Anish Nadh’s Blog

 I taught guitar to some friends and Cherian was one of them. He was completely tech savvy! He had the latest softwares, lime wire at that time! Took two days to download a video or an entire album! Cherian had them all. You ask for an album he gave you the entire discography with bootlegs!  I got Steve Vai, Dream Theater, Satch and everything! And Cherian had even more! He was willing to share and write them down for me. I also got some instruction dvds written and we practiced a lot! Cherian was into the whole death metal scene while I tried Vai on my Givson and it sucked!  I owe the bulk of my music education to the wealth of information that came from him! God bless him!  

 I got my hands on stone more dvds, thanks to Joshi. This included G3 live in Denver and Racer X live at Whisky a Go Go. I watched the former a million times that I had another back up for that dvd.  Gradually I was introduced to Eric Johnson, Eric Clapton, Dream Theater, Yngwie Malmsteen, Joe Satriani! I adored Steve Vai over all these artists. I liked that Vai was spiritually connected to the instrument. I discovered him through G3 series of concerts! 

National market was the hub of piracy. You could get copies of clothes, brands, electronics and also music! I went there to get some Adidas footwear and was window shopping, and inside there were some smaller shops selling belts and earphones and radio. They had MP3s and also VCDs. I browsed through them and saw one called Steve Vai, Alien Love Secrets. I bargained it down to ₹25 and the shopkeeper reluctantly let go of it! This was one of the guys that Joshi always spoke about, Steve Vai! I bought the CD and the way back home seemed too long.  I played it on our huge Sony Tv! There is was Steve Vai all painted in gold playing Bad horsie. I didn’t like the song. I was dumbstruck from the next song onwards. I’m looking forward to seeing and listening to Vai soon! 

Joshi took me to David’s house one day. I heard him practising. He also played some Racer X live at Whisky a Go Go dvd, on his computer. Joshi helped me get some of the dvds and wrote them for me.  I saw Yngwie playing with a symphony orchestra, but David didn’t want you share his rare music collection. I was mesmerized by the speed and accuracy with which Yngwie  played! The internet was not quick, it took about a week to download any video! I was upset that I couldn’t get Maalmsteen. Joshi gave me some more more dvds copied! And thanks to him I heard some amazing bands! 

 There was a small place that can seat about 50 people that served expensive coffee called Coffee House in Kammanahalli, near Kullappa circle! I went there every Friday evening, they had live music! The bands were amazing especially the band called claymen!  After a few visits there, a few of us friends mustered courage and played our first show there. We were called Stones Cry Out! It had Stephen and me in guitars and Johnin on vocals. We played some DC Talk there.  Coffee house was also frequented by amazing musicians, Naveen Thomas and David! These guys were so amazing that I wanted to play like them. 

The next week it was classes with Along. Satem introduced me to him in their mother tongue and I heard him say “talented”, they were talking about me.  Along started his classical guitar lessons with me and boy was he drunk. He didn’t stink as much but he was high as a kite. He was a good teacher, very methodical and talked highly of his teacher Kenny from BSM!  Along was very strict with the posture and technique yet he was patient. I did not have a classical guitar, I learnt to read notes again after those piano classes with Kaundinya, I was good at keeping time but not great at identifying notes.(I’m still struggling with that.). After lessons I would walk from shantinagar to Cathedrals to catch my bus. I still can’t believe that I walked this far with my guitar in my younger days! 

 Joshi took me to his teachers Along and Satem! We walked through the streets of Shanti Nagar and entered a half constructed incomplete building. Joshi showed me an old Hero Honda Splendor bike and said “Machaa he’s here” we had no phone. We had to make an appointment and just show up.  I met Satem that day! Along was not around. Joshi introduced Satem as the most amazing solo player who played Eric Johnson, Steve Vai and Satch! I was quite impressed with his playing.  They lived in an unfinished house lot of open windows, must’ve been very cold during winters. But Satem asked me to play on his guitar, and I did! He liked my playing and gave me a few exercises to do! I did them religiously! He said “Come next week, Along will teach you classical! And we’ll alternate classical and electric guitar”. I was thrilled to her this, I worked hard and never missed any class and waited for the next week for classes with Along!  

