Mohini Dey: The Bassist Everyone's Talking About

hey everybody I'm Rick Bato throughout the course of my channel I've tried to make it a point to Champion Young Musicians whose playing I admire one of these musicians is Indian bass virtuoso moini deart such I've been following her incredible playing on Instagram for the past couple [Music] years and What Makes Her Style so interesting is the way that she merges her Indian musical roots with rock Funk Jazz and metal as you'll see from some of the demonstrations she does in the video I caught up with mohini a couple weeks ago while at the Nam

show in La here's my interview mohini welcome thank you for having me I'm so happy to talk to you tell me about how you got to be such a great bass player at your 27 correct yes that's right uh I come from a musical family having my dad as a Bas and my mom as a singer I guess kind of helped uh music was always floating in the house we weren't financially that strong uh but uh my dad had Big Dreams and very unconventional dreams especially for India uh he wanted to have two kids and

he wanted his kids to be um you know a bass player and a drummer okay so he had uh two kids me and my younger sister when we were born my extended family wasn't very happy cuz we were girl Childs and yeah like my relatives and stuff you know so my parents cut cords with them and they were like you know we don't need you guys like we're happy we're good we lead our life you know we'll show you what it means to be you know uh girls and be successful at the same time and

there's no such thing as masculine instruments or you know all these like things that we were hearing like no don't teach your girl base it's a masculine instrument don't teach your girl drums it's it's it's too powerful you know for a girl and stuff like that so my dad totally like you know neglected them and like totally cut them out of our lives and made sure that we were always in an environment that was inspiring and uh raised us with uh very uh High values very good uh you know um very strict schedule as well

because the culture that I come from I'm a Bengali by my mother tongue so all Bengali families uh always have some type of uh art related things growing up either it's painting or you know dancing or singing or something you walk into every Bengali family's house and you'll find an artist of some sort and uh so yeah you know my um schedule kind of looked like this waking up 5:30 a.m. in the morning going to school by 6:00 a.m. coming back home at 12:30 and then come home freshen up have your lunch and then my

private tutor would come home to teach me uh they didn't send me to like external classes or anything because they didn't want want me to get distracted I guess you know they wanted me wanted me to be super focused stay focused and you know just practice music and do your uh academics and stuff so she would teach me my private T tutor would teach me for about two and a half three hours and then after she would leave I would do her homework and then after that I would do my school homework and then little

snack and then my dad would give me my music lessons and then I would do his homework so that would go on for about like 9:00 p.m. then have dinner and then go to sleep and then all over again so every day okay so his homework you meaning the stuff he wanted you to practice exactly all the exercises and stuff so how old were you when you started doing this five I uh seriously started taking lessons when I was six or seven years old but I was really already playing the bass at the age of

three so when he used to practice his bass he would put his headphones on my ears and I started tapping the right Tempo and that's when he realized like I've already got rhythm in me and uh why not teach your Bas you know like why not teach your base seriously and why why don't I let her pursue uh bass as a career cuz there is no female bass player in India at that time there were none and uh it was quite uh you know interesting because you know like I hearing my story you would think

oh so Dad decided what you would do right it was like that like I I I didn't have a choice I had to do what my dad told me okay did you fight back ever or no oh absolutely we used to have a bunch of fights you know uh not at first but later on when I became more rebellious when I was probably like 13 or 14 years old that's when I started rebelling really hard and saying what what would be rebelling I don't want to practice I don't want to do this what no I

slowly was growing to love music but I wanted to become a fashion designer so I was trying to explain to him and my mom that I wanted to pursue fashion designing and there came a point in my life where right after my 12th board exams I think and uh there were three golden opportunities where um I got offered a full scholarship by Berkeley College of Music and uh I got called to play in a rahman's band full-time as a as his bass player for his movies and basically be a part of his touring band and

the third one was I got selected in the fashion college that I wanted to go out that I had secretly applied in and that my family had no clue about uh but that was like kind of my secret goal but I knew my parents wouldn't support it so and it was never enough because the culture that I come from it's so strict that if you try to rebel and try to do something else they would my dad would lock me up in the room you know yeah so like if I didn't get something right then

