The Creators | Shorthand

Kartik Sundar, Class of 2020

The Creators will be fortnightly series of artist profiles of Ashokans who are actively involved in different creative fields including music, photography, creative writing, and visual or performing arts.

They might be some of the most humble and down to earth people you’ll meet, but when you hear them play live, Shorthand is a whole other animal. Hearing them at The Piano Man Jazz Club was an experience. The intensity with which they play is only matched by the happiness they exude from their performance. Seamlessly transitioning from lighter, mellow elements to heavy, headbang-worthy ones, the band lives up to its self-described “free genre” tag. Each member comes from a different musical background and this diversity only enriches their uniqueness.

When I heard their rendition of John Lennon’s classic, “Imagine”, their ability to turn it into something particular to themselves instantly grabbed my attention. Listening to one of their original compositions, “One Mic Stand”, made me appreciate their attention to detail. The instrumental precision and synergy with Govind on bass, Abhinav on guitar, and Prithvi on drums, all come together with Sreya’s stunning vocals. When Sreya sang Beth Hart’s “Am I the One”, I could feel the emotion from across the room. Her performance was so strenuous and intense that she had to take a break for the next song, wherein the remaining members performed their stunning take on a jazz instrumental called “The Chicken”.

I sat down with Shorthand last Sunday afternoon for a small chat about their journey to this point as well as their plans for the future.

Kartik: The first thing I wanted to ask was how did this iteration of the band come about?

Abhinav: We had this band called Pineapple Acid in our first year. From the four of us, just Govind and I were in that band. As we got to the end of the first year, our drummer, Aashna, wanted to focus more on her studies. Then, we saw Prithvi performing when the new batch came in. We thought, “Damn that’s a good drummer. We should get him”.

Prithvi: I remember I was at some Ashoka outreach event when I first met one of them. They came to me and started talking about Porcupine Tree for some reason, and I was like “Oh, that’s cool. Do you guys have a band?” The way they spoke about it, it sounded like the band was legit, and I was like, that’s good. When I came here, there was an open mic thing, and all the first years wanted to impress each other. I thought the only thing I can do is play drums, so I’ll just do that. That’s where they saw me play.

We started off slow as a band. We wrote a song in like two weeks after we met and went to Jindal’s fest. It turned out pretty decent for a first song.

Later, I remember talking to Sreya’s roommate, and that’s how I came to know about her. I was told she was a very good singer. I heard her sing, and I was like, “Why is she not in the band?” So we got her on board. And, after that, I think we came third the first time we played together at Jindal.

Abhinav: But our sound was pretty empty. [Govind] had his bass, and I had my electric. But I didn’t have any fancy equipment — just one distortion pedal. All I had were two sounds — clean and dirty. That’s all I could do. Govind didn’t even have that [equipment]. He just had these knobs on his bass. Suddenly, he’d have to start turning the knobs and changing the sound. It was very bleak and empty sounding at the start. It just started as something we did for fun, really.

Kartik: Where did the name come from?

Sreya: We had kind of a weird phase when we went to Jindal, as we said, for the competition. We didn’t have a name, so we came up with a really shitty on-the-spot name; it was Big Yellow Balloon.

After that, I remember sitting down for many hours, many sessions, and we would just suggest stuff. There was never a name that all four people liked — at least one person hated any name that was suggested. But we couldn’t have a band name that even one person hated. At one point, I just started saying words; one of the words I said was Shorthand. And everyone was like, “Yeah, okay”.

Govind: The other one was Filter Coffee.

Sreya: Yeah, the other one was Filter Coffee. I guess, Shorthand kind of stuck. In my mind, once you know that your music is out there and people really respond to it, they enjoy it, they start associating your band name with your music. For example, Porcupine Tree doesn’t really mean anything. You know, you get a very different picture. I guess that’s the idea; at some point, people will start associating “Shorthand” to the kind of music that we play.

Abhinav: And that ridiculous name, you know, Big Yellow Balloon, it came up literally because there was a big yellow balloon floating in the sky at Jindal. Govind saw it, and said, “Fuck this. Let’s just call it [the band] Big Yellow Balloon.” About five minutes before we went on stage, he came up with that name.

