#20 – Stuart DaCosta (Music Composer and Bassist of The Yellow Diary Band) – Making Music, Touring with bands and co-creating 6+ million view songs

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In this episode, I’m talking to Stuart DaCosta, who is a music composer and bassist in the band The Yellow Diary whose songs like Na Tere Jeha Hora Disda and Rab Rakha have been rocking the charts since the day 1 of launch. I absolutely love this band.

Stuart has been in the indie music scene in India from a long time. He has played in various bands like Something Relevant, Baycity Lights etc and then eventually made his way into The Yellow Diary. Which is now signed by Sony Music India. On the side he’s also working for bigger projects with his music production company – Salvage Audio Collective and have worked with films like Gully Boy which had chartbuster songs.

This is an episode with which most of the musicians might resonate. A lot of tidbits for musicians. But for everyone else also it will be a good episode and teach you if you keep working on what you love with all your passion, you definitely will get there.

So without further adieu, please enjoy this conversation with Stuart DaCosta.

Links and references from the episode –

People mentioned –

• Joe Satriani – American musician
• Kavita Sharma – Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry
• Rajan Batra – Lead Vocalist – The Yellow Diary Band
• Sahil Shah – Drums – The Yellow Diary Band
• Vaibhav Pani – Guitarist – The Yellow Diary Band
• Himonshu Parikh – Music Producer and Keyboardist
• Vishal Dadlani
• Papon
• Raghu Dixit
• Blackstratblues
• Harsh – Guitarist
• Mallika Barot
• Siddharth Pandit
• Juancho Herrera – Amazing latin guitar player based in NY – here’s one of his performances from 2015.
• Sofia Tosello – Incredible vocal coach
• Andres Rotmistrovsky – Bass Legend
• Ferenc Nemeth – Drums – He’s also the creator of the Drum School App – check out this video
• Rohan Ramanna
• Benny Greb
• JJ
• Jack Steadman of Bombay Bicycle Club‘s (English indie Rock Band)
• Mutemath
• Ed Sheeran
• Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
• Quincy Jones
• Frank Sinatra
• Michael Jackson
• Jacob Collier – one of his YouTube video
• Antibalas
• Kaytranada
  • 99.9 Album
  • Lite Spots track

Books mentioned –

• The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Film(s) mentioned –

• Forest Gump

Softwares/apps/tools mentioned –

• Logic Pro
• UAD Plugins
• Satelite Device
• SoundToys Bundle
• Ableton Live
• Pro Tools
• Oek sound soothe plugin
• Drum Sticks and Practice Pad – YouTube video showing how it works

Interesting references –

• Bandstand revival project – History | Twitter Handle
• Liar Liar song – One of Stuart’s performances as a lead vocalist in his earlier Band – Something Relevant
• Timeout
• Hanging Gardens, Mumbai
• Serendipity
• Himonshu and Rajan worked on a project and eventually worked on Marz song together. Which eventually became one of the initial songs of The Yellow Diary. Then Vaibhav Pani joined in and subsequently, others joined in.
• Mauj Maharaja Band (started by people involved in Something Relevant Band)
• Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music (SAM) – Stuart learned in this music academy.
• Stuart and friends from Swarnabhoomi started Cotton Press Studio, Elphinston Road
• Salvage Audio Collective – Stuart’s music production company which he found along with his musician friends.
• Sony Music India – Record label who signed The Yellow Diary
• FOMO – Fear of missing out
• Morning pages – writing your monkey mind-brain dump on paper in morning – idea from the book The Artist’s way
• Artist’s Date – allowing yourself in indulging in anything your curious mind is thinking off, liberating yourself – idea from the book The Artist’s way
• Manga Movies
• Hayao Miyazaki movies

Quotes mentioned –

• If you have good thoughts, good words and good intentions; you’ll have a good life. Nothing else is in your control really. – Stuart
• I don’t think that there are patterns in creativity, ideas could come from anywhere – Stuart

The ways you can connect with Stuart DaCosta –

• Instagram
• Twitter

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:08:26 — 62.7MB)

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Previous episodes along with show-notes available here.

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Credits and License:

My awesome intro background – The Real Broadway Musical by Narch and Dan Mace (Thanks guys)
Outro background – Tight Shorts – Andrew Applepie

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