Meet Zurfahani Batrisya a musician and composer from Shah Alam, Malaysia who recently collaborated with Polish violinist and composer Antonina Car.

Both of them spoke to Eksentrika on how to collaborate on music remotely.

Despite the time difference and the global lockdown, both musicians pulled off one of the most hauntingly beautiful tracks I’ve heard.

They’ve titled it ‘Flautando’. Here are both musicians, talking about their remote-based collaboration and the significance behind their single.

Heya Fahani, let’s start from the beginning. How did your musical journey begin?

I started picking up an instrument at the age of 11, which was the guitar.

I have always been following my brother’s footsteps, whatever he does then I’d always follow, and also my environment is one of the factors to my musical journey.

From there, I furthered my studies in a music course at the university. During my diploma years, I picked up a new instrument; the flute. That was my major instrument during my studies.

Can you share with us how your collaboration with Antonina Car happened? She’s from Poland and you’re from Malaysia. How did the two of you meet?

It’s a long story, but in brief; I met her through Instagram.

We both applied for a music scholarship in Poland, but unfortunately, Antonina and I didn’t get to be in the program.

However, it’s not something that I’m really sad about because I gained a new friendship throughout the process and that’s something beautiful to me.

We both decided to collaborate just to prove that we actually don’t need to be in that scholarship program and that we both can grow in our own ways (just kidding, but a part of it is true).

The main reason was, we both just wanted to try and collaborate for fun.

Turns out, the post-production or even the whole production itself is very professional, thanks to Antonina and her friends that made everything possible.

So, I told Antonina that, might as well market this track and see where it goes from there.

What inspired the sound for this track? It’s hauntingly beautiful (in fact it should be a film theme). 

Antonina: The general concept of the track developed when I was playing around with violin and looper, recording several violin stems and combining them with each other.

I noticed that certain repetitive patterns create a sound that brings to my mind some images, scenes.

I imagined a sea-like place with sounds like waves – in constant, repeatable motion, at the first sight looking all similar but when you take the time to look beyond that, you’ll notice how complex and interesting they actually are.

The title “flautando”(it.) means violin technique but also means “flute-like instruments”.

Our idea was to combine both instruments’ parts in the way that they play similar patterns and sometimes their frequencies merge one with another.

This creates a genuine filling of flow and integrity, just like being an observer of various liquid forms or water waves.

We’re made to understand that the collaboration took place remotely. What were some of the biggest challenges the both of you faced and how did you overcome them?

Antonina: Working with Fahani is a pleasure, we’ve been talking, meeting, calling each other on the internet a lot and every time we worked on this single, we also had a great time.

Distance or pandemic situation was not a problem for us at all. We’re both bedroom composers, so we had everything we actually needed to create music in our houses.

In the beginning, I was mostly worried about our time zone difference but it turned out that we had no problem with scheduling our meetings.

For me, the biggest challenge was to create a marketing plan for the release. It was something totally new for me but hopefully, Fahani really helped me out with this.

We consulted ways to prepare all visuals and marketing materials. I shot the music video, edited it, and prepared the graphic content.

At every stage, we discussed all the content and helped each other with all the tasks.

Fahani, you’re also now pursuing creating your own tracks through your solo project. Can you share more about this project?

I also have my personal projects and demos on my SoundCloud (will include the link on email).

What is it about neoclassical and experimental music that appeals to you, Fahani?

Personally, I think that neoclassical and experimental music give me more space to explore sound and harmony in general.

Unlike classical music, classical music has a lot of rules which restricted me from experimenting with new things that I would like to try.

What are your plans for the future, Fahani, specifically when it comes to music?

My plans in the future are that I want to focus more on starting with my own career as a solo artist and as a composer. Especially a composer for short films, or jingles.

Follow Zurfahani Batrisya here and follow Antonina Car here.  

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All images in this feature were supplied by Nurfahani Batrisya.