Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] So, guys, welcome once again to the Raj call podcast. So this one's a bit of a different episode this week. So, because I had a massive guest, which I'll tell you who it is at the end of the show. So if you tune in, stick around, watch the show, because trust me, you don't want to miss the next guest. But because of the who the guest is, they want you to sort of have a bit more insight to the way we do things. And so we've editing the video a bit more because of the size of this guest. But I'm going to reveal that at the end of the show. So make sure you stick around for that because it's humongous. It's one of my all time favorite artists, UK based. So I will reveal that to you all in due time. But so stick around to the end and you'll know who that artist is. All right? Unless you want to forward it all and just see who is. So anyway, there you go. So I hope you all doing well. It's gonna be because of that, it's gonna be a different podcast, different type of podcast, which I'm gonna do more of these solo podcasts as well, depending on your feedback. Guys, definitely leave me your feedback and let me know what you think of this kind of podcast. So, as you know, the podcast is mainly about me learning as a musician in the pursuit of musical excellence. So I'm gonna. I'm gonna carry on that theme anyway, so. So. But before we get to that, I thought I'd do a few segments in this podcast. So I want to explain the latest news, latest updates I've. I've been involved in at the moment. And the main thing is lazy music projects, which I've had a. So I've had quite a number of delays in the music at the moment. And the reason why.
[00:02:04] There's a number of reasons. So I have had two, maybe three or four projects which I've had to delay because of not having the time to finish them off and because of commitments which I'm going to go through. So the first thing that happened. So it's a bit about my life, really. This segment is so you'll have insight into my life of what. What I've been doing and what the obstacles I come across as a musician.
[00:02:33] Well, wannabe musician, I think so.
[00:02:36] So the first thing that happened was really sad, actually. So this is probably about a month, month, six weeks back, maybe. So my had a boxer, I got two dogs, I've got a staff, a mixed staff, across staff breed. And I've also had a boxer.
[00:02:53] And so a few weeks ago, but well, before that. Before that time, he started to form at the mouth. So he. Every. Every once in a while, he'd be foaming that. So we thought, okay, something's not right here. But then one weekend, he.
[00:03:09] We come back from church and come back home, and he was having seizures. So he had a full on seizure and forming at the mouth really bad that, okay, this is not right. Then he. Then he was acting. Struggling a bit strange. And that night, he, um, was just constantly having seizures. Seizures. Then he'd walk around, uh, for. Walk around the garden, the house, and not knowing who's what. Just walking around like this. Um, uh. And he'd hurt himself. He'd get his face and he'd rub it into a quid, find a corner and rub it, and it would bleed. His face started to bleed and stuff. So that Sunday night, we had to keep an eye on him all night. But he had lost. Basically, he had lost his mind. More, more or less, yeah. And it was down to a brain tumor, most likely. So I had to put him down, unfortunately, which is really, really sad. The next day, on the Monday, we phoned the vets and said, this is what the issue is, and says, yeah, bring him in.
[00:04:08] I had to put him down. So it was a really sad, sad time for me to put my boxer down.
[00:04:16] Yeah, it was heartbreaking, actually, because I don't know any of you who've got dogs, so let me know, guys. And by the way, any feedback you want to give on this or you want to message me, you can message me on Instagram or drop me an email on infoagecoremusic.com and I'm sure reply, yeah, yeah. So that's what happened to the dog. And then after that, I didn't want to do music. I was. I had had a track which I was supposed to fit. It's almost complete. I just had to finish off a few more vocals for it with Oman DJ reminisce. He was doing the mixing and mastering for me. So because of that, he, um.
[00:04:54] I was there. I told him I don't really feel like doing music at the moment. So, uh, yeah, that was that. That's what happened with that particular podcast, particular track. There's another track I've given him as well, which had to finish off, which was, uh, so the first one I was gonna give him, which is completely, almost done. Just few vocal, uh, vocals need to be done again, uh, which was a proper bangla. Track.
