Frizzell D’Souza straddles the worlds of architecture and music. She has been studying the former for the last four years and practising the latter since she was in third grade. She finds a similarity between the two. “It is the process,” she says, “When we work on a design in architecture, we start with a concept. We do a lot of redos and keep going back and forth with it until we get it right. That is a parallel I find in music.”
Frizzell’s third single, ‘Foolish Once Again’, has over 22,000 views on YouTube and close to 45,000 streams on Spotify. Though the flowing love ballad was written in a day, the “composition-centric” song, took about two months to produce.
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After writing the song, Frizzell wanted to have live string sounds to make it orchestral. Her manager stumbled upon Tatiana Kritskaya, a Russia-based cellist who has worked for the Symphony Orchestra of India in Mumbai.
Video calling technology has enabled long-distance musical collaborations. Frizzell, however, feels it is not ideal. “When you are in a studio together, your ideas are more effectively communicated. You can even jam to an extent and figure out what you want instantly. Whereas, online you have to sort of send across references and it takes more time.” The difference in time zones and Tatiana’s recovery from COVID-19 added to the production time. She is quick to add, “But it was mostly fun.”
Frizzell released her previous singles, ‘New’ and ‘Drown Away’, during the pandemic and is used to the snags of working from home. Until last year, she was doing covers of her favourite artists. To produce an original song was a different game. The experience of the first two singles helped her with the third. “As I wasn’t familiar with the process, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted with the first two. I used to settle for the first draft and couldn’t work around the inconsistencies. I am quite happy with the third one.”
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Frizell has about a year and a half to finish her architecture course. She is planning to release an EP or an album after graduation.