These are works created using computer software, either pure synthesized or using processed live-recorded audio.

My Electronic Compositions

The image which inspired this piece (more information below) made me think about sheets of paper, and the sentences that had been on them which had now been rendered devoid of any meaning whatsoever by the "redacting" process.  Lastly, the ragged right edge of the image made me think of a paper shredder.  
I built the piece from three elements:  paper noises, vocal sounds, and the sound of a shredder.  The paper sounds were recorded at close range and used with very little modification other than combining large numbers of them at one time.  The vocal sounds heard in the piece are resynthesized from linear-predictive coding (LPC) analyses of recording of me reading a list of synonyms for the word "redacted".  The shredder sound is close-mike recorded, and then processed slightly.
The voice resynthesizer let me produce streams of "conversation" which were, like the NSA document, utterly unintelligible.  The shredder acts as an interrupter and a divider.  The paper sounds take on many roles, including the ostinato near the end.
The individual sounds were edited and processed using my own software, MiXViews, and the public domain software RTcmix (http://www.rtcmix.org).  The final mix was done using Logic Pro X.

***

More on this 83rd Disquiet Junto project, in which a page from recently declassified documents related to NSA collection of telephone metadata records is treated as a graphically notated score, at:

disquiet.com/2013/08/01/disquiet0083-redacted/

Image found via twitter.com/shearm and twitter.com/glennf.

Full document at:

goo.gl/wVydxR

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

Groups – Disquiet-junto

Shred Act [disquiet0083-redacted]

This is my first submission to the Naviar Haiku Music Challenge.  The project for this week:  https://www.naviarrecords.com/2021/05/12/naviarhaiku384-the-beginning-of-all-art.

This haiku immediately brought to mind a musical line, slowly building in length note by note, joined by others building in the same fashion.  I did this with simple sine wave lines which each begin quietly alternating the first 2 or 3 notes of a 23-note melody, adding gradually to how many notes each can play.  Subtle richness is provided by tiny "imperfections" in the rhythm of the lines, plus variations in the attack and decay of each line.  Lastly, the lines are joined by a slow progression of low chords as the music builds towards all four parts playing the entire melody, at which point they vanish.

Haiku 384

Haiku 384 (naviarhaiku384)

Red Shift is a meditation on the sound beamed back to Earth by Voyager 1.  The first 4 minutes are entirely derived from the 1.5-second tone at the beginning of the recording, plus some of the noise signal (used like percussion in the piece) which follows that.  No other source material was used.  The tone was time-dialated up to 128x and transposed using the RTcmix Phase Vocoder instrument, then moved around in a very large reverberant environment using RTcmix's MMove and MPlace.  The final minute features the rising high tone from the end of the Voyager recording.  A nearly literal version of the tone is anwered by a complex expansion of the same, and then is  repeated at 3x time dilation with a second answer, closing with one last stretched repeat.


More on this 89th Disquiet Junto project, in which the sounds of interstellar space are used to make "goodbye music" for the Voyager 1 space probe, at:

http://disquiet.com/2013/09/12/disquiet0089-vger/

Source audio courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Iowa via:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIAZWb9_si4

Special thanks to Mark Ward (mark-ward.org) for having suggested this material as the subject for a Disquiet Junto project.

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Red Shift [disquiet0089-vger]

The Harvard Sentences are a set of 720 short American English sentences designed to test the quality of audio telephony.  To this end, they are rich and varied in English vowels and consonants, and oddly compelling (at least to me) as microscopic poems.  This is the first of many miniatures I hope to create based on some of these.

Harvard Sentences: List 4, No. 5

This project was way outside my comfort zone given my abysmal knowledge of EDM.  I worked from the bottom up, finding sounds that I thought were appropriate to something moving this slowly but also familiar to (some) listeners of techno.  I assembled this in Logic Pro.
 
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More on this 541st weekly Disquiet Junto project — 10BPM Techno (The Assignment: Make some snail-paced beats) — at: https://disquiet.com/0541/

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-0541-10bpm-techno/

Image used thanks to this license: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Grapevinesnail_01.jpg.

SloTechno

SloTechno [disquiet0541]

This track was inspired by the not-haiku from this week's Naviar Haiku music challenge:

In the late blossom
Of red sunlight
One last dance

This brought up many feelings for me, some of which I hope I captured.