[00:05:21] So story behind this one, this track in particular was that it was originally was supposed to do with Ritz, but then we, Ritz is doing his other projects, is probably busy. What? So I've taken the project to myself and yeah, done it and I hope you like it as well. So the next year, then the other one was like a weekend vibe. Really, really cool weekendy vibe track.
[00:05:46] So I hope you like that one as well. But they're coming. But then anyway, back, back to the story. We um. So my. I'm expecting, I was expecting my second child, um. Uh, which she's here now, all safe. I'll tell you the story behind it. And so uh, my wife Ruby, who manages, manages me as well as you know, she, she was showing early signs of labor so she had to go to hospital. And because it was prem, they had to keep her in hospital for, as a precaution, for days. And then, so I was looking, I was getting up at 7667 every day looking after my daughter. And all the way till 10:00 in the night. So music again was out of the question. Um, because I was straight, six, seven. And then by the time I was putting my daughter to sleep, as I'm putting it to sleep, I drift off myself. I didn't know what day it was basically. So it was long days. Even though I enjoyed it, I love spending time with my daughter. Probably one of my most favorite things to do after. Yeah, probably even, even before music or any. Anything else. That's my most favorite thing to do is looking prep is spending time with my daughter. She's a two year old, but she's full of energy. She loves singing. I actually did a post recently on social media showing her first recording. So check that out. If you think she's really cute, she's singing 123-12-3451 side quarter fish. So she was singing that. So check it out. It's pretty cool. So yeah, so that, so my wife was. Anyway, she was showing signs of early labour then. Uh, so that was a week. So they kept in hospital probably three, four days maybe. Kept in hospital. So that. And then every day we was trying to visit her as well. See. Then they sent her home. Then a few days later she was back in hospital because the baby was born. But uh, uh, because the baby was premature, we had to um. Uh, she had to stay in the hospital as to observation just as a precaution.
[00:07:46] And then, then there were signs jaundice the baby had. So because of the jaundice, they kept her under a machine. I work a uv light over. Over here, so those on the podcasts, you can see, so that I'm just referen. Just signaling like a uv light over the. Over the baby's cot. So, yeah, so they kept here for a few days there, then.
[00:08:11] So, again, no, no music being done, so I had to look after my daughter and this and so, so on. And then we got back home, she still had jaundice, but they gave it a jaundice, but they gave her a billy blanket. So it's something called bilirubin in the blood, which is what caused the jaundice, which, the yellow tint in the skin and eyes. So that's. They gave her a billy blanket. So again, we had to do that. And that was just stopped yesterday, I think, or the day before. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Something like yesterday, the day before, if I can remember correctly. So that's what happened there. And then adjusting to two kids because my older daughter, she started having, uh, tantrums. Um, and, um, as she's having these tantrums, she's a not, basically, she's. She doesn't know how to communicate her feelings at the moment because she's thinking what's happening is another person, another person, another. Another child who's getting attention in the house. And so she was struggling with that. So that's, that's where I. Up until today. So that's why my music's been delayed. And he hates all fun and games. But what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna try and stack my music nicely, get two, three tracks of the one track every month coming out. So, anyway, back to the, uh, today's podcast. So, today's podcast, I wanted to discuss, I thought, as I'm, as I'm learning music, I thought, let me discuss some of my, uh, feedback or what shall I say, my, uh, experience in music as well. And this one's not particularly about music. You can use this in anything, really, but my, my emphasis is, is going to be about music. So it's about the first thing I want to. I think the most important thing in anything you do is consistency. You can, you can really, you know, you, you can have all the plans, you can have all, everything, you know, that you want to do in life, but if you're not consistent in it, this is whether you go gym, whether you, whether you. Whether you want to. I don't know, whether you want to be studying, studying for exams or whatever. If you're not consistent in anything, it's not going to count. You can have all the knowledge and you want, you can have all the know how you want. But if you're not consistent, doesn't matter what you, you can be motivated one day, you can mode, because what motivation will only get you so far? You might be motivated one day, then you might have, you might watch the best. Like you might listen to this podcast and think, oh, wow, I'm really motivated to get, get going in music or in whatever you, you're pursuing. And then after that you'll, you'll just die down. Because motivations like an emotion, isn't it? So your emotions come and go. So that's why consistency is, um, is great. You have to be consistent in everything you do, but it's not as straightforward having just, okay, I'm going to be consistent. You have to have a planning process, which is what, the first part I want to talk about is setting clear goals. So you should define short term goals, what you want to achieve and long term goals as well.
