Harshit Misra aka Hashbass, multi-instrumentalist
Tell us about your childhood. How did you get into music? Were your parents into music too?
A very oiled up school going boy who lives alone in his house since the age of 12 because his parents work and the only thing he gets hooked onto is listening to music in cassettes / radio, eventually CDs, and playing unreal tournament on cheat codes. Yeah! That kid is me. My mom who I have mentioned before was always into great music listening and she made me hear ABBA, George Michael, Lionel Ritchie when I was really young. All I could understand out of it was that it was western music and I really loved the beats and voices, my nana used to have a gramophone and in my summer holidays he used to play these records (Vinyl’s) and then a lot more of Hindi too. I think it had to happen that music just was around more than an instrument playing it was just music playing I literally heard a lot of music, it was this companion to me when I was failing classes, getting good marks, falling for my crush or hell even going to nirulas when I scored well in exams. It also became so intense I would listen to one song for one full week, buy tapes as rewards and then record on them via the radio air FM rainbow shows that played English music. Pretty crazy man!!!
Why did you choose to play the bass? What’s the earliest memory you have of your instrument?
I never in my lifetime thought I would be a bassist, music was a hobby for me till the age of 18. I used to play keyboards, started from Pehla asha and Christmas
You’ve mentioned that you play with a lot of acts. How do you manage this?
At one point I was playing fulltime/ sessions for at least 12-13 acts and that was retarded still is I love juggling from different artist to acts and challenging myself, its fun a lot of endurance, fitness both mental and physical. You’ve got to bring you A+++ game and a lot is looked upon you, I manage myself and I figured correct ways from calendar notifications to shamelessly asking for
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What’s that one thing that you look in an act or artist before you decide to join?
The music they give out does it connects to me? Does it make me move to a
Among all the acts that you are a part of, which one’s the most challenging to play with?
Wow … I remember playing in this amazing trio set with these 2 legendary musicians who blessed Delhi at one point Sava Boyadzhiev and Francisco Lelo De Larrea and that was a challenging gig with some amazing tunes I had never heard and had to play.
Another act that keeps me challenging is the electro-jazz trio DCF_shapes. All 3 of us challenge each other with tunes and remember all the tunes for a nonstop set.
Tell us a bit about your latest release, ’10/11′
Bharath Kumar and me, we both play in the trio dcf_shapes, have been toying with the idea of doing a 2-day lock-down session and then seeing what we get out of it. But since we are from different cities, and play with different artists, our schedules rarely match and when we did find a little window in June, we blocked our calendars and locked ourselves in my home studio in Bangalore for 2 days. Trusting in our ability
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Any interesting anecdote from your album recording process?
I Remember me using a toy vibraphone the one you get for small kids to record on this track called ‘
What’s your music making and recording process like?
My process is like a very natural flow, being a bassist I try not to come up with a bass groove rather I always hear the drums, it’s the drums man they got to knock and if they grooving it gives me an instant idea to lay down a bass groove. Hear a melody put down and build it from there.
The recording process is pretty much sorted in my head and with the gear since I record a lot of session bass and I use zero effects or compression and do believe in creating the tone directly from the bass.
Above all keeping it simple yet knowing what sound you want is my key to work. Like if I can hear it in the head it’s easy to create or fine-tune it.
Hear Hash Bass’ Ep 1011 here :
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