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COBAKA - A Slavic Ballad

Hi guys & gals,

I'm posting my newest piece for review. I've always been a big fan of eastern European folk music, and was truly inspired to start using it as a frame of reference after seeing "Les Musiciens de Lviv" in the Paris-Chatelet metro station.

The piece, "Cobaka (which means "dog") I guess you could say, is my compositional style, but influenced by some of the traditional instrumentations of gypsy bands and the like. The words are about this guy whose dog just died. Kind of in the tradition of the American folk classic "Old Blue", which, by the way, tears me up almost every time I hear it.

I know some of you are into folks music a lot so I'd really appreciate your input. Thanks!

P.S. I have words to the song but they're in Russian (I speak enough to get by) and I have no idea how to type in cyrillic on my laptop.

1 member likes this

Attachments:

Cobaka.mp3, 2.5 MB

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Boneman on June 13, 2012 at 4:40am

Nothing to say David really other than a lovely haunting piece of music!

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Permalink Reply by Charles Greco on June 13, 2012 at 9:00pm

Nicely done. A very thoughtful and moving little work.

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Permalink Reply by Anders Christensen on June 14, 2012 at 12:29pm

I really like it too. The only thing that could make it even better was using some high quality samples and thereby make the violin and piano sound a bit more real.

Great composition and I love the mood in your piece.

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Permalink Reply by David Lauber on June 14, 2012 at 1:20pm

Thanks all for your comments! I'm looking at different sound libraries to increase the quality of the songs.

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Permalink Reply by Boneman on June 15, 2012 at 4:21am

Why don't you do away with sound libraries and just get it played!

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Permalink Reply by David Lauber on June 15, 2012 at 10:27am

@KevinRiley: I have no idea how to go about doing that.

@JonCorelis. Thanks, and I agree that it is not as emotional as I'd like it to be. I have a hard time penning emotion onto paper. I guess I should make notes that these scores are "subject to improvisation." I tried using a balalaika on my first run on this piece but the Garritan sound library doesn't have a very good sample. Maybe after I purchase a better sound library I will give it a shot again.

You are correct that the English pronunciation would be so-ba-ka. I spelled it how I did because it was closer to the traditional cyrillic spelling of it. I guess it would have been more accurate for me to use a lower case "b" though.