Upmanyu Bhanot in an exclusive interview with NewsX under its special segment, NewsX India A-list, talked about his inspiring journey from delivering a Gima award-nominated album to working with singers like Asha Bhosle and Sonu Nigam. He has been a part of the music industry for 22 years now.
Mr Upmanyu began his music journey at a very early age, he was only 8 or 9 when he started playing the tabla and then gradually progressed to Guitar, Keyboard and even computer-generated music. He’s always been interested in instrumental music and was more interested in scoring background music since the beginning. He worked with legendary Sitar Maestro Shujaat Husain Khan and Asha Bhosle to produce music for mainstream cinema and tele-series, from background scores of feature films and documentaries. Upmanyu has produced professional outputs in a variety of genres.
When it comes to the music style that distinguishes Upmanyu Bhanot, he said “I would say, I have been using this word very regularly it’s called contemporary music. So, I’m more known for my style of fusing things, classical or semiclassical with the symphony, or electronic mixing with Symphony, or electronic music mixing with classical so I love to experiment. So, as I said I love the fusion world music genre so this is my genre. So, I love doing that and people also like that.”
Mr Upmanyu has recently composed music for web series like ‘The Story’ for Zee 5 and ‘Bekaboo’ for Alt Balaji. He explained how it is different from the normal film background music and said “So we have to compose a lot of themes and then themes matched with the characters, and then we have to make some random themes. And then of course the background score as per the scene. So it was a good learning experience for me. I really enjoyed doing background score off lately. I just realized this thing about myself. the more challenging the scene is, the more I enjoy it. ”
In response to a question about remix culture, he said, “Yes, the everyday sound is changing. so music is actually converting into sound. You compare today’s music world with your 70s 80s or mid-90s also, composer and producers were focusing more on the music, the melody. Today the melody is missing, that is why we are remixing old songs. So basically we’re picking up the old melodies and putting new sounds, which is a brilliant idea because today sound is changing. So if we can mix these two things. It sounds nice. But, unfortunately, some of the remixes are so bad and to be very honest, they overdo it. So they kill the melody so much that the sound overpowers the melody and you don’t enjoy the sound. You just kill the song. So if you don’t overdo it then It’s fantastic. there’s a very thin line between overdoing it and doing it properly, I can name a few of the remixes, which are very wonderful and when you listen to them while driving maybe once a day.”
At last, sharing his piece of advice for the young aspiring music composers, He said, “stick to your genre. And don’t try to copy like if this guy is doing remixes and he’s earning big money so I should also do it, All you need is to explore yourself what’s your strength and stick to that. I’m also saying this but I’m also exploring myself and still learning.”