[00:11:12] So short term might be okay, you're working on, I don't know, let's say my long term goals are to master these ten tracks or I want to be certain type of singer over long term. So that's my long term goal just to, you know, want to release this much tracks. I want to get this much listeners. That's, that's my long term goal. But my short term goal might be I want to master this specific track. So in order to master that specific track, I have to break down. So you almost have to have a roadmap of the long term roadmap and the short term roadmap. So what the short term roadmap is, is, uh, just steps. Almost like, almost like a pirate, a treasure map. If you, I don't mean a literal treasure map. If you're thinking it's head. If you want a treasure map, I need to get to this x. So how am I going to get there? And you need to, you need to, um, uh, lay out the path that you have that you're going to use to get there. So that path is, is. So as I was saying, if we're going to master the track, so I've got this track say I'm going to do, uh, I don't know.
[00:12:17] So I'm gonna do a chupke and do the first line. I'm gonna, I can have to break that down, slow it down. And as some of my guests have said before, I think Tubsy mentioned it as well, which about Rajahota breaking down a song.
[00:12:33] He slowed it down half time. And I've done that before as old when I was practicing one of sabriji songs. Who's those who don't know cyber Cortese. He's a, he's a deceased artist now, but he's one of my favorite singers, is a punjabi indian artist. So he, again, I slowed down his track, half sped it and then looked at what notes is hitting and then try to emulate that. So that was my path of breaking down that song, slowing it down, taking it piece by piece. And that should be your short term goal yet. And then that short term goal should add up to your long term goal in the long term. So there you go. So that's, um, uh, the first part is setting the clear goals. Then you should create a practice schedule. So I, my practice schedules got out the window. As I said, I've told you why. Uh, but I normally have like a, I used to have like a three year practice schedule. So I'm not going to miss any session of practice for, for three years. So it, um, uh, the reason why I said three years, because I listened to this guy. There's a book called Mastery, I think it's called mastery. I think, um, it's about Robert someone, Robert Greene, I think his name is. And he's, he's one of the most, best books on, on, uh, on getting, mastering a subject. Me. And I was to apart him on a podcast and he said, look, set a goal to say three years. I'm going to do this every day, practice every day, whatever your goal is, and see where you are in three years and watch your. I, you would have made efforts. I go, okay, let me try that. So I did. I don't miss practice until recently. You have to reset that goal, reschedule it.
