More on this 242nd weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Make (and annotate) a track that provides an example of a trick/skill/tip you want to share about a piece of musical software or hardware” — at:

http://disquiet.com/0242/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

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

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

http://llllllll.co/t/share-yer-knowledge-disquiet-junto-project-0242/4218

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

The image associated with this project is by Susanna Bolle, and is used thanks to a Creative Commons license:

flic.kr/p/8F9Jmz


Disquiet Junto Project 0242: Share Yer Knowledge

Using a feedback delay you can add more color and variations by processing the feedback loop through an effect of choice. In this example I'm using a 5 second delay and a reverb to color the feedback loop. The first part lets you hear the dry loop and the second part with the wet feedback.

Unfortunately adding an effect to a feedback loop is not possible in any DAW. I use Bitwig and Reason for this purpose. In Reaper it should be possible too. Another option is using plugins like MXXX.

More on this 242nd weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Make (and annotate) a track that provides an example of a trick/skill/tip you want to share about a piece of musical software or hardware” — at:
http://disquiet.com/0242/1

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

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

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:
llllllll.co/t/share-yer-knowledge-disquiet-junto-project-0242/4218

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

The image associated with this project is by Susanna Bolle, and is used thanks to a Creative Commons license:
flic.kr/p/8F9Jmz

Process The Feedback Loop [disquiet0242]

electronic
granulated, transverb'd, taldub3'd, mjucjr'd
k-blamo

Especial {disquiet0242}

See http://bassling.blogspot.com/2016/08/disquiet-junto-0242-share-yer-knowledge.html for track discussion and video.

More on this 242nd weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Make (and annotate) a track that provides an example of a trick/skill/tip you want to share about a piece of musical software or hardware” — at:

http://disquiet.com/0242/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

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

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

http://llllllll.co/t/share-yer-knowledge-disquiet-junto-project-0242/4218

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

Farewell [disquiet0242]

This track uses 2 tricks. 1) FEEDBACK is at the heart of everything electronic, oscillators and filters use it for instance, feedback in any process exaggerates the effects of that process and feedback is one of my favourite tricks, it gives you MORE but always suprises you. This is part of a piece i am working on using four “oscillators” which are feedback loops through delays. By cross-feeding and phase-shifting the feeding you can make anything from tuned harmonic drones to noise. I expect that this shares something with David Tudor’s work but this is all in software. (Max 7) They are difficult to control though and this is edited from a long recording when i was trying to write a song about Aleppo but couldn’t find the words. 2) In addition this piece is AMBISONIC to an extent. The oscillators are tapped at 4 different points (wxyz) to create a spatial image. Ambisonics is my other tip/trick/obsession, such an easy way to deal with 3d space and all the patents have expired so all the knowledge is mostly free and available - even for VR, just google it. Here using ATK plugins in Reaper to mix and Binaurally render the 4 channel recordings made in Max7 down to stereo. listen on headphones! and, off topic #0242 makes me think - who remembers Front 242? or the 242 Pilots for that matter?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ambisonic_Software

this track is dedicated to the people of Aleppo.


More on this 242nd weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Make (and annotate) a track that provides an example of a trick/skill/tip you want to share about a piece of musical software or hardware” — at:

http://disquiet.com/0242/
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
http://disquiet.com/junto/
Subscribe to project announcements here:
http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:
llllllll.co/t/share-yer-knowledge-disquiet-junto-project-0242/


Feed(Aleppo)[disquiet0242]

The stress off modern life can be a bitch so I often find a little bit of sonic mayhem is just the balm I need. First I must stress this point -that you MUST delete all prior tracks as you move along your path of destruction, do not hold onto anything no matter how much you like something that happened. You must commit fully to come out the other side. I do this mostly with drum tracks as they often have the hardest attack and shortest decays and kicks just rock. I put 2 drum loops in. The first one stays the same the 2nd I warp to 2/3 time and do some more warping to get it out of time. I then crossfade those tracks to a new track. This will still have a bit of rhythm to it and that will have to go. Take that track copy it another track and start a a different point. The crossfader will now start clipping those sounds,record that to a new track. Now record that track and using the mouse to change the tempo using big and little changes. That new track now must be unwarped in ableton so that the tempo changes stay. Now you can use the new track and do some transposing. Because it is not warped the transposing also changes the speed of everything. Each new track can be copied and crossfaded between using a different start point. Keep doing this process till you feel the stress leave your body. At no point do I add fx. Fx too early in the process kills the slicing effect of the crossfader. When you finally reach you last track then you copy and paste that to another track. Now add fx to it but record it with you scrolling through the presets at whatever rate feels right. Now crossfade that track with the track with no fx and record to one track. Copy that track once and add different drum master fx to each. Pan one a little left and the other right. Master the master to taste. You should not be attached to the final track. That is not the point. The point is where your head is at now.
More on this 242nd weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Make (and annotate) a track that provides an example of a trick/skill/tip you want to share about a piece of musical software or hardware” — at:

http://disquiet.com/0242/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

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

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

http://llllllll.co/t/share-yer-knowledge-disquiet-junto-project-0242/4218

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

The image associated with this project is by Susanna Bolle, and is used thanks to a Creative Commons license:

http://flic.kr/p/8F9Jmz

How to Obliterate a Drum Track and Find Inner Peace (disquiet0242)

