Cool distorted, screaming guitars, really effective use of the e-bow here. Overall a nice, noticeable “material” quality.

Disquiet Junto Project 0690: Knot Bad
The Assignment: Interpret wood grain as a graphic score.

Step 1: Find a piece of wood, the grain of which captures your imagination.

Step 2: Consider how the shapes of the grain might be interpreted as a graphically notated score. (If you are not familiar with the concept of a graphic score, read up.)

Step 3: Record a piece of music in which you interpret the grain of the wood you selected in Step 1 as a graphic score.

Deadline: Monday, March 24, 2024, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.

Details: https://disquiet.com/0690/

Disquiet Junto Project 0690: Knot Bad

More on the 690th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Knot Bad — The Assignment: Interpret wood grain as a graphic score — at https://disquiet.com/0690/

disquiet0690

My track notes regarding the creation of this track can be found here: 

Disquiet Junto Project 0690: Knot Bad
The Assignment: Interpret wood grain as a graphic score.

Step 1: Find a piece of wood, the grain of which captures your imagination.

Step 2: Consider how the shapes of the grain might be interpreted as a graphically notated score. (If you are not familiar with the concept of a graphic score, read up.)

Step 3: Record a piece of music in which you interpret the grain of the wood you selected in Step 1 as a graphic score.

[Disquiet Junto 0690] Contin You'd Uhm

The graphic score used, featured as the cover art, is a photo I took of part of a wood-panelled ceiling in my home. The track, in four continuous sections, comprises a mix of layered electronic sequences created using Pure Data with additional sounds and editing carried out using Audacity.

Knotty Pine Perusal (disquiet0690)

Ooooh good ... Here's another track that the SoundCloud algorithm refuses to recommend to potentially interested listeners ... If you're interested in music that a robot doesn't consider 'music', why not give it a listen! 😜

More on the 690th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Knot Bad — The Assignment: Interpret wood grain as a graphic score — at https://disquiet.com/0689/

more halF unusuaL

halF knoT [disquiet0690]

This week's Disquiet Junto prompt instructed us to find a piece of wood with interesting grain, and interpret it as a graphical music score.

My music desk is a pretty solid piece of furniture, and the dark stain makes the wood grain stand out prominently. I noticed that the grain on one side of the desk contained two interlocking swirls, and the radiating pattern reminded me of a magnetic field. So I decided that this week's composition would be played with wood and magnets.

I used a contact mic to record the percussion part, playing the top of the desk like a hand drum. Then I recorded three layers of guitar played with an ebow: an electromagnetic "guitar pick" characterized by infinite sustain. Ebow has the drawback of making dynamics difficult but I was able to make it growl and howl enough to get some texture and noise out of the performance. 

The bass layer was played on a Schecter Damien 7-string guitar with an altered tuning. I managed to play the bottom string freehand with the ebow, floating rather than resting on surrounding strings, which required multiple takes unfortunately. I just really, really needed that low B♭. The other two guitar layers were played on the St Vincent guitar. 

Offboard, the guitars went through my standard bank of stomp boxes, including an Eventide Harmonizer, Keeley Halo, ARP-87 and Julia pedals from Walrus, and a trusty RAT distortion pedal. DAW effects were mainly reverb and Chromaglow, plus a stereo delay and EQ on the percussion part.

More on the 690th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Knot Bad — The Assignment: Interpret wood grain as a graphic score — at https://disquiet.com/0689/

Lost in the Ironwood (disquiet0690)

This week's task is rather serendipitous in that I am actually engaged in some minor wood working this weekend. I recently built a small Buchla 100 system (and its case), consisting of what is shown in the image and the as yet unhoused (and not shown) 114 touch control module, which is what the piece of unstained pine sitting on top of the Buchla is destined for. I selected pine because my woodworking skills are still rather rudimentary so working with higher priced and more difficult lumber makes me nervous. Plus, there is something comforting about pine's ubiquity and approachability. Making a mistake with pine seems excusable. Doing so with walnut or oak less so. That said, I got to thinking about the pine that I picked up at my local lumber shop in terms of the conditions under which it is grown and the vast quantities of trees that are stripped from the land so that people like me can make boxes for their vintage synthesizers. Sonically, I imagined this as a somewhat discordant drone, with peaks and valleys and occasional moments of harmony. The trees grow, mainly in a state or quietude, before they are cut down and processed to the sound of chain saws and saw blades. And then everything goes quiet again as the next crop is planted.  Graphically, I notated this imagined scenario as a series of constant lines, punctuated here and there with peaks, valleys, bright and dark spots, representing in part the knots and impurities in the pine but also the experience of the piece of wood in its transition from tree to commodity. Everything you hear was created on my humble System 100, which was first fed through the Empress Zoia pedal using the "soft focus" effect created by Christopher H.M. Jacques and then further transformed in Logic using "fragments," and "motion" from Arturia, with hints of the unprocessed Buchla emerging here and there. And there was panning. Lots of panning, so headphones are the preferred listening approach.