I would be locked in the room trying to get that right and until I get that right I wouldn't be out go back to to you're a little kid what kind of stuff is your dad teaching in you uh just scales you know just normal just C major and then different shapes and then Doria just you know simple scales and stuff would he teach you Funk stuff yes uh he would play a lot of music different kinds of music he would play Mark King level 42 so he would first show me how sound is so

important right so my finger style tone is very different than my slap style tone this is my which is very kind of tight and very has a lot of attack whereas my slap sound it's very lot of subs and lot of high mids right so when I play slap when I start slapping it um it registers more it cuts more [Music] right so that's marking right there Mark King's groov so I would pick up those grooves while watching him on my TV we had this DVD player and he would play a lot of Victor Wooten

a lot of uh you know Jacko pastoras weather report tunes and uh brother Johnson Lewis Johnson cab Tony mopine and lots of drummers as well like d Dennis Chambers and CER bu for a bunch of music and so I would just like sit in front of the TV so this is what would happen I would watch fash shows and my dad would change it and play play these incredible musicians playing you know their instruments and then he'd be like um you should play this tune this is really good this is Lucky 7 from extraction Greg

how play this try to pick it up and then tonight or tomorrow I want to see how much you've picked it picked up and then I will correct you you know so that was kind of like every day like I would learn a tune you know talking about Greg actually I'm touring with Greg how in October November this year so I'm really excited about that but as a 12-year-old 13-year-old I wouldn't have been that excited at that time because that was wasn't my dream at that time uh but uh yeah I mean it it was

uh it was kind of like my dad put me on this train and I didn't know where the destination was and I still feel like that I still feel like I am set to do something and I'm set to be somewhere but I don't know where the destination is so that's why like music is not the only thing that I do I have a company on the side and I have a clothing line on the side that runs by itself I do social uh media marketing digital analyzing and stuff and then on the side I

sell clothes as well and I manage bands in India where I'm doing event organizing and stuff like that I love managing the aspect you know this managing stuff um so this gives me I guess time to kind of fluctuate in and out between different things having said that I'm also recording for a bunch of artists a lot of great guitar players I've had uh the pleasure of playing with Mike Stern at the age of 15 I I did two tours with him I did a tour with Dave wo the more I played with different musicians

uh again these were things that I never thought I would it just kind of happened uh cuz they were coming to India and uh I guess they heard that there's this little girl that plays bass she's really good let's try her out you know it was kind of like that and when they heard me they were blown away and uh they took me under their wings and uh it was it I think I start at first I started enjoying the spotlight uh more than the playing and then then later on when I got tired of

the spotl then it was like well I want to move out of my house so I moved out uh from my parents' place at 17 because I just wanted control over my life I wanted to do things of my own and was that unusual to do that very unusual especially for a girl at 17 to move out of uh her parents place very unusual very rare too but I was rebellious like that and he was you know training me to be something that was not traditional so what what was he training you to be um

a Bas I know but but in an independent what style what was your dad's what what what kind of stuff did he like he loved Funk he loved Funk um he wanted me to be versatile uh not he didn't never put me in one box he always played different kinds of music but uh he always said learn this learn that you know uh learn this from this person this is really cool do you like this what kind of music do you like do you like R&B do you like so I guess he was trying to

sus out like what I'm more inclined towards as well but at that time you're a kid you know like whatever get you're in that environment everything is exciting and everything is fun cuz it's new but then when you hear more of that it's like okay I don't know you know but that changed when I started playing with musicians from South India MH I was already working by the age of nine uh so it's been over 18 years that I've been professionally working in the music industry and uh through my years in the early years I

had the pleasure of exploring the south side of India where I got to play with a lot of exotic instrumentalists like k mangam gam Mor sing like all these unheard of things that I had never heard of that time and when I played with them I saw them do things like even TAA for instance like they were doing things that I just never knew was possible and it was really fascinating to me and I wanted to sound like them on my base okay so how would you adapt something like like tablea something that you would

take from that yeah so so like you know the buyer like the left side and the right side is the chatti we call it the chatti which is the tongue the high sound and then the low sound is the baa so I was like okay I play base obviously there are frequencies and there are you know registers low register High register mid register so my b string can become the bua right and I'm slapping so maybe my thumb can become the buer and then the chatti can become the pluck okay and then all the Ghost

