Let’s start at the end - what do we expect from you guys in 2008-2009?
Ehsaan: A lot of work is happening right now. We have completed work on Abhishek Kapoor’s Rock On, which stars Farhan Akhtar, Prachi Desai and Arjun Rampal. Since the film is about a rock band and their ambitions, as a score it is a complete moveaway from whatever we have done. Like in Taare Zameen Par we used soft rock, but here it’s full-on hard rock. Javedsaab has done some really different writing, because a band’s music has no situational contexts. We have also completed Zoya Akhtar’s Luck By Chance with Farhan Akhtar and Konkona Sen Sharma.

How was it using Farhan’s own voice?
Ehsaan:He’s done a damn good job, man! We told him that we would like to try him out because he can sing well, but he made this condition that if it did not work out we would take a proper singer. But it worked out better than we thought and he’s sung three songs.

Go on.
Ehsaan: We are working on Anil Kapoor’s Shortcut. Boney Kapoor’s film directed by Anees Bazmee is a very different film from the director - a love story with Harman Baweja - and Neelesh Misra has written some brilliant lyrics. We have Nikhil Advani’s Chandni Chowk To China and Kunal Kohli’s film. Then there are also a Telugu film with Siddharth as the hero and R.Madhavan’s film with Nishikant Kamat as director and Kamal Haasan’s daughter Shruti Haasan and Madhavan himself. We hope to do Nikhil’s Ab Dilli Door Nahin and we will start work later on Karan Johar’s film with Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol.
We have recorded three lovely songs by Gulzarsaab for Amol Palekar’s Dhoom Kata and also have Ravi Chopra’s film with Govinda and Lara Dutta. We are also doing Aamir Khan’s English film Delhi Belly and Vipul Amrutlal Shah’s London Dreams.Our three original songs from High School Musical 2 have become huge in the North, especially after the show has gone on air.

That’s a massive quantum of work for a team that generally completes an assignment before moving on to the next.
Ehsaan:Yes, but the pressure of work is also a great stimulus. We still follow the one film at a time way of working but every film has different practicalities. Like some big films are not shot at a stretch or the poeple involved may be too busy on multiple projects.

The flipside to working on a film at a stretch is that afterthoughts that come as a mind evolves cannot be incorporated.
Ehsaan: Well, we do keep making changes and alterations till the last moment. We have even changed compositions at later stages. But some filmmakers find this aspect irritating. (Smiles) Adi (Aditya Chopra) is always grumbling how we keep changing even the mix and master till the end! And no creative person can set a pattern or schedule to creativity. We do have to adjust - like we may plan for five songs in 12 days but only two may happen.

When you sign a film with a superstar, are there any pressures of delivering, or do certain stars become specially inspiring, like Rishi Kapoor and Rajesh Khanna for different composers in the past?
Ehsaan:No, we basically think only of the song. A track like Move your body from Johnny Gaddaar was not even a part of the film but became huge. The songs of High School Musical 2 are a rage. I think that today a song can do without a film, but a film cannot do without a song. As for inspiration, only a director can inspire us.

After a long time, Taare Zameen Par had a bunch of good children-based songs. Did you ever guess at the quantum of success and acclaim it got while working on the film?
Ehsaan: The script by Amole Gupte was terrific, and Aamir Khan’s treatment was like a punch in the stomach. In fact Aamir and Amole, who incidentally is a rock fan and would hang out with us long ago, left everything to us. They just gave us the no’s in the music - no ‘item’ song, no dhol and nothing Punjabi! We decided to do away with”kiddie” kiddies songs like a Lakde ki kaathi and settled for soft rock.

With such a huge workload, do you get time for your other activities?
Ehsaan: We do! I don’t call it a workload, music is about having fun! We have begun the practice of 50 per cent royalty from the sales proceeds with Johnny Gaddaar and we have also started SEL Songs, where we will spotlight the cream of singing talent and give them breaks. We are also doing a lot of corporate work.
Loy:One reason for working on more films is that it is difficult to turn away people. In terms of actual work, I do not think that I am working more though. Before we came into films, we would work on jingles from Monday to Saturday - jingles are like 30-second songs but the work hours can even go up to 2 at night! Now we work a 5-day week.
Even though we have more assignments in films, we have corporate stuff coming in too because we have a very successful track-record in the ad world and they know we have our finger on the right pulse each time. They were always confident that we could deliver in ads but now they know that we can deliver in a film too, so we are the only composers who have been equally successful in both the fields.

