A playlist of all the pieces in which violin (and occasionally Cello) feature prominently

Pulling Strings

A violin and electric guitar adaptation of Death Cab for Cutie's "Lack of Color" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jduFDgIr598). 

I used a Fender Stratocaster through a Marshall amp and recorded the guitar directly through a Yeti microphone (http://bluemic.com/yeti/) placed next to the amp. It was raining today and the microphone was picking that up as well but it fit into the mood of the song anyway so I just let it be

The electric violin was recorded directly and the piano was programmed. 

I upped the key from Eb to E to make it simpler in general.

Lack Of Colour

The genius Carnatic vocalist Madurai Mani Iyer (1912-1968), possibly the greatest exponent of live improvisation in Carnatic classical music, popularized this "English Note" composed by Harikesanallur Mutthiah Bhagavathar (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNjl5w8Prw0) to showcase his autodidactic (self teaching) talent in expanding beyond his strictly classical training. This piece was extremely popular with an independence era audience that felt pride in one of their own "getting" western music while no Englishman could perform a Thodi alapana. 

Obviously as a Indian classical musician, Mutthiah Bhagavathar only composed the main melody, an incredibly catchy and hummable tune that would have worked in the best courts of Vienna. But Western classical music is about harmony layered over the melody and I was surprised that no one had taken a crack at taking this really catch melody and writing a String quartet around it. 

There were some interesting challenges. Mani Iyer clearly did not keep harmony in mind when he wrote the piece so there are places where the melodic sequence presents quite a hard challenge to harmonize, but all in all, I think it turned out okayish. 

Again, I am quite an amateur and It will be great if more talented musicians take this melody and set it to even better background scores :)

English Note (by Madurai Mani Iyer) - String Quartet

Darth Vaadhiar Theme

Cover of Maxence Cyrin's "Where is my mind", which by itself is a cover of The Pixies original (that was featured in the soundtrack of "Fight Club")

Originally Recorded on Garageband, now re-done on Logic Pro X

Where is My Mind

Piano score recorded through a MIDI keyboard and heavily corrected for mistakes. 

Ave Maria

I take the ridiculous and the sublime, add cellos, violins, guitars and random internet collaborators to make music of sorts

Lack Of Colour

Krish Ashok