Notes can become my ghost notes you know so uh same thing put into drummer like looking at a drummer when the kick is being played that's my um that's that's my bass drum you right and then the snare is the pluck and then the high hats become my ghost notes so like when I'm hearing a drummer play so all the chicka Chi is is the ghost note so I would [Music] do so I'm thinking like a drummer most of the time and that's where it kind of started and then I guess I took it to

another level when I heard drummers do like really fast stuff like that all the triplet kind of stuff I was like I was like o okay I can do that but again I was not using my third finger until that point to only to achieve that sound I started incorporating my third finger and then I realized wow you could do it really fast right you know and um same way when I heard all these exotic instrumentalist um instrumentalists play uh quintuplets sep tuplets and of course the konle stuff that is really big in India right

I uh trained under that a little bit not entirely uh but I picked up few things that really helped me view time differently so like sevens for me or just fours to start with would be now e not triplet you know so like if you were to do the one two three four so I use that idea and then if you were to just keep time if you could just do that for me I'll show you how I play it one two three 4 so that's stray [Music] whatever notes and then 2 three 4 so

those ideas I can use when I'm improvising and even when I'm soloing now the Quint uplet stuff triplets are easy right like sorry but um like with slap and even with fing style I kind of constructed ways to play triplets different ways like um open string and then hammer on hammer on you know and then to make it cooler just use the open string it's nonfunctional but still works when you just go half a step up cuz it's so fast you can't you can barely hear it so no matter what scale you are in [Music]

so you know using those ideas so that's one way and then [Music] like and then Mark King's Way [Music] is you know and then Victor uses this up Thum a lot so that's hard to do isn't it yeah it's hard it's hard I always wondered when Victor would do that yeah it's really hard it took me some time to you know get that but once I got it it's a it's it's really powerful you know and then I used that idea yeah and put that in quintuplets so I just need two more notes cuz it's

three four five then it's a quint uplet I can do quintuplets in every beat I was like okay what if I do open string and then hammer on and then do the okay so lots of you know spending time to try to figure out what could sound like that so that's so that's how it would sound so 2 3 [Music] 4 now get more ambitious more adventurous and why don't I put triplet with the quintet [Music] so [Music] so now you can [Music] play so you could play it really fast and mo what is what

is hard for you to do is there I so people that that that you that are watching this you have to follow moini on her Instagram you play every style and it always amazes me how versatile you are and you're interested in all these things you play on progressive metal things and and you'll play Funk and then you'll play fusion with your Fusion group and why are you interested in all these different genres of music first of all I guess I like to see music as one maybe that's why uh for me I'm not categorizing

that much for me anything that sounds good and excites me I'm down for it you know uh and that's why I think it allows me to not be stuck at one point and be just satisfied with it every day is a new day and when it's just like talking to new people you know and uh vocabularies for example you know really excite me like when I come to the US and I talk to different people with different accents and different vocabularies I am adapting constantly I still don't think I speak the best English but perfect