[00:14:16] Don't miss any day of practice for three years running and see what happens at the end of three years. And obviously good things are going to happen if you're doing like 20 minutes a day for three years, you watch, you're going to, you're going to see some amazing benefits. Maybe not in this, maybe not straight away, but you will. So set that regular time and treat your practice sessions as appointments you can't miss. So there's no, okay, I've got this appointment now. I'm not going to miss it no matter what happens. Right. And, you know, if you've got a doctor's appointment and especially these days, uh, in the NHS, in the UK, so if you got an appointment, you, you're not going to miss that appointment no matter what happens, because you're not going to get one again for the next two months or so. So very important. Don't miss. Don't miss any sessions. So make that commitment to yourself. I'm not going to miss any sessions of practice. I'm going to keep going. I'm going to. I'm going to. I'm going to do that and just try and achieve what I need to achieve. So the next part was, is just to keep practice sessions manageable. So this is, this was important because I should, when I was younger, I used to think, okay, I'm going to practice 2 hours a day. I'm going to do that. But what I've done recently is break my practice sessions into small segments. So I do 20 minutes segments. So I might be doing a warm up for 20 minutes. Then I'll do the next part. For 20 minutes of the next part. That's really important. So make them manageable. And even if it, for you it's five minutes. But do the five minutes, do five minutes a day rather. That's better. Or five minute segments. That's better than not doing anything at all because what will happen if you, you lose interest very fast. So make it manageable for yourself. And like, I don't, I don't necessarily, because of my life work life balance, I don't necessarily have the time to do everything straight away. So I don't, you know, everything in one go. Sorry. So I might do 20 minutes here. I might even do ten minutes of the 20 minutes then come back in ten minutes because of. I've got a daughter, toddlers. A toddler and, and work commitments as well. So it might be a case where you do it that way as well. Yeah. So, um, the, uh. So aim for an, aim for quality over quantity. So even just like sort of that five minutes that you're doing and you're focused. Because what I struggle with is focus. So I might get distracted. Some, something might happen. You'll check your phone. Phones. Phones. Even though they're so useful, despise my phone at times because it's one of the worst distractions ever. Think I put it, I've got a focus mode, but use your focus mode or chuck it away if you need to chuck it. I don't mean chuck it in the bin, but just put it away. And so it's outside our mind. Outside. Yeah. So that's why I would do anyway. So, yeah, so, yeah, keep it 20 minutes segments. So again, the next thing I would do is develop a routine. So my routine currently is be adaptable. The routine such may need to change depending on your needs and requirements. So my routine currently is a 20 minutes warm up set. Yours might be if you're practicing, if you're, if you're, if you're a pianist or a guitarist, you might just warm up, warm your fingers up. So you're warming. I don't know, you might play a few scales on here, warming up. So what I do, I do something called Saria's, which is a drone exercise. And you're just trying to find the pitch, get your pitch right and just doing that with different movements in your mouth. So you do vowel movements. So you might do sa, which is the indian notation for whatever your root notice. Then you do it in R. So r, a, e or oo. You might do all these different types of variants of toward me walk. And then you do lip trills, I think you call it. So I'm not going to do that here because it's going to sound funny on the podcast. But you roll your lips, basically, and. Yeah. And you push the air out. That's another part of it. And you might do humming. So this is, I'm talking about vocals, but again, this translates to any, anything that you're doing so much. If you're doing guitars, you might practice scales to start off with. And so develop that routine. And after that I would do like, sort of paltry, which are like runs in English. So basically you do like.
[00:18:59] So you do that. But you. I have a tempo. I have a BPM timer on, double r dumpur on. So I'll keep increasing that until I get. Get faster and faster. That particular piece I'm doing. So again, set yourself a routine. Then after that you might do, you might practice a song or you might do something. So sit down, develop. Develop a routine for yourself.
[00:19:25] The other thing I do is use a practice journal. So after you've practiced, write down anything you're stuck on or any particular thing that you thought, okay, I need to practice on this bit more. Or, or even you can write your bpm down. Okay, I've done this much. This is my speed I'm currently working at. You'll probably see my vagrant. Oh, that's my lyric. Lyric, but under. That's my practice journal.
[00:19:48] And, uh. So you'd practice that. So, uh, yeah, so that's what I would do. Write a journal, uh, track your progress, note down what you've worked on that day, uh, and reflect on what went well and what needs improvement. Um, and take. And take notes on that. Yeah, basically. And then look back on that the day, the next day when you're doing it that way, you'll. You'll get better. Yeah. Um, this one's a pretty, pretty hard challenge for me. So this one is setting yourself a comfortable practice space. So this is my studio here. Um, and it's one of the, one of the upstairs bedrooms. And you can see the outlook in the garden. You can see my book collection there, which I'm. I like to think I'm an avid reader, which I do like to read, but it's time again. But I'm trying to work on that. But this one I struggle with at times. Um, so as I said, I don't have, uh, time's not a luxury for me anymore. Uh, so my daughter's asleep at the moment. So I'm doing this while she's asleep. And um, my wife's looking after the other little one. So, um, so I struggle with this one. But it's great if you can choose the distraction free area. And except again, I said the phones are probably um, a thing to get rid of. Like at that time, just put it outside. Put it, put it, put it, put it. Weights out of reach at the moment. Yes, that's what I would do. And ensure your instrument and other instruments are other, other materials are easily accessible as well. So as you can see, my vaja is there, my guitars there. I've got my, got my. I've got a keyboard here and yeah, whatever you need to practice should be there, accessible. So I like to keep things out. My wife hates it sometimes. What was just, you know, out here, but because it's. If it's in my eye, if it's in my um. Um. If it's in my vision, I'll pick it up and do it. And it's. I've made. Made it. Made it easier for myself to do. So that's what I would do. Keep things out, keep and keep, keep using it, obviously. So keep things out, keep them accessible as well. The more inaccessible you make things, the harder it'll. It'll be. Trust me on that. And it's. It's very. It's quite important, I think.
