SoundWallah

I’d like to introduce you to SoundWallah, my new music production company. I’ve rolled up all my activity in composition, scoring, arranging, sound design, mixing and effects into SoundWallah. This project has taken a lot of time over the past five months and was the logical next step in my (long) transition back to full-time music.

My hope is to keep SoundWallah focussed on both simplicity and quality. I’m thankful for the excellent design work of Kris Morris at TooMuchGravy. Kris really meet the brief perfectly for a logo that was both elegant and evocative and has given SoundWallah an excellent visual impact as a fledgling “brand.”

The name, SoundWallah is inspired by the ‘wallahs of India – ChaiWallah, FlowerWallah, CableWallah. These guys overcome tremendous limitations and often display breathtaking ingenuity in delivering the products and services. Watching and talking to these wallahs, I learnt a lot about commerce, capitalism and creativity. It’s amazing and humbling to see what can be achieved when people’s need to sell outpaces their fear of failure.

The name SoundWallah brings my passion for sound and music together with a desire to deliver and not be held back by technical limitations. Being a musician in the digital age brings tremendous global freedom, to work and ship via the pipe that is the internet. But, that can also cage us, as new technologies develop and as we try to master all the tools available to us.

SoundWallah is about trying to simplify delivery. The internet is intricate and complex, but perhaps it is also as simple as a rickshaw – a tool for carrying goods, and at some times of the day a place to lean against and have a chat. The rickshaw analogy extends to thinking about the road, about journeys, about the ultimate question – where will the music take you?

The creation of SoundWallah is not going to change this blog. I don’t like it when people’s blogs become covert marketing campaigns. I have made small changes to some of the relevant about me pages. I will, occasionally blog about SoundWallah projects (like my solo album!). But, for the most part SoundWallah related stuff will just be a subset of the music posts regular readers are used to seeing. For anyone interested in finding out more about SoundWallah, there is a website, a twitter feed and soon, a mailing list.

Finally, I’d like to say another big thank you to my friends and family for their support, encouragement and patience. I’ve been slow to deliver on a number of projects because I couldn’t get my head around the commercial side of things. It’s one thing to have some good ideas, it is quite another to create the structures that will allow those ideas to become reality.

I’ve played musical almost all my life. But, SoundWallah is a biggest commercial, emotional and physical step I’ve taken towards publicising and selling my musical ideas. I hope you’ll join me on the road.