English I know but I'm saying that because like I am learning all the time constantly I'm a very good listener mhm and that's why I think I'm grasping things very quickly cuz I'm very focused and I want to learn and uh so I treat music the same way when I'm listening to people play I hear different vocabularies and different stylistic ideas which is exciting to me and I want to incorporate those good ideas and blend that or Infuse that with my voice with my playing and uh yeah it allows me to not stay stuck in

one place and go beyond that you know otherwise it's just like okay that's it you know how is your reading your reading is very good right well it used to be better I still can read but coming from India there's not many people that can read that much but uh it would take me like 2 minutes to kind of go through everything and then play it right but if this was me before I was much better but nowadays people don't send charts and people don't and the pace of work is so fast that you know

there's a midi base and you hear it that's you do a cop copy midi midi Bas for example I don't do that I don't do that I uh for my clients some clients will send the midi reference but most clients will not send the midi reference and just send the track and just tell me whatever you feel like do yeah so I will orchestrate My Own Parts which is really fun cuz I love the creation part I love uh making songs I love creating uh ideating new things for different uh keeping the instrument instrumentation in

mind uh for me that's very exciting uh even more than performing actually I love creating how important is improvising to you we talked a little bit about this before we started very very important because if you don't know how to improvise then there's nothing to talk about expand on that I hear a lot of musicians nowadays uh do great things very skilled very technical uh amazing in their own ways but what's missing is the soul and the melody uh I always say this there's only bad Arrangement there's no bad Melody and my band we all

share the same thought because you can color you have the ability to color you have the ability to shape things and you are in control of that but what happens is when you don't have the tools to improvise when you don't have the uh things that you can play with to create something uh harmonically um speaking in terms of functionality MH then most of the things are just non-functional and it doesn't make sense it's just yeah it might be fun to listen to it's kind of like gymnastics you know uh oh how high high can

you jump you know or how uh far can you throw this ball you know it's kind of like that it becomes more metric it's be it becomes more uh how much of that can you do or how fast can you play it becomes more about just a sport kind of sporty you know but music is not a sport you know at least I don't see it that way music is About Soul feeling and intention you know for me intention matters the most I will hire musician who cannot read and has Soul over somebody who can

read and has no soul let's put it that way okay coming to uh really Orchestra ated music really technical music and kind of the stuff that I have been hearing nowadays it's all great it's really great and uh amazing but uh at the same time I personally wouldn't wouldn't hire musicians like that who cannot improvise because my music requires people to be able to improvise cuz I don't want my every night to sound the same right and that's really the thing do you want to have a conversation on stage with the other musicians yeah and

you want it to be a conversation every night absolutely yeah I like having different conversations and I want to be able to explore the possibility of what can happen I don't want to just limit there by saying that okay this is what I can do this is what I'm great at I'm going to do this every night cool but that's not me you have your Trio tell talk about that a little bit right so the trio I wouldn't call it my Trio but I I would call it our Trio only because uh the project mamoji

uh only started because of my husband Mark um the sax he's the saxophonist in the band and he was hearing me record for a lot of prog Ro guitar players when we had just got married and uh from the other room he's just like oh my God whose track is that and I'm like oh this is this person this is Terry cyri playing on guitar and he's like oh my God I want to play music like that but what if we put saxophone in that context and in instead of guitar what do we do saxophone

based and drums and still play prog Rock somewhat prog rock not maybe entirely maybe prog rock musicians if they hear our music would disagree that this is prog rock because there is uh it's heavy on the Jazz side because there are elements of jazz because it has has changes exactly and there's vocabulary wait wait wait just to explain changes cuz people that are watching this may not even know when you say that your jazz musician everybody knows but it's chord changes chord changes yeah yeah changes that you can solo uh through you know you know

that you can make sense of you know uh and then there are changes that are functional and nonfunctional so I guess a lot of prog Ro music music has non-functional Harmony you guys have very sophisticated Harmony yes that you improvise over exactly exactly so there are areas in the songs where there are fixed Parts y but then there are areas which are solely solo parts for each of us where we can just blow over those changes right um that's that's our featured spot because we're good at that right but we also want to see how

this cuz this sound when we first came together it was very new like even now I've never heard any band that sounds like this mamoji because saxophone playing prog rock Parts it's heavy but then there's Jazz and then there's kle because of Gino and I's uh you know history Gino and I have played together since I was like 11 years old okay Gino Banks who plays drums now I met Gino back in 20 8 yeah and you guys have known each other forever forever yeah he has seen me grow I've seen him grow we've played

