Name: Helsinki Downspout by disquiet
Duration: 1 min 35 s
Description: This is a recording of a downspout in Helsinki recorded by Scott Fletcher. It's being posted as part of a Disquiet Junto project with the intention of creative, credited re-purposing.

I'll load it into my MicroGranny, thanx for the DL(s)...

Disquiet Junto Project 0580: Evo Evol Evolve

The Assignment: Record a piece of music that develops like an organism evolves.

Step 1: You’re going to record a piece of music informed by evolution. Think of stages of evolution, perhaps choosing a specific animal or other life form that evolved over time.

Step 2: Record a piece of music that evolves as it proceeds, based on the patterns (phases, stages) you explored in Step 1. And yes, animals that went extinct are a potential subject.

===

Track notes:

I took my inspiration from the long evolution of insect species on the planet, considering the vast scale of evolution from primordial epochs up to the present, where insect species are front-and-centre in the Sixth Great Extinction of the late Anthropocene.

SuperCollider came to mind again as a tool for realisation, since I had ‘traditional’ forms of ‘computer music’ in mind - especially Bernard Parmegiani’s epic La Creatione De Monde (1984)

Now, obviously I don’t have a) a year up my sleeve; and b) the coding faculty in SC to pull off such a gargantuan feat, but I thought it might be a cool point of reference that I could fold into my current understanding (as a beginner) in the SC environment.

Recently I got to grips with buffering audio samples and using sequences to control various patterns - both melodic and percussive. I created a couple of dictionaries of short percussive samples (kalimba, woodblock and guiro) as well as instantiating a couple of Synth objects that produce pure waves. The percussive sounds turned out well when triggered, sequenced and manipulated and I liked the interplay with the pure waves.

My track is a bit longer than my usual submissions (~6 mins) but I thought I needed a decent span of time to realise a time compression of a few hundred million years of evolution.

For the realisation, I live-coded from the initial script (see GitHub link below) and then adjusted various parameters, arguments and variable throughout. The idea was to start amongst the matter of the cosmos and then gradually render a semblance of life on Earth. Eventually, an abundance takes form, before the insect population starts to diminish at the close. It not strictly a linear progression; rather, a fairly wobbly negative exponential progression. I’m still getting to grips with controlling instruments on the fly in SC, but I think I’m improving.

I was happily surprised when I saw the spectrogram of this track. Its progression of blobs, smears and flurries of activity over a time series seemed fitting!

https://github.com/TristanLouthRobins/Supercollider/blob/main/junto0580-evo_compressor.scd.scd

[Disquiet_Junto_0580] Evo Compressor (w/SuperCollider)

More on this 580th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Evo Evol Evolve (The Assignment: Record a piece of music that develops like an organism evolves), at: Disquiet Junto Project 0580: Evo Evol Evolve – Disquiet

More on the Disquiet Junto at: Disquiet Junto F.A.Q. – Disquiet

Subscribe to project announcements here: Disquiet Junto by Marc Weidenbaum (Disquiet.com)

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0580-evo-evol-evolve/

Evo Evol Evolve

The Euclidean Chromaticon | Evo Evol Evolve - disquiet0580

I had some fun with this one, a wrong take on Butterflies' life cycle. They are supposed to arrive to the prettier stage in the end but my track moves backwards, from a gentle and nice pastoral in the first section to a cheesy jazz ballad, then chaotic and quite ugly electro-acoustic free-jazz third section.
It's always the same "theme" with variations, that was my actual "exercise" here.
I used
Celesta
Vibraphone
Fretless bass
Drums
Piano
Synthesizers
Orchestral samples


DD, Friday 10 and Saturday 11 February 2023
Photo by Fleur

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0580-evo-evol-evolve

Butterfly Backwards(disquiet0580)

Disquiet Junto Project 0580: Evo Evol Evolve
The Assignment: Record a piece of music that develops like an organism evolves.

Out of curiosity, I had just bought a sequencer called ZOA, so I decided to go with the "Game of Life" approach of this sequencer (chances are I'm not alone in this). In case you're not familiar with the concept: Conway's Game of Life is a cellular model of evolution in which the life of each cell depends on the life of neighboring cells. In ZOA, each cell is a note and four sequencers play these notes according to additional rules. ZOA adds features like MIDI, and I liked that a lot. 

What I didn't like was the randomness of the melodies, but hey, isn't life random in the first place? (Big debate… let's say: Sometimes it feels random...) I had pushed the development by changing the probability of the notes by hand. If the game of life had come to a halt with some dead pattern, I would have used that, but I didn't want to force it.

I played with many instruments and patterns, but in the end I reduced it to two tracks of eighth notes. For the beginning and the end I chose a cheap fade-in, fade-out, because life came quietly and very slowly out of nowhere, and I think that according to current scientific knowledge, one day it will end like that and just fade out.

