County Crossing collects sound material from The Living Bridge and along the banks of the River Shannon as one ventures down the path towards Limerick’s City Centre. Resonances of reeds, foliage, and the bridge itself merge to intimate sonic phantoms within the air, land, and lives shaped by its might.

The piece was recently featured in ISSTA's River Shannon Soundscape as part of ICMC 2022 in Limerick, IE. (http://issta.ie/shannonsoundwalk/)

County Crossing

Maphis is an exploration of found sound located within the cabin I stayed at while attending Mountain Lake Biological Station's ArtLab residency - wooden wind chime, refrigerator jangles, the ever-present meal bell, and a splash of Puremagnetik's Small Winters plugin.

Maphis

This is a binaural render of The Unsettling Knot, a collaborative work between Vicki Hallett and myself.

The Unsettling Knot is an inquiry into the looming question of “what’s next?” as society wades through the evolving trajectory and intermingling of possibilities presented to us by the outbreak of covid-19. The work develops from an interpretation of the coronavirus RNA sequence as it is allowed to mutate through a combination of stochastic and chaotic processes. With each moment, The Unsettling Knot positions itself between an uncertain future and the myriad approaches undertaken by communities to find a way forward.

https://ashbysounds.bandcamp.com/album/the-unsettling-knot

The sound material at the heart of The Unsettling Knot are extrapolated elements from Ashby and Hallett's previous collaboration The Shore Sang of Ghosts. (vickihallett.bandcamp.com/album/the-shore-sang-of-ghosts)

The Unsettling Knot (binuaral render - use headphones)

classical guitar cover of Twin Peaks Theme

Twin Peaks Theme

arrangements and performances of pieces for solo classical guitar.

Jose Gonzales - Heartbeats (classical guitar arrangement)

For my piece, I chose Montano's self-titled release as the source material. https://montano.bandcamp.com/album/montano

Each track from Montano's album was time compressed as far as Ableton would allow. Then I split the two sides of the record between tracks. Side A (tracks 1-6) panned to the left. Side B (tracks 12-7) on the right.  Adjusting the triggers, each "Side" was played as a loop moving through each other of the compressed tracks, with a little transient shaping to accent the attack. In the middle, we have tracks 1, 2, 6, & 8 (transposition of the set [0157] based on today's date). Each of those is reversed, and looped, then to play only 128 bit rate MP3 artifacts (the lossy bits that compression thinks we don't need to hear). One more layer was added as a bed, taking the above mentioned track, time compressing it further, sliced and played in Ableton's new Simpler device. (very cool update by the way)
Enjoy. 

Disquiet Junto Project 0201: Real Future
Encapsulate an album for efficient yet meaningful consumption.

This week’s project is a special collaboration with Real Future, as part of the Real Future Fair being held in San Francisco on November 6 and 7. On the evening of the 7th I’ll be presenting some of this project’s audio during the Fair’s Real Future of Sound segment, and talking about the Junto with Alexis Madrigal, the Editor-in-Chief of Fusion. Madrigal and Fusion’s Cara Rose DeFabio participated in the development of this week’s project.

Step 1: First, ask yourself this question: As the population on Earth increases, and more and more people are creating art, how will technology and our brains collaborate to process all that creative information. In 2015 it’s hard enough to keep track of all the TV shows, albums, novels, and video games. What about in 2055?

Step 2: Choose one of these two albums to be your source material and download it:

This self-titled ambient pop album by the New Zealand act Montano: https://montano.bandcamp.com/album/montano

This self-titled album by the French rock band Salmo: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Salmo/Salmo/

Step 3: Consider an approach to compress the selected album for … let’s call it “efficient yet meaningful” consumption. Already today supercuts and superfuses condense material through quick sequences and dense simultaneity. Come up with an approach to similarly compressing a full-length album. You might consider the “overture” employed in project 0198, but you’ll likely come up with your own approach. And keep in mind that the end result should be … let’s call it “enjoyable.”

