Disquiet Junto Project 0608: Nature-to-Text
The Assignment: Using a speech-to-text tool, turn a field recording into instructions for a composition.

This project is perhaps more experimental than ordinary, simply because it may not work for everyone. Apologies in advance. As someone, I think Brian Eno, once said, “It’s only experimental music if there’s a chance it can fail.”

Step 1: When one uses speech-to-text tools, such as those now commonly included in word processing software, often those tools will mistakenly interpret ordinary, non-verbal sound as garbled words, or otherwise try to characterize the sound, such as with bracketed phrases like “[deep breath]” or “[background chatter].” One potential way to achieve the result is to upload the audio to YouTube and then apply automated captions. Check out your options. There is likely to be discussion of this topic on places where the Junto occurs, such as the llllllll.co 2 BBS and the Junto Slack.

Step 2: Record some non-verbal audio, perhaps a field recording of the sound on the street, or down a hallway. It’s recommended to do the recording somewhere where there is likely to be variation.

Step 3: Submit a segment of the audio to a speech-to-text tool. Or perhaps multiple tools, to see the results.

Step 4: Assuming Step 3 yields a series of descriptions, then compose a piece of music that treats that sequence as a kind of score. That is, make music that achieves the result described by the speech-to-text tool’s results. Perhaps you could use someone else’s. Here, for example, is a sequence that I ended up with recently: “[ambient noise] [ambient noise] [indistinct chatter] [indistinct chatter] [background noise] [indistinct chatter] [ambient noise].”

Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0608” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your tracks.

Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0608” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation of a project playlist.

Step 3: Upload your tracks. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your tracks.

Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co 2:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0608-nature-to-text/

Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 6: If posting on social media, please consider using the hashtag #DisquietJunto so fellow participants are more likely to locate your communication.

Step 7: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Step 8: Also join in the discussion on the Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to marc@disquiet.com for Slack inclusion.

Note: Please post one track for this weekly Junto project. If you choose to post more than one, and do so on SoundCloud, please let me know which you’d like added to the playlist. Thanks.

Hot Dogs At Bunnings - disquiet0608

Disquiet Junto Project 0611: Music That Listens to Itself
The Assignment: Record a piece of music that repurposes itself as it proceeds.

Background: On September 29, 2023, there is going to be an event at a place called the Berkeley Alembic, in Berkeley, California, where I’ll play recordings of music that share a specific theme, and I’ll discuss the sounds with the people who come to listen. The event is titled Music That Listens to Itself, part of the Expanded Listening series developed by Erik Davis (Techgnosis, Burning Shore). That is the theme. Part of the goal of this project is to develop tracks for potential inclusion in the event, and to pursue ideas related to the event’s theme.

Step 1: The underlying idea is to produce music that, so to speak, listens to itself. This would be music that employs techniques to revisit itself — repurposes itself — as it proceeds. From reverb to echo to tape loops to granular synthesis to accessing a buffer, various techniques serve such a compositional and performance purpose. Consider a means to achieve this result.

Step 2: Record a piece of music that employs the technique you focused on as a result of Step 1. Please note: for the Berkeley Alembic event, I’ll be sharing music that is particularly quiet, particularly appropriate to a meditative state of mind. You don’t need to record quiet music for this project, but quiet music is what I’ll be playing at the event.

Additional details: disquiet.com 1. Tickets: eventbrite.com 3. About the venue: berkeleyalembic.org 1.

Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0611” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your tracks.

Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0611” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation of a project playlist.

Step 3: Upload your tracks. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your tracks.

Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0611-music-that-listens-to-itself/

Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 6: If posting on social media, please consider using the hashtag #DisquietJunto so fellow participants are more likely to locate your communication.

Step 7: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Step 8: Also join in the discussion on the Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to marc@disquiet.com for Slack inclusion.

Note: Please post one track for this weekly Junto project. If you choose to post more than one, and do so on SoundCloud, please let me know which you’d like added to the playlist. Thanks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is up to you. About 10 minutes maximum is best, and probably no shorter than three minutes.

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, September 18, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, September 14, 2023.

Upload: When participating in this project, be sure to include a description of your process in planning, composing, and recording it. This description is an essential element of the communicative process inherent in the Disquiet Junto. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.

Download: It is always best to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution, allowing for derivatives).

For context, when posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:

Memory of a loss - disquiet0611

Enjoy the accompanying visuals @ https://youtu.be/iqaumOrzVfw

Front page news from Derby Daily Telegraph from exactly 50 years ago - November 2, 1973 ... Also an exploration of Minimal Audio's Morph EQ ...

Here's the text from the newspaper article - the photo is in the centre of the track image:

ANNE'S WEDDING CAKE ON DISPLAY
A SIX FEET high, three-tier cake weighing around 500lb, extra rich in fruit and rum, is on show at Wilfred House Uttoxeter, this weekend prior to being transported to London for the wedding of Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips.

It has been made at the bakery of Elkes Biscuits Ltd. Uttoxeter and baker Mr G. Moore (pictured) was brought out of retirement to prepare and bake it.

Mr Moore, who also baked wedding cakes for the Queen and Princess Margaret, was with the company for more than 40 years.

HEAD OF HORSE
In keeping with the couple's mutual interest in horses, designer Mrs J. Morgan has incorporated the head of a fine horse, in low relief, as the main decoration on each side of the lower tier.