Self verdict: The track is soulless and meaningless, like the evolution of life, which need not mean that listeners could not hear either soul or meaning in it if they felt like it.

--

ZOA (Mac/iOS)
https://www.audiosymmetric.com/zoa.html
I'm in no way affiliated with it and there are many alternative MIDI tools doing "life" patterns. ZOA is not without its limits, but I found it a very interesting addition to my pattern park.

LIFE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life

--

More on this 580th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Evo Evol Evolve (The Assignment: Record a piece of music that develops like an organism evolves), at: https://disquiet.com/0580/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0580-evo-evol-evolve/

What Comes Up Must Come Down [disquiet0580]

This was my contribution for the Disquiet Junto Project 0580:Evo Evil Evolve.

Here’s a copy of my post on the Disquiet Junto 0580 discussion thread:
This is my interpretation of the evolution of plant communities through the ages – from the smallest of flora to massive forests. It's also an imagining of photosynthesis beginning with the first rays of morning sunlight.

I initially created this over a year ago but ended up totally reworking most of it for this project. The final couple minutes is a little too over-the-top than what I would have liked, but I decided to keep it rather than rework that section. 

Main audio was created on an iPad using Spectrum Modal, Zoa and Xynthesizr apps, and imported into Ableton Live. Supporting tracks were added using FRMS, Pigments, and Minifreak V software instruments. Forest image by Casey Horner via Unsplash.

More on this 580th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Evo Evol Evolve (The Assignment: Record a piece of music that develops like an organism evolves), at: Disquiet Junto Project 0580: Evo Evol Evolve – Disquiet
More on the Disquiet Junto at: Disquiet Junto F.A.Q. – Disquiet
Subscribe to project announcements here: Disquiet Junto by Marc Weidenbaum (Disquiet.com)
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co 1: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0580-evo-evol-evolve/

Sifting Morning Light [disquiet0580]

This is a recording of a downspout in Helsinki recorded by Scott Fletcher. It's being posted as part of a Disquiet Junto project with the intention of creative, credited re-purposing.

Helsinki Downspout

Disquiet 0581 - this weeks challenge was to download a rhythmic field recording and make it part of a track or incorporate it somehow.

Thanks to Scott Fletcher for having provided the original material. It is used thanks to a Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0). Original track at: https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/helsinki-downspout/

I loaded the field recording into Ableton and put it into a drum rack. I then took all the bits between the beats (hiss and non rhythmic parts) and started to mess about with these, adding filters and effects and also playing them as drum hits - that is how the track opens. 
I them loaded all these hiss parts into a synth and stretched and played them as keys, creating the additional synth sounds with effects changing the sounds somewhat.  After jamming about for 30 / 40 minutes I hit reccord and laid down a fairly basic arrangement. 
I tweaked this slightly, adding a little more effects until I had a nice short experimental track i'm pretty happy with!

More or less the whole track was made with the source sounds but it's debatable if the original sound is recognisable?  However I took the prompot to "to sample and rework the source material" as a guide! 

Disquiet Junto Project 0581: Helsinki Downspout

The Assignment: Use a rhythmic field recording as the foundation for a new track.

Step 1: This is a shared sample project, one in which all the participants will utilize the same provided recording, about a minute and a half long, as the rhythmic element for their own music. Access the track, originally recorded by Scott Fletcher and used with his permission, here:

https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/helsinki-downspout

Step 2: Listen to the provided track several times. Think about ways to map its content, perhaps making notations about when certain unique, momentary aspects surface.

Step 3: Record an original piece of music for which the provided music is the underlying rhythm. You might take this quite literally, using the source as it is, resulting in a track that is precisely 1:35 long. Alternately, you might elect to sample and rework the source material. If you go the latter route, make certain that the original sound is, at least at some point in the finished track, recognizable.

Step 4: Because this is a Creative Commons resource, be sure to identify Scott Fletcher as the original recorder of the source material, and include a link to the source track. Identify the license as: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0).

Audio Obscura - Helsinki Downpour [disquiet0581]

More on this 581st weekly Disquiet Junto project, Helsinki Downspout (The Assignment: Use a rhythmic field recording as the foundation for a new track), at: https://disquiet.com/0581/

Thanks to Scott Fletcher for having provided the original material. It is used thanks to a Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0). Original track at: https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/helsinki-downspout/

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-0581-helsinki-downspout/

Helsinki Downspout Crackles (disquiet0581)

Downspout Miasma (disquiet0581)

Adding to @rshaddox's addition to @winterer's original. Trying to remain within keeping of the two that preceded me.
--
More on this 593rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, The Charm (The Assignment: Complete an asynchronous trio begun by two other musicians), at: https://disquiet.com/0593/

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-0593-the-charm/

worm whole (disquiet0593) - krakenkraft + russell-c-shaddox + wasabicube

Ignición

NEPTUNO

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.

Helsinki Downspout

disquiet

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