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

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

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0690-knot-bad

Hi, I've been working on percussion tracks, so I took this picture (taken in souther Spain), it is not really "shapes of the grain" but the pikes are so massive and menacing that I couldn’t stop thinking as a good notation for a spicy percussive track. I see short, high transient sound anyway.
So I decided to use my new Oberheim DMX virtual instrument exclusivelly, changing pitch and sound for the toms to represent those spikes.
Anyway, glad to be back on a junto, cheers DD

Performed by DD 2025 on a Oberheim DMX by @gforce-software

Spike Knot - disquiet0690

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

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.

Priya

Andag

rising sun
and nothing else –
misty sea!
(Inoue Shiro) 
https://www.naviarrecords.com/naviarhaiku589-rising-sun/
Komposition1063 StreichOrchester

Misty Sea And Rising Sun (naviarhaiku589)

[naviarhaiku591] dream and reality

csound source: https://github.com/tonpatt/compositions/tree/master/onde%2Bcric2

These are two studies realized in Csound in 1995 and revised in 2025. The first is a study on the timbral variations resulting from the interference of sounds with closely related frequencies; the second is a study on noise and the manipulation of sound through filters, delay, and feedback.

onde+cric2

ALLEE

Tír na nÓg

A blend between two different projects, to say not in my name
audio taken from a raw italian documentary about all we already know..
work in progress

غزة  *Pay attention to the volume

Like Water

Oxide

My Girl Vers. II.wav

between two spaces PART 2

multi-instrumentalist & composer.
Genre fluid music for images / instrumental / contemporary post-fusion / experimental jazz / electro acoustic ambient / melodic noise / neoclassical / naive hard core / cosmopolitan world music.

bio here:
http://dedeland.com/daniel-diaz-bio/


In some words:
Composer, arranger, producer, multi-instrumentalist. Born in Argentina,
I studied music in Buenos Aires, New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Paris.

For 20 years, I developed an important career as a session and backing musician in Argentina and Europe, playing, among other instruments, the bass, touring and recording with many jazz, rock, fusion, world, Latin and tango bands.

At the same time, I worked as an arranger, producer and musical director with many projects and artists in the USA, Argentina and Europe.

From 1992 to 1997, I performed my compositions live with my own band in Buenos Aires and began a solo recording career with the worldwide release of my first album "The Years Alone" on the North American label Green Linnet/Xenophile. On this album I arranged and performed 11 of my songs written between 1986 and 1993. I played most of the instruments, but included guest appearances by some great South American players.

My recording career continued with "Segundo Ciclo" (1997), released worldwide by Timeless Records, and 12 more albums released between 2000 and 2016.

Currently, I work as an on-demand film/TV composer while continuing to play live and produce.

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.

Spike Knot - disquiet0690

Daniel Diaz

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