Today we’d like to introduce you to Somesh Das
Hi Somesh, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I grew up in Melbourne, Australia to an Indian immigrant family. I’m the only person out of all my relatives to be born outside of India to this day. I was encouraged and steered towards a more traditional South Asian career path and ambition of Medicine, however I started to naturally become increasingly drawn to music and performance. The power of music as a young teenager was transformative to my consciousness. When feeling lost, alone or disconnected from my surroundings, listening to music in my headphones gave my feelings, emotions and situations context and familiarity. Early on in my childhood I was exposed to a lot of late 90’s and early 2000’s Hip-Hop and R&B thanks to my older brother and family friends. Eminem, Jay Z, Snoop Dogg, Usher, Chris Brown and Rihanna were big early influences. As I became my own person in my early teens, it was a lot of singer-songwriter music that influenced me. The beginning of Ed Sheeran’s career and the + album was huge for me. The biggest inspiration of mine came from a deep dive of Coldplay in 2012 when I was 14. I had just started playing in a band in 9th grade for the first time doing mostly pop/rock and pop/punk covers of Green Day, The Fray, and a few of Coldplay’s biggest songs. During my Summer break, I bought a Live Coldplay album from the store, and it came with a DVD of their Live 2012 Concert Tour. The energy I heard from their live performances of songs like Yellow, Fix You and Paradise as well as more of their deep cuts definitively changed my life forever. Watching the DVD, and hearing Chris Martin and the band share their perspectives of their career, music and touring touched my soul like nothing I’d ever experienced before. The way Chris talked about music, his upbringing, the band’s chemistry, writing, and performing was the most connected I’d ever felt to an individual in my life. He was speaking my language, and then when I watched the performances of the band in Paris, Buenos Aires & Glastonbury with their now famed LED wristbands being synced to their music and worn by the crowd to act as a interactive light show captivated my dreams, my ambitions and my soul and to this day I am still driven and inspired by those moments to my core.
I was very fortunate to go a high school with a really solid music program, with some of Melbourne and Australia’s finest contemporary musicians acting as teachers in the program. Being able to learn about jazz and performance from them, as well as watching their own jam sessions in secret while I would skip PE transformed my understanding of music, and allowed me to see the different levels to skill, cohesion and harmony before my eyes. It. was also in this program that I was able to go on a 2 week trip to the USA with a few other music students and teachers, and see the music scene in New York at venues and performances such as the iconic Birdland Big Band, New York Philharmonic, Broadway, as well as witness masterclasses by students and faculty of Manhattan School of Music and Berklee College of Music. Those two weeks were imprinted on my being, and the level of musicianship, energy and diversity of entertainment I witnessed in the USA lingered in my mind the following years as I finished high school. Through this whole time, I was still focused on getting into medical school. However after taking a gap year at the end of high school, I had enough time and space to reflect, gig a bit more in Melbourne, busk a lot as a musician, and eventually decide to apply for music schools in the USA. Once I got accepted to my dream school Berklee College of Music and had my parents support, there was no looking back. I spent 2017-2022 studying Piano Performance, Film Scoring and Music Technology at Berklee. Beyond the specific classes and curriculum, the biggest takeaway from Berklee came from the over 100 nationalities represented in a pure music environment. I got to learn so much from the diversity of background, musical approach, strengths and weaknesses of my peers and teachers around me that I still reflect on regularly to this day. It is here where I really went deep into music and put in the majority of my 10,000 hours. The piano, production and engineering, and film scoring departments are so deep in knowledge and resources that I would spend 7 days a week, just about 52 weeks a year learning, trying, failing, getting back up again and throwing myself in the deep end. After I finished in 2022, I moved to LA at the beginning of 2023, and started working as a freelance pianist, music producer, recording and mixing engineer, and composer for picture. The entrepreneurial lifestyle is very challenging, especially when starting out, however I am lucky to have some great support around me, and some very talented and hardworking musicians, artists, engineers, and directors in my circle now that have helped me on my journey and am now starting to see progress and success towards my ultimate goals in the music industry and my life.