ch1The Lyrics Stand Harini Carried Everywhere
Harini Ramachandran comes from a lineage that does not take music lightly. Her great-grandfather is Papanasam Shivam, one of the legendary composers in Carnatic music. She grew up waking to music every morning, singing at every school competition, running lunchtime concerts in her sixth and seventh grade when her classmates went out to play. By the time she was performing professionally, she had sung 75 playback songs for the who's who of composers across South India. She was not a beginner trying to get good. She was already good, and she knew it.
And yet she carried a lyrics stand with her everywhere she went. She planted it center stage at every concert. When Antano Solar John watched her perform for the first time, he noticed something: she was commanding the audience, connecting with her band, having a genuine high on stage, and then breaking that connection every few minutes to check the lyrics book. He asked her after the show whether she knew those songs. She said yes. Then he asked why she kept going back to the stand. She told him the truth. She was scared. What if she forgot?
That fear is recognizable. You sit down to study and the material goes in while you read. The next day, half of it is gone. You learn something under calm conditions and forget it the moment you are stressed or tired or on the spot. You repeat it, rewrite it, use flashcards, record yourself speaking it back. Some of it sticks. Not enough. The assumption underneath all of this effort is that if you just put the information in more carefully, it will stay. That assumption is what Harini's story challenges.
Antano looked at her that evening and asked a different question. He did not ask how she was memorizing lyrics. He asked what would happen if she did not need the stand at all. What if your attention could stay completely on the performance? She said that would be great. He said, sit with me for 45 minutes. She did.
He did not give her a technique. He did not teach her a system. She does not remember exactly what happened in that session. What she remembers is that he said, go ahead and be surprised. That same evening, she walked out for her next set and left the lyrics stand backstage by accident. It was only when she planted herself center stage and felt the first moment of panic that she realized the stand was not there. Then the music started, and the words came.
ch2Why Memory Fails Under Pressure and Flows in the Right State
Harini sang four songs that evening without the lyrics stand. She did not forget a single word in any of them. What she describes is not the feeling of retrieving stored information. It is the feeling of words flowing, the same way you do not retrieve how to sing the national anthem. You do not reach for it. It is simply there, and it comes. At the midpoint of the first song she knew she was singing it correctly not because she was checking but because of a kinesthetic sense of rightness. It was happening. She was not managing it.
This is the distinction that memory techniques miss. The techniques assume that memory failure is a retrieval problem: information was stored improperly, or the retrieval path is not clear enough. So they give you better encoding strategies, better retrieval cues, spaced repetition, mnemonics, the method of loci. These can help. And they still fail under pressure, on exam day, on stage, in the meeting where you have to recall the argument you prepared. The information was there in practice. It vanishes when you need it.
What Harini's story shows is that the access point is state. The lyrics she forgot on stage were lyrics she knew in her sleep. She had sung them many times. The block was not in storage. It was in the state she entered when she stepped on stage with the stand in front of her, her attention split between the performance and the question of whether she would lose her place. The stand was supposed to solve the problem. Instead it was holding the problem in place by confirming every night that she could not trust herself without it.
When the state changed, access opened. She did not learn better memory. She gained a state from which her existing memory worked without obstruction. The distinction matters enormously, because if the bottleneck is state, then more repetition is not the answer. More sophisticated techniques are not the answer. The answer is changing the state from which you encounter what you are trying to learn.
You have probably seen this in yourself. Material you learn when you are calm, rested, and absorbed in genuine interest tends to stay. Material you force yourself through with the exam date pressing tends to slide. It is not your memory that is different in those two scenarios. It is your state. The capacity is the same. The access is not.
ch3What Learning in Compressed Time Actually Looks Like
Two months after that 45-minute session, a composer stopped a recording mid-take and told Harini she was singing faster. Not rushing. Faster, with more feel. Songs that used to take her four or five hours to record were finishing in 45 minutes. He said it like he was reporting something he had observed from the outside and was slightly puzzled by. She did not tell him about the session. She barely had language for what had changed. What she knew was that the only thing that was different was that one conversation with Antano Solar John.
