Meet Ishita Sinha

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ishita Sinha.

Ishita, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I’m from Patna, Bihar in India. My father is a film exhibitor, so I was raised on movies and Indian music. I started learning Indian Classical Music at the age of 6. After high school, I went to Sriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra in New Delhi to study it further, this time with only music as the focus. While in Delhi, I started exploring Film Scoring by listening to scores from Hollywood movies.

Music in movies had always fascinated me and even as a kid I would listen to songs over and over again and try to hear what was going on behind the melody. I decided to go to Berklee College of Music to study Film Scoring. There I also got to be a part of the Berklee Indian Ensemble. It was a class offered at Berklee, but soon we started doing professional level shows and recording sessions with artists such as A. R. Rahman, Shankar Mahadevan, Clinton Cerejo and Vijay Prakash. During this time, I also got opportunities to be featured as a soloist on these shows and sessions.

I came out to LA for the first time in Summer of 2016 to intern at Hans Zimmer’s Remote Control Productions studio. At the end of 2016, I finished my studies at Berklee, and moved to L.A. in early 2017. That first year I did as many composing gigs as I could possibly fit into my schedule. I interned at Chris Lennertz’s Sonic Fuel Studios where I learnt about the business side of running a music production studio. I assisted violinist Lili Haydn while she was working on the Netflix documentary “Feminists: What Were They Thinking”. I also assisted TV composer Tree Adams and got to work on “The 100” (The CW & Netflix) and NCIS: New Orleans. While working with Tree Adams, I also recorded solo vocals for the score of “The 100”, which was an incredible opportunity! During this time, I started working as an orchestrator for Nathan Wang on two Chinese features – “Namiya” and “The Faces of My Gene”. I used to work at Tree’s studio during the day and come home at night and orchestrate for Nathan from my home studio.

I wanted to do my own projects and build my relationships with creatives from the industry as well. I scored three short films for director Saraswathi Balgam, composed the brand theme for Regent Theater (Patna, India), and worked with Lux Et Umbra, a production company based in Bangalore, to compose music for the projects they did with Nike, India.

Since late 2018, I’ve branched out to the other side of film music – music supervision. I now work as the music coordinator at a music library called MusicSupervisor.com, and as the music supervisor for a music production company. Being a music supervisor is exciting as I get to work with artists from around the world and get their tracks placed in film/television/visual media. Recently I worked as the music coordinator/editor for the upcoming indie feature “The Never List”.

Between all this, I also have been recording songs with producers from Facebook Sound Collection. I want to continue working as a vocalist and I’m grateful that opportunities like these let me do that. Being a vocalist is where it all began for me and continuing to work as one lets me stay grounded and reminds me of where I started, from a small city called Patna.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Being in any creative field is challenging in itself. We usually are our biggest critics. One of the biggest struggles I would say is gaining confidence in yourself and what you do. When you go to a school like Berklee, where everyone is immensely talented, it’s easy to start feeling insecure of your skills. It has taken me a while to try and find their root and deal with those insecurities. I’m still working on it, and I think it’s an on-going process for any artist.

I also struggled with really coming to terms with what I wanted to do. Since I went to college to study film music composition, that, without doubt, always seemed like the thing I wanted to do when I moved to LA. After working in the industry for a bit, I realized that I didn’t always want to write music all the time and that was okay. I was very much interested in the business and music supervision side of things and realized that I was getting good at it. So coming to terms with the fact that I was starting to move in a different direction in the music business, than what I had expected when I had first moved here, was a bit of an adjustment period.

We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
I do a few of different things within the field of music. At MusicSupervisor.com, I get to work with independent artists from all across the globe and get music placed in film and television. I am also the music supervisor at a music production company based here in LA. I work with our diverse team in seeking new projects and manage the library side of the business. As a music editor, I am really proud to have had worked on the upcoming independent feature “The Never List”.

My work as a vocalist is probably what I’m most known for. I was featured as a solo vocalist on Berklee Indian Ensemble’s cover of A. R. Rahman’s song, “Jiya Jale”. It garnered immense appreciation on YouTube and other social media platforms. With the Ensemble, I also performed multiple shows in Boston and in India. My original composition “Bhumi”, which premiered in one of these shows, has almost 250,000 views on YouTube now. I am also the solo vocalist on multiple tracks on Facebook Sound Collection, and on the background score of the popular The CW and Netflix series, “The 100”.

What were you like growing up?
I was really shy and reserved. I would rarely express myself and tell people what I thought or what I wanted; even with my family. Or even if I would open up to someone, it would take me a really long time to get there. I studied in a boarding school from fifth grade, all the way through high school. I remember feeling awkward all the time like I didn’t fit in anywhere. I remember wanting to do something about my awkwardness and the anxiety that came with it. One of my older sisters, who I thought to be really funny, had a lot friends. So, I slowly started using humor to feel a little less awkward, and I still do that.

Interest wise, I was always learning music. That, too, helped me feel less nervous. After high school, when I wanted to go study music in New Delhi, it was a big deal for my parents. They weren’t sure if I’d be able to take care of myself and even fixed a personal cab for me, if I needed to go anywhere. I was talking to them recently about that, and they said that it’s hard for them to believe that I live and work in LA now. Sometimes when I stop and reflect back on where I first started, I realize what a crazy ride life has been. 

Contact Info:

• Website: ishitasinha.com
• Email: ishita@musicsupervisor.com
• Facebook: @isinha1989
• Instagram: ishita_sinha

Image Credit:
Nolan Eskeets, Prakash Simha, Anantha Srinivas Pawan Dommeti

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