Step 4: Apply the result of Step 3 to the album you downloaded in Step 2.

Step 5: Upload your completed track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.

Step 6: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Deadline: This assignment was made in the evening, California time, on Thursday, November 5, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, November 9, 2015.

beside aside [disquiet0201-realfuture]

little blue box

the sonic basis of this piece are sounds originating from the hospital.  The click of magnetic door locks.  The pharmaceutical delivery chutes.  The gurgling of an oxygen line humidifier. The space and time to think in stairwells.  An improvised guitar in the few moments at home to ponder what comes next.

care is critical

As part of the Sonic Mmabolela 2017 residency, each sound artist was asked/challenged to create a sound piece from the material we collected during our stay. Cicada, wind, and water proved to be primary sound objects. Mosima is an interpretation of this material.

https://sonicmmabolela.bandcamp.com/album/sonic-mmabolela-2017

mosima

sound elements recorded during Sonic Mmabolela 2017. 
stereo version of multi-channel piece performed at New Music Gathering 2018 (Boston, MA)

mmabolela (waterhole at dusk)

stereo excerpt from the opening movement of "between rail and water," a sound installation presented as part of Sound Arts Richmond. Presented at Crossroads Art Center (Richmond, VA) on an eight speaker array.

Between rail and water

07/15/18

between rail and water (excerpt)

opening track from the album "To look up is to breathe"
Full album stream: 
https://ashbysounds.bandcamp.com/album/to-look-up-is-to-breathe

To look up is to breathe. 
a deep breath emerging from the corridors of possibility 
aloft in the atmosphere, currents of communication that pull at present location signaling 
an unheard voice hidden just beyond perception.

A Fleeting Exchange

created as  part of the Disquiet Junto Project 0417: Changes Tracker

The Assignment: Create a sonic diary of the past year with a dozen (or more) super-brief segments.

segment identities:

1. interference sketches (for piano, guitar, nimb, and loops)
2. Irish bog walk (County Limerick)
3. floaty (experiments with ppool)
4. the study bay (6-speaker installation for stairwell)
5. loch above and below (Glenshee, Scotland)
6. Galway beach (Galway, IE)
7. noiseTape
8. CT5 guitar improv
9. buchla sketch (EMS Stockholm)
10. duet (installation for 32-speakers)
11. chebyshev loops (work-in-progress)
12. videoDriven sound (work-in-progress)

More on this 417th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Changes Tracker / The Assignment: Create a sonic diary of the past year with a dozen (or more) super-brief segments — at:

https://disquiet.com/0417/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0417-changes-tracker/

juntoTracker_disquiet0417

a quick max patch was created to generate chaotic yet natural alterations of playback speed for the chosen elements from Patricia Wolfe's Cellular Chorus. a bit of filtering and reverb were used to allow the elements to sit together as a whole. The bass element heard is one of the voice elements stretched and pitched down further.

__________________________

More on this 426th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Cellular Chorale / The Assignment: Make music with the source audio from (and inspired by) a Patricia Wolf project — at:

https://disquiet.com/0426/

Thanks to Patricia Wolf for collaborating on this project.

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

More on Wolf’s Cellular Chorus at:

https://www.cellularchorus.com/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0426-cellular-chorale/

There’s also a Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.

The image associated with this project is a still from a video, provided by Patricia Wolf, of a Cellular Chorus event.

cellular chorus (disquiet0426)

Translucent connection began as an interpretation of data collected from a video feedback loop to synthesize sound. Through stochastic methods, these elements move about the space in real-time. The morphing texture of the piece explores perceived motion as an object travels further away from its place of origin.

translucent connection

twelve clips of sound that shaped 2020.

***********************************

More on this 470th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Calendar View / The Assignment: Create a sonic diary of the past year with a dozen (or more) super-brief segments — at:

https://disquiet.com/0470/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0470-calendar-view/

calendarView (disquiet470)

musician, composer, sound artist based in Richmond, VA

Steve Ashby

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