As a team, the three of you lay great stress on originality.
Loy:Of course. Plagiarizing is like staying in someone’s house and calling it your own. When we took Pretty woman in Kal Ho Naa Ho we paid a bomb for the rights, but we would have never done it any other way. We also gave full credits to its creators. Shankar, Ehsaan and I always keep reminding each other even if unintentionall y some bars creep in that are similar to something we have heard or made ourselves. As for me, since the last few months, I have stopped listening completely to outside music.

What would you say is your role in the team?
Loy: Where we as a team stand out is that though our music caters a lot to young audiences there is a lot of tradition and Indian classical element that comes in from Shankar’s side. And we are now assimilating each other’s fortes and influences too. Today, for example, I am much more aware of Indian classical music than I was before. Western music is more about feelings and we too have our modal system, but the Indian raags have a much stronger sense of aesthetics because Indian music has been refined over centuries. We are really a marriage of the best of traditional and modern and Indian and Western. And yet we become the objective outsiders to each other. I would say that I am the glue of the team. How do I explain this? Okay, let me put it this way. A red tikka by itself looks quite different if placed for a change against a yellow background instead of skin. So by changing the harmonies, I can change the very base of something that Shankar has composed or he can suggest changes in something Western that I have thought of.
Shankar: Actually, when we started off, all our roles were very clearly defined - Loy was in charge of programming, I was looking after the Indian melody and Ehsaan would fill in with melody or Western elements too. But very strangely, all of us over the years realised that we were contributing to all the departments! Like a melody that people are sure must have been composed by me because of my Indian classical base was actually composed by Ehsaan and a groove that must be right up Loy’s street is actually done by Loy or me. We are thus constantly treading on each other’s forte by erasing the lines of demarcation. I may even tell Loy to make a part of a melody or a chord and then Indianise it and thus make it sound completely different and fresh.

What other changes - in your music or otherwise - have you seen in the ten years you have been around?
Shankar: I think that the most important change is that poeple have started trusting us a little more! Over a period of time, they have realised that our music isn’t for a niche, South Mumbai or metro crowd but connects with everyone. After Dil Chahta Hai came Kal Ho Naa Ho and after that came a rooted-in-small-town-Kanpur Bunty Aur Babli. They have realised that our instrumentations, chords and rhythm patterns change from film to film and we connect both with the masses and the students of music. Our music thus connects at different levels. Like Maa, which had everyone rave about the lyrics. But one person came up to me and said that it was the soft ma-dha-sa chord that connected with his emotions.
That apart, I think that we have always kept changing with every film. What has happened now is that the industry is opening up to new ideas and concepts - I think that the audience always was open. For example, four years back, a song like Dil da mamla in Heyy Babyy would have had everyone insisting on a hero’s voice for Shah Rukh Khan. But now we could afford to explore and take a boy from Punjab - Salim Shehzada - for his playback voice. Today we are more into casting a singer for a song the way an actor is cast for a role. Another example would be of a voice that has a character even if the singer is not a great singer - when a song needs that kind of effect, we take such a voice.

Do you agree that after A.R.Rahman and you came in a lot of half-baked talents and non-talents have also come in because their entry has been facilitated by the new kind of music you brought in?
Shankar: I would say that mediocrity has always been a co-existing factor in all ages. But only true genuine talents sustain for long.

How do you cope with so much work even outside S-E-L?
Shankar: At the end of the day, music is about the communication of emotions. If you are passionate and have your priorities right, then everything can be managed. I keep doing my concerts and shows. Making music is like opening up a valve - the more you let go the more it flows. You will never see me stressed and Ehsaan and Loy are the same.