Guitar lessons with Ebi had to stop, as dad did not want to pay for it. So I asked Ebi, if I could teach at his music school sanctuary. In exchange he agreed to teach me for free. He also paid me ₹500 that time, it was a huge sum of money for a 16 year old. This was how I made some extra money to buy the signature guitar, a guitar bag and strings.  I taught the basics and learnt from Ebi all that I could. I learnt all the cool gospel open chords and more! Ebi also had a lot of guitars! He played Steve Vai’s guitar and also had a Taylor! I only taught here for a few months, I felt I was getting stuck in a rut and I was not paid enough compared to what I was bringing in. So I called it quits and went to Along and Satem after Joshi took me to them. 

 I had a year to prepare for my supplementary exam, but I somehow convinced my parents to buy me a guitar! I went to Chickpet and I got a Signature guitar. I used this guitar for my lessons with Ebi, Along and Satem. My Gibtone guitar now had a lot of cracks and it was fixed with araldite and glue.  The signature guitar was easy to play and I realised what a good guitar can do to your playing! I learnt fingerstyle guitar on this and it was easy to play compared to the Gibtone. I improved steadily, still remember playing send amazing chords and composing music.  Many many years later, a student borrowed this guitar and disappeared with it. That was the end of my signature guitar. 

 My dad was posted in St James, we moved to Kammanahalli. This was the place where I learnt music a bit more seriously. Joshi was round the corner, he introduced me to Ebi, and I started learning fingerstyle with him. I also was quite active with the church, teaching everyone to play the guitar there. Kammanahalli had a lot of Christian population, I heard guitars around the neighborhood, round the clock, suspended chords and singing Open the eyes and Light of the world! I wanted to learn it all!  I had flunked pu college and this was a blessing in disguise! I had all the time in the world! I practiced guitar almost for 8 hours everyday, I also played a lot of Diablo and enjoyed the music theme. 

 Cathedral PU college was where I honed my craft, I played in a few bands, attended concerts, a typical day for me e we would begin early. I almost always went to college with my guitar with one notebook inside the case. I didn’t enjoy the lessons learnt in class, I waited for the band practise to begin, I bunked with attendance. I lost interest in studies because I did not have strong basics in math and science subjects.  At cathedrals, I was exposed to amazing music, bands, concerts I even played a few! I tasted the rockstar cookie there. After I graduated, all this suddenly came to a halt! I began looking for new adventure. 

 Joey named our band Breed Species ADas the Joseph’s Christian fest required us to not reveal the college name. Joey didn’t feel like any popular gospel song was worth covering, so he wrote one, taught me the bass part, that was groovy! I practiced till my fingers went red and purple and during the show, I played with blisters on my fingers!  The show ended with a duet, the most feared acoustic duet, that won all the competitions. Alex on vocals and Joey making all the guitarists there feel worthless. Needless to say, we won that competition and my college test scores lost!

Thermal and a Quarter was launching their album, Jupiter Cafe, and were playing a gig at music world. So Joey and I walked down to Brigade Road. I did not understand the Bangalore rock vibe back then. But I remember them to be very groovy and not Metallica or Maiden like!  What made me love the band was the vocalist Bruce, played complex guitar parts and sang at the same time! I didn’t expect that level of musicianship! I was thrilled when I heard the band was named after Three malayalees and a quarter malayalee.  After the show, I met the then guitarist Rajesh, who refused to sign the autograph and years later I was quite happy he was not in this band anymore. I bought their album “This is it” years later when I could afford the album. I think of them as the best band Bangalore has ever produced! 

Joshy was another friend from Cathedrals, my junior! He was a huge fan of Joey! (who isn’t) We bonded over our common language Malayalam! He loved music and never seemed to get the rhythm right, but he worked his ass off practising 5 hours a day, filling his books with notes and tabs.  He took lessons with Ebi and was suddenly playing finger style. Joey never really taught me how to play finger style, but Joshy was willing to share. He even introduced me to his teachers, Ebi, Along and Satem. I learnt music from all of them! They helped me get my techniques and theory in place.  Ebi taught me jazz chords and some fingerstyle classical music, Along taught me to read music and Satem taught me how to play electric guitar! These guys were masters! I will write about them later!  I am indebted to Joshy for leading me to the right teachers! Though he was an engineering student, he ended getting a sales job at Reynolds! And like any pure Malayali does, he moved to Dubai! The last l heard was

I had a class mate, from my hometown! Avinash, he was quite a metal head! Though he never had a music talent, he accompanied us to all the shows that we did as a roadie! He carried our guitars pedals and cables! Once I saw saw him writing some notes in a hurry, and on closer look I noticed he was writing “For whom the Bell Tolls” by Metallica, trying to remember the lyrics.  His parents were not happy with his choice of music, and that made him pursue it more. I even visited him in Kerala, after he left college and I lost touch! It will be amazing to meet him someday! 

