This remarkable stretch of the journey in music started only a couple of years back for A/J. It all started when he decided to go back in time and snatch his piece of the rainbow dream from his childhood days, that of being a musician par excellence someday. That quest for “someday” I guess is now reaching its climax.

This second life of his (his first was and still is that of a marketing strategist) started only a couple of years back. While his love for music and ability to imbibe instrumentation goes way back to his childhood, he let his own pragmatic self take over for close to 17 years. Just that one day, while at the peak of his career, he was stumped by the question. What next? That question, led him to risk all that he’d worked towards and take a semi sabbatical approach to work, and experience freedom to introspect and open out to himself (he has four people on this planet to thank for helping him make that happen.) Its this phase that led him back to music.

His affair with the guitar, had started around the college days, which is when most want to impress the chicks with a hot lick or two and also play on stage. Among the many shows that he's perfomed in those days as a session artist, a solo act as well as with a classic rock band named Chymera. All of this got over out of boredom of playing covers and puppy requests which were in vogue mostly around that time. The concept of creating and playing original rock music was yet to arrive in India in the early 90's.

This day that year

Come 2007, A/J picked up the guitar yet again with a fresh perspective in life. Hell bent of not going the usual path of getting down to covers, this time, A/J stuck to learning music. And learning it on a fast track mode. His experiences in life had taught him enough to set up his own personal guitar course through books, videos, ears and serious introspection which he started applying with full rigor. His personal practice sessions ranged from a minimum of 3 hours a day to 7 hours a day. This was full pelt without any serious breaks for two years!  It was a matter of time before it started kicking in and the restless spirit broke out in a voice of his own through his axe.

His music he realized had a storytelling aspect woven into it. While it was open for interpretation, the soulful guitar riffs, backed with tasty chordal harmonies and hip grooves resulting in some amazing melodious textures. It had something that was not being heard on the shores of the Indian rock music landscape.

In this period of intense composing, he created and set up 35 songs, all in a space of three months. His music has been termed as “Diverse, Emotional, Jazz Rocky, Story like, Image loaded” by his fans.

Recognition, or the start of it

With that came the need to get the music heard. The marketing career and knowldege came in handy at this stage. Soon enough his music scorched the Reverbnation India charts and scored a number 1 in India across all genres in a short period of three months, leaving behind the much lauded and popular acts.

The mission was far from over, as he went on to snag the featured artist slot in Reverbnation globally as well. One of the very few musician in India to have made it there. Add to that a huge fan following, along with some great fan mail to motivate him on. He’s also got covered in Indian media online and offline.

All this only added fuel to A/J’s thirst for learning music. With a quest to probe into getting towards a more robust and musically challenging sound, A/J got down to studying Jazz structures, scales, tones and outside sounds. This new perspective has resulted in applying the knowledge in new tracks and compositions.

This new wave soon to be realized in the form a new set of compositions and tracks.

Influences and Style

Talking about his influences, in music A/J mentions many different artists, including: David Gilmour, Joe Satriani, Paul Gilbert, John Petrucci, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix to name a few.

He composes music in a wide variety of styles including Progressive, Rock, Pop, Blues and Funk.

He is thankful to Paul Gilbert and John Petrucci for creating music their way and also making the secrets of their craft available for his own interpretation. According to him, these two have made him look at learning music and the guitar from a completely different perspective.

Gear

A/J’s favorite Axe so far is a Fender Stratocaster. According to him something happens when he picks up his Strat and what comes out is more melodious than the rest. His Strat is mounted with Fender Noiseless pickups.

In addition to this he also creates music on a Gibson Les Paul and an Ibanez. Strange mix though it sounds but his pursuit of both classic and modern tones has led to gravitate towards more than one kind of axe. On the acoustic, he simply trips on Takamine guitars.

Regarding amps and effects, while he currently experimenting with a Marshall Haze and Vox amps, since he’s still not got a fix on choice of rig, he prefers to run through a Line 6 X3 Live which gives him some of the best amp models and effects in the chain. Add to that this board also gives him the flexibility of mounting and performing independently on a dual rig. His amp is mostly based of monitor amps which can faithfully replicate the sounds from the pedal board without any coloring.  

Current quest

While digital music is on its way to changing the how the music industry operates, A/J is actively looking for a label to release the first set of his creation into an album which needs the recognition it deserves by being available online and offline.