130 Minutes Theater Audio/Music Project | My Sad Story

Its been a while since I was working on a music and sound project for a Berlin Theater Show, since we Iranians are sanctioned internationally (for a stupid reason), I couldn't sign a contract with them, so I and my friend (Director of this theater show) who lives in Germany found a guy who would do that for me, though he took a high percent of payment like 70%, but I was thinking at least they will write my name in the credit part so I can add it to my CV, but they only wrote the name of the guy who signed the contract with them. (Fucking paper works I can't blame any of them; it's a government issue, the tax details had to be clear, and it was our first time facing a situation like this.) Well, it's like I sold 130 minutes of sound, ambient music, voice mixing, and heavy FX sounds to another guy who was just a middleman, and nobody knows that I did it all (except for the director). It was my art, my music, and my techniques. But anyway, now I can only focus on the future and new projects. I'm planning to do something about it by opening a bank account in Armenia; it has its own story (paperwork, payments, etc.), but I guess that's the only way I can make fair contracts with companies, organizations, and theaters.

At first I was so happy and I wanted to share it all with you but now I feel like that case is just closed and I am not able to do anything about it.

But I like to write a little about how was the process, So I took the scenario from the director with his ideas and changes as pdf files, and I kept reading it to understand the whole story. Then as always it started with a dark screen, an empty space in DAW and you should start to create and be creative, and the director expect you to bring his ideas and story to life, he wants you to create his universe (Usually I met Directors who always are in hurry and add a lot of pressures on me and this project was exactly like that, I had to work day and night). For a part of this show, He was telling me things like: I want you to create a surreal atmosphere in a bus where everyone is sitting there and they have different nationalities and personalities and life backgrounds and different opinions and Thoughts. And it has a lot of climaxes but the whole story is in a loop where the first climax starts. When cops stopping the bus. (Sorry I cant tell the whole story and my focus is more on explaining a little about the music production of this project)

I started working on sounds of Bus, Driver, people who are talking in the bus, a man who is talking with his child and the other people's reaction to their conversations (as thoughts and dreamy voices in the same scene). It is like you hear Dad and Son conversations and the bus and background voices but suddenly all voices slow down and pitched low with a heavy reverb into a silent place of thoughts but with a dark reversed fx in and out, then people's thoughts started like voices in reverb and delay with a scratchy FX in parts of their voices. And a lot of FX in their background added to rise it also with violin and cello scary music theme that I created. It reaches a climax and then it went out of thoughts and got back to the main sounds, live, conversations of Father and child.

I had to work on each audios separated, some audios that he sent me had lots of problems like bad recording, outside noises, low volume, ..., so I had to do a lot of EQ shaping, noise and air removing. Then adding them to different channels on mixer for different scenes.

In another scene we needed lots of crazy sound designs, it was like a storm of sounds, I started recording sounds in my apartment, water dripping, spoon sounds, freezer plastic noises, moving iron on iron, and more. I had to create sounds for a scene where everyone on the bus is doing something. Some of them were busy with their phones, some were eating food, someone was moving his luggage, a dreamy yet scary sound was singing in between which it was fading (I sing that part too) and so on.

Aside from all the minor music, I also produced dramatic Middle Eastern music with Nylon Guitar and a classical sad piece that I improvised and recorded live. I also created metal music for a guy who's listening to it through his headphones on the bus.

Well, I don't want to write the whole thing; this was just one part of the story, and it had around 45 parts. It was a really heavy project because of the number of WAV files, the length of the sounds, and all those 73 mixer channels with VSTs open in each one. My laptop can't even handle it well when I open it. It took about 5 minutes to load all the sounds and VSTs.

Somehow I am happy about what I had done and I feel like it was a great achievement. (I should add that my friend (Director) still gives me hope like he said there are like 5% chance that he can find a way to make them add my name for the credits.)

Ok guys, have a great night and day! ❤️