How THE GIRL UPSTAIRS music was scored.

THE GIRL UPSTAIRS is a no-budget  film shot in 2 weeks without a crew. This is an account of the music production for the film.


After the first cut of THE GIRL UPSTAIRS was done, back in San Diego,  I ran into Suresh Sistla, a fellow Qualcommer and Musician, whose office was a few offices down from mine. He sent me a sample of his work ("Fusion"). I loved it because it had an Illayaraja feel to it. I showed him the film and he became interested in scoring the music for the film.

By then, the film already had some royalty free music all over it. Suresh was instrumental in revamping the entire BGM and also scoring 5-6 new compositions for the songs.
Yours truly had the opportunity to work closely with him on the lyrics of the first 3 songs. Suresh was on the lookout for a second lyricist and he ran into KSM Phanindra, a talented lyricist, on a Qualcomm mailing list. They got together and rest is history.

The last part was the actual song recording. We hired an excellent sound engineer and recorded the songs at his home studio over 2-3 weekend. Suresh had to rope in a number of talented singers (Sushma, Balaaji, Sriram, Bharathi) and instrumentalists (Sarju, Rahul, Lawrence) to make the recording possible.

In the end, the CD was done and we made it available on Itunes. I have to thank Suresh and his team, especially his wife and singer, Sushma Suresh, for making this soundtrack possible. And I hope you enjoy the music of THE GIRL UPSTAIRS.