With the help of a few compressors and an equalizer, I managed to glue everything together quite nicely. Not my best work, but it’ll do given the circumstances. I still haven’t really answered the question, but the plan was never to answer it, but to address it, to explore it. Are we experiencing the death of traditional instruments? Maybe. Is it a bad thing? It might be too early to actually answer that. I mean, if you ask me then yes, it is. I was never on good terms with progress. I found it happens too fast, and it only seems to be speeding up. You can’t really enjoy the moment anymore, and if you really try to you might find yourself feeling left behind. I don’t know. I don’t really want to talk about it anymore.

So I finished writing the script for my audio paper, I recorded the soundtrack for it, and I also have my interview. The recorded material sounds like crap, to be completely honest, but it’s the best I could do given the challenges I encountered. First, my microphone stopped working so I had to record the instruments on my phone. Then, given that Sam’s in Italy and I had to conduct the interview over the phone, I had to use an Ipad to record the whole thing. I hope I can make it sound at least half-decent.

To make it a little more interesting I decided to add a soundtrack to my audio paper. I thought playing some original compositions on a few instruments sounded like a great idea. Except for bass – I’m a novice when it comes to playing bass, so I did a short variation of the guitar track off R.E.M.’s “Be Mine” instead. Then I went with electric guitar, banjo, and lap steel. As for the interview part, I asked Sam if he was ok with me playing one of his band’s tracks in the background and he was ok with it. Informative and entertaining.

Because of my nationality, I do have some roots in the Romanian minimal techno scene. And I would be lying if I said I never enjoyed a techno party back in the day. Back in the day, before he rose to international stardom, I was lucky enough to have attended quite a few parties where Barac was playing three or four-hour sets, where he helped sculped what is now known as “the Romanian sound”. I recently a very interesting and detailed article by William Ralston (https://www.scribd.com/document/487393802/Sunrise-in-Bucharest), about the so-called “Rominimal” scene, and the Sunrise collective – the engine behind the Sunwaves festival. I was happy and surprised to recognize a few of my friends’ names mentioned in there, as well as quite a few DJs whose sets I had the pleasure of dancing to a decade ago.

I’ve spoken with an old friend of mine, Samuele Simeone – the lead singer and guitarist of The Fuzz Brothers, and he agreed to let me interview him for my audio paper. The Fuzz Brothers is an Italian stoner rock band while Sam is a very talented multi-instrumentalist. I met him five years ago while he was studying guitar at BIMM. I always knew him as being very open-minded, and capable of seeing the whole picture even when he’s right in the middle of an issue. I hope he’ll help me shed some light on the matter.

I decided that my audio paper will explore the question, “Are the recent rapidly increasing technological advances a threat to traditional instruments?”. I chose this topic because it’s a question I dread because I think the answer is “Yes”, although I hope to God I’m not right. Ultimately, I guess I’ll try to prove myself wrong on this. I did purchase a violin just before I started writing this, to add to the ever-increasing number of instruments I’m doing my best to master. That is perhaps a panicked attempt to somehow balance things out in the world, like the more instruments I learn the slower they will fade away in the ever-growing shadow of the digital era, so I am somewhat biased. I hope that won’t interfere with my investigation.