Independent Music Producer, Composer and Multiple Award Winning Musician, Roto Shah, has composed the music for recently released 9XM CGI and Live Action Music Video “Bakwaaspan” featuring 9XM characters Bade and Chote along with singing sensation Honey Singh.
AnimationXpress.com caught up with Roto to know more about the music composition process for this 9XM whacky video.
“The best part of this video I feel are the catchy lines “Sun Le Tu Mera Sun Le Tu Mere Sun le Tu Mera Bakwaaspan Sun” “Nahi Sununga Nahi Sununga Nahi Sununga Bakwaaspan Chal”
How did this project happen?
Since long, I’ve been associated with 9XM on various projects. They’ve have always appreciated my work and knew that apart from working on ads and animation promos, I even compose songs. Programming head of 9XM, Sunder Venketraman, who is also a very good friend of mine had long time ago shared that he wanted me to create a Rap song for 9XM mascots Chote Bade’ show ‘Bakwas Bandkar.’ As Honey Singh is a good friend of Sunder, he managed to rope in Honey Singh for this video and approached me to compose its music.
What was the brief given to you by 9XM?
9XM already had a 15-30 second rap music for their show ‘Bakwaas Bandkar ‘, but they wanted to increase it to 2 minutes. They wanted me to compose music that should be cool to hear, listeners should murmur it and feel to groove on it, and they told me that ‘Song Hathke Hona Chahiye’, as the trend is nowadays. Listening to their expectations, I decided to give a groovy, catchy sound blended with a simple melody so that the people could murmur the song.
What was your approach to the project?
Firstly, I made sure to freeze a style and groove for the song. For this, I created two styles with one being a slow hip-hop style having mid slow tempo and other one being a House dance style with faster tempo.
I composed basic grooves upon which I composed the tune without the lyrics. This tune was a basic audio-matic, which only had the groove and the tune and not the full arrangement and I shared it with the 9XM for their review.
9XM loved this tune which was just an instrumental version. One feedback that I received from Sunder was that the fast tempo might not work well as Bade Chote do not have legs to dance and hence going ahead with the fast tempo wouldn’t justify the animation part and hence he locked the mid slow hip-hop tune.
Next was to have lyrics that would go well with the music. I met up with Chandan Oza, who voiced Chote and is the Lyricist and Devesh, who voiced Bade and together we finalized on the lyrics which went perfect with my music composition. The best part of the lyrics that you will find is the ‘Antra’, which is a Question and Answer conversation.
We would like to know about the research that you did and software that you used?
I made sure to listen to some latest styles of music happening in the current scenario as the musical style that we wanted to go ahead with was a blend of hip-hop and reggae-ton and house genres and to combine these genres needed good amount of research.
I work on Steinberg Cubase for composing songs.
As there is ‘Bade Chote’ and Honey Singh together in this music video, how did you plan out on the kind of music variations for them?
Bade Chote are one of India’s most iconic and favorite characters, giving a proper music to them was a challenge and I made sure to make them sing in a way in which audiences could connect with them. Honey Singh is an added attraction to this video and I just made sure to do justice to him by giving a good musical track that would go well with his presence.
What inspires you to be creative and can you tell us about your upcoming projects?
Each projects builds immense excitement within me and I enjoy working on it. I believe that there is a small child within me who keeps me going and helps me to achieve good outputs, that has reflected in my past work’s Whacky Nick Spots that I did for Nickelodeon and some Funny Ads for Vodafone, Fevicol ,Simpoo, Disney and Luv Ka The End funny Virals done for Yash Raj Films.
I am composing music and sound design for animated shorts by Vaibhav Studios and simultaneously working on my own music tracks and composition, which I plan to pitch for feature films as well as animation films. Simpoo, 3rd Promo of Disney Jet Set Go Promo is in pipeline.