I learnt to play the 4 finger G chord from Joey. We hung out a lot during my second year at cathedrals. Joey had some peculiar quick food remedies. Egg puff sandwiched between buns, raw Maggi with the added masala! He was quite some character. Coloured hair, the girls loved him.  He knew how to play and improvise a solo and always strived to improve his abilities without copying any one. His playing is unique to this day.  Joey was also a perfectionist he didn’t like it when I missed the F# note during his solo! He kept yelling F# at me and I still didn’t know  where it was at Bishop Cottons fest. We ended up winning it anyway! Joey always saved the day when it came to fests. We hung out in between after I left college and shared our love for Mr Big and Extreme. 

 Brigade Road had two wonderful shops for all the music needs. We could listen to an album right there before we purchased the album. The albums were priced very high! Most students couldn’t afford it! But I managed to purchase Eagles and Iron Maiden cassettes from there. I also had a Sony Walkman that became my companion through my long journey to college and back.  Music world and planet M also hosted bands, Taaq and Galeej Gurus! I loved these shops to while away time! But, they eventually closed down after the download - Lime Wire software came into picture. 

 I finally had my guitar, now it was time to be in a band! Having the guitar, I was in, but there was a better guitar player! Joey. So there was an agreement made, I would be in the band, if Joey can use my guitar, I can play the bass and be in the band.  We played Papa Roach, Nativity in Black, the Ugly Kid Joe version and Joey’s signature finger style blues! Joey was amazing on guitars! We ended up winning every competition we played. We won the rockstar status in college, we bunked classes with attendance!  I just carried my guitar to college with a rough book in the guitar case. I spent a lot of time practising, watching, listening, learning all the music from Joey and friends. Joey and I hung out a lot, at brigade. We also went to a few shows together. He also lent me his music cassettes, where I heard Mr. Big, Ugly Kid Joe and Extreme. These artists became part of my everyday listening. 

 My first year at cathedrals was quite crazy, I joined the mad ads team! And I could act really well. But it was when I played guitar, I realized I was the best among my peers. So I decided to play a lot more. I was not so great with my studies, so a deal was made with my dad to buy me an electric guitar if I passed the 1st year. I did it! The results were out and I got my Givson Blue diamond and a DOD Supra distortion. I learnt some basic Metallica and Iron Maiden riff by taking help from friends and by ear. 

 By the time I was at Cathedral PU college, I had listened to scorpions and eagles and some pop songs, Backstreet Boys, Vengaboys! College music scene was different! It was not very cool to be listening to boy bands! We had to listen to Metallica and Iron Maiden! Every one only listened to either or. I chose the Metallica side, because they had easier songs to play on the acoustic! The college also had a band with guitarists and drummers! I witnessed my first rock show at Cathedrals! They played Limp Bizkit’s Mission Impossible theme and paranoid by Black Sabbath! I found cassettes and started copying and listening to them!

 We got an Onida home theater system, that played 2 cassettes and it could also copy a cassette! This thing was a life changer, we could hear the bass, treble and mids clearly and it also had an equalizer! I started copying music, Scorpions, Hendrix, we also had a 3 cd changer that could play audio CDs. I ended up copying and collecting a lot of music in cassettes! I would copy music on the home theater system, and listen to it in my room in the small red tape recorder all night! It was this time, I listened to albums on repeat! 

