Chennai-born music composer takes his world’s first smart pedal global

Satish Chakravarthy creates world's first smart pedal in Chennai, revolutionizing music technology for musicians worldwide.

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Music composer Satish Chakravarthy has founded the world’s first smart pedal — Black BT SusEx Pedal in Chennai, integrating Sustain, Expression and Trigger pedal functionalities.

In the 1980s, Mr. Chakravarthy spent most of his time at his father’s studio in Chennai, soaking in the ins and outs of the music technology. It was around the time that his first piano lessons also kicked off at the house of Carnatic music doyen Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, whose daughter-in-law Meena Radhakrishnan showed him the ropes.

His last piano teacher in Chennai, Geetha Menon, introduced him to lyric writing and western singing. It was there he got the urge to create something impactful in the world of music and music-tech. After earning an engineering degree from National Institute of Technology (NIT) in Tiruchi, he left for Berklee College of Music in the US to study song-writing, music production and engineering in the early 2000s.

“When I returned to Chennai after my studies, it felt like a deep exhale, grounding myself in both culture and the world of technology,” shares Mr. Chakravarthy, adding it renewed his vigour to create music for films. Known for his music compositions in films such as Leelai, Kanimozhi, he now works predominantly on independent films. It was during this period that he realised that something was missing in the sphere of music technology that had grown leaps and bounds for five decades.

Now, an entire studio could be shrunk into a laptop, yet an essential accessory of the keyboard instrument — the pedal — has remained in the ‘70s. “When I searched for a wireless smart pedal for keyboard, there wasn’t a single one found anywhere in the world,” he says. “That is exactly when this idea to make a smart pedal took root in my mind to fill this glaring gap,” he adds.

During the COVID-19 lockdown, with ample time to spare at his home in Chennai, the relentless ambition to make a mark in the music-tech world came to fruition. “This was a chance to tap into both sides of me, my creative side and that unexplored engineering brain,” he says.