In this paper discusses a project which involved the negotiation of a sound world in a non-standard recording format. It aims to represent Cuban rumba in its home setting: the tenement yards of Matanzas, Cuba, capturing not just the music but the visual, musical and verbal interactions integral to the performance.
The idea grew out of discussions between UK and Cuban academics and practitioners and involved collaboration at many levels: cross-discipline, cross-cultural and inter- personal. In debating how best to impart knowledge about musical performance we considered developing the concept of a 3D immersive experience as a shared activity. We wanted to do away with the isolating experience of donning a VR headset and explore a simpler, more communal immersive experience, seeing the tremendous potential of this as an educational tool as well as being an enjoyable musical experience.
We designed a project whereby a musical activity was staged around four sides of a space. This was filmed by four static cameras positioned in the centre, facing out towards the four sides. All instruments and voices were individually recorded to multi-track.
For playback we created a space where several viewers could walk into a ‘room’ surrounded by four large screens with back projected videos. Each screen was coupled with a pair of speakers playing back a stereo mix of the instruments on the screen. This created challenges in the mix process that were approached using theoretical models of staging (see Moylan 1992, Lacasse 2001 and Zagorski-Thomas 2014). I discuss decisions we made in the recording and mixing of the four stereo stems in order to create an audio representation of the performance capturing the ambience of the location while maintaining clarity and separation between the instruments. How successful where we in manipulating reality to create a ‘sonic cartoon’ of the performance?
