The Corn Of The Future Is Hundreds Of Years Old And Makes Its Own Mucus

Quentin Smirhes' video "Quentin and his Birdbox Orchestra featuring his 18th Century hand teacher" run through a Norns Shield running the Otis looper

Original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbX6lm-DZ4g

Quentin Smirhes Ambient

The goal of this track was to create a loopable drone based on the current chord being played as part of the 639 year performance of “Organ²/ASLSP” by John Cage, at a church in Halberstadt, Germany.

I used a 4MS Ensemble Oscillator as the primary voice, with the two sets of its oscillators going down different signal paths. Half of the oscillators are going into an Instruo Arbhar which is tending to frequency shift the notes down, creating the deeper rumbles. The sets of voices are being faded in and out with VCAs. End of chain effects are provided by a 1010Music Blue Box, which was used to mix and record this.

More on this 554th weekly Disquiet Junto project – Cage Chord (The Assignment: Riff on a chord by John Cage) – at: https://disquiet.com/0554/ 1

Thanks to Tobias Reber and Musikfestival Bern for collaboration on this project. More on the festival at:

https://www.musikfestivalbern.ch/
https://www.instagram.com/musikfestival_bern
https://www.facebook.com/musikfestivalbern

More on the Disquiet Junto at: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/ 1

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co 1: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0554-cage-chord/

disquiet0554 - Cage Chord Ensemble

I was making an interesting beat and started to make a melody by sending a sequence into Rings. However, it turns out that if you modulate the parameters of Rings in a certain way, it makes an extra tone beyond the ping that just wanders around in a cool way. It's super wonky but I recorded it anyway because it's cool. Also you should always record noodles.

Wonky wandering drone noodle

The assignment was to interpret a collection of shapes as a graphic score. I took the five shapes and ran them through my Cricut machine, and recorded the sounds that it made. I then halved the speed (video is half speed too) and used the shapes that the sound made to control various things in a modular patch. The sound itself - quite heavily processed - is shaped by envelopes derived from the general audio level of the recording sampled at discrete points in time, driven by a clock. That clock is also providing percussion to mark the rhythm of the piece. Two different filters are used to pick different parts of the audio spectrum to use as envelopes and triggers.

There are two "voices" of cutting machine sound, one of which is synchronised to the beat, but the other one departs from it. This wasn't intentional - I ran out of modules and just made the decision to go ahead with what I had, as I was running out of time.

I don't think this was very successful, but I had fun making it and learned a lot. Really I misinterpreted the intention behind the assignment, which was to create four phases based on the four main shapes. I did nothing like that!

You can see a video of the cutting machine with the audio synced to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEXbDofj1jQ

More on this 557th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Condensation Is a Form of Change (The Assignment: Interpret a graphic score that depicts four phases) — at: https://disquiet.com/0557/

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-0557-condensation-is-a-form-of-change/.

disquiet0557 - Condensation Is a Form of Change

The assignment was to make a track by sampling a chore that takes a number of phases to accomplish. This track was made purely with field recordings while mowing the lawn. I didn't pitch or pan any of these sounds, but I did stretch and squish a couple of them for timing purposes (while preserving pitch).

Phases:
Charge and load battery
Open garage door and roll out
Mow lawn
Finish with the whipper snipper
Roll back into the garage and close door

More on this 558th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Chore Progressions (The Assignment: Use a routine activity as the map of a composition) — at: https://disquiet.com/0558/

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-0558-chore-progressions/

disquiet0558 - chore progressions - lawn mowing

Modular jam, recorded with the 1010 Music Bluebox. I recorded myself counting, into Arbhar. The output of that went into the Poly Hector running Rings and Clouds and maybe some other stuff. LFOs wibbled various things. The speech samples from Arbhar are functioning as the exciter input for Rings.

Counting

Grumbles triggered by and made of noise, ran through comb filters and distortion and more comb filters. Once inside the computer, I applied Valhalla Supermassive and MORE reverb. Just to mash the hell out of it.

Grumbulent

"as if this homely drong had been transformed to a royal path in some greenwood"
—Llewelyn Powys

D R O N G

Eight electric toothbrushes attached to a popcorn bucket, mic'ed up, and fed into my modular. Recorded at the Kirk of St James, Charlottetown, on Drone Day 2024

Chridmeister

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