I decided to do an instructional 'how-to' for my entry, as it's easier than typing it all out. There isn't much of a song here, it's mostly instruction.

Special shout-out to Robert Nunnally (Gurdonark) for suggesting this software when I was just looking for a simple sample-playback device.

Links:

Lunchbox Battles:
[direct download] http://www.kvraudio.com/developer_challenge/2006/Lunchbox.zip
Made by: http://www.brambos.net/

Free VSTs used to make the loops:

loop 1 - lo-fi plastic piano
http://www.vst4free.com/free_vst.php?id=634

loop 2 - iowa piano
http://www.vst4free.com/free_vst.php?plugin=Iowa_Piano&id=2294

loop 3 - piano one
http://www.vst4free.com/free_vst.php?plugin=Piano_One&id=1100

***

Project Steps:

Step 1: Think of a specific trick or skill or tip you have honed in regard a particular piece of music software or hardware.

Step 2: Create a piece of music in which that trick or skill or tip is intrinsic.

Step 3: Annotate the track to detail the trick/skill/tip.

Five More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Per the instructions below, be sure to include the project tag “disquiet0242” in the name of your track. If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to my locating the tracks and creating a playlist of them.

Step 2: Upload your track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.

Step 3: This is a new task, if you’ve done a Junto project previously. In the following discussion thread at llllllll.co post your track:

llllllll.co/t/share-yer-knowledge-disquiet-junto-project-0242/4218


How To Make Ambient Music In 10 Minutes [disquiet0242]

This week's junto was to create a track showcasing a favourite tip / trick about a piece of software / hardware. Well, a modular synth is a piece of hardware...
 
One of my favourite tools in making music is to get complexity from simple sources. Here I employ three techniques for doing that: 
1) adding two simple sequences together, 
2) using envelopes to isolate certain notes by volume and timbral changes,
3) using two different delays, with one delay also passed through the second.  

What you hear initially is two oscillators, each playing one of the short sequences. As you can hear, they are different lengths and at different rates, so they overlap and move across each other.  I then gradually bring in a third oscillator playing the (quantised) sum of these two sequences, which is panned hard to the side. This sets up quite a nice three-part harmony.   I then bring in two envelopes to that third oscillator, one for volume and the other for timbre - these envelopes are also triggered at different rates, so that the notes that are being highlighted by each move around in the sequence to give more interesting rhythmic patterns. I then bring in an echo of this (panned hard to the opposite side). This is followed by another echo, which has a much longer delay time and which ping-pongs from side to side.  I then also feed the first echo into the second, setting up a more complex polyrhythm as each note from the sequence appears and reappears around the stereo field. I next bring in some reverb, first on the two original sequences, and then gradually on the other sequence and delays,   before fading out as the reverb is increased to give an effect of drifting away.  All that from one six note and one 8 note loop.

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto/1

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/1

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

llllllll.co/t/share-yer-knowledge-disquiet-junto-project-0242/4218

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

The image associated with this project is by Susanna Bolle, and is used thanks to a Creative Commons license:

flic.kr/p/8F9Jmz 

A Spirit Of Sharing (Disquiet0242)

Thank you to @autumn-drones for being a gracious host, a fine collaborator, and an amazing caretaker of synthetic technologies that would make your head spin. Check out his releases:

https://autumndrones.bandcamp.com/

So this week's Junto asks us to share a trick or technique that we utilize with a particular piece of hard/software. My response might be perceived as a willful disregarding of the spirit of this task, but I'm completely serious in my desire to share one of the most important aspects of music creation for me; namely face-to-face collaborations for real-time improvisations. I get such a boost of creative energy by working with other individuals who are consciously creating and responding to our shared space. The improvisational nature makes for an invigorating propulsion, and having another person helping to keep the figurative balls up in the air whilst juggling our way through means one can take more and more risks in development. Are their bumps and blemishes? Of course. But there are also moments approaching the sublime. 