in so many different bands including having toured with gri Goin you know we did we've done like uh two to three tours with him and a bunch of other great artists you know um but uh yeah it really helps us you know see music differently because of our different backgrounds you know uh whereas my band uh which is actually quintet um I did um my I guess a few performances before I released my album in Poland with GGO Boron drums Daniel sheni on keyboards uh Mike goth on guitar and Mark aruch on Sachs and myself

on bass and I was doing all the conle stuff but I at that time I hadn't released my album I was just kind of um experimenting with my music and I wanted to see how people react in the live uh scenario before I before I could put out the album I just wanted to see how people react to my music first and it was great it was good so it gave me the kind of assurance that okay this would do well and uh I had been getting a lot of messages uh from a very long

time like when are you going to release your music you know even when I was playing with ar even when I was playing with you know Jordan drudis and bunch of other artists I kept getting this message like when are you putting out your album so there was the demand for that it was just that sometimes us human beings have this bad habit of self-sabotaging you know that it's not good enough you know and I was there you know sadly I was there and uh sometimes uh you know it it puts you uh it puts

a full stop for some time maybe it's good maybe it's bad I don't know but the more I played with different artists the more it made me realize like I want these guest artists on the songs uh the first song that I wrote for my album was introverted Soul okay and I wrote that when I was 13 years old and that is my biggest hit on the album uh that has the most number of views that is the song that people are talking about and that was very uh surprising to me because that was the

first song I wrote and uh I think that's what I mean by like you know representation and like putting your feelings and your experiences in your music when you have the tools to do that you are able to do that but if you don't have the tools then you will not be able to share your story through music then it's just a bunch of talking you know but I don't I don't like talking that much you know I like playing so I let my music speak for itself and if you hear all the songs on

the album every song has a story uh every song has something to say which is a part of my life has been a part of my life um the song uh that NADA Michael Walden played on uh that was written when I was 14 or 15 years old and uh my dad showed me this groove and it's in three and it's hard to you know and that was an exercise just to get this going you know at that time I didn't think that I was going to write a song Until Nar Michael Walden reached out

on Facebook when my dad posted this video of me and my sister playing this and my sister was playing this really funky Rhythm rhythmic kind of comp thing that she was doing and NADA said I want to play play on this track and I was like okay I guess I need to make a song then So This Groove Led to the song kick base and that then I um you know got horns um to play this [Music] melody and I kind of wrote that song keeping in mind weather report like you know I wanted that

big band kind of sound but with the fusion element cuz I'm from India you know and uh yeah you know so a lot of the songs on my album are about me uh my love for music cultures uh experiences and my love for food as well because there's meater that's me one of the song names and then In-N-Out that was dedicated to literally In-N-Out Burgers and first food than you so that says a lot okay so Fusion means a different thing in India than here exactly wait well let's define Fusion for here how would you

say Americans think of fusion music well I guess a little bit of jazz little bit of rock right I think that's what Jazz Rock I guess historically Jazz rock yeah but in India it's also the Indian element fused in with the Jazz Rock element that's what we call Fusion when you hear Indian elements in there like Tad takas or like some Raga stuff going on where with a little bit of the gmock we call it gmock but in uh English it's called Grace notes Grace notes you know so uh just different words but literally the

same thing we talk about it a lot when we're playing music like you can view music differently but still be on the same page and still make music together you know it's all about the intention tell me some things that you would have transcribed would your dad have you transcribe baselines from people or learn solos at all and would you learn just base things would you learned sax solos would you learn guitar solos yeah a lot of songs like I was saying like you you know uh Victor wuten songs can't let me see if I

can [Music] remember so I think that's called more love or the lesson by Victor Woon so I would like transcribe a bunch of Victor songs I would transcribe uh Mark King songs like [Music] star child yeah so bunch of songs bunch of grooves and then like Greg house songs that I don't remember anymore but bunch of just like really um like odd time meter songs you know cuz my dad wanted my rhythm to be strong and uh I started playing with uh Ranjit Barrett who plays with John mcclaflin now when I was like only 11

