Pune-Based Musician-Developer Sandeep Ranade Wins ‘Apple Design Award 2021’
Shikha Srivastava
Pune, 14th June 2021: A Pune-based software engineer and musician of Mewati Gharana Sandeep Ranade’s artificial intelligence music app ‘NaadSadhana’ has won the ‘Apple Design Award 2021’. This is the very first app to win for Indian music art and culture. The app helps Indian Classical musician’s tune, synthesise and create music.
NaadSadhana (a mix of the Sanskrit words for “essence of sound” and “systemic practice”) is an all-in-one, studio-quality music app that helps musicians of all genres and any expertise perform and publish their music without boundaries. After first finding its tune as an app for practicing Indian classical singing, NaadSadhana has expanded to support seven different genres of music. And with the help of artificial intelligence and Core ML, the app listens as a singer improvises a vocal line, provides instant feedback on the accuracy of notes, and generates a backing track to match, all in real time.
On June 10, 2021, he won the prestigious Apple Design Award for his app NaadSadhana which was selected out of over a million apps for it’s innovation in music, technology and design. NaadSadhana is only the second Indian app to have ever won this award, and the very first one about Indian music, art and culture. Most of the other award winners were larger teams, while NaadSadhana is a one-man effort.
Ranade said, “I kept pinching myself, It felt like winning an Oscar. I couldn’t believe it for a few hours. I kept pinching myself because I thought it was a dream. Once it’s sort of surreal and I really won this, it felt like winning an Oscar. It was just absolutely marvellous.”
He got the idea to develop this app in his music class. There was a student of music who came to him after learning many years from someone else. She was frustrated because she was not progressing. He decided to help her out. He realized that she needs an app or someone to guide her notes while singing and practising because she could only learn from him for one hour per week. That’s why he decided to make an app to guide her notes.
After that Ranade added more accompaniment instruments like Tanpura, Tabla, chords for piano, violin, harmonium and several other percussion instruments. He also added full multitrack recording.
He further said, “Whenever you feel in a mood to sing something, you can create studio-quality music at your home.”
The Indian classical developer has a golden history with the Late Padma- Vibhushan Sangeet Martand Pt Jasraj. Ranade’s classical music journey started in childhood when he was in 4th standard. From 2009 onward he started learning from Pt Jasraj.
On talking about the balancing between his career and passion, Ranade said, “When I was in my 12th grade, I had to make a choice as to whether I want to pursue music professionally or software engineering or do both and I decided to do both. I realized that I need to manage my time more effectively. So first it was optimized for my ‘Riyaz’ (practice) time. Therefore, I have invented ‘NaadYoga’ for a vocal workout that covers eight hours of practice in just 15 mins. That’s how I managed things.”
His ‘Na Corona Karo’ song went viral on social media in 2020 and was appreciated by the god of music AR Rahman.
Remembering that moment, Sandeep said, “The song somehow reached a lot of people around the world and AR Rahman himself put it as a post on Instagram. That’s changed everything for me. The fact that AR Rahman appreciated my music, my app, everything was just beyond a dream come true.”
As a software engineer, Ranade has worked in US tech companies like Google, Microsoft, etc in a career spanning 17+ years. He holds a Masters Degree in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University. He’s the founder of Endless Evolution, an education startup that helps create workouts for habits crucial for success.
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