We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Shireen Ghosh. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Shireen below.

Alright, Shireen thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

I don’t think I ever had a single moment, it was more an accumulation of experiences over several years. I’ve never had enough definite certainty to know I wanted to be a composer or musician for sure – I just kind of fell into doing it, and discovered surprisingly that I kind of liked it… so I just kept going! I feel like the more years pass, the more my focus sharpens, and it’s only in hindsight that I realize that no matter what else I’ve done and how many times I’ve strayed from the path of doing music, I’ve always come back to it somehow.

Shireen, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a music composer, producer, and sound designer! I love sound in every single form, I love getting to work with something that’s so fundamental to our perception of the world. I started learning piano as a child, but I was never a very good student, I was always distracted by everything else in the massive world of sound. I taught myself several other instruments, and also how to record and edit sound on my shared family computer. After I graduated high school, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, so I did an undergraduate degree in English – but I never felt like it was right for me. I started connecting with filmmaking students and working on their projects for fun, but by doing this I realized I really liked working with media, and so after I finished my undergrad, I just kept working on music projects.

I worked in my hometown of Kolkata, India, as well as in Mumbai, for several years. During the pandemic, I made an impulse decision to apply to Columbia College Chicago, and after I graduated from there, I moved to Los Angeles.

I’m always looking for new and interesting things to do, and I love getting the chance to mess around with new instruments and technology. I enjoy recording strange sounds, using software to manipulate them, and I love being able to tell stories and explore concepts through this medium!

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

Artistic ability is not some kind of magical unknowable god-gifted talent that only special chosen people are given. All people have the potential to be creative, and the skills required to express that potential are absolutely teachable. “Artists” can often seem like mysterious creatures with strange habits and behaviours, but a lot of that comes from several years of experimentation and learning about our own creative processes, habits, and interests. Basically – creativity and expression are not solely the property of professional artists! given some time, patience, and the right kind of practice, anyone can unlock that side of themselves, and you don’t have to do it professionally in order for it to be fulfilling and worth it for you.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

My path to get here has been pretty non-traditional, and significantly self-taught. I used to have a lot of impostor syndrome about people who did things the more conventional and “proper” way, believing that it had way more legitimacy than the scrappy DIY way I have tended to do things for most of my life. I had to unlearn that inferiority, not only because it isn’t true, but also it made me have a hard time relating to my colleagues who DID come by that traditional path, and made me focus on the differences between us, rather than the similarities and the ways that we could help each other to learn. There’s no singularly correct method, and our differences should make us stronger together rather than pulling us apart.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.shireenghosh.com
• Instagram: @shywren905
• Other: https://on.soundcloud.com/eAQUD

Image Credits
John Betten, Robin Jamkatel