found some wood grains in my dining table. obvious jump is from grains to granular, so went with a looping sample going into beads. the graphic score is the sequence of darker grains - roughly up/down is pitch, darker areas introduce more noise, and each grain in the wood triggers a burst granular sample, starting with a larger grain becoming smaller

(that's the idea anyway)

--

More on the 690th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Knot Bad — The Assignment: Interpret wood grain as a graphic score — at https://disquiet.com/0690/

disquiet0690 - along the grain

This is my submission to this week's Disquiet Junto assignment.

More on the 691st weekly Disquiet Junto project, Un-Ravel — The Assignment: Make a recording of a string quartet fall apart — at https://disquiet.com/0691/

Unravel [disquiet0691]

Ravel from the 1920s, timestretched in ableton, then converted to midi and combined, fx etc

More on the 691st weekly Disquiet Junto project, Un-Ravel — The Assignment: Make a recording of a string quartet fall apart — at https://disquiet.com/0691/

un-ravel +3 mix [disquiet0691]

Following this week's Disquiet Junto project this track was created using a historic recording of the Ravel string quartet from 1928.
This is the sound of a dream, dissolved beyond recognition, but still present as the conscious cause of this unconscious music.

The audio was transformed using spectral synthesizers and effect chains to create this dreamlike rendition. No other sounds or instruments were employed.

More on the 691st weekly Disquiet Junto project, Un-Ravel — The Assignment: Make a recording of a string quartet fall apart — at https://disquiet.com/0691/

rêver  (Disquiet0691)

three 90s jungle beats, all slowed to 128bpm, switch out across two channels

morse code plays the phrase "fog dissolves to rain" on ableton's "EFX Small Cymbal" rack

four granular soundbeds

a melody i played through three sampled instruments (upright bass, piano, guitarophone)

one atmospheric drone from the "though-forms" patreon

mary says "maybe tomorrow"

[naviarhaiku586] clear the vista

Disquiet 0692 called for us to record the sound of fire and use it as a percussion layer in a composition.

I broke out my trusty stereo field recorder and captured the sounds of match strikes, a lighter, a gas stove, a gas furnace, and a wooden-wicked candle. I did minimal sonic processing on the samples, mainly touches of distortion here and there. All of the samples except the candle were loaded into a custom sampler set up and programmed as a drum kit. The drum pattern is supported by a full-length recording of the candle, processed rhythmically with a combination of a highly sensitive noise gate, beat breakers, step FX, delay, and quantization.

The percussion is the center of the piece, but there's also some vintage analog synth goodness in the background. All of the synth parts were played and manipulated on a Moog Minitaur, my current favorite desktop analog synth.

More on the 692nd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Combust a Move — The Assignment: Make music using fire for the rhythm track — at https://disquiet.com/0692/

Candle Magick (disquiet0692)

Separated spiritually reflecting on fate,

Incantations

I create original experiential music from NOSIGNAL Multimedia Lab in Chicago. The Hard Times described my music as "creepy, haunted, but also a little bit uplifting." Prolific.

My 33 1/3 series book about the Aphex Twin album <i>Selected Ambient Works Volume II</i> was published in 2014. The book was one of the top 5 bestselling titles for the calendar year, and in 2015 was ranked by Pitchfork as one of the "33 best" of the 100-plus books in the 33 1/3 series. It has subsequently been translated into Japanese (2019) and Spanish (2018)

Since 2012 I have moderated the Disquiet Junto group, which began on SoundCloud. More at disquiet.com/junto. 

I've written for Nature, Pitchfork, The Wire, Down Beat, Boing Boing, NewMusicBox, Red Bull Music Academy, Art Practical, the website of The Atlantic, and many other publications. 

I've exhibited sound art at galleries in Los Angeles (Crewest), Manhattan (apex art), and Dubai (DUTAC), and I had a audio-visual installation at the San Jose Museum of Art as part of its 45th anniversary.

And since 1996 I've run the website Disquiet.com about the intersection of sound, art, and technology.

Lost in the Ironwood (disquiet0690)

Coraline Ada Ehmke

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