Kartik: You guys have a lot of original compositions. What’s the process like? How do you guys go about creating new songs?

Prithvi: A drummer’s contribution to song-writing is often very limited. It usually comes at the end. But there’ve been times I’d come up with these grooves that I [wouldn’t] know what to do with. I’d record them and send them to Abhinav. I think for one of the songs, there was this groove I’d written. It’s called “Devoid” — and there’s this intro groove that I’d written quite a while back. So, I would just play this groove, and [Govind] would play it in his room and come up with a bass line. Then Abhinav would write all these parts and just…arrange it really well. A lot of our songs have stemmed from the drums, and that kind of…gives them some sort of backdrop from where they can take off. It allows me to really create a groove that actually translates into a full-fledged song. I think I’m very lucky to have that.

Abhinav: Right now, it’s been from all over the place, mostly from the three of us (Abhinav, Govind, and Prithvi). We found it easier to begin with either the drums, or Govind has some idea. They’ll jam and come up with something. I also have several hundred songs tucked away. So we just bring some idea in and then gauge the reaction of everyone else. It changes a lot even after you get the idea there. Everyone is pulling in a different direction. That’s been our constant experience, in a nice way! You know, you compromise and reach a place where you’re comfortable.

What we’ve been wanting to do is actually have Sreya way more involved from the start, which is something very hard to do. We have to figure out how the hell you get a song to begin with the vocalist. How do you get the vocal melody first? What we’re doing now is very different. We’ve been sitting down and talking about what we want to do on the latest song [that we’re writing].

Sreya: Generally, people bring in ideas, and we go by feel and see where it goes. How that works for me is that, we all sit down and discuss: “okay, this is gonna be the verse, and this is gonna be the chorus”. [We] essentially lay down the basic structure of the song. While they’re figuring out transitions from one part to another, I’ll record it and sit in another room — one of the classrooms. Just listen to it and write down the lyrics. The lyrics and the vocal melody come to me at the same time. So, in one way, the lyrics come after the music. That’s fine because I think they (Abhinav, Govind, and Prithvi) are inspired by the mood, and I kind of take it in a different direction, or give it a voice. It would be challenging to start it with words.

Kartik: You guys were recording in Bombay a while back. What was that experience like, the studio?

Sreya: I think the experience is very different for everyone.

Govind: Recording in the studio is a big challenge. We had a good thing going before we went to Bombay. Played a few gigs in Bangalore, and we thought, “Haan, we’re all good musicians”. But recording in the studio is like looking at yourself in a magnifying mirror. You can see all the small blemishes on your skin. You think that you can nail this part in one take — from beginning to end. You realise in the studio that you really can’t do that. Even the simplest of parts, you’ll make so many mistakes in playing it again and again. It’s like you see yourself as much, much worse than you actually are. So you play the same part five times, six times, ten times.

I remember one song we were recording — it’s one of our oldest songs — and I wrote that bass line. “Yeah, I’ve written this bass line and I’ll do it in one take.” But it’s the same thing: repeating again, and again for a good two and a half minutes. It just… really got to me. Because, one note would just be a little bit off. I would think that, “Oh, I thought I could play this, but clearly I can’t”. It’s an interesting experience. Reflecting on yourself and seeing how good or bad you are as a musician. Does it even mean that you are good or bad? So, questions that like came up.

Sreya: When we [were] in the studio, we were there from morning to night; inside the studio, you don’t know whether it’s day or night. I think some people respond to that. I think Prithvi plays equally well in the studio and outside. Abhinav can sit there for hours. There’s no circadian rhythm; you don’t know what time of day it is. For me, it was really stressful. I don’t like listening to myself. That’s a big drawback as a vocalist because if you can’t listen to yourself on record, then you don’t know where you’re messing up and what you’re doing right. The thing about vocal recording is that if you are tired or hungry or sleepy, it comes into the song. You can hear it. For me, the biggest challenges were one, hearing myself back, and two, trying to get that energy and that emotion out when there was no crowd, and there was no one responding. You are behind a glass, in a room all by yourself. I actually asked them (the other three) to leave, so that they wouldn’t be sitting outside and watching while I was recording.

Govind: That’s why vocalists are such trouble.

(They all laugh.)

