Walt Disney once said, “If you can dream it, you can do it.” Well, I’m not sure if our thoughts were as big as dreams but I have to admit that forming a band and releasing an album was one of our fantasies.
We were a bunch of music freaks, Sangeetha, Jasmine, and I, and we were pretty popular in school for all of the song covers we performed on different occasions. Technically, we didn’t have a band, we just sang; and I, knowing how to use a keyboard, just made a recording of the accompaniment to play in the background while we sang.
Generally, for any performance, people spend a lot of time practicing together for voices to combine and parts to time perfectly but the best part about us was that we needed very little practice to sing together. I found that bond something very special, cuz I’ve worked on performances with so many people and trust me, getting it synchronized perfectly is dead hard. It actually took me years to develop something similar with my own brother. It’s like you have an idea and the person you’re working with just grabs hold of it without having to give them a full description. That sync was just awesome.
All this having been said, the three of us parted halfway through high school, in 2004. We were still in touch though, and all of us cherished the love for music that we shared and the fun we had singing together.
Eight years later, it was during my wedding that we got a chance to meet up again. This was December 2012 and the girls were coming down to my hometown for the bachelorette party that was planned a week before my wedding. Like I mentioned earlier, we all fantasized doing a recording of the covers we had performed, but we never made it a dream since we were all mature enough to understand the fact that we all had commitments to college, work, and family. We were all from different places and we’d have to put aside a lot of time and work to plan something as big as a recording and that was something none of us could afford. But at this point, I can still remember what Sangeetha’s dad once told me when we were in 9th grade. He said, “Shefrin, if you’re ever planning a recording of all of your songs, and if you need any help, just let me know.” At that time, I just nodded with respect for the encouragement, but I never thought it was actually possible.
About four months before the wedding, I was just talking to my fiancé about the girls coming over and how we used to perform in school when he casually asked me why we didn’t think about doing a professional recording. I gave him our excuses and we never talked about it again, but his question really got me thinking and my mind started running through a thought chain.
When I spoke to Sangeetha, I casually asked her what the odds were for us to try and plan a recording while the girls were here, since they would be staying for just a week max. She was in right away and asked me to work something out. I spoke to Jasmine, got an okay and we started planning.
Over four months, we selected songs, got the lyrics sorted out, and assigned parts, all through email. We were to practice individually and finally practice together once we met up. I turned to my brother Jefrin and his buddy Lynton to make me some decent accompaniment music.
Sangeetha was arriving on the evening of Dec 28th and staying till Jan 1st (3.5 days) while Jasmine was scheduled to reach on the 29th morning (the bachelorette party was on that evening) and leave on 30th evening (hardly 2 days). She had to be at work after that and planned on coming back for the wedding. So technically we had just two to three days to finish recording the vocals… Phew! Not good.
Anyway, I got the boys to get the music recorded in two days, the 27th and 28th and we left for the studio as soon as Jasmine arrived on the 29th morning. We rushed up to finish her vocals before she left and managed to finish the rest by 31st evening. That’s recording the vocals for eight songs in just three days! We were so proud of ourselves!
We didn’t do the cover of all our old songs cuz we figured some of them were too old and boring. So we picked the best and most recent four: Celine Dion’s A New Day Has Come and That’s The Way It Is, Boyzone’s A Different Beat, and U.S. for Africa’s We Are The World. The rest were Disney Stars’ Send It On, Miley Cyrus’ The Climb, Brooke Fraser’s Lead Me To The Cross, and finally, my own composition, Sweet Memories.
I jumped to Jefrin and Lynton for help with the editing work. It was supposed to be done sooner, but things got delayed since J had to work on it every time he came home on vacation from college. But when the work was over, we were excited!!! I designed a cover for the album and we got the CDs printed. It was a dream come true indeed! Listening to the songs, I have to admit that it doesn’t sound as perfect as we could have made it or would have expected it. But given the eight years apart and three days together I’d say the entire endeavor was a 200% success!
There are a lot of people we need to pay a tribute to for this recording, cuz without their support and encouragement (all the way from eight years ago), we couldn’t have done it! Here’s to our band Arabiana and all the fun we had singing during our high school era!