[00:22:02] So the next thing I would use is tools and technology for practice. So to be consistent. So the tools and technology I use are I've got pitch recognition. So if I've got downput on. And I've got the mic here. So on the Mac or my phone. Oops. Hit my mic on the phone.
[00:22:26] I'd see the pitch going, like it'll be leveling, like, so say that's, that's the perfect pitch. And then the meter where my voices, it'd be going if it's over or under. So where, wherever the frequency is. So that enables me to see immediate feedback, how far I'm out of key and whatnot. So that's another thing to do, use that technology. So that's what I use. Or I also use logic recording. So I'd record a song and look back. And if you've got like, like a melodyne, which is a piece of software which shows you what note your voice is, that so you can look at that. Oh, I'm at a key here because you know where it should be. So if you play that on the vodja first, which is over there somewhere, or play on your keyboard or whatever instrument, you've got platinum, you can see actually, this is out of key here because you know what note you should be hitting there. So you can see that that's another tool I use. And I think, as I was saying earlier, just to stay motivated, you need, it's a bit of a catch 22 almost to say. So if like a symbiotic relationship, you need to be motivated, but you need to be consistent to be motivated and. Yep. And so there you go. So, so just reward yourself and so play music that you're interested in because music sort of so vast and not everyone's gonna have the same taste. So play music that you're interested in as well. Like, I struggle with the classical side of it because some of it, I'm not interested in that. I mean, I'm interested in it, but it's not my favorite genre of music, like pure classical because it's quite in depth. You have to do things in a certain way. You haven't got the free freedom to do stuff because you have to do. You have to have to structure it in a certain way, especially doing classical. So you have to do the alarm at the start, which is like doing like, uh, with, with like a variation of the notation of the song with, with your, with your singing voice. Then you have to do the main Bundesh, which is, um, uh, the actual body of the song. Then you have to do take the bundish, then you have to do a darn, which is like a fast repetition note straight after the first line. So as you can see, clack. I'm going to want to bore you. You can see. You have to structure. Classical music in a cell has to be structured in a certain way, but semi classical, you got a bit more variation and, you know, results and kwalis and stuff. You could do semi class of tumories and things like that. So that's, that's another part. So keep yourself motivated by doing songs that you like and pick a selection of songs that you enjoy. So I've got like a selection of 1010 15 songs which I want to practice and master by next year. So that's my, one of my targets, as I was saying, goals earlier. So that's quite important as well. So that's to keep yourself motivated. The other thing is seek feedback and support. So this one's pretty important as well. So I've got a vocal coach who's based in Saudi Arabia at the moment. Originally he's from India, but at the moment he's working as a music teacher in Saudi Arabia. So I have lessons with him over Zoom. So it's quite important to have that feedback. And if you want feedback from me, guys, just.
[00:25:49] I'm not an expert in any way matter. I'm just letting my lane on myself. So. But if I can help you in that way, just drop me a message. I don't mind. And people do sometimes like one. Once, I think a few, few months back, someone messaged me. So, Raj, what do you think of this? Do you mind having a look? And I. Yeah, I said, great. Is it? He was such a good singer as well, but I advised him and how, you know, rather than looking for a label these days, do it yourself. And I advised him on that says, anything help you need. And he was very grateful. Based in London, had come over from India, bait working in London and.
