A classical musician, Praveen has spent the last 33 years working as a percussionist and arranger in the Kannada music industry.

Praveen D. Rao is a musician and a composer from Bangalore. He has been working in the music industry for the past thirty-three years.

Praveen primarily plays the tabla and the synthesizer. He is a North Indian style musician  trained in both vocal singing and playing the harmonium.

Describing his journey so far, Praveen says his family comes from the coastal belt of Karnataka and has a great love for Indian music. Since his childhood, his father used to listen to the Indian classical legendary singers like Bhimsen Joshi and Lata Mangeshkar. He remembers that his mother was not a professional singer, but she used to sing folklore and hum it at night to lull him to sleep.

When he was very young, his mother started taking him to the Ramakrishna Mission, where he had the opportunity to hear the tabla and the harmonium for the first time during the bhajan sessions. He got his first chance to get closer to the harmonium when a monk, Shri Purushottamanand Ji Maharaj, encouraged him to learn how to play the tabla during the satsang while handling the sound system.

Gradually, he started performing with other classical singers and Kathak artists. From 1994, he started composing music for theater productions, dance dramas, television and films. Till date he has composed for over 300 productions globally and around 1000 albums of devotional and light music. He has also worked for many movies and worked with famous music directors like Illayaraja , Upendra , Manohar and many more. He also arranged music for the prolific musician Sri Lalgudi Jayaraman for a tamil movie and later the movie’s music won the national award too.

Speaking about his challenges, Praveen says he faced many challenges because of his ignorance and innocence.

Creating music for the London cultural olympiad was a challenge for him. He remembers he used one of the shlokas which he had learned in his childhood to create the magic which was much appreciated by everyone.

When asked about his role models, Praveen says he considers his teachers Pandit R. V. Sheshadri Gawai and Pandit Ravindra Yavagal who taught him Tabla, as his role models. For his musical journey, he took inspiration from famous music directors like Illayaraja, R.D. Burman, Pt. Ravi Shankar Atul Desai, Hridyanath Mangeshkar, etc. He also mentions the foreign music composers like African musician Eugene Keefe and Mark Rocket, a pianist from France and many more with whom he worked and learned a lot.

In his leisure time, Praveen enjoys photography. One of his photos was also exhibited in the Toronto Photography exhibition. He also likes to do theater and has acted in fifteen TV serials and movies as well. He also writes songs for movies.

Praveen’s life mantra is -"To grow, go deep and meet the roots of the art."

Praveen advises the artists of his genre to share their ideas without being concerned that they would be stolen. He says only by communicating their thoughts and opinions, they might have a shot.