Chitra aligns herself with the future that she wants
Realizing she could have bigger dreams, Chitra studied as a violinist for years until she discovered that becoming an artist would be an even greater adventure. She’s got a line-up of projects coming up, and this is JUST the beginning for her.
Abby Martinez: How did you get started with music?
Chitra: So I started playing violin when I was five years old, and I begged my parents that I really wanted lessons. That's something that just continued when I went to college and studied violin. So that was called classical music and that was what I was being trained in. When I was younger I would always sing but I just never wanted to pursue that. I'd go on YouTube and just find instrumentals of songs I like then sing to them constantly and learn to vocally replicate it. So I kind of just taught myself. When I was like 12, I wanted to be able to accompany myself so then I taught myself piano, which is a learning process.
When I was 16 I went to CalArts for a summer program. That fully changed my life because there you study music full-time as if it's like a college program. And that's when I sang live for the first time, and accompanied myself playing piano. I've always known this is what I want to do with my whole life but now I really know that performing is like 1,000% the only thing that makes me really happy. From there, I applied to a bunch of music schools and decided to go to Chapman University, which was a fully classical program so some ups but a lot of downs as well, because I quickly realized I want to be an artist. I need to recalibrate and then I only started songwriting maybe 3 years ago.
When I was 18, I started songwriting out of singing covers because I'd want to associate meaning to how I'm feeling so I find songs that have the meaning that I'm feeling. One day I was just like, “there is no song that can associate how I'm feeling” so I just had to write something down. That transitioned into the first song and kept on doing that.
Tiktok of a transition from Chitra’s demo to the final version of “Throwaway”
AM: Do you have a creative team that you usually work with or do you just make music by yourself?
Chitra: I write all my songs by myself. In terms of production I definitely have two incredible amazing producers, one who I met at that summer program and became one of my best friends. He goes to NYU, so his roommate became my co-producer just by habit. The song “Throwaway,” I had the voice memo and sent it to my friend Sanjay. He loved it and brought his roommate Brede onboard, who's my other producer. We did the entire song over zoom sending files back and forth, and producing it all together.
Producer-writer Duo's are so difficult to find sometimes but it's like finding people that can take the words out of your mouth. They know the sound you want before you even have to say it.
So I think it's also just respect. We all have different strengths, I would say. And so together, the three of us were able to pool 7 different instruments and then a bunch of different ways of thinking about the same thing. We're still also friends and can not take each other too seriously, which I think is a really important part of musical collaboration. You can get in your head and feel this song is so serious. It's like this masterpiece and you need people to chill the fuck out.
AM: What was the most challenging part of creating “Throwaway,” your latest release?
Chitra: The writing was like 10 minutes, and then everything else was hard. I remember it was like a random afternoon a year ago in August. That song worked itself backwards. I think I had the chorus first or that melody. Then I just wrote all the lyrics. The production process was hard to get good takes of that song because being able to relate the emotion that the lines needed took me months. Then all of a sudden in one week I did it in one day and I did every single vocal in one day. All of them were one takes. It was really weird. It was just like my brain and body being like “you're not ready to record the song.”
AM: There are artists out there who create in the most unconventional places like in a closet or under a desk, where do you usually write music?
Chitra: When I was in college, I had a keyboard in my room. And a little studio setup with my speakers and stuff. But I will say I write a lot of lyrics down on my phone and then somehow they land in songs.
I've also been doing this other thing. So sometimes I'll hear a word, phrase, or something and then I'll kind of start to come up with a story of it in my head. Then I will actually use that word in conversation with my friends. They won't know that this is for the purpose of a song, but I will just like to use that word/phrase if I'm talking about a situation or a person or something that I'm in. And it's like a meet my way to myself of manifesting my song. It's been working really well so I don't, I don't know why or how but my brain probably formed some sort of alignment. Then when I actually want to write about it, that word will come in and lend itself. So, that's kind of what my writing process has been for the past couple of months.
Tiktok of Chitra asking her artist friends to make something inspired by “Throwaway”
AM: How was being in an internship for Mark Ronson?
Chitra: Craziest internship ever! I worked at his studio for two years. First, it was like a summer internship (June to August) after my sophomore year of college. I was an audio engineering and production intern so everything I was doing was working with analog gear but also learning like digital space (Pro Tools, Logic, Ableton). I got to be in some really sick sessions, and just like to see how other artists are able to create what their process is like. I had a lot of just funny weird stories, but then I kind of just kept coming back as an intern because I was available and I always wanted to be there because there's literally nothing more fun for someone who's obsessed with music than being in a music studio. So then right before COVID hit I was also still interning there, and then all of this past school year I was pretty much going in to just help with sessions with whatever was needed. I learned so much, like so so so much just not even musically, but in the business space because I was working for a label. So I got to see A&R management like what a creative team actually looks like, just all of the different moving pieces so that was very, very cool.
AM: Do you have any future projects coming up?
Chitra: I do. So last week, I did a release party in downtown LA. Got this whole space and did a whole show, and had 60 to 80 people there. It was very fun. I got to play a lot of unreleased music so all of this is gearing up towards an EP that hopefully will be released in the new year probably like February or March. And then I actually just today booked 3 shows very randomly between October and November. But I'm very very very excited about it because I just love performing live. I also have a music video coming out very soon for “Throwaway.”
Keep up with Chitra:
https://linktr.ee/thisischitra
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