years old so my time got really strong from 11 years old you know and I was already playing like poly rhythmic stuff like 11 13s and fives so my feeling with those time signatures was super strong and he's the kind of drummer that kind of doesn't show the one and he was looking for a Bas cler at that time so my dad was a good friend of his and uh he introduced me to Ranjit Barrett at the age of 11 and I played one of Victor's songs in five you know and uh he took me

under his wings and uh he said let's play every day so after school hours sometimes I would go to his Studio it was called Nirvana studio and I would just play with him and he would be playing with Bas players like Jonas hellberg Dominic diazza um a lot of great Bas players and I was witnessed to all of that so it was a great like kind of Master Class for me just sitting there and watching them play like wow you know and then I would ask Dominic questions like how are you doing this you know

can you show it to me and how nice of him him to actually show it to me you know when you were a kid and your D and you're starting out and your dad said okay this is your homework play these scales work on these groups would he make sure that you were practicing absolutely yeah yeah he was a very uh Hands-On dad uh very controll controlling dad but uh again his intentions were really good you know he wanted me to be independent uh because he didn't want me to struggle like him and my mom

when they moved to Mumbai uh after they got married both their families disowned them so they didn't have any help and so they really had to start from scratch they had nothing they didn't my mom was wearing my dad's t-shirts like she didn't have any clothes you know so they were they used to live as guests in somebody's home and they didn't have a toilet they would knock on people's doors to even use the toilet they would save food so that they could feed me you know stuff like that so they saw some days that

that I guess they never wanted me or my sister to see so they worked really hard together and made sure that we don't ever get to that point and they uh you know uh uh enrolled me and my sister in the best school we went to the best school uh they would have a hard time paying fees but they did it anyways because they wanted the best education for us you know they wanted us to know that whatever they are doing they're doing it for our future so he always said in the future you will

have a very secure life and uh you will then understand why I'm doing all these things it might feel like it's too much right now but it's for the good at that time I didn't get it but now I get it you know and so I thank him and I'm really grateful for everything that he has taught me for everything that he has given me in my life and um I get it you know I get it uh it's very hard to be a parent you know I I I I totally see that that and

uh even my mom like she was uh I guess my you know ride or die when uh my dad was you know con like giving me all all the information and uh really taught me how to do the business deals in the music industry not just like how to play but like you know how to deal with people you know uh and my mom on the other hand she always made sure like as a girl like I am getting all the you know like the I guess you know the there's a way parents uh teach

boy kids and then there's a way they treat uh uh you know your daughters like it's different it's different consoling it's different upbringing alog together so my mom always made sure that you know I was still getting to be the little kid on the side and not getting swallowed entirely by this like really strict so that was your mom's job yeah yeah yeah yeah and she used to work a lot too but after she had me and my sister she kind of took a back seed because if everybody's working nobody's home then there's like it's

hard it's it's a hard Dynamic so she had to take a back seat and she was happy to do it it was her personal choice and um she was um you know kind of uh she was making sure that everybody was fed and you know she was making sure the house is neat and stuff when we would come back home and uh yeah so that was that was kind of my story and then my goal in life became that I I take care of my family you know uh after I turn after I moved out

at 17 I moved out with this mentality which is that cuz I fought with my dad a lot right and the reason why I moved out was because I didn't want to be in that environment where I'm clashing with Dad all the time uh because he was a Bas fler too and I am a Bas fler too and I was taking his jobs away so there was a lot of there was a lot of like unresolved and unsaid things that and pent up things that was just I guess you know he wanted me to be

a Bas but it became hard to accept that when it came to reality I guess he didn't understand it could really happen and when it was happening he just didn't understand and then later on when I moved out I didn't speak to him for like two and a half three years you know yeah because he was so mad I was still kind of staying in touch with Mom but my goal was to prove to him that I can do this by myself you know like I can show you I can do this by myself and

