My take on this week’s topic is based on the idea of an evolving eco system and how individual organisms contribute to their environment.

In my case, the environment is my small studio in the attic of my house and the individual organisms are the various synths, modular and otherwise, that are all connected to one another in some form. More specifically, my method is as follows:

1) I have selected a single tone or very simple sonic element that I think best represents the character of a particular synth, module or a self contained patch;
2) Each of these tones or sonic elements are triggered and fed into a chaotic looper, in my case the Soma Cosmos in combination with “Airport Looper” created for the Zoia, which are fed back into each other via a matrix mixer;
3) I wait to hear what happens;
4) The aim is to resist triggering further tones and sonic elements but since evolution is not a predictable or rule based process, I might do so. After all, I am also part of this eco system, and as such, cannot keep silent.

Instruments used: Buchla Easel Command, 1010 Music Synthbox, Arp 2600, Arturia Drumbrute, Microfreak, Microbrute 2s, Lyra-8 and the Inner.

Disquiet0580

Sometimes techno is all about the anticipation of the beat. So you have the evocative samples, the drone before the kick drum, the sampled female voices just prior to the high hat and so on. In this contribution to the week's Junto challenge I have created a track that is all about the anticipation before the beat. And when the beat finally comes, it is disappointing, disjointed and interrupted. Enough to clear the dance floor. Head to the bar. Or head for the door.

disquiet0582

A walk through my mother's parking garage; a short elevator ride; snippets of a preacher's sermon; radio static; mysterious voices and glorious feedback from an Enner and a PolyD. This and more found its way into my Polyend Tracker and then into Logic with a few feedback loops using a bus trick I learned from Youtube. Hallelujah!

Disquiet0590

This is just a simple ambient solo using the Buchla Music Easel and Christopher H.M Jacques "Sleepwalker" patch for the Zoia. Hopefully it will be of some use to someone for the trio project.

disquiet0591

It was hard to decide on which track from Marcus Fisher to use for this piece as I found them all quite evocative and inspiring. I settled on "worn path," mainly because the size of the file allowed it to be uploaded into the Polyend Tracker, which I then used to augment the original recording, along with some additional samples. I decided to keep things minimal and sparse.

disquiet0600

Given that it is late July in Ontario, clouds usually lead to thunderstorms and quick and intense bouts of rain. Either that or soul crushing humidity. The image was taken in the morning, with a "chance of a thunderstorm" being announced on my weather app and the track is intended to capture the sounds and feeling of a mid to late summer storm. As for the technicalities, it's all about the low pass gate on the Easel, which provides the drones and tones, such as they are. The crunchy electric and at times thunderous bits come from the Landscape HCTT. The tape used is a mix tape I made back in the 90s of the "Revolting Cocks," which was more or less grabbed at random from an old box in the attic. Part of the mix was passed through Christopher Jacques "Cosmic Grains" patch on the Zoia.

disquiet0604

I recently got my hands on the Terra from Soma and, well, I haven't been able to keep my hands off of it. So I decided to use it for this challenge employing the arp mode with the timing regulated by an external clock. There are three, roughly 1 minute segments to this track. The first runs the Terra through an Eno style airport looper, with 4 intersecting loops. The second does the same, with a little help from the granular mode on the Cosmos. The third Terra arp is just run through the Cosmos delay mode. The first track uses an arpeggio with about 5 notes, the second about 3 and the last only 1, with the "sun" knob on the Terra creating some tonal variation. Hopefully at least some of this will be useable!

disquiet0609

I decided to use the pieces by Forelight, Fake Genius and RadMusicLab which I loaded into my 1010Music Bitbox. After slowing them all down to half speed and subjecting them to some granularity I basically did a couple of improv sessions, triggering portions of the three samples using the touch interface of the 1010 and then adding some melancholic notes from the Terra, along with a bit of electric shocks from the Landscape HC-TT.

disquiet0610

Given all that is going on in the world at the moment, I thought "anxiety" would be a good word to choose for the first half of the track. Of the many words conveying the same thing, I chose "botheration," mainly because I liked the sound of it, but also because it also captures the annoying aspects of our current time. So, "botheration" takes over at about the half way mark. As for process, I began with a nervous and somewhat chaotic drum sequence and then augmented that with a  few mournful strums from the Terra and then fired up my Landscape Stereofield for a bit of noise. Halfway through the drum beats give way to some darkness, again thanks to the Terra and ends with a flourish of pure noise.

disquiet0616

I went with Lily Makes Sounds' "empathy factor" which really captivated me. I did just a bit of layering and then added parts of an interview with Emily Haines from the band Metric, whose voice, whether singing or speaking, I really love. In the background, I added some ambient drones from my trusty Terra and a bit of reverb here and there.

disquiet0620

Some leftover arpeggios, filter sweeps and simple drum beats.

disquiet0621

disquiet0625

In response to the prompt I did a quick search on alchemy and found George Ripley's description of "separation" from his Compound of Alchemy, 1471. I recorded myself reading portions of the text, which I then "separate" into random chunks and then layered and switched them around over a couple of tracks. Towards the end the tracks eventually merge together and become unified into a singular, comprehensible account. Beneath the spoken elements I created a drone using an Arp 2600, with some reverb and cosmic magic from my trusty Cosmos.

