Anand Bhaskar- The Man Behind The Soundtracks of Popular Web Series' like Mirzapur and Masoom

Anand Bhaskar, popularly known for being the front man of alt-rock outfit Anand Bhaskar Collective has been composing soundtracks for quite a few popular shows. The list includes MirzapurSeason 1 and 2 (Amazon Prime Video) andMasoom(Disney+ Hotstar) along with his latest projects, including Dr Arora(SonyLIV) a short film -Graydirected by Sakshi Gurnani forAmazon Mini.On being asked about the process he follows to score for a film or a web series, the singer songwriter opened up

"I don't score to the visuals, I score to the story. I read the script a bunch of times to the point that I memorise the characters and what they bring to the world that is being created. Then I sit with the director and discuss the soundscape that might work for the film, the kind of instruments which can be used based on where the story is set and what the characters are like. The idea is to build that world with the director even before the visuals (episodes) come to me. Then I write 25-30 themes, each about 3 minutes long and they start minimally developing into a grand sound. When I receive the first cut, the team loosely place the themes they liked on the timeline, which is about 15 in number. The director then asks me to develop on those 15 shortlisted themes and eventually 7-8 of them get reused through the series. "

For someone who has just ventured into the composing and scoring space, Anand is very sure of his role in the art form that is being created

"Music plays a support function in a film. For me, it is important that whatever I write needs to support the film. The hero of the project is not the music, it is the story. People are going to be invested in the story and not in the music. I feel I am succesful when someone is watching a scene that I have scored and they have not realised that there was music in it. Having said that, the melodic component of the score or its recall value is also important to me but not at the cost of distracting the audience from the story or the characters. My foremost job is to bring out the vision of the director, I am a director's composer."