Having steered Mexican music star Peso Pluma to the top of the charts, a Grammy Award, 12 Billboard Latin Music Awards and a sold-out arena tour in just two years, George Prajin has now turned his attention to expanding his Prajin Music Group’s music production capabilities. Based in Southern California, Prajin Parlay Studioz recently took delivery of the first Harrison 32Classic analogue mixing console to come off the production line for a tracking room that will become fully operational in early 2025.
‘At first sight, it looks like your traditional analogue console,’ says mixer and producer Ernesto ‘Neto’ Fernández. ‘But where I see the power is with the whole Dante set-up and the routing capabilities.’
Fernández won two Grammy Awards in 2024, for his work on Peso Pluma’s album as well as Chiquis Rivera’s album, which also won a 2024 Latin Grammy Award in November.
The Harrison 32Classic, which offers inline monitoring, is the first studio console to feature integrated high-performance A/D and D/A converters coupled to a Dante AoIP interface, enabling it to connect to the DAW over a single ethernet cable. Pressing the InLine button on any input channel module selects the associated Dante input to that channel’s monitor path. The unique Dante interface also provides a simple but powerful 12 wide monitor source for feeding a 7.1.4 loudspeaker array while working on Dolby Atmos projects without the necessity of an external wide monitoring solution.
The decision to install a Harrison 32Classic was driven by Pluma’s co-manager, Herminio Morales, whose brother Jessie (El Original de la Sierra) is also signed to Prajin. ‘Herminio went to school for audio engineering and was taught on a Harrison board; I believe it was an original 32C,’ Fernández says.
Introduced in 1975, the 32C was Harrison’s first console to offer company founder Dave Harrison’s inline design concept and was the world’s first desk with 32 multitrack buses. ‘I also had experience with Harrison because where I learned, back in the 1990s, had a Harrison MR4. So when the 32Classic came up it was nostalgic, you could say, and Herminio ended up purchasing it.’
Prajin signed Pluma to his company at the end of 2021 and in 2023 the pair partnered to launch the Double P Records label. Consumption of Mexican regional music, such as corridos, banda, ranchera, norteño, mariachi and sierreño, reportedly increased by more than 40 per cent in the US during 2023. The Pajin group now represents numerous rising stars of Mexican music, including Santa Fe Klan, Código FN, Jasiel Nuñez, Tito Double P, Dareyes de la Sierra and Raul Vega. Some of them, like Pluma and his corridos, combine traditional Mexican music and instrumentation – accordion, tenor horns, trombone, acoustic guitars and upright bass – with elements of hip-hop, trap and reggaeton.
Prajin, whose firm offers management, record label, and music production services, opened Prajin Parlay Studioz in Anaheim in 2021. The facility features a recording and mixing room plus a producers’ room – where the 32Classic has now been installed – that was initially designed for basic in-the-box production with a DAW and an interface.
Fernández, recently honoured as Producer of the Year at Billboard’s 2024 Latin Music Awards, has been working with George Prajin, who personally manages Peso Pluma. He came onboard with the organisation in 2018, just as streaming began to help revive the record industry’s fortunes, and these days also mixes in Dolby Atmos for the immersive music platforms.
Fernández is looking forward to working with the firm’s artists in the newly reconfigured room: ‘That’s where I see big potential for the Harrison board,’ he says. ‘It’s got a lot of power, and it sounds great. There’s going to be great work done in this room.’
Fernández has wired the new Harrison console directly to a live space that is shared between the two control rooms, also linking to it via video. ‘It’s a separate room where we can record drums, accordions, guitars, vocals and all that,’ he says. Twelve analogue lines run from the booth into the 32Classic’s DB25 input connectors. ‘Those pop up on the channels, and then I route those into Dante and into Pro Tools. The workflow is direct and fast.’
As the Prajin Music Group racks up one success after another, the firm is working on further expanding its Southern California music production facilities: ‘We have another studio in Tustin and we’re building two new studios in Irvine, at the main office,’ Fernández reports.
The current plan is to work with the label’s artists at the company’s headquarters, he says, and make the Anaheim facility available for outside work.