Nuts and bolts:  The piece starts with  a set of 7 slow chords whose roots follow a descending minor scale (flat 3rd, 6th, and 7th) but they are harmonized using a dorian scale (no flat 6th) so there is extra tension between the alternating A naturals and A flats.  The chords are played by a scripted software piano sampler instrument which adjusts the attacks and the steady state of the piano samples to create constantly shifting start times, and durations.  The same instrument, with  modifications, plays the slow arpeggiated accompaniment which gradually circles in space as it plays out.
Over this I set a melody which is played successively by solo oboe, solo clarinet, and flutes (all these added using Logic Pro).  Finally the chords and arpeggiation are left to fade away.

Last Dance

Last Dance [naviarhaiku444]

This piece exists because the sound material I created demanded a completely different treatment than my original plans.  This material consists of 1-2 second recordings of 7 sung vowels combined with 4 consonants (B, D, P, and T).  I was never a great singer, and I am horribly out of practice as well, so the results were, let's say, challenging.  This inspired the quirky use of the audio files in this work.

Vocalise 1

Following the project guidelines, this is an all-sinewave piece with only envelopes and panning as additional manipulation of the waveforms.  It consists of 4 voices, each of which alternates between 2 diatonic pitches.  Each successive voice plays at 1/2 the rate of the previous - I thought of it like the flipping each higher bit as you continue to add 1 to a variable in a software program, hence the "binary" in the title.

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More on this 555th weekly Disquiet Junto project — A Simple Timer (The Assignment: Simplify by a factor of 5) — at: https://disquiet.com/0555/

Thanks to Anatol Locker for having proposed this project.

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-0555-a-simple-timer/

Binary Pop

BinaryPop [disquiet0555]

I always look forward to the beginning of the year when this project comes around.  This year I used this piece as a study for a much larger work - specifically using it as a way to experiment with a complex scripting language I have built on top of the RTcmix (www.rtcmix.org) scripting language, MinC.
My scripts allow me to create algorithmic musical patterns in a large number of dimensions:  volume, pitch, sample selection, tempo, placement in a simulated room-space etc.  Each dimension can be moved about in via an algorithmic plug-in, for example, random choice, sequential access, fixed value, etc.
The Psychedelic Ice Machine uses three sets of ice sound samples I have recorded over the years.  The score loops, creating an ever-changing set of patterns.  The relationship between these is sometimes clear and sometimes obscured.

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More on this 575th weekly Disquiet Junto project — On Ice (The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it) — at: https://disquiet.com/0575/

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-0575-on-ice/

The Psychedelic Ice Machine

The Psychedelic Ice Machine [disquiet0575]

The tenth work in my SoundPrism series derives its material from 5 substances:  Glass, ceramic, metal, plastic, and cardboard.  A large variety of objects of different sizes and shapes, made of these materials, were struck with different hardnesses of mallets and sticks and recorded as individual samples.  From this I developed a set of music "characters", which maintain a timbral identity throughout the piece, but also change in subtle ways as they interact.

I came up with the subtitle on my own, but then found the only online reference to that exact phrase came from a "forgotten book":  "The Technique of Play Writing" by Charlton Andrews (1915).

SoundPrism 10: A Play of Characters

My first Disquiet Junto submission in quite a while.  In this track I decided to explore a dozen or so FX available in Logic Pro, which I use to master most of my music.  Various tracks use flanging, compression, distortion, echo, reverb, multi-band filtering, stereo tremolo, etc., in various combinations.  For the most part I left the source tracks intact, with a few exceptions, and quite a bit of looping.
Thanks go to Marcus Fischer for the source samples!
-------------------
More on this 600th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Reaching Out (The Assignment: This is a shared sample project. Rework a set of seven WAV files provided by Marcus Fischer), at: https://disquiet.com/0600/

ReachingOut

ReachingOut [disquiet0600]

Transfigured Daylight is the second piece in a series of works which attempt to blend algorithmic and human musical materials and structure to create beautiful and compelling results.  The piece was generated from a single RTcmix script.  To hear the first work in the series, listen to https://open.spotify.com/track/34ZLIxpZV55CBm0asQlF0J?si=23d70af0aecd4789.