um there was a lot of fights at home growing up so I I wanted that to stop and I wanted to take the responsibility to take care of my mom and family and expenses and stuff like that and I was able to do that and um I'm very proud of that and he was eventually very proud of me and then we were able to have a healthy relationship you know but for the longest time it was uh really nuts at home you know having to play BAS flers at home was not not good I don't

know it was I guess now I just laugh at it you know so Mo your father passed away recently that's right yeah you're 27 how old was your dad 55 yeah that's got to be really difficult yeah it's very difficult uh and I still haven't had time to process that since uh he passed away uh every single day I've been busy maybe consciously maybe unconsciously as a way to to avoid feeling avoid understanding the I guess the depth it was very difficult because um it was my first loss I have never experienced loss and this

happens to be my dad not just Dad but somebody who taught me everything you know so um yeah I still don't know how to feel about I still feel like he's around you know he's watching me uh that's a good thing but I guess at some point I will have to just take a moment and just process and understand what has happened but uh at the moment I fail to understand um he was um a very important part of the Indian music industry uh everybody respected him a lot and um he had so many students

that he was teaching free of cost because uh that's the kind of guy he was even uh talking to the neighbors uh after he passed away I realized that he was helping out so many people uh from different uh Apartments uh with their families um and so it really shows the kind of guy he was he was always looking out but never looking out for himself it was always giving you know um so yeah I I have always respected him and I've I still respect him a lot and uh if anything you know reality is

has hit so hard suddenly that I have realized a lot of things that um for example you know work is important but family is also important like sometimes you'll be like oh talk to you later I'm too busy or whatever you know but yeah just talking five minutes really helps you know it just takes five minutes you know so those things little things like that oh little things like you know changing strings and then giving the strings away to my dad because he liked using my old strings and my old strings means like just 2

weeks 3 weeks old so they're brand new basically um but um yeah after he passed away I I still do some things like you know changing strings and then oh I'm going to give it to my dad and then realizing he's not there or like calling him like letting him know I just did this or I got this tour you know but having said all of that I know that he was very proud of me um because last 3 years of my relationship with him was is beautiful fantastic yeah yeah he was a proud father

you're out touring you've been here in the states for a few weeks you did uh Steve Vice Camp that's right you been to Sweetwater and uh now you're here you're here at n you have your pedal board here that's set up is this something that is uh meant to cover all the needs that you have here that's right yeah go through some of the things that that you have on here and what you would use them for sure so none of these pedals are doing anything to my sound my sound is coming uh I mean

my tone uh my tone uh is coming uh from the internally built preamp which is the obp3 preamp and my settings here so this one which is the Stacked knob the top one is high mids and it's full okay and this one is lows it's full okay and this one is mid LS it's about 50% and then this one is the balance slap it's also at uh I only use this uh when I'm slapping but right now it's zero cuz I'm in finger style mode finger style would be the bridge P pickup then exactly Bridge

heavy and this one is volume and this one is like a booster pedal wait so when you're on when you're slapping do you combine the two pickups then I do yeah I do so all I do is I put the mid lows to zero y there's no mid lows when I'm slapping and the balance knob is at 50% and that's it so that's why it's so right yes it's like woo you know you can really feel it but sometimes depending on certain venues if it's too sub heavy uh then I will dial in a little

bit of the midl and then it'll sound like can hear it a little bit but just a tad bit you know just to get that Brilliance the definition in the sound because I always go for clarity in my tone because I'm playing FASA like all the stuff that I play it's and I play like a lead instrument on the base so I am always looking for definition because if my tone is sub heavy then the same things no definition no no definition so I don't like that and uh so on the pedal board there's nothing

that's um doing anything to my tone these are all just synth petals distortion pedals little bit of Reverb so I'll take you through my pedal board here the first on the chain is the mono Synn by Electro harmonics and this is just um you know just synth sound so [Music] like you know when you're in a trio setup and you don't have a keyboard player you do yeah I can yeah now you do so there are lots of different sounds in here and then this is like an OG pedal every Bas Flur has yeah the