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Getting to the point of being a full time professional musician and entrepreneur has not been smooth at all. It is tough. Covid interjecting the end of my time at College really messed up my sense of momentum and linear progress with networking and connections. Being a foreigner and having work restrictions as an international student, and VISA conditions to meet upon graduating has its fair share of struggles. The amount of friends and connections I had at Berklee that were talented musicians that would of probably moved to LA upon graduating in 2021, was significantly affected by Covid. Many of them finished their degrees through Zoom, and moved back to their home countries and cities after Covid really changed things. In the music industry, its all about connections and who you know. Its a bit of a ripple effect really. Once so many people drifted physically and inevitably socially and emotionally through Covid, that support circle in regards to my career ambitions and opportunities really shrunk. By the time I moved to LA at the beginning of 2023, there were very few people that I personally knew residing and working in LA, and there were even fewer people that really knew my strengths and weaknesses, and specific assets and range that I brought to the table as a pianist, producer, engineer or composer. It is still very much a struggle, but every month that goes by, I get to meet more people, and get the chance to make an impression, and thankfully some of these interactions are converting into great work opportunities and friendships that I believe can last a very long time.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am a pianist/keys player, music producer, mixing engineer, and composer. My ultimate career and life goals involve producing long term projects like full albums with artists, developing their sound, and then going on tours as the keys player/MD (musical director) with those artists. In the long term, I would also like to dive more into music for film.
As a contemporary pianist, I am trained in jazz and contemporary music styles, as well as classical, and am the touring keys player for new Rostrum Records artist: Dryboy. I am heavily influenced by Bill Evans, Hiromi, Robert Glasper, Frans Liszt, Claude Debussy. My knowledge of piano and harmony in the jazz and classical traditions also helped me land the job of transcribing the ‘Typical Of Me’ EP into the official songbook and sheet music for 2024 Grammy winning, jazz/classical/pop musician: Laufey!
As a music producer, I feel most comfortable working on singer-songwriter music. Artists like Coldplay, Ed Sheeran, Ben Howard and John Mayer have shaped me significantly. In addition to this, I love certain aspects of Hip-Hop, R&B and Soul Music such as Kendrick Lamar, Mac Miller, Dr Dre and his crew, Bruno Mars, Anderson Paak, D’Angelo & Hiatus Kaiyote.
In regards to my career in scoring for media, I was blessed to have been called up by Actor/Director: Daniel Augustin (HBO’s Rap Shit, Hulu’s How I Met Your Father), to score and produce music for his short series ‘Kinfolk’ at the end of 2023. The show aired at the end of 2023 on the ToughLoveSeries Youtube Channel which has 275,000 subscribers and counting, and the episodes have amassed over 100,000 views since it aired. The show’s pilot was also aired at the esteemed Tribeca Film Festival, and has been nominated in 7 categories in the 14th Annual Indie Series Awards show in LA for 2024. It was great being able to use a blend of my film scoring studies background with modern hip-hop and R&B production elements to whip up something truly unique for this brilliant, comedy series.
My speciality involves blending elements of the great music of the past, such as the Romantic and Impressionist eras, to the golden era of film and 20th century music, Jazz, the great bands of the past such as The Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Bee Gees, Queen, and the level of musicality, live instrumentation, skill and taste required, to modern music and younger artists and listeners. I have been told frequently that there is something almost cinematic or soundtrack like about most of productions, regardless of whether they are Hip-Hop, Indie/Alt Rock, or Pop.
I think what sets me apart from others is how deeply I’ve studied and developed my craft as a live musician and pianist with a range of eras and genres, and incorporated that into my biggest natural strength which is composition, arrangement and production for popular music and culture today. I’ve also studied and worked in mixing and recording engineering in depth. Therefore, just about every angle of original music, whether it be the songwriting, production, recording, post production, or live performance aspect is familiar to me, and a part of my thinking, feeling and decision making when working with other creatives in the music industry and the creation process.
Do you any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
Not exactly childhood, but my first time going to a Coldplay concert when I was 18 in 2016, a few months before I started college. It confirmed my dreams and life path for me – there was nothing else I wanted to work towards in my life.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.bluelotusrecords.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100067602730927
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_Eg3caBZSk4Vmb4Xb_rVHw
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/someshdas
