So here’s why Balanta was my choice for this assignment. Using comedic irony to conduct a political analysis of Ceausescu’s regime from the point of view of two representants of the oppressed “intellectual class” (a doctor and a school teacher), it shares a peculiar characteristic with many early post-Decembrist Romanian films – the lack of non-diegetic sound. I’ve discussed this aspect with some friends and some believe that the lack of soundtracks on most Romanian films keeps the scenes grounded in reality even when things tend to get a bit surreal, while others think it stems from a Rennainscence type of situation, where the directors are trying to define a new wave of cinematic styles separating themselves by all means from what came out before 1989. Whatever the reason, the lack of music, along with my love for early ’90s movies, drove me to choose this as my project.
E#1
For my personal creative project, I chose to compose a track for a short clip I found on YouTube from a 1992 Romanian film called Balanta (The Oak), one of the best pieces of Romanian cinema in my humble opinion. Directed by Lucian Pintilie and boasting an amazing cast, with Maia Morgenstern and Razvan Vasilescu in the main roles, Balanta was among many critically acclaimed films that came out of Romania after the fall of the communist regime. It received quite a few awards and nominations, with Maia Morgenstern winning European Actress of the Year at the 1993 European Fim Awards. An amazing film overall.
S#6
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.
S#5
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.
S#4
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.
S#3
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.
S#2
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.
S#1
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.
I#1
For my creative sound work, I decided to write and record a funeral song. Its lyrics are going to be based on a few Christian Orthodox prayers as well as contain traditional Romanian funeral themes. It will make a great audio companion to my essay, Exploring the Role of Music in Christian Worship. I will record it at my home studio and will try to keep it as simple as possible. So far I’ve got the tile, “Groapa” which is Romanian for “Hole in the Ground”. It will portray my own funeral. This’ll be fun.
C#2
I was lucky enough to have joined the project pretty early, so roles within the group weren’t really assigned yet. I took advantage of this and started working on game’s score. I uploaded tree different flavors of tracks.
First one was a short crash-type of sound, just 17 seconds, western-themed. I used electric guitar banjo and harmonica – I felt the reactions were mixed.
The second upload was a techno track of sorts, slowed down to 96 bpm, I put together using harmonica and playing around with Ashlight for NI’s Kontakt. No one said a word about it.
The third track I made using nothing but VST instruments – a slow and eerie composition of saw based sounds accompanied by a few sparse piano notes. Everybody loved it, and from what I understood we’ll be using it in the first scene, for the first part of the space flight, right before the crash.
I now have an idea of what type of sound everybody envisions for this game’s score, which will be of great help with this project.