Rafasan

Middle Georgia’s musicians have a new place to record their work.

Rafasan Music, the studio created by local producer Rafi San Inocencio, offers a full range of studio recording, mixing and mastering, production, and even lessons and tutorials for musicians of all skill levels. In his fully equipped studio compete with a full suite of production and mastering software, San Inocencio combines his years of recording experience with a full complement of electronics and equipment.

“I recently graduated from Full Sail University in Orlando, Fla., in May,” he said, from his newly completed Fernwood Drive studio. “I moved back to town and opened this up, and started taking on clients. With the equipment, I just sort of compiled everything I’ve been working with for the last few years in recording.”

Although San Inocencio is younger than many professional producers, he has years of experience in the recording field to draw on. Almost since he started recording his friends for fun in high school, the producer and musician has known that he wanted to make music into a career.

“I’ve been doing music myself and recording for other people since 2011, when I was a freshman in high school,” he said. “Back then I was just messing around in my bedroom with a laptop, just recording my friends and figuring out what everything was. After going to school, I picked up guitar and bass and started playing piano … I started taking it seriously and taught myself recording programs and how they work, music theory, how you make a chord progression, and how you make melodies and how they work together. It’s all about how to make different emotions out of music and how to get the listener to feel something, and it’s still growing and still evolving.”

Although anyone with a full complement of recording gear could ostensibly open their own studio, San Inocencio has both the training and experience needed to turn a raw, unfinished album or track into a true finished product. At his recently completed bachelor’s program at Full Sail, the producer was one of only a handful to make it through the university’s rigorous music production curriculum.

“It’s a 20-month program for a bachelor’s degree, so that’s four years in a little over a year and a half,” said San Inocencio. “I started with a hundred-and-something people in my class, and toward the end it was about 15 people that had stuck it out through the crazy hours … 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. was my latest lab, and then 9 a.m. lectures after that, and you just sort of repeat. They try to prepare you for actual times you could be recording in the industry.”

Although most musicians in Middle Georgia won't be in immediate need of a hit single at 3 a.m., customers can rest assured that whatever they may throw at him, San Inocencio has dealt with worse. Aside from just the recording, mixing and mastering aspect, the producer can also offer advice with a trained musical ear.

“I offer recording, which is here [in the studio]; mixing and mastering, where anyone can send me a recording and I can polish it up and make it sound radio-ready; and I also do songwriting,” he said. “If someone needs help with a song I can help them out, and I also do lessons on music and production.”

“One thing that I can tell you about him is that he’s a perfectionist,” said Rafi’s father, Rafael. “He’s been working on one particular song for a contest for about a month, and I said ‘Let me listen to it’. He said ‘No, you can’t listen to it until it’s finalized’.”

While recording, mixing, and producing seems outwardly like it would be easy, in reality it’s a long, slow, arduous process. In putting his mark on artists of nearly every conceivable musical genre, San Inocencio said he simply enjoys helping artists realize their potential.

“Just trying to talk with the client and make them understand what they need to be going for, and sort of steer them in the right direction to get a good recording,” he said, of his favorite part of running the studio. “With a lot of people, this is either their first time recording or they’re pretty new to it, but since I’ve been doing it for a bit I’m kind of able to get them going in the right direction.”

Rafasan Music is located at 1001 Fernwood Drive, Suite, A, in Milledgeville, and can be reached by phone at 478-456-9582. For examples of Rafi’s work, services, and more information, visit www.rafasanmusic.com. - Union Recorder