A techie’s take on carnatic music

While the percussionists sat down around him accompanied by traditional instruments for the kutcheri, Navneeth sat on the stage scrolling on his iPad. The jarring contrast, however, seems to disappear once the concert begins and music starts flowing off the iPad speakers. 

For the first time, after his Limca Book of Records winning recital, Navneeth performed a Carnatic iPad kutcheri, playing classical and classical-based compositions using just his iPad. 

A composer and pianist from Chennai, Navneeth came up with the idea a few years ago while browsing through some of the music apps on his newly bought iPad. What started as an attempt to play piano on iPad soon took shape into a novel concept and he started adjusting the app settings to produce sounds of Indian instruments. 

“I was surprised to find that many of the music apps, even though they were made for western music, lend themselves well for Carnatic compositions. Since I have been performing alongside the likes of Ilayaraja and Bombay Jayashree, I had a certain sense of Carnatic music and I started trying to create Carnatic based compositions on the iPad,” explained Navneeth. 

The first recording that Navneeth did in this manner was an Ananda Bhairavi composition. He uploaded it on YouTube and, inspired by the positive feedback, went on to perfect the style. One of his later recordings, a video of him playing a Lalgudi Jayaraman thillana in Desh, grabbed the attention of the Mozart of Madras. 

AR Rahman tweeted the video, that was till then shared just by Navneeth’s friends, and it went viral. The computer-engineer-turned-musician added, “Perhaps I was drawn to try infusing technology with something as traditional as Carnatic music because I’m a techie. But it worked! I could even play gamakas on certain apps and that interested me. 

So, once I was more confident with the use of the apps, I went on to perform my first Carnatic kutcheri using just an iPad. I entered the Limca Book of records for this concert.” Animoog, GeoShred and MorphWiz are just some of the apps that this music whiz uses. 

“Theoretically, there are no limits to what these apps can do. But, since many of these are created with western compositions and instruments in mind, they do have certain limitations at the moment. But, day by day, there are new updates being made to these apps that are making them better and better. One of the major issues I face now while performing is that my iPad doesn’t have enough power. But I hear the new version of iPad provides better power. So, I’m waiting to get my hands on it now,” he said. 

Navneeth, who has multiple film compositions as well as a Tamil YouTube album to his credit, has been alternating between his keyboard and iPad during his performance for a long time now. 

“As a keyboardist, I do corporate concerts often and accompany leading vocalists at kutcheris. So, for certain sections of the performance I use the iPad. Initially people were confused, but now more and more are taking note.” Navneeth was accompanied by Krishna Kishor on mridangam, Raghavasimhan on violin and Anil Srinivasan on keyboard for the performance.