[5] After his studies, he was employed in his father's printing press and subsequently joined his brother Balakrishna's orchestra group.

Officially, his cinema career started as a dialogue and lyric writer for the film Naanu Nanna Hendthi (1985).

He made occasional use of many genres of music, including Western, pop, rock, hip hop, Indian classical,[citation needed] folk, ghazals, Sufi, and item songs.

[13] The melodic structure of his songs demand considerable vocal virtuosity, and have found expressive platform amongst some of India's respected vocalists and playback singers, such as Dr. Rajkumar, P. B. Sreenivas, S. Janaki, Vani Jairam, P. Susheela, K. J. Yesudas, S. P. Balasubrahmanyam, Mano, Swarnalatha, K. S. Chithra, Sujatha Mohan, Kavita Krishnamurthy, Anuradha Paudwal, Sadhana Sargam, B. R. Chaya, Manjula Gururaj, Chandrika Gururaj, L. N. Shastry, Rajesh Krishnan, Ramesh Chandra, Hemanth Kumar, Sangeetha Katti, Rathnamala Prakash, Nanditha, Sowmya Raoh, B. Jayashree, Sonu Nigam, Hariharan, Udit Narayan, Kumar Sanu and Shreya Ghoshal with majority of the songs recorded by S. P. Balasubrahmanyam, S. Janaki and K. S. Chithra.

He recorded some of the rare and distinct voices like M. Balamuralikrishna for a song in Muthina Haara (1990), C. Ashwath for Hoovu Hannu (1993) and Pankaj Udhas for Sparsha (2001).

[citation needed] Hamsalekha laid the foundation stone for Desi Music University on the day of Kannada Rajyotsava on 1 November 2010.

[citation needed]The university will be built with ₹ 1.20 billion on 50 acres (200,000 m2) of land in Mudhigere village near Channapatna in Karnataka.

[citation needed] The Dravidian University of Andhra Pradesh has given recognition to this Hamsalekha College of Performing Arts.