The Making of Sunil's Music

III. The Recording Process

“He liked to compose, he liked to play, but he did not like to record.”

— Steve, on Sunil

Early Recording: The Two-Track Era

For much of Sunil’s career, recording meant a two-track Revox semi-professional machine — essentially a live performance captured in real time. There was no multitrack, no ability to isolate mistakes. If something went wrong, the whole piece had to be started again — on the same tape.

“Before multi-track recording became available in the 1980s, everything was done on a two-track recorder. They would do a take, stop, Sunil Da would practise a passage further, and if something needed to be added, they would superimpose it onto the same recording. This is why the early material has a quality that noticeably deteriorates over the length of the tape — you can actually hear it.”

— Mrityunjay Sathyanarayanan

The tape shortage of the early years added its own pressure. Victor, who served as Sunil’s recording assistant from the mid-1960s, once wrote to the Mother to say he would have to stop recording entirely if tapes could not be found. Her reply: “Don’t worry.” Shortly afterward, Gambelon arrived carrying a stack of tapes.

How a Session Worked

A recording session began not with a take but with prolonged familiarisation. The process was deliberate, patient, almost ritual.

“He would come in and spend at least the first hour simply playing through the piece, over and over, so that Kanat could learn his part and Clusterman or Patrick could familiarise themselves with the music. Only after everyone felt comfortable would we actually record.”

— Steve

Sunil disliked multiple takes. He felt that repetition eroded the feeling of a piece. Unless a mistake was obvious, the first take was kept.

“He disliked multiple takes — he felt that if you did too many, you lost the feeling. So unless there was an obvious mistake, the first take was the one he kept.”

— Steve

And yet there were sessions that transcended technique altogether:

“There were sessions where the room itself seemed to change as he played. There are certain passages I remember simply because of what it was like to be in that room when he was working through them.”

— Steve

The Multitrack Liberation

The arrival of multitrack recording changed the emotional atmosphere of the sessions substantially.

“Once we eventually acquired a multitrack recorder, Sunil became far more relaxed. He knew he could go back and add or correct things. He still did not enjoy the act of recording itself — he would often say he liked to compose, he liked to play, but he did not like to record. I think that was a residue of the stress from those early live sessions. In the later years, particularly during mixing, he was genuinely at ease.”

— Steve

Accidents as Composition

Some of what listeners heard as deliberate artistic choices were, in fact, the behaviour of the medium. Mrityunjay’s account of discovering this is one of the most illuminating passages in the interviews:

“For the longest time I believed the opening of the Savitri Book One, Canto One music — ‘The Hour of God’ — was one of the most futuristic sounds imaginable. That rich, lush bell tone, like the startup sound of an early Macintosh. I thought it was a stroke of genius. Years later, Steve told me it sounds that way because the reverb was overdone and there was natural tape flutter. What I heard as a deliberate composition was actually the behaviour of the medium.”

— Mrityunjay Sathyanarayanan

This did not diminish the music; it illuminated its method. Constraint was simply medium. The creative mind found use in whatever was there.

Creative Blocks and Gaps

The pressure of producing a New Year composition every year without fail was not always met smoothly. There were years of silence.

“Yes. There were some years where nothing came and we simply did not record. If you look at the release dates, most years follow in sequence, but there are a few gaps. I remember one year — in the early period — where we did not begin recording until nearly Christmas and had to complete everything between Christmas and New Year.”

— Steve