The Score Magazine January 2020 | Page 36

I started learning music first from Pandit Bhavani Shankar, a Pakhavaj maestro. Later, I learnt Tabla from him. I was very fascinated with multi percussions. He is the one who sent me to Ustad Taufiq Qureshi. It has been twelve years since O started learning from him and the learning is still ongoing. When I started playing with my father, I used to play in Orchestra, Dandiya and so on. It started from Rs.300 per show and the duration of the shows were six to seven hours. I used to play small percussions. I had done a lot of Navrathri shows. I got to explore a lot of genres through this from Bhajans to Bollywood. My vision of looking at rhythms changed after I met Taufiq bhai. He has an expanded vision of rhythms. He says there is rhythm in everything. I am blessed to be his student. His guidance, techniques have helped me out a lot and still does. Elaborate on the techniques you learnt from your teacher Ustad Taufiq Qureshi His teaching process is such that it is very practical. In studio, I do lots of sessions and work in Bollywood. His techniques are very unusual. Say if he is given a song to be arranged, he wouldn’t follow a particular way of using percussions. If he feels a steel dabba can be used for eight bars, he would still use it. He always says not to keep your parts ready but the whole song should be in your head. His techniques have helped in both studio and live shows. Taufiq bhai has taught us to always look at the other instrumentalist’s hands to see what they are doing. In conversation with Percussionist & Rhythm Arranger Dipesh Varma Talk about your music journey and biggest learnings in your career When the journey started at the age of 13, when I was in school. My father is a singer. Since childhood I was attracted towards rhythms. I went to my father and told him I wanted to make a career out of this. He just told me I can perform with him during shows but asked me not to look for recommendations from him. He advised me to walk on my own path. 34 The Score Magazine highonscore.com Could you talk about your process of Rhythm Arrangement? Rhythm arranger is someone who designs the rhythm part of the song. This person has to look after what kind of percussions should be used in the song, frequencies to be covered. The song is given to the rhythm arranger. Sometimes there is a rough loop going on under the song for a reference or other times there is a structure ready. For instance, the composer would say he wants a break after the second verse of the song. Sometimes, there is nothing but the voice and melodic instruments. The rhythm arrange decides how many percussions are required. I did the song for Pritam from Bajrangi Baijan, the song Selfie Le Le. We had about twenty Dhol tasha playing, and above that I layered percussions. Sometimes only one person is needed and in such cases. I myself go and play for percussions part like in the song Aayat from the movie Bajirao Mastani. It depends on the vision of the composer and the kind of rhythms he is looking at. The job of the rhythm arranger is to make it bigger with his ideas. Few years ago, everything was done through programming. But now, I’m thankful to composers to have brought the live instruments back to the scene. These composers believe in the sound and texture. Tell us about your upcoming projects I recently released a track for Ganpati and it was my first as a composer. I had recreated the Ganesh aarti especially for Lalbaug Cha Raja and Times Music. I also recently did a track called Chumma Kizhi from the movie Darbar for music director Anirudh avichander. I’m coming up with few songs for Bollywood for the composers Vishal & Shekhar, Amaal Malik, Shankar, Ehsaan & Loy and Pritam. I am also coming up with my own single which is entirely based on Rhythms.