When I first began playing the guitar, the goal was to form a band, not learn music. I learned music because it was important for a band to know how to play music. Being in a band was my top priority in 2007. I remember forming Unsure/Uncertain with some of my engineering friends. We had 2 guitarists playing acoustic guitars (Vishwesh Shetty and I), one drummer (Mitesh Mudras) playing drums on a wooden stool, a chair, and one Hi-hat we bought by saving our allowances. We bought a second-hand bass guitar and forced a friend (Prashanth Chennoji) who knew how to play the guitar to play bass for us, cause finding bass guitarists for amateur bands was close to taking a peek inside a singularity. And we auditioned a lot of vocalists, but some were either creepy, not dependable, or into Bollywood music. Till we were looking for vocalists, I was playing rhythm guitars and singing, and I enjoyed singing quite a bit, but I hadn’t taken any vocal lessons, so I was pretty crappy. But that didn’t stop us from going on stage, being stupid, and doing what we loved. We kept entering local college band competitions and jamming every single week cause we dreamed and dared to work on it.
After 3 years of playing in the band, losing Vishwesh cause he wanted to play drums for another band and replacing him with a kick-ass new guitarist (Durvesh Pathak), we had transitioned from Punk to Rock to Progressive and written around 4-5 original songs. But my vocals hadn’t improved much, and everyone was frustrated that we weren’t making any progress. So, with extreme difficulty, I had to Step Down from being the frontman of the band. It all started here. By this time I had fallen in love with singing and wanted to learn how to sing well, but there was always the fear of failure and never being able to be good enough.
I remember 2 people’s words that kept my dream to be a vocalist alive. One was Shrreya Sen, who said, “Don’t listen to the world, you have the sweetest voice ever. Please don’t give up on singing.” The second person was Abhishek Pandey, who said, “Dude, you love singing right? Then fuck the world, you do what you love. Don’t give a damn about anyone.”
Continuing the story, we welcomed Abhishek Pandey as the new vocalist of Unsure/Uncertain. I focused on guitars and backing vocals, but there wasn’t much teamwork between Abhishek and me when it came to writing content together because Abhishek was a very lazy writer. This one time he sang the lines "I don’t know what I’m singing" cause he hadn’t written lines for our song yet.
For 2 years (2010-2012), I focused on guitars and backing vocals, but there wasn’t much improvement in my vocals. Unsure/Uncertain had become a tight band by then, with impressive vocals, an extremely tight drummer, my kickass compositions, Durvesh’s simple solos, and Prashant’s innovative bass lines. I continued writing my songs and wanted to start my own project and asked Prashanth if he wanted to play the bass. We formed a punk band called ‘Revolt For’. We asked Mitesh to play drums, be he had bigger offers from other bands and didn’t have the time or interest. In 2013 I figured out some vocal exercises and started training. I trained for an hour every day and in 2014 ‘Revolt For’ was ready to play in local band competitions. We approached a lot of drummers and found one who agreed to play for us. Revolt For became an extremely tight band within no time as we had a lot of experience.
In 2015 Prashanth said, “We need to get a new vocalist for ‘Revolt For’. You sing quite well now, you’ve improved your vocals tremendously from what they used to be, but they’re still not enough to kick ass on stage.” At this point, I wasn’t ready to ‘Step Down’. I had faith in my vocals, I knew I had figured out a way to improve my vocals and they were going to continue to improve. I had worked extremely hard for a year and the results were showing. I rejected Prashanth’s suggestion. I refused to ‘Step Down’. I told Prashanth, “I’m not going to step down this time, these are my songs, no one can sing them or do justice to them as I do. If you still want to get a new vocalist, let’s break off right here, I’ll take my songs and start something new all over again.” Prashanth backed down this time and we continued for another year. We produced ‘God Is Gay’ in 2015. ‘Revolt For’ broke off for a completely different reason later on. But, I wrote ‘Step Down’ because of what Prashanth said to me.
Yes, ‘Step Down’ was mainly written as a reply to Prashanth. All the lines, questions, and screaming in the song are for Prashanth. Prashanth always loved Abhishek’s vocals. And he was never able to appreciate my vocals or believe in the potential they had. Perhaps he wanted instant results and he wasn’t willing to wait till my vocals became better, because he was a kick-ass bassist. But if that was his intention, he should have just found better musicians and continued playing with them. He had no right to undermine my effort and demotivate me from achieving my dream of singing my songs, which he did. I wanted Prashanth to support me as a friend, but he disappointed me. His criticism and honesty hit me hard, so hard that I strived even harder for the next 2 years to improve my vocals. And let me tell you, if you train for 1 hour every day for 3 years straight, you go into sage mode like Naruto. You emerge with breathtaking vocals at the end of the tunnel.
So, this has been my journey from singing crappy vocals for Unsure/Uncertain to performing really good vocals for Just Suddenly. ‘Step Down’ is written for anyone who passes critical and honest comments without thinking about the effect it has on the person. If you don’t have something good to say, don’t say something bad either. Or use the ‘Sandwich Technique’, make sure you’re passing harsh comments responsibly. Learn how to communicate properly before delivering criticism. Not everyone is as strong-headed and gutsy as me to go against the world. Some people are gentle and timid and can take criticism very differently. I remember, Durvesh gave up guitars because of criticism for a while. He is not the brightest with original compositions, but nevertheless, he has potential and having been an underdog myself, I will continue to have faith in that potential, rather than be a critique and destroy his dream.
So, if anyone tells you, you shouldn’t pursue what you want to do, say ‘Fuck Off’ and go do your thing. Find something you love and give it your all. Don’t ‘Step Down’ no matter who says what. If not the best, you can at least become average at that skill. And being average for a while brings you to the top among at least a few hundred people. And that is local success, if not global success. And boy local success feels good enough. As of 2022, all my friends have given up music. I continued improving my skill as a guitarist and a vocalist. The years of training, songwriting, and learning have definitely made me a better musician than everyone else just because I continued playing while they gave up. It’s a classic Tortoise And The Hare story. Slow and Steady wins the race, cause talented people tend to give up sometimes. And when you don’t give up, you find success, as long as you keep Problem-solving. So, go do your thing. I’m sure you have the potential to do whatever you want in the world.