What the composers were noticing was not just speed. When a singer finishes a song in 45 minutes instead of five hours, something has changed about how they are processing the material. They are not working harder at the technique. The technique has become more available to them. The gap between what they hear internally and what comes out vocally has narrowed. Harini was absorbing the composer's vision faster, executing it faster, and bringing her own interpretation in at the same time. That is why the same composers who were calling her for recordings started calling her into the initial composing sessions. She was not just a faster singer. She had become someone whose learning speed made her useful earlier in the creative process.
None of this was about lyrics. The session was about remembering lyrics. What installed was the capacity to learn in compressed time, and that capacity does not stay in one lane. Within that same 12-month period, Harini took on IT testing with zero background in technology. She started as a basic tester. She ended up leading a team running tests for complex client deliverables, then moved into client interfacing, then into consultative sales for corporate and K-12 clients. All of this while her music career was accelerating simultaneously. She was not managing time better. She was processing and integrating new material faster, in every domain she touched.
This is what Antano Solar John meant when he said it was just the beginning. He was not being generous. He was describing a structural reality. When the state that governs how you encounter new information changes, the change is not domain-specific. You do not get better memory for lyrics and the same old memory for everything else. The state travels with you. Every new field you enter, every new challenge you pick up, every new skill you try to build, you bring the same changed relationship to learning. Harini describes looking back at that year overwhelmed by how many things changed. The specific changes were in music and work and confidence and the quality of opportunities arriving. But the root change was one. A single state, installed in 45 minutes, produced the cascade.
When you search for memory techniques, you are looking for a way to retain more of what you study. That is a real and legitimate need. What Harini's story points to is that the ceiling on what memory techniques can do is set by state. Techniques operate on top of state. They can optimize within a state, but they cannot change it. The person who learns fastest is not the one with the best technique. It is the one whose state makes new information feel available rather than elusive, whose absorption is natural rather than forced, who does not experience learning as something they are fighting through. That state can change. When it does, learning accelerates in every direction at once.
Key terms
StateThe internal condition from which you encounter new information. State determines whether memory access is fluid or blocked, regardless of how much you have rehearsed the material. Changing state changes learning capacity across all domains simultaneously.Unconscious PatterningAutomatic responses that run below conscious awareness. In Harini's case, her reliance on the lyrics stand was an unconscious pattern that confirmed each night that she could not perform without it. The pattern, not the information, was the bottleneck.Time CompressionThe ability to accomplish in compressed time what previously required far longer. Harini's recording time dropped from four to five hours per song to 45 minutes. Time compression is a consequence of the right state, not of trying harder or working longer.InstallationA change at the level of unconscious patterning that produces new capability without the person consciously executing steps. Harini did not follow a technique after her session with Antano Solar John. The capability was installed. It ran automatically from that point forward.CascadeThe chain of downstream changes that follow a single state-level shift. One 45-minute session produced better memory, faster recording, new types of professional opportunities in music, and the ability to learn IT from scratch inside 12 months. The session did not target any of those outcomes directly.Frequently asked questions
What are the best memory techniques?
Spaced repetition, active recall, the method of loci, and chunking are among the techniques with solid research behind them. They can improve retention within a given state. What they do not change is the state itself. Harini Ramachandran used no technique after her 45-minute session with Antano Solar John. The words flowed because her state changed, not because her technique improved. If you find that techniques work in calm conditions and fail under pressure, the bottleneck is state, not method.
How do I improve memory and concentration?
Sleep, exercise, and reducing background anxiety all support memory and concentration. These work at the level of conditions. What Harini's story points to is something more specific: concentration breaks down when your attention is split between the task and the fear of failing at the task. She kept checking the lyrics stand not because she did not know the lyrics but because she did not trust that she knew them. When that distrust was resolved at a deeper level, her concentration freed up completely. The question to ask is not how to concentrate harder but what is splitting your attention in the first place.
