With a clever name and catchy song, an electro-pop collaboration is now seeing the light of day after a year of writing and recording by two blind musicians in Metro Vancouver.
Jugpreet Bajwa and Justine On Green (a stage name) created Tonal Vision as a duo project after first meeting in 2019.
Despite coming from very different musical and cultural backgrounds, the two have some common ground when it comes to making pop music.
Check out Tonal Vision’s launch song “Kissed Your Lips,” an ear-worm of a tune sung by Bajwa and produced by Green, the first of several they plan to release in coming months.
One night some time ago, Green was listening to The Chainsmokers and wondered what could come of a collaboration with Bajwa, known as a Bollywood-style singer blessed with a high, soulful voice.
Hockey fans might recognize him as an anthem singer at Vancouver Canucks games.
• RELATED, from March 2023: Surrey concert for Jugpreet Bajwa, now a fan-fave anthem singer at Canucks games.
The Alberta-raised Green is very much an Edmonton Oilers fan, so the two are friends despite cheering for rival NHL teams.
“We met through a mutual friend of ours,” Bajwa recalled. “She’s an Oilers fan so we don’t really talk about that,” he added with a laugh. “We’re both just really into music, and I know that we had similar tastes in music. We’ve actually built a kind of brother-sister relationship.”
Yes it's Tonal Vision not Tunnel 😂 part 2 of our beach Vlogs interview with the camera legend, himself @owenkristensen95 more coming soon! Appreciate all of your love! Stream our song here https://t.co/zOoQ4CFYas #Vlogs #BeachVlogs #BeachVibes #PopMusic #TonalVision #summer pic.twitter.com/QDT2T8FKLA
— Tonal Vision (@thisistonal) July 29, 2023
Recording was done at Green’s place in Vancouver, to which she moved to study the business of music.
“During COVID, back in 2020 and 2021, Juggy was one of my ‘bubble’ people, one of the people I had in my bubble, and so we hung out pretty much every weekend, listening to music and making music,” said Green in a conference call. “That’s where this Tonal Vision project started.”
In the first week of July, social media posts got the promotional ball rolling for the duo, and they’re both excited for people to hear their music, one song at a time.
“August 18 is when our next song comes out,” Green noted, “and we’re aiming for about a single a month right now, what we’re going for.
“What people are hearing right now didn’t happen overnight,” she added. “It’s been a year of writing and strategizing and recording, all of those things. So for us, the response has been absolutely magical because the music is finally out and people are hearing what we’ve been working on and hearing for so long.”
Green has been blind since birth, and Bajwa lost his eyesight at just six months of age due to a type of eye cancer, retinoblastoma.
Both have perfect pitch, and Green also experiences synesthesia (“the ability to feel music as motion,” she says).
“I’ve been making music since I was a kid, and I wrote my first song when I was around seven years old,” Green recalled. “This is a very collaborative effort, and neither of us does only this or that, we’re working on all aspect of the music. This first track, I was more focused on the production because I wanted to make sure we had a really focused sound, a really good sound.”
Bajwa was excited to record pop songs with a friend who shares his passion for music.
“Justine just kept telling me, ‘Juggy, you’ve got a voice for pop, you should be doing more pop stuff and sing some songs in English,’” he said. “A lot of other people were saying that to me, too, so that helped lead us to this, too. But even then, I do incorporate Indian languages into these Tonal Visions songs including the Hindi in ‘Kissed Your Lips.’ In the next song (“All Your Love”), we have a bit of Punjabi on it as well.”
tom.zillich@surreynowleader.com
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