I’ve made a couple new songs recently, both of which are a practice in film composition. The first is a study on the work of Eduard Artemyev, a Soviet composer who worked with the director Andrei Tarkovsky on the film “Stalker.” Here, I’m attempting to copy the affect of the films opening sequence, for which Artemyev wanted to create a mixture of eastern and western aesthetics.

[audio:http://amusesmile.com/old/sound/rasa.mp3|titles=Stalker Rasa]

From Wikipedia: “[Artemyev and Tarkovsky] finally found the solution in a theme that would create a state of inner calmness and inner satisfaction, or as Tarkovsky said “space frozen in a dynamic equilibrium.” Artemyev knew about a musical piece from Indian classical music where a prolonged and unchanged background tone is performed on a tambura. As this gave Artemyev the impression of frozen space, he used this inspiration and created a background tone on his synthesizer similar to the background tone performed on the tambura. The tar then improvised on the background sound, together with a flute as a European, Western instrument. To mask the obvious combination of European and Oriental instruments he passed the foreground music through the effect channels of his SYNTHI 100 synthesizer. These effects included modulating the sound of the flute and lowering the speed of the tar, so that what Artemyev called “the life of one string” could be heard. Tarkovsky was amazed by the result, especially liking the sound of the tar, and used the theme without any alterations in the film.”

The second is a track I made entirely from the sampled first measure of “In a Sentimental Mood” by Ellington and Coltrane. I thought of it as appropriate for a busy city street scene, but a close friend of mine says it sounds more like someone is loosing his/her mind. The beat starts at 0:36.

[audio:http://amusesmile.com/old/sound/July2011.mp3|titles=July 2011]