The initials A and M are also displayed in an oval frame on the second tier. Traditional symbols of good luck, including silver horseshoes, white heather, and orange blossom, are also depicted in white icing and silver motifs.

The crest of Princess Anne, and the Phillips family, together with Captain Phillips's regimental badge, add a dash of colour to the cake.

SUGAR DECORATION
The fine sugar decoration was completed by Mr S West head of the Division of Baking Technology at Ealing Technical College, assisted by Mrs P. Arnold (pictured with Mr Moore) in charge of the company's test bakery, who was also responsible for co-ordinating of the programme for the cake from manufacture to display.

After leaving Wilfred House, and prior to its transportation to the Palace, the cake will be displayed in a West End hotel.

***

More on this 618th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Burying the Lede (The Assignment: Turn old news into new music), at: https://disquiet.com/0618/

About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0618-burying-the-lede/

visuals (YouTube)

halF cakE [disquiet0618]

Electronic composition inspired by haiku:

A Black Dog

A black dog Transformed into a lantern! The way in snow

Transformed

Transformed - (naviarhaiku513)

I've been exploring scanned synthesis - and this is a glitchy little number using that approach to interpret the latest haiku from Naviar Records ... Enjoy!

gale in the mountains –
watch how the fallen blossoms
carpet the water

Haiku by: Den Sutejo [Translated by Makoto Ueda] https://wkdhaikutopics.blogspot.com/2007/03/den-sutejo.html

More information: https://www.naviarrecords.com/about/naviar-haiku

more halF unusuaL

halF carpeteD [naviarhaiku514]

An electronic composition of seven parts, sounds created in Pure Data.

More on this 619th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Beat Accrual (The Assignment: Rebuild a complicated rhythm from scratch), at: https://disquiet.com/0619/

About the Disquiet Junto: Disquiet Junto F.A.Q. – Disquiet

Subscribe to project announcements: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0619-beat-accrual/

Buildup (disquiet0619)

11Nov23

My naviarhaiku514 submission;
https://www.naviarrecords.com/2023/11/08/naviarhaiku514-gale-in-the-mountains/
:D

watch how the fallen blossoms carpet the water [naviarhaiku514 ]

samples and voices triggered by sequences of various lengths mainly driven by Marbles all going into a delay/reverb with its wet/dry gated by another sequence

--

More on this 619th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Beat Accrual (The Assignment: Rebuild a complicated rhythm from scratch), at: https://disquiet.com/0619/

About the Disquiet Junto: Disquiet Junto F.A.Q. – Disquiet

Subscribe to project announcements: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0619-beat-accrual/

disquiet0619 - provisions

Last bloom before autumn
Stares back at me with a smile
My younger brother

Haiku by: John Wright  https://soundcloud.com/thgirwnhoj

About this interpretation: 

My 'younger brother' here is my (much) younger self in the early 1980s, pictured here, when I proudly owned an Octave Cat monosynth and a 4-track portastudio to make music with. What you hear is pre-planned; each part played by hand, multitracked, and bounced down to extend beyond the 4 cassette tracks available. So, for example, drums were recorded part by part, as was each note of each chord, each sound created from scratch - with no presets ... So, please be kind to my 'younger brother' before judging TOO harshly! ;-)

This is an original mixdown to stereo cassette, no editing or remixing - including the terrible 'drum break'! - so it couldn't be more authentic! Enjoy! 😜

More information about the Naviar Records Weekly Haiku: https://www.naviarrecords.com/about/naviar-haiku

halF brotheR [naviarhaiku515]

Suss Müsik’s entire creative practice is centered around the quest to derive gold from detritus. It’s likely an attribute shared with carefree art school days of an earlier era: a time when post-modern photography, sweaty punk rock, and ramen noodles served as daily sustenance.

“Photographs, so much a part of our daily lives, become highly self-conscious when pulled from the fraying of their ordinary locations,” wrote the art critic Julia Ballerini in 1989. “They refer back to their origins in a different voice … suggest[ing] a complexity of potential attachments, detachments, and reconfigurations.”

For this week’s project, Suss Müsik utilized four handmade devices recently built from material laying around the workshop: a digital sample trigger, a joystick-activated grain synth, a touchscreen MIDI device, and a touchscreen modulation controller. These were used to manipulate sonic material (loops, found audio, etc.) from the backlog, some of which has been in the works for more than eight years.

Given the nature of this week’s offering, Suss Müsik captured the session on video. 

https://youtu.be/z-bk_wxwhMo

The piece has no title and was recorded live to a TASCAM 8-track.

More on this 621st weekly Disquiet Junto project, The Leftovers (The Assignment: Use recently discarded material to make something new), at: https://disquiet.com/0621/

About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0621-the-leftovers/

Disquiet0621

My submission for the Sonic Pi October 2020 Challenge:
https://in-thread.sonic-pi.net/t/sonic-pi-monthly-challenge-1/4442

Made using only one sample:
https://freesound.org/people/bbmario/sounds/107919/

Code here:
https://github.com/binarysweets/sonic-pi-monthly-challenge/tree/main/challenge-1

Toad Mode

It's a long story.
Fature - https://tinyurl.com/bifalmmu

Toad Mode

Binarysweets

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