【我的故事my story】《Maveriq studio Malaysia》|林颖昭 Amelin |
The first impression I got when I stepped foot into the lounge in Maveriq studio was Mr.Paul, the boss of the studio. He was dark. It actually gave me a shock. I looked to my left, there was a woman with blue eyes and golden hair. Surrounded the little area we’re all the people from different countries and I believed all of them were of different races. They were the brilliant sound engineers, composers, singers, music producers and executive producers.
*What is a music engineer? Music engineer is the one who do the mixing, refine the quality of the sound. They are normally the most busy person in the house.
What is a composer? Composer is the one who come out with the idea of a song, the creative part of making a song.
What is an executive producer? You can imagine the executive producer as the cashier of the shop. Everyone who wants to make a business deal need to go through this person. To make sure the whole shop run smoothly, this executive producer need to have the best plan in mind.
What is mastering? Mastering is the post checking procedure before letting out the song to the market. Don’t think that it is an easy job, mostly mastering was done by masters!
The place was brilliant. When I sat on the sofa in the lounge where I could out look the clearing outside, I just wished my future home could be just like Maveriq’s lounge. It has a lot of to-the-floor windows that allowed the light to pour in. It was comfortable, high-class, just the ultimate place one could wish to work in.
I was always scared when I pictured about my future. Maybe I would become incompatible outside at the war zone fighting for an occupation, useless. But when I got the messages from him, I knew that all along I had been fully-prepared. We met so few a time, yet he knew so much about me and had so much faith in me. He said,” Even when you don’t have anything to do, you’ll still find something to work on.” “You have a big appetite for music knowledge.” Those tiny remarks always made my heart melts.
I proudly found out that two of my seniors in my university were actually working in Maveriq now. One had become a composer and singer and had recently won a local best film song award. Another one was doing an internship in Maveriq. Although her everyday task was to answer the phone, but she learned a lot from that as how to communicate with people from all walks of life. As she put it,” I need to train myself to come up with the best answers to the customers within seconds!” Sometimes other colleagues in Maveriq gave her some sudden and emergency tasks that made her panic. Paralysed with panic. But all the people in Maveriq were so helpful they taught her little by little. Eventually after a short period of three months, time to let her go, she brought so many useful and memorable experiences with her too.
Paul has a really deep and low voice, he may be the best candidate for a bass singer in a a Capella or a choir setting. He said to me and my group of friends that our ears haven’t tuned to his frequency, so we got to listen very carefully. He encouraged us to speak out when we didn’t respond to him as he put it” silence cannot make music”. I never know that we had such a good place in Malaysia. Suddenly the patriotism in me lighted up. Paul explained to us why he insisted to invest so many high-end equipments and quality technologies in Maveriq, while now a days, everyone could get their music online free and easy, people wouldn’t appreciate music as much as the old days. It was because people came back every time for good music that majorly been produced by big productions like films and post audio companies that released their own songs and equipped with own house engineers, composers, singers and mastering master.
One remark from Paul that stayed in my mind until now was,” while a one-man-band idea could work well in this era, people probably could do everything by themselves in their bedrooms, but to produce exclusive premium product, we still need a team.”
They have spacious, well-designed, and separately-functioned working studio for every engineers and composers. Some was slightly bigger than the others, some with the same brand of speakers, one without the recording room, one was special designed for ADR( Automated Dialogue Replacement) so that no additional unrequited noise can be heard during the recording, one can even occupy a chamber orchestra.
I asked a question which afterward I thought impolite, I asked,” Why do they choose Maveriq?”, when the golden hair woman introduced to us that they did a lot of important collaboration with US film companies, some oversea and local big advertisements and songs. She answered, “I think it’s because we have a good reputation, we reach the international standard and they are happy to work with us.”