Review: Indian Express/Mani & Co and some rant on audio processing ;/
Bought Indian Express/Mani & Co. Its a Jazz fusion album with L.Subramaniam playing most of the violin parts. There are a dozen names listed on the CD and has 14 tracks. The track 'MotherLand' is nothing but the Theme Music for 'Surabhi' (remember? the 9PM show on DD?). Brought back so many great memories of the good old DD days. Its set to raga 'Nattai. Has quite some funk. The other track that sounded familiar was "Lets Talk" -- Reminded me of 'Otchi-Tchor-Ni-Ya. Decent value for the buck (Rs.295/-).
Along with this CD, I bought another L.Subramaniam CD called 'Samarpanam'. I bought the CD for the song 'Devi Brova'... a wonderful song that I have several renditions of (vocal (K.V.Narayanasamy, D K Jayaraman), mandolin, chitraveena (Ravikiran) and now Violin). But whats with all these instrumentalists using too much of Reverb/Delay? I prefer the clean sound of a violin or mandolin than such an extremely "processed" version, any day. Its so reverb-ed and I don't like it.
Talking of processing and recording, I think nothing comes close to Prasanna's recording / processing. Hardly do you ever find his tracks using effects that distort the 'clean' sound of the guitar. The "max" I've seen him use (for his Carnatic CDs) is just a mild delay. He uses stereo while recording appropriately. Half of these carnatic CDs come with the main vocalist singing on the left side and the violin on the right. That sucks, doesn't it? Atleast it does, to me.
Earlier, Prasanna used a Strat. Like all strats, it had a very 'tinny' sound and didn't have the... uh... "Bass" required for playing Carnatic. As you might have noticed, trebly sounds have the reverb more pronounced. I don't know when he switched to a Gibson (Since gibson uses humbucking pickups, the tone is warm and sounds more 'continuous' (read: sustained)), but his later albums had an awesome (slightly warm) tone.
Along with this CD, I bought another L.Subramaniam CD called 'Samarpanam'. I bought the CD for the song 'Devi Brova'... a wonderful song that I have several renditions of (vocal (K.V.Narayanasamy, D K Jayaraman), mandolin, chitraveena (Ravikiran) and now Violin). But whats with all these instrumentalists using too much of Reverb/Delay? I prefer the clean sound of a violin or mandolin than such an extremely "processed" version, any day. Its so reverb-ed and I don't like it.
Talking of processing and recording, I think nothing comes close to Prasanna's recording / processing. Hardly do you ever find his tracks using effects that distort the 'clean' sound of the guitar. The "max" I've seen him use (for his Carnatic CDs) is just a mild delay. He uses stereo while recording appropriately. Half of these carnatic CDs come with the main vocalist singing on the left side and the violin on the right. That sucks, doesn't it? Atleast it does, to me.
Earlier, Prasanna used a Strat. Like all strats, it had a very 'tinny' sound and didn't have the... uh... "Bass" required for playing Carnatic. As you might have noticed, trebly sounds have the reverb more pronounced. I don't know when he switched to a Gibson (Since gibson uses humbucking pickups, the tone is warm and sounds more 'continuous' (read: sustained)), but his later albums had an awesome (slightly warm) tone.