Chossy Pratama on four decades in film scoring and audio: “music has always been in my blood”

Chossy Pratama is an Indonesian songwriter, producer, audio engineer, and television theme composer, with a glittering career across the Asian continent spanning four and a half decades. Pratama had a career breakthrough in the early ‘90s, writing theme songs for a number of Indonesian films, quickly becoming his career specialty. He chats to Headliner about his long and illustrious career, why he is now passionate about helping young singers break into the music industry, and how his Merging Technologies kit has proven key for him.

Growing up in Indonesia, what inspired you to get into songwriting and the world of audio?

My mum was a classical piano player, and my dad taught me to play the ukulele, so I have played both piano and ukulele since I was five years old. My father bought a second-hand upright piano. So I started to play piano first by just looking at how my mum played, and then she sent me to a teacher to teach me. I dropped out after two years and just played my own style. So even though I grew up professionally as an electronic engineer, music has always been in my blood.

I was in a band in my teens and wrote songs, but I decided to leave the live music scene in 1972 and finish my studies and start to work professionally as a QC Engineer. Then, later, I opened my own industrial automation company in Singapore. In 1986, I met legendary Indonesian composer A. Ryanto. We call him Mas Kelik. He was the person who asked me to go back to music. I already knew about MIDI and production at that time. Now I have my own label, Chossy Pratama Production. I also started to build recording studios, radio broadcast studios, television studios, auditoriums, and more.

You started out as a music arranger for a few Indonesian horror films in the early ‘90s. How did you land those jobs and get a start in the industry?

I started to enter the film industry as a musician because it was very difficult at that time to enter the music industry. I knew my knowledge of MIDI and production would be a big asset. I started to receive a lot of requests to do movies, and one day, an old friend who happened to be the owner of a production house called and asked me to do the scoring for his TV series. I wrote a pop song to be the theme song, Si Manis Jembatan Ancol. It was a big hit. Then the industry started to come to me. It was all God's work, because when I went back to music, I was already 37 years old, and the others were 10-12 years younger than me, and they were already on top.

In the world of film and TV, what have been some of your favourite projects and happiest memories from your career?

On film, all projects are equally important and challenging, because I had to wake up at 2.30am, then go to the production house and do a copy to VHS. Unlike today, when everything is just sent by WeTransfer or something like that. Then I would rush to my studio and start doing the scoring in MIDI. Afterwards, I would have to dump the MIDI audio to a 24-track, and do the mix from there. There was no digital audio at that time, so we would all be so excited and happy whenever we completed a project on time!

What advice would you give to those looking to break into the world of audio and film?

It is not an easy path to go into the music or film industry, but they are always looking for fresh ideas, and that is where the opportunity lies. However, it takes a hell of a lot of persistence to just be auditioned by the producers. Just keep on doing your style as long as it is not a style like somebody else's. Do not be discouraged if you only got a job as a sessionist, because we can learn a lot about how other people work. It will pay off big or small, that depends. But it will.

You’re currently based in and working from the island of Timor-Leste. How has that move been, and how are you finding working there?

I got an offer to do an audio restoration project in Dili, for the Archiving and Resistance Museum. It is a restoration from audio cassettes, VHS, and some vinyl. Apart from doing that, they also wanted to have a studio that could remake the old songs made during the struggle for independence. So I built them an audio studio that will do audio restoration as well as recording, and also I built them a video editing room and a green room to do chroma key shots.

The project was completed in 28 days, and running Pro Tools at that time. Then they asked me to stay as a consultant to train the staff, and so I have been here for almost three years now. I set up a separate restoration room using Pro Tools and installed a new Pyramix Pro14 Native for the recording studio, and it became the best-sounding studio in Timor-Leste. I also did a design for the National Television of Timor-Leste, also using the Pyramix Pro14.

What are some of your favourite hardware and software tools for your work?

I started recording when I was only 13 years old using my father’s Akai two-track tape recorder back in 1962. I started experimenting with mic placement on the upright piano, sometimes even dismantling the piano, until my mum screamed in anger!

Coming from there to where I am now, my favourite hardware is still analogue hardware.

I have the Tubetech Dbx160, the SSL Bus Comp, and the Focusrite Red Compressor. I also have the SSL EQ hardware, the Focusrite EQ, the Lexicon 480L, the TCE 2290 Delay, and the Klark Teknik Reverb. My mixing console is the Euphonix CS3000. My plugin arsenal is Harrison, SSL, Flux, Merging, Slate, Izotope, UAD, Plugin Alliance and Waves. My DAWs are Logic Pro and Merging 14 Prime Masscore.

Part of your setup is based around gear from Merging Technologies. How does this help your workflow?

At Promid, I am using Pyramix 14 Masscore with Horus and Anubis for tracking, mixing, and mastering. I’m also using Quested V3110 speakers. Both computers, Horus, and Anubis, are connected via the Quadra-Artel switch, a PPT switch.

Since all computers are connected, the workflow is super easy. All audio from Logic will be transported to the media file of a project in Pyramix, and in Pyramix, we just drag it into the timeline, and we are ready to work.

Pyramix is a hyper-end recording system, it is definitely not a DAW in my opinion, it is a system on its own. It does not do MIDI, it only does audio, and it uses the analogue routing concept, stemming work quickly and easily. Also, with the internal bus facility that is easy to use and understand, it is very easy to do a return bus, and also record to audio all effects if deemed necessary. The final metering is superb, it is very easy with Pyramix to have stable output at -11 LUFS, for instance.

Pyramix Prime MassCore is my weapon for any kind of audio work, with the proper window tweaking and correct motherboard and CPU setup. It’s very important to follow Merging’s recommendation. Although I have, in my own studio, built a PC which is not 100% compliant with the Merging recommendation, and it still works and is stable. The performance of Pyramix outperforms the other DAWs. I was a proud user of Pro Tools Indonesia, and I migrated to Pyramix in 2019 after using Horus with Pro Tools from 2017. Now I'm a 100% Merging man.