<a href="https://www.freepik.com/free-photo/sun-clouds_949083.htm#query=photoangel&position=1&from_view=search&track=sph">Image by photoangel</a> on Freepik

Transfigured Daylight

This piece has a long history: Some of the tracks were created more than a decade ago during one of my many attempts to put a piece together.  In each previous attempt, I created a bunch of new material and then abandoned it.  Finally in this composition much of that historic material has been fit together into a new sound tapestry.  Sets of specific material appear and disappear cyclicly, changing order, volume, and relationship to each other.

All sound generation, processing, and mixing were done using the RTcmix software toolkit (www.rtcmix.org).

Image by <a href="https://www.freepik.com/free-photo/glitter-texture-background_4167762.htm#from_view=detail_alsolike">Freepik</a>

Premonitions of Waking

Premonitions Of Waking

My first attempt at what I think of as "minimal ambient".

From The Near Distance

I composed my first Disquiet "Ice piece" a decade ago.  Over this decade I have created seven of these (and am sorrowful for the years I missed), and this is the eighth.  As I promised myself, I use the same ice recordings I made those many years ago.  In this composition, four source files are randomly selected for their content.  Each contains ice sounds at a different frequency, and the contrast between those, and the way they are chopped up, repeated, and placed in space and time, forms the narrative of the music.  In addition, two other source files, one a "normal" recording of ice rattling, and the other similar but transposed down, add their occasional commentary.
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More on this 627th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Just Ice Society — The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it — at: https://disquiet.com/0627/

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-0627-just-ice-society/

Of The Piece of Just Ice

Of The Piece Of Just Ice [disquiet0627]

I recorded three 1-minute tracks of my refrigerator: one with the mike below the unit, one with the mike inside the freezer (door shut) and one with the mike inside the cooler (also door shut).
These I processed and combined in several ways.  First is a track which slowly moves two of those recorded sounds in a large virtual circle in a synthetic room space.  Next is one of the tracks passed through a set of 12 comb filters with independently varying gains.  Next is one of the tracks transposed down an octave to provide a 30-cycle bass track.  Lastly one of the tracks is processed through a set of 8 resonant filters (also independently changing in resonance) set to the 3rd-10th partials of the 60-cycle hum which dominates the recordings.  The gains are set higher for higher frequencies to compensate for their reduced levels in the recording.

More on this 224th weekly Disquiet Junto project (“Make music with the sound of a refrigerator as its foundation.”) at:

http://disquiet.com/0224/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto/

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:

http://disquiet.com/forums/

The image associated with this project is by Timothy Allen and is used thanks to a Creative Commons license:

https://flic.kr/p/yQWAr/


Amana Fantasia [disquiet0224-coldembrace]

I had a lot of fun with this week's project.  When I think of Buckminster Fuller, I think of geodesics.  That made me think of pythagorean solids like dodecahedrons.  I thought about a piece which explores the number 12 (the number of sides on a dodecahedron).  So for once, I thought I would go into some detail on my process...

This piece is in 12/8, but divided into odd groups:  The two-line, eighth-note accompaniment is grouped in a regular pattern of 3, then 4, then 5 eighths (summing up to 12) with each beginning with an eight rest.  The bass line moves opposite this, in notes of 5, 4, and then 3 eighths duration, so the accented accompaniment never lines up with the bass.

Harmonically the piece also plays with the number 12, this time as 6 plus 6.  The pitches used in the bass and accompaniment are chosen first from the C hexachord (C, D, E, F, G, A) and then from the F# hexachord (F#, G#, A#, B, C#).  These two are identical but transposed by a tritone.  Between them, all the chromatic pitches of the scale are represented.  After a two-bar introduction, these two "pitch fields" alternate at constantly-changing rates, but always in measure counts which sum up to 12 (so, 4 vs. 8, 5 vs. 7, etc.).

The melody floats over all this in randomly-selected note durations of 3, 4, or 12 eighths.

The melody is generated with a wave shaping instrument and all the other parts are created using a filtered Karplus-Strong algorithm.  All parts are also run through a my room-simulation/reverb processor.  All these are part of the RTcmix software tools.

Lastly, everything is generated algorithmically using the capabilities of the RTcmix MinC scripting language.

