Shankar Tucker's music goes viral on web

American clarinetist Shankar Tucker, an avid A.R. Rehman fan and the protégé of flautist Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, has stormed the web with his innovative cover version of Slumdog Millionaire's soundtrack and Adele's Rolling In The Deep, among many others. VIDEO INSIDE

If you think nobody could have made Slumdog Millionaire's soundtrack better than A.R.Rehman, think again. Shankar, the self confessed Rehman fan, has given a truly fusion feel to this innovative cover of O Saya. As he says in the intro to the song, "This is my arrangement of A.R. Rahman's "O Saya", from the soundtrack of Slumdog Millionaire. It features my sister, Akshaya, playing cello. The glitchy sound at the beginning was created using cello and izotope's "stutter edit pro" plugin. The only drum I used in this was the ganjira, though I tried various mic placements and EQ's to make it sound really big."

Shankar-Tucker

In an age where videos and sales drive the music scene, Shankar has relied completely on the online platform to distribute and sell all his music. And it worked. His YouTube music channel, The Shrutibox, features his fusion compositions and has garnered two million hits. He has collaborated with Mumbai-based classical singer Nirali Kartik and Washington DC-based vocalists, Vidya and Vandana Iyer.Not content with instrumental fusion, he has also experimented with a Indo-western mash-up featuring Adele's hit track Rolling in the Deep with Rahat Fateh Ali Khan's iconic track O Re Piya.