Abhinav: That’s the interesting thing we found; for both of them (Govind and Sreya), they feed off of the crowds while on stage. To deliver the same intensity of emotion in the performance on a recording was really hard for them. They had to really dig it out. Whereas for Prithvi and I, it felt like this natural habitat where we were really happy. You know, Prithvi’d scurry off into that little drum booth and play some part and then he’d get all excited. He’d come back and listen to it, and if there was something he didn’t like, he’d go back and do that a hundred times.

Even I enjoyed watching him doing that. It’s not just [recording] your own part, but watching each other, watching other people do it. For both of us, that was a lot of fun.

Sreya: Also, I think you hear the song a different way [in the studio]. You hear each part in isolation, and you hear what the other person hears — from their perspective. Now, I know what the song sounds like to Govind, so I know from where he’s coming from. That was actually very exciting.

Prithvi: Two things really stood out for me. One was that if we did this six or eight months ago, it wouldn’t work. Because you can’t escape these faces for eight hours: the idea of being okay with each others’ presence in the room and having that level of comfort hasn’t been there throughout. This band didn’t start with a click where four people just got together and the chemistry was there. This was one thing that we really worked on. So, that’s one.

And, as a drummer: personally, I’ve always enjoyed listening to longer forms of music — listening to songs that are ten to fifteen minutes long. So, the idea of having multiple transitions and playing them through repeatedly kind of feels natural for me. And unlike, say Abhinav, who likes to write down his parts, I don’t. I leave a lot to feel and improvisation. There’ll be sections in a song where, for some eight bars, I don’t plan anything. Being a drummer, it’s also good because you are in this room and it doesn’t even feel like you’re in a studio. I felt like I was in my room, because even in my room I’m in an enclosed space with no one entering. In the studio, it’s the same. They can’t enter the room while I’m playing. I didn’t feel any pressure because I was inside a room. The moment that you enter [that room], you have the headphones on; it’s like the world is cut off. I don’t think they (the rest of the members) had that luxury.

Abhinav: And I’ve gotta say, there were some magical moments for Prithvi especially. There’s some insane things that he did on the spur of the moment. That is quite exciting to just witness and listen to.

Sreya: Honestly, when we talk about it in retrospect, it’s super-exciting to have a track that you can share. But, man, you have to have a lot of patience! A lot of the times, it’s kind of…boring? I feel like people should know that it’s a long painstaking process that happens over hours.

Abhinav: A lot of it is waiting for other people!

Sreya: It’s waiting for other people. It’s really listening to the part again and being like, “should we add this?” Abhinav’ll wanna add this…

Govind: Vibraphone.

Sreya: …vibraphone thing, and we’re like, “We don’t want it.” And you spend fifteen minutes discussing that. It’s not as glamorous as performing live, I think.

Kartik: About the gig you had around Thursday at Piano Man: Prithvi told me it was a six month process to eventually land it. How did you guys finally land that?

Prithvi: I remember, eight months ago was the first time I sent a Facebook message to Piano Man. We didn’t get a reply for like four months. We just forgot about it; we thought we probably weren’t good enough. Then, we played at Depot48 in May 2017; after that, we somehow sent the Piano Man people a message and our recorded stuff. Two months later, we got a reply. This gig was a long time coming. In that, it was a painstaking process to get it.

Abhinav: But I think it came at the right time.

Prithvi: Yeah, we didn’t have good recording, so I don’t think it’s a surprise that it took us eight months. I think now, if we had to do a show at a high profile venue, say in Bombay or Bangalore, it’d be much easier because studio recordings accurately portray our ability. I don’t think the recordings we [had] even came close to showing how good we were. It often painted a pretty bad picture.

Govind: This getting-it-in-eight-months made us realise one thing. I was discussing this with Abhinav yesterday; it’s not enough to be a good musician. We’re all good musicians; we’re good at what we do, but it’s just not enough. You gotta be able to network.

Sreya: Yeah, you go on merit, but you have to impress people, and they’ll have to want to help you. You have to be okay with asking for help and taking their help.

