Racquet rhythms: Somdev Devvarman talks about turning musician together with his debut album ‘One3Two’

Somdev Devvarman
| Photograph Credit score: Particular Association

Music and sport are seemingly worlds aside. One is taken into account a inventive endeavour; the opposite a bodily pursuit. If the masking of effort is admired in a single, the exhibition of toil is appreciated within the different. The requirement of various abilities makes it troublesome to grasp each. There are, nonetheless, a couple of who’ve managed to straddle each worlds with appreciable success. The late Micheline Ostermeyer, for example, was an Olympic gold medallist (in shot put and discus throw) and an achieved live performance pianist.

“The qualities that make a true artist are nearly the same qualities that make a true athlete,” she believed.

Former Indian tennis star Somdev Devvarman concurs with Ostermeyer. Although he isn’t a grasp of music and sports activities just like the French champion, Somdev is aware of each worlds. Throughout his enjoying days, he has performed reside gigs often. Publish-retirement, he has been making his pastime his major ardour venture. He lately launched his first single, ‘Something More Real’, from his debut album One3Two, which shall be launched later this month.

“The approach and the process [for music and tennis] is incredibly similar but also different in many ways. There is no perfect way of doing it. And the only wrong way of doing it is if I rush the process and not be true to myself,” he says, “Regardless of what people say, as an athlete, you need to be comfortable with your style when you’re out there. Otherwise, it’s not going to work. And I felt something similar with songwriting as well.”

Six years after hanging up his sneakers in tennis, Somdev says he felt like a novice once more whereas creating the album. “It’s a completely different thing to immerse yourself into a studio and figure out the sound that you want to create. You need to be open to constructive criticism. That was the most important thing in sports as well. You need to be brutally honest with yourself and say, ‘Hey, these are the areas that you need to improve on.’ And, the only way to improve is by repeating the process,” says Somdev, who can also be a panellist on the Extraaa Serve present on Sony Sports activities Network.

Songwriting, for Somdev, is the favorite half within the album-making course of. He has been dabbling with it for the final 5 years. “I had so many thoughts, feelings and concepts in my head. Whenever they kept coming to me, I wrote them down and thought if I could make them into songs. Instead of releasing them separately as singles, I thought it’d be better to put them together in an album. Many years down the line, I’ll be proud of all the effort I put into making the album even if no one listens to it.” 

One3Twowould have 15 songs together with ‘Something More Real’. Every music, Somdev says, has a novel temper. ‘Something More Real’, for example, is a pensive monitor about searching for. “There’s a love song, there’s one that evokes humour, there’s a melancholic song… There are different kinds of songs in the album. Hopefully, all of them put together will paint a good picture of what it’s all about.”