More on this 416th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Time Laps / The Assignment: Improvise successive layers, each time reversing the previous layer:

https://disquiet.com/0416/

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/disquier-junto-project-0416-time-laps/

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0416: Time Laps

This is a playlist with each of my submissions to the disquiet junto, a weekly electronic music writing prompt at http://disquiet.com/

Disquiet Junto Compositions

three layers of guitar (same guitar, dry), successively reversed-relayered-re-reversed

More on this 416th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Time Laps / The Assignment: Improvise successive layers, each time reversing the previous layer:

https://disquiet.com/0416/

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/disquier-junto-project-0416-time-laps/

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

disquiet0416 time laps

"sreyarp her hguorht hurries ohw woman a am I" - disquiet0416

I tackled this project by using apeMatrix to record and reverse layers of mirack  and ruismaker noir patches. The patches were mostly little generative sequences and I improvised by tinkering around with the virtual knobs. I kinda got lost with all the reversing and overdubbing and have lost a few hours on the sofa happily prodding my MaxiPad.

More on this 416th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Time Laps / The Assignment: Improvise successive layers, each time reversing the previous layer:

https://disquiet.com/0416/

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/disquier-junto-project-0416-time-laps/

Waxcap (disquiet0416)

i used piano genie and just played around
lost count of how many times i reversed it
a bit of reverb and slowed down too  

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Disquiet Junto Project 0416: Time Laps
The Assignment: Improvise successive layers, each time reversing the previous layer.

The project is intended as a series of live improvisations, but certainly interpret the instructions as you see fit.

Step 1: Record a short piece of live, improvised music.

Step 2: Reverse the audio recorded in Step 1.

Step 3: Record a live improvisation on top of the reversed audio that resulted from Step 2. (Do this by listening to and responding to the playback in real time.) Then flatten the two layers into one layer.

Step 4: Reverse the combined audio (both layers flattened) resulting from Step 3.

Step 5: Record a live improvisation on top of the reversed audio that resulted from Step 4. (Do this by listening to and responding to the playback in real time.) Then flatten the two layers into one layer.

Step 6: Reverse the combined audio (both layers flattened) resulting from Step 5. This is your finished piece (unless you’d like to do additional layers, continuing the flip-flopping, for as many times as you’d like).

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0416

inf pianodromics - disquiet0416

Uploaded as part of Disquiet Junto Project 0416 - using an OP-1

Time Laps (disquiet0416)

Disquiet 0416 https://llllllll.co/t/disquier-junto-project-0416-time-laps/27823

This week's prompt was almost algorithmic (improvise; reverse; improvise; merge; reverse; improvise; print). And I found myself in a hectic holiday season with a reduced set of gear (an electric guitar, digital piano and laptop). And I thought to myself that the trick here will be leaving enough space in the mix as you reverse and print and reverse and print to leave you with enough room for those layers.

And of course time matters too. A steady pad backwards is just a steady pad. An attack will sound like a swell. 

And finally, I wanted to make something with some motion. 

So this week I turned on the metronome to 5/4 160bpm and kinda played that electric guitar a bit like a bass, but a bit not, and then reversed it and layered on a piano played a bit like a piano but a bit like a clav, and turned it around, and that reverse piano sound just made me happy. I think second or third take on most everything and I left some of the slop in there. And finally I mentally time traveled back to the late 70s, whipped up an interesting bright synth lead on surge, played a little theme, and this week’s tiny item ends up complete:  “In Time With Space (disquet0416)”

In Time With Space (disquiet0416)

Disquiet 0422: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0422-chapter-cascade/28907

The challenge, to make very short collections of noises, in a relatively prescribed A/B pattern, immediately clicked in my head with an idea. I would write 3 very short pieces of music, two a pattern and one a loop. Then I would “play” the loop with the patterns radically sped up being each note of the loop. 

So some constraints. For the fastest rendition of the patterns to work, they could not have repeating notes. So one pattern is a sort of opposing pair of melodies and another is three rising chords. The loop has one repeated theme of 7 notes and another of 5, so the item ends up 140 “notes” long.