I guess, the last few months [have been] kind of a transition period for us: moving from being a college band or a band that does this as a hobby or as a passion, to actually wanting to be professionally in this. One of the things has been to think about everything else, apart from the music. You can’t afford to just focus on the music. There’s stuff that should happen on the side: marketing, social media, recording, releasing your music, meeting people, actually attending gigs. Things like that. I think Piano Man came as a result of playing, putting ourselves out there, networking, and being a little relentless and resilient.

Kartik: I remember, at the performance, you described yourself as a free genre band. Could you talk a little more as to what that means to you, and what kind of different music you try to incorporate into it?

Govind: [Sreya]’s trained in the Carnatic tradition, and I’m through-and-through a blues man. I’ve had metal influences and all, but when I really learned to play the guitar — when I learned guitar theory and all that — it was through the medium of blues. Prithvi has been into prog and all — nu jazz, Snarky Puppy sort of stuff. And Abhinav has sort of a metal background; he’s grown up learning how to play metal, really heavy rock songs. Now, he’s into jazz.

Abhinav: Yeah, it’s weird because I grew up on otherwise heavy music. One band who’s template I love is Alter Bridge because I feel that’s where melody and rhythm come together. I think that’s what we are always looking for, in general. At the core, you need to have a melody that anyone can relate to — a simple enough rhythm for people to catch on to. Despite listening to all that heavy music, it’s strange that most of the music I write is very jazzy, funky, and very out-there, weird. I don’t even know how to describe it, but it’s very different from what I grew up listening to; influenced but somewhat disconnected. All of us come from very different [musical] backgrounds.

Sreya: It’s interesting because we are also equally involved in the songwriting process; we contribute very different feels in a song. Even within a song there’ll be parts that are light and parts that are heavy. There’s a nice symbiotic relationship between the two things. It’s not like we feel forced to stay within one genre. There are people who do that, and they’re great. It’s like being a classical musician: you just play that, and you have to be good at it. I guess we like the freedom of having a free genre. We wanna be ourselves in our music rather than try and be somebody else and not do it right.

Prithvi: I think that’s very important. We say free genre borrowing from these influences like prog, and jazz, and blues. But if we really were any of them, we’d have to have a lot more virtuousity.

Kartik: What would be your major influences as individuals? Or just favourites? Bands, songs.

Prithvi: I really like bands like Porcupine Tree, Neal Morse. I like Robert Glasper, and stuff like Snarky Puppy. Also, softer stuff like Julian Lage. Some more jazz kind of guys. I’ve never been into metal. Porcupine Tree — that’s as heavy as I’ve listened to in my childhood.

Abhinav: I grew up on typical things any Indian rock fan grows up on. So, I had Guns n’ Roses, Metallica, and Iron Maiden. [I’m] also a gigantic Linkin Park fan but only the first two albums — not Reanimation, that doesn’t count! I wasn’t into their later stuff either. After that, I started listening to a lot of Alter Bridge; Mark Tremonti is my favourite songwriter. Then there’s the heavier stuff — Lamb of God, this band called Killswitch Engage — as heavy as it sounds. Right now, one of my favourite bands is Mastodon. I’ve also always had a soft spot for 80s ballads!

What I found common in all of this was that all of these bands have a very clear core of melody. Even if something might be too heavy for most people to listen to, there’s something great, rhythmically, about it. That’s what I’ve always had going on in all the music I listened to. When I came to Ashoka I actually hadn’t heard Porcupine Tree before, and in my first year I think Govind introduced me to them. That’s when I started listening to Steven Wilson as well, and Snarky Puppy. Then we had these overlapping interests because we swapped music. Especially Prithvi: he’s always got something new he’s listening to. He’ll just send us a link and make us listen to stuff.

Govind: Abhinav and I were roommates in our first year, and we listened to a lot of Alter Bridge. I think, now, that was one of the first things I asked him. I think I saw his Facebook cover photo or he saw mine. It was an Alter Bridge album cover, and we were just like, “Hey”. So, we listened to a lot of Alter Bridge. That has been one of my favourite bands.