Disquiet0628

This project came at a good time as I was travelling, which means that I only had my Polyend Tracker with me. So that was the first item. From within the tracker I decided on five additional "items." The first being a low sound, the second a higher one, the third something distorted, the fourth a sampled voice, the fifth a "conventional synth" pad and the sixth being a trio of basic drums - bass, snare and high hat. I placed the various parts into the tracker, added some reverb (which I guess is another part?) and chopped up the "conventional synth" by abusing the arpeggiator within the Tracker. 

Prior to choosing my pieces (with the exception of the Tracker since that is all that I had on me), I decided to create something that starts low and slow, transitions into something a bit more frenetic and then returns to its initial state.

Disquiet0630

I decided to make this a slow dance of tones, working mainly with the timbre on the Buchla Easel, which provided one of the tones and the modulation "blobs" on the Terra, which provided the other. Both were tuned to the same frequency. I used Logic "Space Designer" to modulate a bit of movement but aside from the internal reverbs in both the Buchla Easel and Terra, I resisted the urge to thrown even more effects at the final mix. So, that's it. A couple of tones dancing slowly with one another, moving up to a climax and then fading away.

Disquiet0631

Found a recording of Satie's Clair de Lune, which I subjected to a stereo filter sweep. On top of that I created a piece on the Polyend Tracker while on a flight home from Vancouver, which can be a melancholic place, especially when its raining. The files on the tracker were mainly samples from my Arp 2600, Music Easel and my Minimoog clone - so all classic sounds, with a bit of the Wing Pinger at the end. I tried to create a kind of cross talk between the samples, using random generations for the "horn" like bits.

disquiet0634

Overlapping loops, inspired the the warmup noodlings of an orchestra. The sound source is the PolyD fed through the "Sleepwalker" patch of the Zoia.

disquiet0636 Short

So many choices and such great pieces! My finally decided on alanblip's "leftydrone" which I thought would go well with a conversation that I recorded from a shortwave radio. I removed the static and duplicated a few key phrases, but otherwise left it as is, aside from a bit of reverb and a few contributions from Meng Qi's beguiling Wing Pinger.

Disquiet0637

I spent the morning adding my third element to a few tracks and finally decided that my contribution to encym and Jimmy Lem's combo was the most coherent. I was struck by the contrasting tones of encym's off kilter Tele with the controlled chaos of Jimmy's cuatro. Sandwiched in between are some sparse tones from my Terra, fed through the "Vangelis Verb" on the Zoia.

disquiet0638

I added a bit of static to CoralineAda’s and Leon Clowes’ mezmerizing duo as an attempt to heighten the tension of the “missed connection” implied by the vocal sample. The static was created with the Landscape Stereofield and tamed somewhat by one of Hainbach’s presets for the Zoia.

Disquiet0638.6

Aside from the voice over from an old commercial, the sounds are entirely from the process of filling a soda stream bottle and then pouring myself a drink. I sampled the audio directly to my Polyend tracker and then subjected them a Steve Reich inspired clapping algorithm on the Zoia.  I resisted the temptation to add anything else for reasons that are not entirely clear to me. Perhaps I just liked the purity of the fizzy sounds.

disquiet0642 "Coke after Coke"

What sound does a stone make while aging? I know what sounds I make. Some of them are groans. Others I will leave to your imagination. As for stones, if we could hear them I'd imagine cracking and slow, harmonious drones. I replicated this with the Buchla Easel for the cracking and the Soma Terra for the droning, helped along with granular processing and some reverb.

Disquiet0643

I selected a previous disquiet track to slow down, which resulted in a brooding, languid beat overlayed with mysterious hisses and what sounds now like a guitar (instead of the Terra). Halfway through I layered a sample from the Qbit nebulae, where I played around with the sample length and granular controls and then ran that through a few effects. This was an interesting exercise as it revealed the creative potentials in just experimenting with track speed. Anyway, the end result is kind of brooding, a bit menacing and slow...

disquiet 645

To me drones in daylight suggest, obviously, brightness but perhaps also a kind of straightforward simplicity and purity. For me, the sine wave rendered in the major scale represents these qualities. Hence this track is the result of a one lone sine wave oscillator tuned to the C-major scale. There is of course lots of looping and over looping and the requisite reverb.

disquiet0647

The theme of shadowboxing took me a while to figure out, sonically speaking but the more I thought about it, the more I came to realize that there was a lot of potential here for interesting explorations. That said, by the time I did figure it out, time was short so I only had time to do a brief sketch where I had two of the clones in my studio (the 2600 and the PolyD) duke it out with parallel variations of a C minor chord. The 2600 tended to have a more aggressive and bass heavy stance, where as the PolyD's output was somewhat diminutive, except when the filter was turned up. My approach was simple: play a short riff on one clone and have the other repeat it, with the idea being a kind of shadow boxing, call and response type of interaction between the two. Multiple versions of reverb and spacial effects where then employed to further play with the back and forth motion.

Andreas Kitzmann

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