A sound change

Lakshman Parsuram at a live gig

Here's a brief insight into how a print newsroom functions. The reporters and photographers go out individually during the day to pursue stories in their specific beats. Then, in the evening, the editorial team comes into office to collate all this information and make sense of the day's news, which is presented to the reader the following morning. The two teams often work in silos. But sometimes, a member of the editorial team might make a shift to the reporting wing, and when that happens, this person has a distinct advantage. He or she already has an understanding of the editorial mind, and can thus frame a copy accordingly so that it doesn't have to be chopped and changed much subsequently.

Sanjay Das at a music studio

The reason behind giving you this insight is that it's much the same when a sound engineer takes a turn as a musical artiste, which is something that Mumbai-based Lakshman Parsuram will testify to. An audio engineer by profession, Parsuram recently released an EP called From a Room, which consists of his original music. The 33-year-old tells us, "Some things become easier when you know the engineering side of things. The process becomes faster. If I am writing a song and have guitar bits in mind, I know instinctively when two parts might clash. So, I end up writing something else instead of recording everything at one go and forcing things into place later on."

Lakshman Parsuram

This makes the process of reaching from point A to point B faster, agrees Sanjay Das, another Mumbaikar who made the shift from being an assistant engineer at a music studio to producing his own music under the moniker of Philtersoup, in 2018. "The number of experiments I have to do is less," he says, adding, "When you are learning sound engineering, you mess around with equipment and build on that experience."

Das also says, however, that a sound engineering background isn't an essential skill for an artiste, but the fact remains that both aspects of the music business feed off each other. The 25-year-old, who is now concentrating on making more of his own music, tells us, "When you are working as an engineer, you are playing a smaller role in a much bigger project. But when you are producing music, you are part of the vision yourself. You are at the source of the conceptualisation process. As an engineer, you aren't producing that much. But as a producer, you sometimes have to do both."

Which brings us back to the advantage that musicians with sound engineering experience have over those who don't, just like reporters with editorial knowledge, who have a better grip on framing their copies. Is it essential to be adept at both? Not really. But does it help? The answer is a definite yes.

Log on to: youtube.com (to listen to From a Room)