How do I study and not forget?
Forgetting under pressure is almost always a state problem rather than an encoding problem. You know the material in the room where you studied it. You blank on it during the exam or the presentation. The information is not gone. The state you are in has changed, and access has narrowed. Techniques like retrieval practice and interleaving help condition you to access material across varied states. What produces the biggest shift is changing the state from which you study in the first place, so that new information installs more naturally from the start.
What is the fastest way to learn and remember?
The fastest learning happens when absorption is natural rather than forced. Harini learned IT testing with zero background and built a team within 12 months, not because she had a faster learning technique but because her state had changed across the board. She was not trying harder. She was processing faster. The fastest way to learn is to change the state from which you encounter new material, so that each domain you enter you engage with full absorption rather than divided attention and internal resistance.
Why do I forget what I study?
A primary cause is that you are studying in one state and being tested in another. Anxiety, time pressure, and self-doubt narrow access to what you know. Harini knew every lyric she kept forgetting on stage. The same songs flowed the evening her state changed. A secondary cause is that the encoding itself was shallow: you read without generating retrieval attempts, so the material was never consolidated. Both problems are real, but the state problem is the one that techniques cannot solve on their own.
Full transcript
for for My great grandfather is Papanasam Shivam who is one of the legendary composers in Kannada music. So coming from the lineage, learning music was no big deal. It was a no brainer. It just came to me naturally. And I've always been able to sing on pitch, sing on rhythm. I was musically gifted right from the beginning. Although my mother doesn't sing, but she's extremely knowledgeable and I would wake up every day morning to music playing. So that was the normal thing in my house. And although my father doesn't have a background in music, he has a really melodious voice and fortunately he loves music as well. So we're a family of people who love music and we have so many professional musicians in the family in the Carnatic field which is the classical music in India. I didn't know that I would pursue a career in music, but I just had this dream of being able to sing for films in India. Coming from the background that I do, I mean, Tam Ram so to say, like singing for films is considered taboo. Classical music is end all, but anything other than classical music was not even encouraged that well. But there's this one composer called A R Rahman. He's also a Grammy and an Academy Award winner. His music just struck a chord with me right from the beginning. And I used to dream when I was in my sixth grade, my seventh grade. In fact, my mother and my friend's mother used to joke amongst themselves saying, if A R Rahman could actually put to tune our physics and chemistry books, they'll all be in my fingertips by now. Because I was fanatic about A R Rahman's music. When everybody used to be going out during lunch break and playing and things like that, I used to do a little mini concert for those people who finished having lunch. So afternoon, right after lunch, concert by Preeti and Harini. That's how it was. So I used to listen to cassettes and write down the lyrics and then go back and then write it down again. Actually write down lyrics by listening to songs. And I used to dream that while I was studying for my exams, suddenly my thoughts would go, what if, and I would actually start singing. And my thoughts would go, what if Rahman was actually walking by the road and he listened to me sing and he says, hey, why don't you come and sing for me? So that was a fantasy that I grew up with. It was not a wish, it was not a dream, it was not a sing for movies in India. And this took five hours. So I was running out of breath. So when I'm singing it, I mean, today, of course, I've done like 75 songs of professional playback myself for like the who's who of composers in South India. And so obviously the performance that I'm delivering now is very different from what I sang back then. I was a good singer back then too, but it was just not professional, so to say. It was definitely a cut above everything that I've heard anybody else sing back then. But the moment you're looking at it from a professional ground, I mean, you're immediately you're in the same field as a Lata Mangesh Kura everybody else. Right. And that was my first validation of man, it's taking me five hours to sing Zara Zara, that too a song that I have already learned. And I like I've like I know that song. It's like in my blood. And if that is taking me five hours to sing, then maybe there's just so much more to learn before I can actually get there. But singing has been that constant source of strength and support and validation. I participated in every single music competition, solo, group. I learned instruments. I would direct. I took the lead in music and I did that for two years. And