The man behind songs like Khoya Khoya Chand from Shaitan and O Laal Meri from David, is in a good space with the release of his second album and turning full-fledged composer with Rohan Sippy&rsquo;s next. McCleary speaks to CS about making Mumbai his home, learning Hindi and his fascination for old songs: <img alt="Mikey McCleary" src="http://images.mid-day.com/2013/apr/mikey.jpg" style="width: 500px; height: 638px;" /> Who: Mikey McCleary What: On his music journeyu00a0 PIC/ Sameer Markande Amchi Mumbai! While living in London, I would keep coming to Mumbai for recordings and concerts. So I&rsquo;d made friends and contacts here. Shifting here then wasn&rsquo;t that difficult at all. Life is not a struggle here. My parents shifted to India 50 years ago and got married in Ooty. Now that&rsquo;s different &mdash; India then would have been a very different space. But I like living in Mumbai. It&rsquo;s hard to describe what&rsquo;s nice about living here. I mean, it&rsquo;s a busy, crowded place and there are problems. But it has a life, a soul and a very nice energy. The people are nice, so I love it. Sounds good I&rsquo;m learning Hindi and it&rsquo;s slow progression for me. Everyone I work with usually communicates in English, so it&rsquo;s hard for me to practice. I&rsquo;m making progress. I&rsquo;ll probably be fluent in five years (laughs). As for understanding the lyrics of a song, they are still sounds that can phonetically be very pleasing. Sometimes I&rsquo;m happy approaching a song without even knowing what it&rsquo;s about. I just take an instinctive approach to it. Sometimes if you know too much about the situation or the intention of the song, then you do what&rsquo;s obvious. When you don&rsquo;t know, you can surprise yourself and others. Classic cut I love Geeta Dutts&rsquo;s voice. That whole golden era of the 50s and 60s, it&rsquo;s full of beautiful melodies. One of the things I feel when I hear those songs is that the melody used to be very prominent. As for the base lines and chords &mdash; you don&rsquo;t hear them very much. The strength is in the melody. So I felt that there was a possibility of doing those songs and not only giving them a new vocal treatment but since people really enjoy the base lines and chords, I can keep the song true to its original soul, but give it a colour and warmth around it by chord progressions. That would enhance the melody. The analogy I draw is that the song is a beautiful woman but that woman is wearing clothes that are old fashioned. I&rsquo;m just dressing her up, giving her new clothes and making you see her beauty in a new way. u00a0

Mikey McCleary's musical love affair with India began a few years back, when the music composer and producer shifted bag and baggage to move here from London.

Mikey McCleary's musical moves

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Mikey McCleary's musical moves

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