On The Way

Now-a-days, the music scene in our country is looking up. And I am not talking about singing. A R Rehman, with his unique style has of com...

Now-a-days, the music scene in our country is looking up. And I am not talking about singing. A R Rehman, with his unique style has of composing has revolutionalised the way music is made today. Another one to join this genre is his friend and collegue – Pravin Mani.

Born in Chennai in the July of 1966, Pravin took to playing the guitar at the age of ten. He even joined the school band when he was 13. While he was involved in the school band he came in contact with the the bass guitar and shifted to playing that cause he liked the deep sound it made

In 1985 he joined the Institute of Hotel Management in Chennai for the sole purpose of joining their cool band which had amazing musicians. This went on for three year until he bought his first computer in 1988 and started dabbling in Sequencing and Midi which is possible only on the computer. He got hooked to this sphere of music-making. He dropped out of college and started doing programming sessions for jingles.

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At this time he met Dilip Kumar betterknown as A R Rehman and a few others and set up a band called Myth. After doing a few concerts around the county, he realised that in our country his type of music will not be accepted. The musical environment was just not condusive for growth.

So, he upped and left for Sydney, Australia in 1990. There he joined the School of Audio engineering to further his technical knowledge. He completed his post graduate "tonmeister" program in music production. He then started work in a number of studios around Sydney including Rich Music Studios and Suburban Voodoo. He also set up his own production suite called Mo Mani Music Productions in 1996 and produced albums for a number of companies like Sony, Virgin-EMI, Warner and AMA Records.

In 1997 he signed on to Warner Chappell publishing as a composer/arranger on a worldwide basis and was asked to move to Toronto, Canada to work with more North American R n B artists.

On his way to Canada, he stopped over in India and landed up meeting the Managing director ofMagnasound who made him an offer which he couldn’t refuse. Till date he has worked on two albums for Magnasound. The first was your normal stuff – a remix of Daler Mehndi’s songs called `Daler Remixx’ and the second was for singer Ash for his album Husn. And now he has come out with his own album called `Ohm Karma’ where he has given the type of music which he loves – world music – electronically reproduced.

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Even though he had left for froeign pastures he had kept in touch with A R Rehman. As a result he landed up doing a lot of programmimng sessions for him. e.g he has helped AR Rehman with Mujhe Rang De from Thakshak, Que Sera Sera from Pukar, a few songs from Taal, to name a few.

His musical inlfuences have always been Jazz, Electro and R&B which are the style which he grew up with and which are evident in his work.