Skyterra Interview
Q: How did the decision come about to have two lead singers? And how do you decide who sings on a particular song?
A: Before Skyterra, Chetan and Melissa were both in a previous band together where Melissa sang backups. When we formed after that band broke up it was natural for her to do some singing for Skyterra. Since Chetan was the primary songwriter though, it was also natural for him to write for his own voice a bit and some things fit him better than Melissa. Chetan started taking vocal lessons and practicing every day and ‘Rise’ was recorded after only 4 months of starting vocal training. While the songs here are pretty split in terms of there being a primary singer per song, moving forward our music is becoming far more integrated in each song with both of us singing and we’re excited about the direction.
Q: Your formation as a three piece wasn't too long ago. What was the songwriting process like?
A : While we love coming together to jam as a band, we actually have a pretty distinct writing process that happens remotely. Usually, and of course there’s a lot of overlap in all of this, Chetan writes the raw songs, usually starting from just the piano and lyrics/melody. Melissa, we like to call the ‘sound painter’ because she then dives into a lot of sound design and discovery and most of the layers and synth ideas. She also helps with lyrics and writes many of the verses. Jon takes control of the rhythm section and in the end Chetan usually plays producer to help things become cohesive.
Q : Are there any specific influences for the album itself, musical or otherwise?
A : Nothing directly outside our own life experiences. We try to listen to many types of music and genres and actually for this record stopped listening to music altogether to just live in our own sound for a while.
Q : What’s fascinating to me is that Chetan and Mellisa are classical concert pianists. Can you talk a little bit about your music career path and why you chose to go in this direction?
A : Chetan spent most of his 20’s traveling the world as a concert pianist and competing in the really big competitions, the game changing ones that would get you years of concert engagements and management if you came out on top, but he was always a closet songwriter since his early teens. He just couldn’t shake that this was his first love and had to work in this direction. Melissa has her masters and studied in belgium for a while. She is a top flight pianist as well but she also had these same nagging feelings Chetan had. It doesn’t mean that we completely abandoned that side of us though as we have also started the San Diego Piano Academy which is thriving, and Chetan's still a Yamaha Artist for his classical playing. We are currently building piano training courses which will be launched throughout this year.
Q: There are a lot of layers to your music. What do you do for your live shows? Is it more stripped back?
A: We rely heavily on a backing track to help with the layers we can’t cover live so we manage to keep a pretty big sound. We make sure to play all the important and artistic parts in real time though as there’s definitely a need for that natural energy and feel to be present in a live show instead of just duplicating what you hear on a record.
Q :The band is just getting started. What on the horizon for 2017?
A: ‘Rise’ being our first record, we’re still firmly in the developement stage of our band. This represents the first chapter but moving forward we’re doing tons of experimenting sonically and working hard to continue finding ourselves vocally. We’ve been jamming with some guitarists to possibly add to our sound as well as possibly pulling back from the piano more. We hope to release some ep’s this year as well as launch the above mentioned piano courses. The goal is to be able to make enough passive income from this so we can take our act on the road and be relentless with getting our music out there.
Q: How did the decision come about to have two lead singers? And how do you decide who sings on a particular song?
A: Before Skyterra, Chetan and Melissa were both in a previous band together where Melissa sang backups. When we formed after that band broke up it was natural for her to do some singing for Skyterra. Since Chetan was the primary songwriter though, it was also natural for him to write for his own voice a bit and some things fit him better than Melissa. Chetan started taking vocal lessons and practicing every day and ‘Rise’ was recorded after only 4 months of starting vocal training. While the songs here are pretty split in terms of there being a primary singer per song, moving forward our music is becoming far more integrated in each song with both of us singing and we’re excited about the direction.
Q: Your formation as a three piece wasn't too long ago. What was the songwriting process like?
A : While we love coming together to jam as a band, we actually have a pretty distinct writing process that happens remotely. Usually, and of course there’s a lot of overlap in all of this, Chetan writes the raw songs, usually starting from just the piano and lyrics/melody. Melissa, we like to call the ‘sound painter’ because she then dives into a lot of sound design and discovery and most of the layers and synth ideas. She also helps with lyrics and writes many of the verses. Jon takes control of the rhythm section and in the end Chetan usually plays producer to help things become cohesive.
Q : Are there any specific influences for the album itself, musical or otherwise?
A : Nothing directly outside our own life experiences. We try to listen to many types of music and genres and actually for this record stopped listening to music altogether to just live in our own sound for a while.
Q : What’s fascinating to me is that Chetan and Mellisa are classical concert pianists. Can you talk a little bit about your music career path and why you chose to go in this direction?
A : Chetan spent most of his 20’s traveling the world as a concert pianist and competing in the really big competitions, the game changing ones that would get you years of concert engagements and management if you came out on top, but he was always a closet songwriter since his early teens. He just couldn’t shake that this was his first love and had to work in this direction. Melissa has her masters and studied in belgium for a while. She is a top flight pianist as well but she also had these same nagging feelings Chetan had. It doesn’t mean that we completely abandoned that side of us though as we have also started the San Diego Piano Academy which is thriving, and Chetan's still a Yamaha Artist for his classical playing. We are currently building piano training courses which will be launched throughout this year.
Q: There are a lot of layers to your music. What do you do for your live shows? Is it more stripped back?
A: We rely heavily on a backing track to help with the layers we can’t cover live so we manage to keep a pretty big sound. We make sure to play all the important and artistic parts in real time though as there’s definitely a need for that natural energy and feel to be present in a live show instead of just duplicating what you hear on a record.
Q :The band is just getting started. What on the horizon for 2017?
A: ‘Rise’ being our first record, we’re still firmly in the developement stage of our band. This represents the first chapter but moving forward we’re doing tons of experimenting sonically and working hard to continue finding ourselves vocally. We’ve been jamming with some guitarists to possibly add to our sound as well as possibly pulling back from the piano more. We hope to release some ep’s this year as well as launch the above mentioned piano courses. The goal is to be able to make enough passive income from this so we can take our act on the road and be relentless with getting our music out there.