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HOME
RECORDING MUSICIAN
MURUGA BOOKER |
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INTERVIEW BY BOB DENNIS
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PHOTOS BY MATT BUNJAC |
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Muruga
is always cooking. Whether it is food for the outdoor Memorial
Day barbeque, or a new track in his "Duck Head" (basement) studio,
you can be sure that you are in for a tasty treat.
Although Muruga is a seasoned musician,
songwriter and producer who has performed on several gold records,
he is also a home recording musician in his own basement studio.
Besides enjoying the BBQ with Muruga, his family and members of his
Global Village Ceremonial Band, I interviewed him and asked him to
talk about his new "Let's Dance" track and let us post sample mixes
of it as a
developing artist
productions
lesson. |
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Muruga's area of
expertise is in the more percussive productions, jazz productions and
top hit new age productions. This makes
him cover a lot of areas and we're happy to have
him
aboard as a master consultant for
developing artist
productions.
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Bob Dennis:
With the Tonos studio on the web, you have the ability to record
with anyone, any place on the planet. The long-distance musician
records a track on your tune to the Web and then you download it and
put it on your production. We're going to have the artists we're
helping to develop use this marvelous service. To show how it all
works, with your agreement, we're going to use your Global Village
production on the tune "Let's Dance." The vast majority of recording
musicians don't really know all of the things that go into making a
national quality production and we want to show our members how it
is all done with this example tune. Tell me what
your setup at home is like; this track we're talking about was
recorded and produced in your basement, right? Muruga Booker:
It was done in my basement, we call it "Duck Head Studios." If we
had our preference, we would record it in Sage Court Studios [his
garage]. But since we are down in the basement before we move to the
in-progress garage studio, we record in an area that is not very
tall and you have to duck your head. The name of the studio warns
people what they need to do to record (duck your head). |
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When we bought the house, there was this little
separate room in the basement, and I use it as our control room.
We have two ADATs and, thanks to you, a Yamaha digital mixer.
And I've been using the CADs [condenser mics] how you showed me and
the Shure SM58's. It's humble but we have digital recording, a
clean 16 tracks. I could use more tracks but I don't have to
have more than 16 to produce and record music in my basement.
The band records and there is some bleed-though, but we minimize it
with how the mis are placed. The little bit of bleed gives us an
ambience sound that can be gotten nowhere else, other than my
basement. |
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Bob:
Well I've listened to and mixed the tracks you
record there and you get a workable sound that can easily be used on
music releases. It may require a little more EQ but the sound
"falls in" so to speak. |
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Muruga:
What gave me the faith to record like this because when we recorded
Blues FRom The Rain Forest with Merl Saunders, the album was recorded in
his basement studio. He just had a basic Tascam board, [A Tascam
688 with eight tracks on cassette!] and we got nominated for a Grammy.
When Jerry Garcia [Mr Grateful Dead] heard the tracks he liked them and
wanted to play on them. We had a record that was a hit that helped
out the Rainforest and it all came from the basement. I thought that if
I coiuld do it out of the basement once, I could do it out of the
basement twice! |
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Bob:
That's why you'll be of great help to our developing artists because
that's what the majority of recording musicians are - basement
recordists. Well maybe their doing it in their garage or going
into a studio too - but it usually starts in the basement. They do
what they can do, buy a little but of equipment here and there, get a
little more sophisticated and always wanting a hit record. |
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Muruga:
I want to help show people how they can do it on their own. But
its never really "on your own," its all with the help of your friends -
just like the Beatles said. That's always been a known fact.
We record the basic tracks here and get a good mix in your studio.
If you like what is on the basic tracks, you don't mind spending a
little money to get the mix right, if you have to. You will find
that the studio will have somne gear that you may not have as a
beginning artist. I'm not a beginning artist in terms of making
records, I've been doing that since the 60's but I'm a beginning artist
in the sense of, in the last few years, recording my own stuff in my
house. |
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I started
way back when in New York with cassette to study myself. I then
started recording in a studio with a group of musicians in a continuing
project called "Friday Night Music" where they went straight to a VCR
tape. Later, in California, I found that many great musicians
would come and play with me in my garage. I didn't have a great
setup but I had a mixing board where I got a stereo mix and sent it
directly to a VCR tape - it was real clean. I went from that to an
ADAT and I'm now recording two two ADATs. |
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Bob:
On this Global Village project we are mixing with Marty Krist,
an instructor at the Recording Institute of Detroit. I'm going to
master it by modifying the output of the board on the saved mix, using
the multitrack ADATs. I'm excited about bypassing the normal
loading into the computer for mastering because I can do the mastering
with the digital board and bring out the final sound. With this
setup, if I want to make a change, I can make it directly to a track.
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Muruga:
And I'm suyre you're going to be sharing with others how you do that.
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Bob:
That's the idea, we'r4e going to make this production a sample of
how developing artist productions operates in assisting the production
to move forward to success. We're posting the mix how it is today.
You're going to do more overdubs on the tune. The mix will have to
be modified and then there will be more changes. We'll discuss and
show how we put our heads together, make decisions, make changes and
progress hopefully towards a hit record. The goal is to allow the
project to progress as far as it can with the talent. |
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Muruga:
Yes, be as good as you can be. Don't worry about how good you are
compared to others, simply get as good as you can get. Are you
operating at your maximum |
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Bob: You're working
on the Global Village tune, "Let's Dance." Who is on this? |
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Muruga:
What I first did was start off wiuth my Roland drum machine.
I didn't really expect to do anything with it.
It was
a spoff
and at 3:00 AM I felt like doing something funky, so I put some beats
up, in the earphones. Then I put a synthesizer to it.
Richard Smith from GVCB put a bass line to it and Owen put an electric
violin to it. Ken from the group added electronic percussion and
scratching. My Wife is singing and Bolieta from the P-Funk is singing,
Mad Cat Ruth on juice hap, and finally Perry Robinson on the clarinet. I
do some rap scatting |
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Bob: I see a new P-Funk T-Shirt on you - was that from
playing at the recent P-Funk Concert in Detroit? Muruga:
Last night I did the concert with the P-Funk at the Detroit
Techno Festival. 70,000 People, it was fantastic and we got to
hear a lot of the new talent from Detroit, DJ's and musicians,
it was wonderful. |
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VISIT MURUGA'S WEBSITE |
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VISIT THE NEW MURUGA TONOS SITE AFTER
JUNE 10, 2002 |
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(MURUGA'S
TONOS SITE
WILL BE CONSTRUCTED BETWEEN NOW AND JUNE 10th) |
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