RaagSethi: The multifaceted music creator with a panoramicvision
Evolving from an academic teacher, into a musician, music producer and a leading light for independent artists wanting to take their sound to the next levelRaagSethi,is a young super-achiever on the music scenario. Strongly individualist in his approach RaagSethihas gone on to set up Compass Box Studios, one of Ahmedabad’s distinctive music studios and has in a short span expanded his creator’s oeuvre collaborating with the country’s top music talent. In a detailed conversation with the wiz, IPRS brings forth his views on his personal growth as a creator and his take on taking Indian music to a global audience.
Q. What are your musical influences and your musical education?
A.I love listening to all kinds of music, from prog metal, contemporary jazz, neo-soul, indie acoustic, rock, Western classical, good music is genre agnostic according to me. I did a short minor in classical guitar performance in college, but that’s about the extent of my formal training in music; most of what I have learnt either on the guitar or from the technical side of music making with production or engineering has come through experimentation and YouTube.
Q. Tell us about your journey as a music composer. What is the kind of music you like to compose?
A.I end up co-composing a lotof the projects that I produce. I think one of the main reasons artists/labels approach me is because I work with the song the artist already has and tweak it so that we can make it into the best version of that as possible. In this process, we both work together towards a common vision of the song. When I’m composing by myself, it’s typically instrumental music since I don’t consider myself a very good writer or lyricist. But I do love making anything from jazz to modern Bollywood-type of music.
Q. What is your process as you go on to build a melody ground up?
A.Most people I know are typically compositionally top-down, where they start with the melody and build the song around that; I’m kind of the opposite; I usually start with the chords and the harmonic base of the song before trying out melodies to fit in that.
Q. You areknown for your analogue-style music production. What are the reasons behind this working style?
A.Since my very first production, I’ve always tried to capture and record acoustic instruments in a space rather than relying too much on VSTs and MIDI. There are 2 main reasons for this. Since I don’t come from an educational background in production, my MIDI knowledge and workflow is fairly elementary. The other reason is that I have a studio, so only if it’s an instrument or a layer I can’t record acoustically, will I use MIDI/VSTs; otherwise, I’ll do my best to capture sounds the old-school way.
Q. Tell us of any dream collaboration that you would be looking forward to being a part of and why?
A.There are so many to choose from! As part of the band Heat Sink, we got to work with AR Rahman and Clinton Cerejo for the Nexa Music IP, so that’s one big collaboration checked out. Would love to work with some movie directors to get into film music; working with Amit Trivedi is also on my list!
Q. What is your take on fusion music as a creator?
A.I’ve actually produced and worked on a fusion thumri project, with time signature changes, modulations, and just a whole lotta fun. I feel with fusion it’s a fine line between sounding fresh and new, and sounding derivative and safe. Fusion music should be about pushing artistic boundaries.
Q. What is your benchmark of success as a creative musician?
A.Honestly, for a long time, I was under the impression that numbers and metrics are the mark of a successful musician. While those are undoubtedly important in the process and especially the consistency of being in the music industry, the mark of a successful musician is to make music completely ignorant of the trends, and if it sticks, it sticks; if it doesn’t, do you change who you are as a musician to fit the global music trends? I feel a lot of musicians constantly ask themselves that; there is no right answer to that. Success can be fame, success can be honest art, and sometimes it can be both— which is the goal.
Q. Can you tell us the core ideas behind your setting up The Compass Box Studio?
A.I started Compass Box Studio late in 2018, and released the first project that I produced in 2019. The original idea for the space was to make it into a jam room; there weren’t enough good-quality jam rooms in Ahmedabad at the time, so it felt natural to make something akin to that. As I started the build process, a friend recommended that I add the wiring for a studio anyways since it wasn’t too much of an additional cost, and that’s how Compass Box Studio was born. I created a brand-new state-of-the-art space in late 2023, which is a much larger studio with a 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos mix room powered by Neumann.
Q.You have been a great supporter of independent artists. Can you reveal more about your interest?
A.We started a series called the Compass Box Live Sessions on YouTube as a means of discovering new indie talent, regardless of genre, style, or language. Think of it as a NPR Tiny Desk or Coke Studio, but for indie artists. I realized that there aren’t enough platforms supporting grassroots indie discovery and support, which is why the work I do at Compass Box is centered around the indie scene. Of course, there are label and commercial projects we do, but our passion is working with indie artists.
Q.Does your experience in teaching help you pick emerging talent when you come across one? Please elaborate?
A.I don’t know if it particularly helps, but the patience that comes with the picking process clearly comes from teaching 🙂
Q. How do you see the future of independent music in India through the lens of the global stage?
A.Indie music has become sort of a buzzword lately; there have been some big movie projects that have relied on indie artists to come and change the shape of the ‘Bollywood’ sound with some success. I know a lot of labels are trying to export the indie music sound to an international stage, just like how K-pop became a global phenomenon; people in the industry are trying to replicate that model so that Indian music can have a global impact. We still are a long way away, but the work is being done to highlight independent talent in this country and give them the support and tools to be successful.