A new CD rental shop opened near us. This place was quite controversial, one, it was banned after a white powder that people snorted, two they rented pirated CDs! We had a cd player and a computer that played the CDs I walked into the store and they also wrote CDs into cassette. I got some pop hits from there!  I saw a CD labeled Guns and Roses, it happened to be a dvd available on rent for 15 bucks for 15 days. I took the CD, asked my friend Jerome who helped me locate the avseq file and copied it to my hard disk. Now I had music videos in my hard drive. I returned the VCD back and this time, I saw another one! Eagles! Hell Freezes Over. I copied this too this cd had the most talked about song ever! Hotel California.  My playing ability was not so great to play the finger style music that Hotel California demanded but I honed my barre chord skills by learning this song. I suddenly could play “F #” minor! Soon I was known as the guy who could play Hotel California but in reality, I was

 Because we knew about the competitions held for various churches, at UTC, our church participated and I played the accompaniment on the guitar. We won almost all times we participated. I loved that I could play the guitar and sing harmony. Nivedh, Julie, my sister Claudia and I jammed quite often at my place. We had a great time.  We loved preparing for competitions, the love for music united us. I also developed my skills here, learning and trying new songs by ear. Competitions helped a whole lot to hone my skills.  Also, today, I saw Jacob Collier live! I also watched him close doing the sound check! It was amazing to see how well organised he and his crew was! And what a glorious show! 

 My luck! I came across this guitar that HCC Malayalam  had. I didn’t recall the brand name, but it was a steel string guitar that looked like a classical. A petite guitar, not jumbo. It had small holes in it, drilled by termites. And termites lived in them, I found small hills of white dust on it everyday!  I took the guitar, cleaned it up (couldn’t do anything to the wood chewers) and put new strings. The guitar was heavenly! Very comfortable to play. It was this guitar that I practiced all my chords that I picked up from Jayanth uncle.  Years later I had to leave the guitar behind, because it belonged to HCC (M). The termites had it. But when my fat was posted here again in 2008, I found the body eaten completely but I salvaged the fret board and kept it with myself  I still have this fret board with me! 

Black guitars were a thing! So I decided to paint my guitar black. There was some leftover paint after the painters were done with our gate. I went at it, painting the face of the guitar! All black. The guitar looked amazing but sounded like shit. It took away the sustain from it. But I kept playing anyway!

Haniel was one of the guitar students of Jayanth uncle back in the days. He played quite ok, and he was more Bollywoody kind of a player. He had a peculiar way of twitching his shoulders while playing some cool chords to draw in attention. The girls in church loved him.  He left an electric guitar with me for some time, he was also using a flanger pedal. It reminded me of the 80’s South Indian movies. It was not a very cool sound with my peers.  His electric guitar stayed with me for a long time. I decided do take it apart! I removed all the screws and pickups and put it all back together. As if by magic, a lot of screws were left behind in excess! I didn’t know where they went. I atleast understood how an electric guitar looked like in the end! 

It was Christmas and we went caroling from church. It was my first memorable carol rounds. Men women and kids all crammed into a truck, that took us to every house lots of food to eat. It was time for sweaters and beanies.  Carols also came with a lot of problems. Managing a guitar, broken strings being fixed the jugaad way, losing guitar picks. I did not play the guitar, just watched, got familiar with the chords and asked uncle Jayanth a lot of questions. I learnt a lot by just observing and soaking it all in at night.  Come day time, I was practicing and singing all the songs, with a lot of mistakes ofcourse, no one was listening anyway! Just me and my sister’s Hofner guitar! 

I joined the Saturday guitar lessons that happened in church. I was all set with a book, guitar and a pencil. Showing up to the next building was really easy. Uncle noticed that I already played a little bit. The first thing he did was teach me tuning. He de-tuned the strings and made us tune. He taught us to use one tuned string to compare the others. In a day day and age where tuning apps and devices were unheard of, we relied on our ears. This was an important lesson indeed.  Uncle was more encouraging the more I played. He taught me some more, while the others struggled with basics. I watched his every move. My rhythm playing improved drastically because I followed him. I played with him. It was all practical, I learnt everything with just listening to his sound and imitating him. 

Jayanth uncle, Greying hair, black beard, the go-to person for all the Holy Cross needs. He took care of the youth and Sunday School. He taught me how to tune the guitar and a lot of chords to practice. I watched him playing chords like a hawk and picked up every little thing he was doing. He was more than happy to share the cool things he was playing through the free lessons he gave on Saturday evenings. He was patient and waited until we got it right. He corrected us every time  we went off.  I massively improved on my guitar playing skills! Skills that will stay with me forever. I owe it to uncle Jayanth, he was the spark I needed. Today as I make a living teaching music, I write this post with gratitude to uncle Jayanth.