the third year I was obsessive compulsive about presentations and research and paper presentations. And again, I participated nationally, internationally delivering paper presentations. I didn't know how it would actually contribute. So when I had to do my first internship, I happened to chance upon an event management company and I, you know, like help them organize a few events. So that was my first job. So to say like learning on the job, I went on to again organize some international events for them at every stage, whatever it is that I took up having zero exposure. Somehow opportunities presented themselves to me or I went off road. I don't know to the extent that I got to see like the best of it, like from zero rock bottom to like the best of it. Right. And I had the opportunity in a very short period of time to go through that entire gamut. Human resources was what I thought I was going to do for the rest of my life. And I thought I let me go ahead and do a master's in HR. By the time it was the end of second year, it was placement time and there was TCS and all of these organizations that are coming for placements. And I sat till like the final round of the TCS job selection process, but I refused to go inside that room for that final interview because that was the moment I made the decision. My parents had no clue though. They thought they're going to I'm going to come back with the job offer from there. But that day I said, no, I'm not going to do this because taking up this job would mean I'm going to have to travel two hours to get to the office and two hours back home and going to be there pretty much from nine to six, which means bye bye to the music that is already booming at this point of time for me from a career perspective. Fortunately, I was able to negotiate with this organization as well that they would let me, you know, have some flexible timing. So when I first met Antono, I think I was interning with a particular organization and Antono had joined in as a CTO of the organization. There was just so much that people are telling me this is young guy, his name is Antono, he's just 24 and he's joined in as a CTO. He's like the guru of Web 3.0. And why is everybody talking so much about a 24 year old? And I was 23 back then. I heard who had published three books. They were like internationally published books that are still available everywhere. And I went and asked, OK, so what's his qualification? You know, like, what is he? What can he possibly have studied? And I heard engineering. I'm like, that's not much. I'm masters. You know, he's just an engineering student. But what must be true if he's actually had three books published already? And that was from one of the top two publishers and technology books worldwide. So when I met him, this gesture was something very charismatic about him. There's something very bright about him, like a halo of wisdom. That's the first thing that struck me. And but I don't think we got along too well at the beginning. First thing that he did, I think, I don't know, first or second interaction, he called me fat and that's enough to pick off any girl. So what he meant was you look fatter today than you did two weeks ago when I saw you. And I'm like, you don't tell that to somebody like that on your face. You look fat. So I invited him to one of my concerts and I had fun with my band. I was having so much fun. And with my band, I would sort of put in my own seasoning to the songs that I've sung, as well as the classics. And we gave it our own little treatment concert that brings out my specialties from a vocal perspective, what I can do with my voice, as well as like variety of different genres and a unique sound and fun and all of that put together. And I had a ball on stage. But I don't know, notice that I carried this lyric stand with me everywhere I went. And that concert as well, I had that plan to write in the center of the state. So he used to he watched me like have fun and in track of the audience and having a good time. But I would keep coming back with lyrics book just to like sort of look. And then he looked at me at the end of the concert. He came and said, okay, that was a great performance. You were you were having such a good time and just look at the audience like crazy. They really love you. I said, yeah, I mean, it's that's my life. I love doing what I do on stage. And that's when he said, but why do you keep that lyrics book? Like, do you not know the lyrics to these songs? I'm sure you perform these songs often, right? And I said, yes, I do. But, you know, most of the time I'm performing the latest songs that are like the sensation at that point in time, in addition to some classics in my own. So I don't remember lyrics and I'm just scared. What if I forget? And then he looked at me that day and he said, what if I can help you remember these lyrics? So I said, you don't need to come back to the center of the stage. You're already like 100% with regard to your performance and your interaction and your chemistry with the band. What if you can take that to like 200%? Where your attention doesn't have to be on, oh, I have to go back and check what's the next set of lyrics again? He said, what if you can actually remember it? You don't like you have