More on this 226th weekly Disquiet Junto project (“Compose music for a fictional greatest-hits collection of the electronic music of R. Buckminster Fuller”) at:

http://disquiet.com/0226/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto/

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:

http://disquiet.com/forums/

Project inspired by a dream that C. Reider of Vuzh Music had:

http://vuzhmusic.com/

Image of album cover created for this project is by Brian Scott of Boon Design:

http://boondesign.com/


Bucky Ballet [disquiet0226]

This was my first all-digital composition.  Intervals between successive pitch events are not based on a tempered scale, but rather by integral fractions (e.g., a note being 13/12 of the frequency of the previous note).  The chord which opens the piece returns again and again, transformed as its component pitches are shifted up and down by one or more octaves.  Created using Csound and Cmix.

Apparition (1989)

A gnarly piece written as an antidote to all the insipid woodwind quintet music out there.
Scored for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon.



Conversations for wind quintet (1983)

This week's project is one of my all-time favorites.  Given over 100 short audio files containing vocalizations of various vowels, syllables, and occasional other things, from dozens of different voices, we were given the task to weave these into a composition.

With the exception of some transposition towards the end of the piece, I chose not to modify the character original material in any way.  What I did do was write a set of scripts which chose randomly from those files and figured out how to generate randomly-varying loops within the files in order to allow any one of them (I did have to skip anything shorter than one second) to be extended to an arbitrary length.  Then from that script, I built big, chordal sections where all the voices begin as the same moment (up to 42 parts at one point!), and other sections where the parts overlap and weave in and out over time.

The increasing transposition (up and down) of the sounds gradually distorts them in some disturbing ways.  Pretty early on, I thought of this as a vocal requiem, and structured it to reflect the austere, ceremonial nature of such a work.

All sounds were processed, mixed, and virtually placed in a 3-d sound environment using the RTcmix software toolkit.
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More on this 419th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Dischoir / The Assignment: Make music from 100+ vocal samples of held syllables by members of the Disquiet Junto — at:

https://disquiet.com/0419/

This all came about as a result of something Alan Bland mentioned on the Junto Slack. He pointed out that my having misspelled Disquiet as “Disquier” in the December 19, 2019, project title made him think of “Dischoir,” a possible Junto project. Thanks to Alan and to Jason Wehmhoener for helping me think this project through, and to everyone (over 50 contributors) who sent in samples.

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/disquiet-junto-project-0419-dischoir/

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

The image associated with this track is by Joe Lencioni, and is used (image cropped, text added) via Flickr thanks to a Creative Commons license:

https://flic.kr/p/8Bk9Rx

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

Requiem Vocalise

Requiem Vocalise [disquiet0419]

This composition, the ninth in my SoundPrism series, grew out of my experience being sheltered-in-place from March-June of 2020.  All sounds are derived from acoustic recordings of a variety of items found around my house and garage: ironing boards, chairs, hangars, slamming doors and cabinets, etc.  All processing was done with the RTCmix software toolkit and final mixing was done using Logic Pro X.

SoundPrism 9: At Home

Psalm 06 was composed in response to the events of 9-11-2001.  The structure of the piece follows the form of the sixth penitential psalm, and the sonic source material for the piece is the recorded text of that psalm, in English and in Latin, whispered, spoken, or yelled at various levels of intensity by vocalist Denise Gill.  Each section of the work uses only text content from the matching portion of the text.

The Sixth Penitential Psalm


Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger; 
do not punish me in your wrath.

Have pity on me, Lord, for I am weak; 
heal me, Lord, for my bones are racked.

My spirit shakes with terror; 
how long, O Lord, how long?

Turn, O Lord, and deliver me; 
save me for your mercy's sake.

For in death no one remembers you; 
and who will give you thanks in the grave?

I grow weary because of my groaning; 
every night I drench my bed
and flood my couch with tears.

My eyes are wasted with grief 
and worn away because of all my enemies.

Depart from me, all evildoers, 
for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping.

The Lord has heard my supplication; 
the Lord accepts my prayer.

All my enemies shall be confounded and quake with fear; 
they shall turn back and suddenly be put to shame.


Psalm 06 (2004)

Born and raised in Southern California, Douglas studied composition at U.C.L.A, Indiana University, and Columbia University.  Among his teachers were Paul Reale, Frederick Fox, Jack Beeson, Chou Wen-chung, and Mario Davidovsky.

dascott

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