Sound & Video

Musicians' Diary, Sound & Video

Albanian { wild again ! } sound

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We both love Albanian music (with a slight crush for music from Kosovo !), and we were really happy to hear some live a couple of days ago here in Greece !

The sound is indeed terrific, it’s recorded live for sure, and with all the usual ambiance going around in this kind of concert : discussions (if you pay attention you may hear both Greek and Albanian language around us), laughs, dances, phones ringing, glasses and bottles noises… well, basically the only ambiance in which we have ever heard Albanian music !

Recorded on May the 1st 2014, Tsigas, Nea Peramos, Greece
(http://www.tsigas-hotel.gr)

Let’s see how it will influence our music!

Sound & Video

Very { wild } live takes + Happy Beltan !

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It’s always very cool for us to get videos made from concerts, it’s as if we were at our own concert! This particular video was made in Marseille last month, a very lively and cheerful place, a bit underground too (can you feel the ambiance?). Which actually is a cool combination to listen to our music, at least as far as we can hear!

A fire ambiance that actually is perfect to wish you a very happy Beltan (also spelled Beltain) celebration. Because, yes, tomorrow is May the 1st, and for Celts as in many cultures, Beltan is a Fire and Fertility celebration, a celebration of happiness and joy, also a time to bring new concepts and ideas into the physical world (and yes, our album starts to “unfold”!), and generally speaking a day in which it is easier than usual to communicate with spirits from the Other World, because the veil between our worlds is very thin (the other “big” day like that is November the 1st). Communicate for what you may wonder? Well, maybe to get brilliant ideas, unexpected advices about our major up-coming projects…  So, may your Beltan Day be full of inspiration !

§ Simone

Buy Astrakan Project debut album

Sound & Video

Let’s Twist!

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This video is indeed a kind of making-off of our last video recording for Barzh an Ifern (You still can watch it >here<).

Lyrics are traditional from Brittany (and as usual in #Breton language). A bachelor is complaining about the way girls are nowadays, not willing to stay home but rather going to school or partying. Composed at least… 100 years ago ! (full English translation and more facts >here<)

The final Live part is from the song “Barzh an Ifern”, in Marseille (south of France), March the 15th, 2014, in Equitable Café (crazy ambiance that night as you can hear from the sound!)

One of our goals is to get ALL the songs from our album available on our YouTube channel, (if you are a regular user of YouTube, you can subscribe here, that way you’ll easily get notified from our new videos)… And we’re almost half-way 😉

Enjoy, and if you enjoy it, please share around!

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Buy Astrakan Project debut album

Sound & Video

O Soñjal – a dark winter video

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The weather hasn’t been highly cooperative with us while we were in Brittany, we wtill manage to shot a couple of scenes around our home village Plougras and used them for O Soñjal (a young conscript having to leave his village, familly and relatives to serve the army, full translation >here<)

Don’t you forget you may subscribe to our YouTube channel: http://youtube.com/astrakanproject

Music, Sound & Video

The forbidden 3rd

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Most breton tunes cannot be played on a piano. Why ? Because they have “commas” (as it is often the case in oriental musiv for example). See the fret setup of a guitar below :

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Fret spacing is regular, whereas if you take a look at a turkish saz :

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Fret spacing is not regular, which enables to play notes with the so-called “commas”, and that cannot be played on a piano for instance (see this older issue for further details : Bağlama’s pitch). In other words, a third can be slightly higher than the minor, but much lower than the major, which means its pitch is somewhere inbetween…

Ok, now what happens if you play a tune on the turkish saz with a high third degree as we commonly have in breton music, together with a guitar ?? If you play a grid with a usual minor third, it may sound like this :

Well, I think it sounds a little bit weird, or even out of tune since a third with two different pitches gets played simultaneously… And especially, Simone doesn’t like to sing when I play this kind of chords !

So, I made a grid, trying to find “3rdless” chords, in order to avoid this “forbidden third”, this is what it sounds like :

I do think it sounds better, but you may find it’s even worse than in the first attempt ! If so, please let me know ! :))

§Yann

Sound & Video

1932 – one more road trip video!

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We had ideas for this particular video for a while, since we came back to Brittany, non-stop storms have given us the opportunity to stay home and finish it off!

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The song was on our 1st album, and you may find the lyrics translations >here<. Images are from various locations across Europe (Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Ukraine, Poland & France) as well as some from the demonstrations in Istanbul while we were living there in June 2013.

As always, every time you share is one more opportunity for us to get heard a bit more!

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astrakan breton world music on facebook

Sound & Video

How not to miss a video?

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Whether you already have an account there or not, you’re most probably familiar and a fan of You Tube. If you do have a user account on You Tube, no need to tell you how much easier it will be for your to stay tuned about our new videos… If not, well, this might be your chance, it’s a nice way to keep track of videos you like, play them later, etc…

Here is our direct link to subscribe:

subscribe to our You tube Channel

Direct link to our channel being: http://youtube.com/astrakanproject

We realise we love more and more creating and sharing videos, mostly music videos but not only, and the new way You Tube allows anyone to create a consistent channel, and organise it easily to make it a lively community is very promising. So … expect even more videos of our kind! And here is the one we made to present our channel to people that wouldn’t know anything about us – any comments are of course welcome!

The music is the same we used on the 3 episodes for our quest to get our booking agent (this quest is actually still going on, although for Belgium we are now working with a very dedicated agent – we’ll get back to that later), but it is more about presenting the kind of videos we may share than specifically presenting our music. I’m happy I’m getting a hand on my video editing software! It’s like a new world of possibilities – and I can even praise myself, for I only started to video edit less than 2 years ago, and I made quite some progress!

Have fun watching! At least… as much fun as we had doing it!

§ Simone