And then I had to execute it.  About half the disquiets have me writing some custom code, and I did so here, writing some python to take a performed version of each theme as midi, and radically speed it up. And once I was in code, I could do things, like speed it up a bit less as time went on; and offset the themes at the start and phase them towards not being offset at the end; and some other tricks. It’s all on my GitHub if you want. 

And then take the midi files into Logic, set up some Pianotec and some reverbs and delays and stuff, and voila.

In some ways I really like this, and I think it was super successful, especially as I let it open up. But in other ways it sounds exactly like the sort of mechanical formal toneless music that makes people not like “modern” music. I hope you enjoy listening and making your own decision, and I’m glad to share “3 Ideas; 5040 Notes (disquiet 0422)”

3 Ideas; 5040 Notes (disquiet 0422)

Disquiet 0423: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0423-hold-noise

Luckily, here in modernity, our zooms, our hangouts, our skypes, and our facetimes have chosen to do away with the tradition of hold music. But iproviders of yore made a choice to foist music upon us, and in my experience seemed to pick either a (presumably low license cost) uninspired recording of some baroque music or a bit of music somewhere between smooth jazz and bad fusion. And in the spirit of the second, I approached this week’s prompt.

But also, this week we shipped Surge 1.6.5. If you are a Surge user you should totally upgrade. Loads of new stuff, all detailed in the changelog. One of the big changes is we now have a complete SCL/KBM tuning implementation. I spent quite a bit of time writing and testing this with the rest of the surge team, but I hadn’t used it to make music in anger. So I chose an 18 note even division of the octave scale and went for it. I picked this scale because it makes diminished arpeggios on a standard keyboard equivalent to a whole tone scale. And what is more smooth jazz/bad fusion than a whole tone scale? But all those other notes are hanging out there too… The bit uses the Logic Pro built in drum samples and three virtual instruments with a solid retuning implementation (Surge, dexed and Pianotec).  

And of course, our intrepid hold-music musicians, getting more adventurous as the call goes on, moving further from their whole tone roots, meet the fate of all hold music. If you listen to the end, you’ll find out what that is, if you can make it that far. If you can, I hope you enjoy listening to “The 3:30 is Running a Few Minutes Late (disquiet0423)”

The 3:30 is Running a Few Minutes Late (disquiet0423)

Disquiet 0425: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0425-crop-score/29584

Finally, scientists unpacked the signal in Crop Circles, and amazingly they found encoded audio. The sounds were released Feb 21, 2076. Is it noise? It it speech? Is it an alarm? No-one knows, but the entire world is listening, rapt, to the strange and mysterious sound - a thrum and an unsettled whistle - trying to understand what it is that we have received. In the bar at the teleportation station which we last visited in disquiet0414, the night band sits silent, trying with everyone else to garner a glimpse of meaning. And then the pianist realizes the sound is an invitation to cooperate, a lead from a song that we have to write together across space and time. That some alien, deep in the past, was looking to sit in on the session and make music, and sent us that message as a pile of compressed wheat fields. So turn to the keys - pluck out a hint of a sympathetic melody. As the rest of the group joins in, the bar looks on, thinking:  “No. No, that’s probably not what the signal means. But let’s listen and order another cocktail anyway.”

This week is my 11th disquiet. As I’ve done with several others, I wrote some code and some music. This time I used python to extract 2 dimensional signals from the wikipedia image, turned slices of those signals into one dimensional signals, turned those one dimensional signals into midi cc, and pulled about 2 minutes of lots of midi control into Logic. I made a feedback-y Surge patch controlled by the CC, and then played along on piano. Nicely, as I was playing, I realized I was returning to the sound palette of disquiet0414, and so I wrote the above little micro-story in my head. And voila.

With that, I hope you enjoy “Space Sits In on The Last Number (disquiet0425)”

Space Sits In on The Last Number (disquiet0425)

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0439-hybrid-self/32979

The prompt: Think of two musicians who you admire with different styles. Hybridize. Your choice if you want to disclose who they are.

You know who they are.

Alice at the Gates (disquiet0439)

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0440-tuning-in/

A simple challenge: make music with an alternative tuning. Enjoy.

Untitled, with Resolution (disquiet0440)

Multi-this-that-and-the-other including composer; 1/3 of @NerdBaitBand / www.nerdbaitband.com

In Time With Space (disquiet0416)

baconpaul