anyhow, the band does small gigs, usually decent,when called for. Never before had we ventured online. But, there's always a first, and with the lockdown, many a firsts.
And so it transpired, one of these days, that, at the urging of the band members, the amblingindian was tempted, to join a so called Zoom singing call- where all these melodious morons would converge, online, and try their combined prowess at ahem.. virtual music.
If anyone has been on a zoom call, they would realise that the first 10 minutes are usually spent in asking " Am i audible" , which is a rather queer way of starting off a musical gig. Imagine the crowds ready and waiting for the likes of Coldplay, or Enrique Iglesias to start belting out superhits, to be greeted by an " Am i audible " kind of question... Well, anyway with the audibility established, we moved on.. only to find that the band was rather constrained by another small issue- the bandwidth. The fact that the lead guitarist was leading by a strong margin, and the singers following with considerable lag, and the final output some mishmash of both, need i say more.
On the verge of giveup, it was someone’s idea to move on to Smule, where apparently you can do group singing on an app. Whose idea it was to name a singing (or is it for braying) app after a mule, don’t know.. But certainly, after multiple tries of downloading the app and setting up the band, it came to light that this just isn’t an app for live singing , but for some cold recorded singing!! Well, well then…
If nothing else, with the Corona lockdown, one can always go back to basics, and do live solos with karaoke music, literally, with only the bathroom walls listening in. And put that on youtube : a virtual bathing- singing experience. Which is what might be quite interesting, come to think of it ….
Regards ,
Aina Rao,
The amblingindian- quirky reads on India and life !
