Strumming the right notes

Krishna Dass has a number of achievements to his credit.

 
A second-year engineering student of industrial management at MVIT, this talented guitarist picked up his brother’s guitar during his school days, when he found it covered in a pile of dust.

This pushed him to go online and learn the guitar through e-tutors.

A self-taught musician, he says that YouTube videos were the only kind of classes that he “attended”.
  
“It was initially hard for me because of lack of proper guidance. I learnt through trial and error. I gave up playing guitar during my tenth standard. But soon I picked it up again.”

“It is tough to learn guitar online and it takes a long time. So I took my own time to practise the songs,” he says.

Krishna found it difficult to get the chord shape, music structures and finger placing but practising for about 45 minutes everyday helped him perfect his pieces.

A former guitarist of the band, ‘Worst Case Scenario’ , he now plays for the metalcore band ‘We Will Decide On Wednesday’.
 
He is the rhythms/lead guitarist and has won a number of accolades along with his band at college fests. However, their biggest highlight was playing at the ‘Nokia Lumia Fest’.

He also fondly remembers being asked to headline during a college fest.

He says that one of the advantages of being a self-taught guitarist is that he didn’t have to stick to deadlines. He could also learn a song at his own pace.

He also adds that he is not restrained to any one system as he learnt the lessons online and not at an institute.

“I can play a variety of songs without pressure and can also bring in my originality into them.”

His biggest influences are Jesse Cash, Dave Mustaine and Steve Vai and he loves the songs of ‘Erra’, ‘As I Lay Dying’ and ‘August Burns Red’.

Currently, he is concentrating on songwriting and playing for the numerous fests ahead of him and he hopes that people will like his original compositions.
 
He says that though the crowd turnout for metal is always big in Bengaluru, the metal scene in India currently seems down as many international bands haven’t come in for a while now.

However, he says that the  market is slowly growing as a number of young people are trying to revive the metal scene.

“Youngsters are growing in this field and there is a lot of competition among them. However, if everyone could help each other, support each other and grow together in times of need, it would develop the overall metal industry.”