Tag : music

Collaborative project by ToTarTu featuring Street Musician Yuval Glico.
ToTarTu is on a collaborative project to record the street musicians he finds in the city of Berlin.
Warschauer Strasse U-Bahn is a popular place amongst performing street musicians as many people use this Bahnhof to catch the train that runs along the U1 line through the hip areas of Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain.
And of course it provides an audience that otherwise would not exist.
On this particular day at Warschauer Strasse Bahnhof, Berlin, ripped the sounds of an electric guitar.
After listening to the street performer I approached him to see whether he would be interested in ToTarTu having a go at interpreting his music and adding the rest of a band…so to speak.
Yuval was cool with this and the subsequent recording took place.
The electric guitar takes up a lot of space in the recording deliberately to keep it centre stage. The hardest part for ToTarTu was determining the speed of the song!
Mostly a different array of drums and affects were added along with some other sounds to give the music a different texture than would otherwise be the case.
Yuval is a member of a band and he was only in Berlin for two weeks when I met him…playing at Warschauer Strasse Bahnhof to get some extra money for a night out.
We look forward to seeing and hearing more from Yuval in the future!
* Disclaimer – all work produced and posted is done so on an artistic basis and is there for the promotion of artists and musicians alike.

Location – Along the Berlin Wall by The River Spree, Berlin, near die Overbaumbrücke.
Date – Thursday, 22nd May, 2014
Time – 15.30h
This Street Musician is the dude! He was playing by the Berlin Wall on the old East Berlin Side of the River Spree. He was very funny. Unfortunately ToTarTu could only photograph the anonymous performer because ToTarTu was on a boat cruise and couldn’t stop. However, if you know him, tell him he is a Legend! And if he wants to work on a track please ask him to contact me!!

Collaborative project by ToTarTu featuring Street Musician, Nicka Kristian Donn.
ToTarTu is on a collaborative project to record the street musicians he finds in the city of Berlin.
Introducing Nicka Kristian Donn – what a performer!
Hermannplatz in Berlin is a busy port for shoppers and commuters with the U-Bahn running underneath.
And as the weather was getting colder late last year, with street performers somewhat thinning, Berlin was still lucky to have the sounds of Nicka ‘softly’ hammering away at his Dulcimer.
This instrument produces sounds much the same way as a piano with a (padded) hammer against the string.
I explained ToTarTu’s Berlin Project to Nicka and fortunately for ToTarTu, he was very happy to participate.
My recording of Nicka was made on the backdrop of a very busy intersection; it was quite intense.
ToTarTu’s electronic input into the musical piece picks up on this mood, as well as enhancing the hypnotising and cool performance by Nicka…another Champion Street Musician!
Unfortunately Nicka has no website nor contact details.
However, if we are lucky, we will see him and his fancy Dulcimer in Hermannplatz again this year!!
* Disclaimer – all work produced and posted is done so on an artistic basis and is there for the promotion of artists and musicians alike.

Collaborative project by ToTarTu featuring Street Musician Helmut, alias Klavier Helmut.
ToTarTu is on a collaborative project to record the street musicians he finds in the city of Berlin.
Alas, a piano in the street…was this a trick or a figment of the imagination or was there really a pianist playing in Kottbusser Damm near the canal?
Meet Helmut.
And his piano on wheels that he moves around the streets of Berlin during summer when “the birds are singing and the living is easy”, as written by George Gershwin in the aria “Summertime”.
After approaching Helmut and discussing ToTarTu’s music project, we recorded.
The recording went for five minutes and could of continued as Helmut was improvising and was moving to and back from certain songs and melodies.
As such, ToTarTu edited the version to be just over 2 minutes.
Some strings and new sounds were added.
Towards the end of the recording a pull between the sounds of the ivories and the electronic manifests. The introduction of the electronic in the piece is an attempt to show the old manifesting into the new.
Unfortunately, Helmut does not have a website.
However, he has had many recordings and interviews done and his story can be found when searching for Klavier Helmut on the Internet.
We look forward to seeing and hearing this Legend again this Summer!!
* Disclaimer – all work produced and posted is done so on an artistic basis and is there for the promotion of artists and musicians alike.

ToTarTu is on a collaborative project to record the street musicians he finds in the city of Berlin.
One late evening ToTarTu heard some melodies being played by a saxophone and jumped on his bike to find out exactly where the sound was emanating from.
He was lucky to find the Saxophonist, Roman Liva, as he had already stopped playing about three minutes before ToTarTu arrived; he was making his way up Bürknerstrasse in Neukölln to another venue.
This collaborative project by ToTarTu is short and simple, with instruments added around the saxophone.
After introducing ToTarTu and the project Roman unleashed this little toe tapping number and the recording was made.
ToTarTu imagined that the Saxophone piece could be like a short simple concert performed by a couple of musicians and that being the case, and keeping the Saxophone central, accompanied only with percussion like instruments and drums.
Roman was happy and upbeat so the electronic sound and percussion was added being mindful of the saxophone phrasing and used to enhance the mystery song and give it a little drama and swing.
Unfortunately, Roman does not have a website nor contact details. However, he will certainly be playing out the front of some bar or restaurant somewhere in Berlin when the weather is warm!
* Disclaimer – all work produced and posted is done so on an artistic basis and is there for the promotion of artists and musicians alike.

Street buskers/musicians have been apart of humanity for a very long time.

Wikepedia states:
[Street performance or busking is the practice of performing in public places, for gratuities, which are generally in the form of money and edibles. People engaging in this practice are called street performers, buskers, street musicians, minstrels, or troubadours.

Street performance dates back to antiquity, and occurs all over the world.]

That noted, these courageous people play an important role in every city’s makeup.

An interesting point is that although the term buskers is well known in Australia, it is not known so well in Deutschland; street musician is the term used.

There seems to be two types of music buskers in Europe.
1. The traditional one that positions him/herself in a nice setting where people pass through and where he/she may find the most appreciative (and generous) people; and,
2. A newer kind that you may see performing on trains and playing his/her music and then approaching people and asking for money.

What instruments do street musicians play?

This varies greatly but most common would seem to be the guitar, followed by recorders, violins, drums…and of course the accordion.

New instruments mean that hip drum machines have been included to the instrument repertoire as well as many new one man bands are using karaoke recordings on CD or sequenced MIDI recordings for backup.

Buskers (street musicians) perform all over the world.

ToTarTu’s present project focuses on the ones in Berlin.

In the last month, I’ve organised a trip to Berlin to begin a collaborative project recording the Buskers (Street Musicians) of Berlin.

The Project – Berlin Buskers (Street Musicians) by ToTarTu (2013) is a project conceived by Ryan Larsen t/as ToTarTu. The project intends to provide a forum for promotion of collaborative works created jointly by Buskers (Street Musicians) from Berlin, who offer their live performances recorded on location with their permission by ToTarTu.

ToTarTu, music producer, contributes remixing, production and digital distribution to the project through his website www.totartu.com, and will promote the works created in the project as well as provide active and current links to promotional information on the internet for the contributing buskers.

The promotion of the works will include photos and video footage taken on location at the time of the original live performance.

Berlin Buskers (Street Musicians) falls in line with ToTarTu’s values and mission ie ToTarTu is an ongoing music project where different artists and vocalists collaborate to create music.

Stay tuned…