A. R. Rahman

Bollywood's finest

A key moment in A. R. Rahman's life: he met one of India's most famous directors, Mani Ratnam, who asked him to compose the music for his next film, Roja (1992). The rest, as they say, is history. He went on to compose several great hits for Tamil-language films before composing the score and songs for his first Hindi-language film, Rangeela (1995). The enormous success of his first Hindi venture was followed by the chart-topping soundtrack albums of films such as Bombay (1995), Taal (1999), and Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (2001), which was nominated for best foreign-language film at the 2002 Academy Awards. He also worked with Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber and Shekhar Kapur (director of Elizabeth) on a musical called Bombay Dreams, and won two Oscars for his work on Slumdog Millionaire.

What have been some productions of you and how have they been recorded?

Well, Warriors of Heaven and Earth, Provoked and The Rising are amongst the movie projects.

We were initially recording at the older place on an Euphonix System 5 with Genelec monitors. The Euphonix has now been moved to the new film mixing room designed by Studio 440. At the new recording room we have installed a Neve 88R. A major portion of Rang De Basanti, Provoked, and The Lord of the Rings, a theater adaptation in Toronto, were done at the new facility. Logic is our main workstation, which works in combination with Digidesign hardware.

Did you use Melodyne on these projects? In which songs, in which particular moment?

Sure, used it mostly on vocal tracks of Rang de Basanti, in aim of creating fresh harmonies, reducing quivers, pitch correction etc.

How did Melodyne change the way you work with audio files?

Well, we have been using Melodyne for most of the vocal corrections, but I also like fooling around with it, making harmonies and things like that. I think Melodyne is an ideal and very transparent solution for this. We also tried to make percussion sound bigger with it, using transpose and stacking functions.

What do you like especially about Melodyne?

I enjoy the flexibility, transparency and the many ways in which Melodyne surprises us!

Have you already tried Melodyne editor with DNA?

Yes. I love it!