[00:26:25] Yeah, so. And also you can join music groups or forums. There's a, there's. There's so much resources out there in, in, on the Internet, so you can join and post your videos of you playing and then get feedback like that. And you've got to be. Sometimes going to be thick skinned to do that as well because sometimes the people, people just that people love trolling and I. Most times they have no picture or representation of themselves on their profile, so you don't know who they are, so they just, they feel they can anonymously knock you. But you got to be thick skinned. That's the other thing is develop thick skinned if you're going to put yourself on. On social media or anywhere like that to get feedback.
[00:27:10] The other thing is be patient and kind to yourself. Recognize that progress can be slow and non linear. So you might not necessarily see things go like this, you might see things go up right down again, bit up right down. And that's, that's how music works. But in six months to a year, you look back, wow, look what I did. So make a note. That's what that journal, what was saying to you earlier, practice journal. It comes in handy because you can even write down, I was this doing at this speed. Now I'm at this speed. So make, just, just be patient with yourself and celebrate, um, the small victories. And don't be discouraged by any setbacks. You're gonna have setbacks, you're gonna be frustrated at times and you do music, but this all helps you being consistent in music. So that, that's basically today's podcast in terms of being consistent. So hopefully that was helpful to you guys. It's a bit of a different podcast of my normal interview based podcast, but over to the news. So next in the next fortnight. Uh, so this is, this is out on Tuesday, the 16 July. So two weeks after that, whatever date. Let me check what day is. Quickly show you. So it's calendars. I hate these calendars sometimes. Let me just check it. Oh, here is calendars at the bottom here. So I always get mixed up because I work in windows doing my work life and at home I work on a Mac. So. So it'll be the 29 July.
[00:28:44] So I've got one of the best, the best producers the UK has ever produced. One of the best musicians is Muqdar Sahota. So Muqdar Sahota will be talking about the sahotas, the band soul to how, what he did with, with the souls, how they got their sound. Then he'll be talking about his body projects. It's talking about his journey as a musician and tip to lens such a, an amazing guy. So two weeks time, make sure you do not miss that podcast. Trust me, it's going to be humongous, guys. So yeah, look forward to you. And guys, if you like this podcast, give me your feedback. Leave a review of.
[00:29:29] For me on Apple Music, on Apple Podcast, sorry. On Spotify and on YouTube. Leave a comment if you don't like it as well. Leave a comment as well. As I said, I'm thick skinned. I'm adult enough to accept positive feedback. Like, you know, if you, if you just want to knock me for whatever and sort of have a go at ranting and swearing and effing blinding, then I'm just gonna. I'll leave a comment there. You actually add to my, you add to my, the algorithm because YouTube or Spotify or whatever, they see that people are commenting so that you gets pushed further, that adds to it. So again, I'm not, I'm not too fussy for a leave a comment, but I'll just leave. Ignore your if it's, there's no basis substance to your criticism. But if any positive criticism, I'm more than happy to receive that. And I do get positive criticism as well. So even in my music, I think one of my friends, he said, I really give away too much of my music at the start of my, when I'm, when I'm releasing a song, I don't see that way. But I appreciate his feedback because he wasn't there to, uh, knock me in any way. He was just giving positive feedback the way he thinks that music should be released. So that's fine. You know, at least, at least he's, um, he's honest with me and he, and he, he cares enough about my music that. So, yeah, make sure you leave a review. I'm going off on a tangent, so hopefully this one wasn't too boring because I'm just by myself and haven't got the guest. So it's an exhaust of an experiment. So hopefully it's, well, works well and I can do some more. Anyway, leave your feedback if you think I should do some more. Any more of these sort of how to podcasts, how to get better at music and how to be a better musician. So God bless you all. This is Raj call signing out. Make sure you leave a review and follow me on my socials as usual. That's Raj official and also the website Raj call music.com a sign up on there as well if you can. God bless you and peace.