this exceptional ability to just memorize lyrics so quickly and such that you remember and you don't forget it. I said, that'll be awesome. Three, four languages and songs that I was not familiar with. Like I just learned them about like a week ago. So I took that offer and I sat with him that day for like, what, 45 minutes. I mean, I don't know, I was just doing everything that he was asking me to do. And he said, okay, we're done. So he did some things I don't even remember what he did. So I didn't know when I was supposed to expect results of whatever it is that he did. Reasonably, I was expecting that maybe the next time I sing or learn a bunch of new songs now, the next time it's going to, it's going to maybe I'll remember them better. That was, that is what I thought. But that evening I was still backstage and it was time for me to go up on stage. They called out my name and I literally forgot that lyric stand backstage. And I turned up and when I planted myself in the central stage and then I had a quick moment of panic thinking, oh my God, my lyrics book is not here. These are new songs. What am I going to do? It was almost accidental. But when if you ask Antonov, he will say that was not accidental. That was a very careful and elegant choice made by a subconscious mind is what he would say. But something just took over that moment. I don't know what from where I got that confidence. I was sort of blank in my head for the words just float. Like I sang that entire song, the first song fully. And I didn't forget a single word. Like it just happened like as if I've known that song on my life. And that happened for the first song and the second song and the third song and the fourth song. And I was thinking what is happening, right? Like at that moment, I didn't realize. I just knew that I was just singing it. I didn't have the lyrics book in front of me. And it was it was too good to be true. At the same time, I think I was in a completely different zone in my head that day. It was just I don't know. It was like a high like I've never experienced on stage. But the end of the concert was when it actually hit me that I hadn't taken that lyrics book there. And I managed to remember every single word. So initially, although there was that moment of panic thinking my lyrics book is not there, I was surprised at my own self as to how that panic just vanished when I just heard the music and I just started to sing and the words were flowing. So midway through the song, I realized that I'm actually singing it right. And I had no idea how what but it was actually flowing. Because sometimes when you make a mistake, even though you don't have the lyrics book in front of you, you sort of know. But this time I was just having the kinesthetic feeling of it's correct. It's happening. It was just it was just flowing and I had no reason or answer as to how or why. But I just remember just like you remember other things like you don't forget how to sing the national anthem. You don't forget how to sing Happy Birthday to you. So this was also just flowing and I continuously had that feeling of it's right. So I didn't I didn't mumble or, you know, like sort of forget any word in the song. I didn't sing any word wrong. And it was it was just fascinating for me and that was sitting right there in the performance. You know, at the end of the concert, when he came up to meet me and I looked at him and I had that moment of surprise and I said, can you believe I didn't use the lyrics book? I did take it and then he just looked at me and he gave me this really nice gleeful smile. Like as if he was expecting it anyway, but that's not what he told me to do. So he didn't give me a set of instructions than the previous day saying, next day, don't take your lyrics book and go. None of it. He just did what he did and said, just go ahead and be surprised. That's all he said. And I actually did surprise myself that day and I looked at him and I said, now what? Right. And then he looked at me and he said, this is just the beginning. He said, like three to six months from now, just notice what happens to you. And he said, it's going to be like how a butterfly just suddenly realizes it has wings and it can fly. Those were just nice words. I thought he was encouraging me and motivating me and all that, but it was only after like six months or a year when I took a look back at my life over that year, I was overwhelmed by how many things changed for me after that. I found myself having this new sense of confidence because it was not just this one concert, but I had so many concerts after that and every one of them went off even better than the previous. I was so much more confident. It's suddenly like, you know, those you all along, you thought you needed a crutch, but then suddenly you realize you don't need a crutch and then you realize you can walk and run and do whatever it is that you have to. That was the feeling that I had. Somehow when you have this new sense of confidence, it shows up in your performance. It was contagious the way I was performing and the response and then the event organizers would only be too happy and then they would sign me up for a few more gigs. And surprisingly, the same thing happened even at recording. This was again a