I like music that is not so simple but masks itself as very simple. John Mayer’s guitar licks and rhythm patterns, for instance. You’ll listen to him and be like, anyone can play this. That’s what I thought when I first picked up “Slow dancing in a Burning Room”. In fact “Stop This Train” took me all of six months and a little more to learn! When I tried learning it, I was like, “Damn, it’s not as easy as it seems”. Then, I started listening to him, and he does that in every single song. Someone like Mark Knopfler as well, who makes it looks so simple to pick with his fingers, but it’s not that easy. There’s band called Lake Street Dive that I got super into. We even did a song by them at Piano Man. For me, anything that is creatively… different but that sounds very relatable and simple to someone who is not a musician or not into very complex music — I really like that.

Then, Porcupine Tree and Steven Wilson really matured my taste in music, getting me interested in complex patters; my playing has been heavily influenced by their music.. The Beatles are a huge influence on what is going on. I told you I was a blues man so I really like B.B. King and Clapton too. And heavier stuff too,I used to listen to a lot of metal. I had a big Lamb of God phase and Metallica, obviously.

Sreya: Wow. I think that I’m on a further end of all spectrums because I never had a metal phase. I feel like, if you look at my iTunes, you’ll be really confused about what I like because there are so many different and sometimes opposing influences. I have a classical (Carnatic) background. I love listening to Hindustani music — instrumental, vocalists also — I find it beautiful. I’m a dancer, so I respond to very different kinds of music. Also, I enjoy listening to Bollywood. Some of the music is great — raga-based anything. Anything with a good beat. I’ve always enjoyed some amount of relatable…percussion? That really works for me. So, there’s this popular music thing that I do dip into.

On the other hand, I really, really love bands that are vocal-driven. After coming here, I’ve really come to like Snarky Puppy and people that they collaborate with. Becca Stevens. I like Jacob Collier. He’s amazing. There’s people like Beth Hart, Amy Winehouse, Ella Fitzgerald, Hiatus Kayote. All these really diverse things. For me, it’s always just to keep seeking out new music. I recently found this woman called Rokia Traoré. She’s Malian. As long as the music feels good, or emotionally feels right, then I really respond to it. I like to keep it interesting.

Kartik: You guys have new music coming up, since you’ve been recording. Three of you are fourth years, and one a third year. So, what’s in it for you in the future, in terms of releasing music and continuing playing?

Sreya: Well, we are planning to go ahead with the band. Prithvi will most likely be in Ashoka doing his fourth year. And we will be around and find some sources of income and accommodation. We’re not sure; there are a lot of things we need to worry about, in terms of where, what form do we wanna release the songs: all of them at once? Do we wanna release them as singles? We still haven’t completely finalised on anything.

Abhinav: We’ve finished one song, top-to-bottom — “No Surprise”. That song should be ready, including a video that Prithvi’s dad helped us make; he actually shot the video himself, in the studio, and edited it. That was great. The song and the video should be up within a month or two. I can’t give a concrete date.

Sreya: But we are very excited about sharing it.

Abhinav: And there are another two songs that we recorded at that time.

Prithvi: We’re getting them mixed and mastered. We’ll have these three songs, but do we put them out as singles, EPs? Do we record [more] and put them out as one album? Those are decisions we need to make. But it’s good that we have them with us because now we feel like we can send them to venues that are bigger, scale-up as a band into bigger things, and not remain constrained to the city or small venues. That’s what’s more exciting, the immediate ramifications of having studio recordings. It’s scaling up as a band.

Abhinav: Till now the great thing is the feedback we’ve got, both from crowds at venues and even from other professional musicians we opened for. For example in Bangalore, we played at Blue Frog. We opened for this band called Moksha, and there were a lot of big musicians there.

Sreya: They responded really well.

Abhinav: That really made us feel good. From both crowds as well as musicians, it’s [positive feedback] equally important. If you go around playing music that’s complex, you gotta relate it to the layperson.

Sreya: Release plan, I don’t know, but it’s good to have these recordings on hand. We’re planning to get some more made in the near future. Everyone should stay tuned for “No Surprise”; that’ll be out next month.

Abhinav: And we’re really proud of it.

Hearing them speak just made me appreciate musicians that much more. The amount of effort that goes into their craft is something we all take for granted. Shorthand are modest, but undoubtedly spectacular. To anyone who is yet to see them live, you’re sorely missing out. With new music and several gigs in the pipeline, keep an eye out for their rise.