Making merry with music

With the vibrant music scene in the city, many students and music enthusiasts come together, dreaming of creating their own  band.

One such active team, rather an a cappella group, is ‘No Treble’, which is grabbing the attention of music lovers in Bengaluru. They do not focus on any particular genre of music but mostly sing and perform popular pop songs.

The team has eight members —  six singers namely Samarth U Mamadapur, Joewin Shamalina, Sanjana Vijaykumar, Anushree Shankar, Santoshi Sneha Tadanki and Arunil Konwar, beatboxer Suraj Suresh and rapper Akash ‘Pacman’ Shanbag. They also have a few additional members — Aditya Shiv, Sephra Anthony, Madhuri Suresh and Vinayak.

In a chat with Sirisha Venkatesh, Joewin talks about the group and its inspiration.

How did ‘No Treble’ happen?

I have been a part of quite a few a cappella teams, choirs and bands in the past. With a talented bunch of singers, rappers and beatboxers at M S Ramaiah Institute of Technology, I thought we could do something more than what most engineers do and decided to form ‘No Treble’.

When and how did it come into action?

The team was formed not long ago, although the hunt for the best talent at Ramaiah began last year in August. We came into action in January this year.

Where all have you guys performed?

We started with competitions, hitting it off at every engineering college possible. We won three competitions back to back in two weeks. Starting with Nitte Meenakshi
Institute of Technology followed by PESIT and then SVCE.

After this came one of our biggest events, the VTU cultural youth festival held at Moodabidri, which witnessed participation from about 300 engineering colleges. Fortunately, we were placed first amongst all these colleges.

We couldn’t be happier! This was truly a proud moment for us and we had tears rolling down our eyes.

Have you faced any criticism till now?

At one of our first few competitions at Christ University, we were pondering over what went wrong with our performance and when we asked the judges, they suggested that we must spend more time with our teammates because more than practice, the bond we share with each other is more important and it reflects in the performance. That was one of the most thoughtful suggestions and it has definitely brought us to where we are now.

Your inspiration.

Pentatonix, Agam, Penn Masala and Coldplay.

Your thoughts on a cappella music.

The a cappella craze is growing now. We want to make people aware of the beauty of a cappella music and that one doesn’t need instruments to make music.
All that’s needed are souls which are passionate about music.

Any future plans?

We’ve been offered quite a few shows in Bengaluru. Integrating our own compositions with Bollywood and English songs is something that we’re working on and will be uploading some videos soon.