moment of surprise where I was called by one of the very famous composers to sing a song like after a really long time and midway through the recording, he paused and he said, Megha, you started to sing really fast. There's like more feel in your voice. Like you finished the song already. Like there's so much that we finished already and earlier you used to take such a long time. And a couple of other composers also told me the same thing. When the composers were commenting that I was taking shorter time to sing the same song, what they're referring to is also the songs sometimes are just simpler to sing. There are some songs which are more complex. There were certain kind of songs that I used to sing earlier. Like even the simplest songs would take me like four or five hours. And you know, then it came down to like three hours. But now it came down to like 45 minutes or like one hour. So that was my first validation of well somebody else of authority is telling me that there's a shift in me. That's when it struck me that there are so many people like even today when I meet people who are very good at what they do, right? To get from where they are to that next level, especially the more and more and more you accomplish in your life, to get to that next level can sometimes be very difficult. Because you don't know what to do. Like I was in a point where I, I wouldn't say I hit a plateau or something. I was doing very well. But to actually have that next level of vocal breakthrough is the greatest satisfaction for an artist. And I experienced that in two months and I don't know how that happened. The only thing that I can think of was that one particular session that I had with Antono. And that was also not even to do with my singing. That was to remember lyrics, right? I'm not even just remember lyrics, the ability to learn lyrics fast. So it was not like he gave me a set of steps saying this is how you learn lyrics the next time. I just, just that the next time I was learning lyrics, it was, it happened more spontaneously and I would remember and I still don't know how. So I don't follow a technique even now to remember. That was my moment of magic that happened at intercardings. And that opened up a whole set of different opportunities because then these same composers started to give me different kind of songs. The kind of song that I was not used to singing, they started to experiment with me because it's joyful for a composer when they see that there is a singer that is quickly understanding what their vision is and is executing it really, really well and bringing in their own. And when this is happening in compressed time, it's joyful for a composer to work with a singer like that. So I became a regular to more such top composers. So they were calling me for more songs. They were even calling me for the initial composing sessions. So I was part of the entire creation of the song. And these were opportunities that I didn't have before. And this has nothing to do with lyrics. This is just a consequence of who I had become and what it had opened up for me. What it allowed me to do in my recordings. It made a difference to my confidence. It made a difference in terms of actually being able to deliver faster. And then it becomes an infectious loop. You're delivering faster, the composer is excited, and then he's excited. So you're excited even more. And then you're having a good time. You're learning, listening to more songs. And so suddenly I was in this loop of high performance when it came to recordings and all of that. And I can't imagine how it can just be restricted to this. I was also working. And when so much was happening here, I realized that I was actually doing as much even when I was at work. Suddenly I saw people at work look at me differently. I started to get more responsibilities at work, but I was not stressed out about it. I was able to handle that faster. I started out by doing assessments and behavioral assessments and stuff like that. And within that period of that one year, I took up testing, which is a completely IT related thing. And I had a zero IT background, but I learned that quickly. And I started out as a basic tester. And I went on to eventually had a team there of testing for some really complicated deliverables that they had for a lot of their clients. And then I did a little bit of client interfacing and eventually went on to doing some high end consultative sales for corporate as well as K-12 in the organization. And all of this happened within like 12 months. And I didn't realize things were happening so fast. So I was managing time really well. I was getting better and better songs. My songs were becoming better hits. I had more gigs. And I was doing well at work. And to me, when I look back, I was just fascinated by how things happen so fast. So it was like the domino effect where something started and then it just triggered a whole sort of amazing things for me. Now, I mean, when I'm reflecting on this journey of mine, I realized that that little intervention that I had done for me actually resulted in me going in the direction of achieving incredible things. And all this happened within one year. And now when I look back, I have a completely different meaning to the term legacy.