Zanzibar Studios
Went to Makonela Records in Mombasa today to visit Makonela who I had originally met at Akhenaton studios where I gave them a Reason lesson. His studio was cool as hell.
Housed in a shipping container, it has two rooms constructed independently of the surrounding metal container. He has a pretty basic setup of a PC with an m-audio card, a small PA mixer, 4 different speakers as monitors (controlled with the busses on the mixer. including a Mackie 824 with a crushed tweeter), a bass, an amp a couple mics.
He mostly records tracks for people. Basically, the artist comes in with a song idea. The producer then creates a base (what they call a beat here) and together, they produce the track. It is exceedingly rare to use live acoustic instruments. He makes the beat, records the vocal, mixes and masters a 4 track CD - 1. Full Mix 2. Beat and Chorus 3. Beat 4. Acapella. total cost starts at Tsh85,000 (about US$68). All this takes 3 to 4 hours.
The mix comes from Reason running in demo type mode rewired to cubase. Not super clear on PCs, let alone Cubase/reason setup....nothing is compressed, eqed or mixed beyond ajusting the volume. the vocal gets a little reverb if anything. All the sounds come from reason or the cubase vst instruments. There is no mastering beyond burning the mix to CD.
Makonela wants to learn how to improve the quality of his production. I taught him a little about compression, setting up aux sends/returns for FX, recording the audio of a midi track in order to process it.
From there, I headed across town too Mbweni to Heartbeat Records, the big studio in town. It took me a while to find it, but eventually I found a dude on a bmx bike who took me back around away from the road. then, it was hard to miss - big paintings of Hearbeat Recording on the outside in red, green and gold. It was a big house with a driveway and entryway and entry hall and lounge. the studio was off to the side. Air conditioned, it was quiet and well sound proofed in there. I hadn't heard that kind of silence for such a long time, it was impressive. Chu Chu is the headman there. There were stickers for American Music all over and I asked if he had gone to American Music in Seattle. He bought all the studio equipment there, but then he was already off on another subject. He played the first track of a compilation of ragga they had done. We listened to the track from beginning to end. He chuckled a bit at the end. Professional. Slick. Sounded well balanced on the monitors (also the first I'd seen in a while). More like RnB with a ragga pulse. Okay. We talked about heartbeat records. Initally, they started out producing tracks for anyone and everyone. A Congolese dude named Alan worked there for quite a while before there was some sort of misunderstanding between him and Chuchu. Now Chuchu has 2 producers that he brings over from Dar es Salaam when necessary. Eventually, he tired of so many different artists and decided to create the label in order to work with select artists and market them. He was talking about selling 30,000 cassettes and 3000 CDs per release. All the duplication is done in Dar. they do blitz releases in the bigger cities - Mbeya, Dodoma, Arusha, Tanga. but not zanzibar. There is too much piracy in Zanzibar. You give it to one person today and tomorrow everyone has it, but in Dar=, they respect copyrights. And, do labels in Dar pay radio stations to play their music? No, that doesn't happen, but there are partnerships between stations and studios and the associated artists......
He quickly showed me the recording room, chatted on the phone and said he had to go.
I crossed over to Akhenaton studios which is in nearby Chukwani. Juma 20 was just walking out, but Muda Criss was ready to work. We set up my laptop to the system and I got to making a beat. Muda Criss rhymed and tried it out. An hour or so later, it was sounding pretty good. the lyrics are about his father who is unjustly in prison for murder in India, so he wants to work with that India/Zanzibar connection.
Housed in a shipping container, it has two rooms constructed independently of the surrounding metal container. He has a pretty basic setup of a PC with an m-audio card, a small PA mixer, 4 different speakers as monitors (controlled with the busses on the mixer. including a Mackie 824 with a crushed tweeter), a bass, an amp a couple mics.
He mostly records tracks for people. Basically, the artist comes in with a song idea. The producer then creates a base (what they call a beat here) and together, they produce the track. It is exceedingly rare to use live acoustic instruments. He makes the beat, records the vocal, mixes and masters a 4 track CD - 1. Full Mix 2. Beat and Chorus 3. Beat 4. Acapella. total cost starts at Tsh85,000 (about US$68). All this takes 3 to 4 hours.
The mix comes from Reason running in demo type mode rewired to cubase. Not super clear on PCs, let alone Cubase/reason setup....nothing is compressed, eqed or mixed beyond ajusting the volume. the vocal gets a little reverb if anything. All the sounds come from reason or the cubase vst instruments. There is no mastering beyond burning the mix to CD.Makonela wants to learn how to improve the quality of his production. I taught him a little about compression, setting up aux sends/returns for FX, recording the audio of a midi track in order to process it.
From there, I headed across town too Mbweni to Heartbeat Records, the big studio in town. It took me a while to find it, but eventually I found a dude on a bmx bike who took me back around away from the road. then, it was hard to miss - big paintings of Hearbeat Recording on the outside in red, green and gold. It was a big house with a driveway and entryway and entry hall and lounge. the studio was off to the side. Air conditioned, it was quiet and well sound proofed in there. I hadn't heard that kind of silence for such a long time, it was impressive. Chu Chu is the headman there. There were stickers for American Music all over and I asked if he had gone to American Music in Seattle. He bought all the studio equipment there, but then he was already off on another subject. He played the first track of a compilation of ragga they had done. We listened to the track from beginning to end. He chuckled a bit at the end. Professional. Slick. Sounded well balanced on the monitors (also the first I'd seen in a while). More like RnB with a ragga pulse. Okay. We talked about heartbeat records. Initally, they started out producing tracks for anyone and everyone. A Congolese dude named Alan worked there for quite a while before there was some sort of misunderstanding between him and Chuchu. Now Chuchu has 2 producers that he brings over from Dar es Salaam when necessary. Eventually, he tired of so many different artists and decided to create the label in order to work with select artists and market them. He was talking about selling 30,000 cassettes and 3000 CDs per release. All the duplication is done in Dar. they do blitz releases in the bigger cities - Mbeya, Dodoma, Arusha, Tanga. but not zanzibar. There is too much piracy in Zanzibar. You give it to one person today and tomorrow everyone has it, but in Dar=, they respect copyrights. And, do labels in Dar pay radio stations to play their music? No, that doesn't happen, but there are partnerships between stations and studios and the associated artists......
He quickly showed me the recording room, chatted on the phone and said he had to go.
I crossed over to Akhenaton studios which is in nearby Chukwani. Juma 20 was just walking out, but Muda Criss was ready to work. We set up my laptop to the system and I got to making a beat. Muda Criss rhymed and tried it out. An hour or so later, it was sounding pretty good. the lyrics are about his father who is unjustly in prison for murder in India, so he wants to work with that India/Zanzibar connection.
posted by Maga Bo at 2:46 PM
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