way I like to use it is um I uh when I want something that is kind of drum and Bassy uh then I put the drive to zero and the OC 220 and only oc1 okay is dialed up all the way and it sounds like [Music] this [Music] so you [Music] can yeah and then if I don't want that much sub and like drumond based then so just different modes you know the to desired liking now this one has 100 stock sounds this one is what is that thing it's called the future impact pedal it

is a boutique company they don't I don't think make any other pedals they only never seen this before yeah this is a new one and uh I got this two years ago I think and um this has been a great investment for me and this is I think the only I guess these two petals are the only one that I've bought the others are just given this one has been a great investment for me because uh of the different sounds that it has to offer I'll just take you through a few that I have used

in my songs uh this one you know that's cool yeah so like the fluty and then this one is like um you know so yeah I mean there's so many sounds and uh yeah you can really tweak also you can tweak the attack resonance balance level everything this one is great for soloing uh it's uh brain waves it's called the brain waves pitch shifter by TC electronic and it sound like [Music] this kind of sounds like I don't know like higher octave but also little guitar [Music] like yeah so this is really great it really

cuts through when you're soloing um this one is a distortion pedal and uh the Alpha Omega and uh another really great Distortion classic pedal yeah classic yeah yeah let's see [Music] yeah yeah so this is really great and this is a Hol this is the Hol of Fame too by a TC electronic so when would you use reverb when I'm playing melodic stuff okay yeah like cordal stuff you know or pinch you [Music] know blah blah blah whatever and then Sub sub up by TC electronic this one like this one sounds like a [Music] Hammond

oh yeah so this one when I play I kind of try to think like a horn player y so [Music] you know so Tri or [Music] like you know it's really beautiful this one and this one is the base envela filter by soundblock Pro for B you know and then this one is a rig modulator by muga fuga you know that one classic I really love this one cuz when the drummer is going like and you can like play around with the r wow I hear that all that sub with that too amazing it's so

good yeah so it's fun you know all fun stuff really fun stuff yeah I always like to ask people what is hard to play you know just like keeping a Groove and incorporating different time signatures is kind of hard okay uh just keeping like uh 4 four and then just doing different poly rythmic uh uh improvisation So like [Music] um [Music] [Music] [Music] so different like poly rhythms you know like sevens and six and like five yeah [Music] woo [Music] [Music] so stuff like that um [Music] [Music] is there anything that you want to talk

about yeah I'd like to make an announcement I'm playing uh billboard live Tokyo and Osaka in August okay would like to say that and then the Greg how tour I think I already mentioned that yeah that one would be nice and how many times have you been here to the states to play Oh H not many times but um I'm moving to Nashville okay next month next month really yeah so hopefully there will be more opportunities I think because I live in India I'm less accessible I was going to ask you that because I've been

wanting to interview you and and finally you're here yeah I get it I I totally understand it's so far it's like a 27-hour flight you know it's like really far and it's totally like it's 13 hours difference you know so totally flipped in the daytime I'm like almost like really dying to stay up how long does it take you to get used to it when you come here like a week or so you know it doesn't hit at first but like on the third day it hits you hard right yeah the first two days it's

all exciting because of the culture shock and stuff um like I was saying you know the vocabularies and stuff I get really excited like I remember ordering steak this is going to be really funny I remember ordering steak and this waitress she's like how would you like it cooked I said medium well and she said and sides I said both sides cuz like nobody talks like that in India you know so stuff like that it happens a lot anyways but yeah by the third day it's like oh okay I really need to stay up so

I I I keep my myself busy doing something and then by night I'm like I make sure that I'm tired so I fall asleep that's how I kind of get it uh uh to this time zone get myself to uh get used to this time zone well when you move to Nashville it's a short drive down to Atlanta love to have you come visit it' be amazing true yeah maybe we can do some more stuff that' be great that'd be great well thank you so much been such a pleasure thank you thank you for having

me it was a pleasure talking to you too cool I'd like to once again thank mohini for being my guest today I'll leave a link for her Instagram in the description below don't forget to leave a comment hit the like button and subscribe thanks so much for watching