Find someone to create with live. Have them come to your place. Go to their place. Take a few pieces of gear. Don't overthink it. Jump in and let it all hang out. Even if the results aren't up to your normal standards, I guarantee you'll learn something new about how you create. If you're fortunate enough to have access to a person like Timothy Stoneberg (aka autumn drones) all the better for you because you'll have even more opportunity to learn through explorations. 

This piece is the first one that we knocked out and we started it within minutes of sorting out our audio/control routings. Timothy's Cirklon was his co-brain in this, and they fed MIDI to my Two-Voice Pro. This made my instrument behave in a way that I'd not encountered before. There were certain things that I couldn't do that I normally can ... like octave shift the voices up and down with the press of a button. This meant I would be locked into a relatively narrow pitch range which was an unexpected  limitation. So I had to work to change things that I could control, like timbres. I also stepped out and did more raw oscillator tunings that I would normally do, sweeping the dials up and down to at least partially change the pitched zone. 

As the song proceeded, I found myself fatiguing of some of the repetitions, and I was keen to try introduce rhythmic variations. I began opening and closing the envelope stages more aggressively, and using the knobs more like I used to approach DJing with a mixer's crossfader while cutting and scratching. This opened up a whole other area for exploration. Finally, being synced to a shared global clock, I discovered I could still adjust my sequence's length anywhere from 1-16 steps, and uneven numbers would create interesting results when played against Timothy's chords, drums, and lead lines. 

I know this is ridiculously long contribution, but it really pushed us both to keep things developing, morphing, and changing as the nearly 40 minutes passed. 

This was the first time that we worked together and it won't be the last. Production, especially electronic production, can be really an isolated experience. I think that's why so many of us reach out and participate in groups like this. To feel a sense of camaraderie, and to share inspiration with each other. If you enjoy it online, you GOTTA' try it in the flesh. 

More on this 242nd weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Make (and annotate) a track that provides an example of a trick/skill/tip you want to share about a piece of musical software or hardware” — at:

http://disquiet.com/0242/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

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

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

http://llllllll.co/t/share-yer-knowledge-disquiet-junto-project-0242/4218



Video

Quilting Time At The Chime Factory (disquiet0242)

'sol lucet omnibus'
Track created for the Disquiet Junto Project. http://www.disquiet.com
0242 = Make (and annotate) a track that provides an example of a trick/skill/tip you want to share about a piece of musical software or hardware.

Background noises can really bring life in a digital world.
I often use them, sometimes imperceptibly… which is not the case in this track.
Here, there are nine different noises (samples from Sample Magic 'Analogue Noise') for the same piece played three times (voice loop : Marcel Duchamp talking about 'ready-made', synths : AudioRealism ABL2, AAS Chromaphone, KV331 SynthMaster).
Mixed in Logic Pro 9.

****

More on this 242nd Disquiet Junto project ("Make (and annotate) a track that provides an example of a trick/skill/tip you want to share about a piece of musical software or hardware") at:
http://disquiet.com/0242

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

Join the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:
http://disquiet.com/forums/

Associated image : Petrus Major.

Duchamp Background Noise [disquiet0242]

I don't really have any special knowledge or tricks.  Three years ago, after an economic hardship that I brought upon myself, I started working on sound design again after a long layoff.  During my time away, I sold almost all of my hardware---Arp 2600's, Korg MS-20, 909, 808, SH-101's---many great pieces.  All I really had to work with was a computer and the often-maligned program Acid.  So, I learned to create in a linear fashion with software for the first time.  This piece is a representation of what I learned from the experience.

Anthologie {Disquiet 0242}

This is a technique I've developed over the years and use as the basis of many a self-generative analog modular patch.

There are two main features:
a) Three LFOs each modulating the next in a loop - this produces widely varying rhythm and structure
b) A varying control voltage run through a three stage sample and hold shift register, so that the pitches of three sources change in a cascade

There is some additional "old skool" digital delay added in the middle for that "electronic music studio" sound.

Close up pictures of the patch: https://goo.gl/photos/cqBPChZWhmKhTCzp8

Video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/uMX5busmeuI

——
More on this 242nd weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Make (and annotate) a track that provides an example of a trick/skill/tip you want to share about a piece of musical software or hardware” — at:

http://disquiet.com/0242/


Modular 3XAOS - disquiet0242

My Music Videos - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc_iQ5JFusPt9EIwKIZ5rew
Disquiet 0242
Couldn't help it...had to use some samples and inspiration from Front 242, for obvious reasons :-)
The tricks here are probably new to no one, but they can be used to pretty good effect still. For the reverb fade ins you take your sound of choice, reverse it and add a nice longer reverb. Bounce that with the tail, reverse the bounce and add before original sound. They need to crossover, so sometimes it's easier to make a new track with same effects as original sound. The minor tip is copying regions to new tracks but using different eq's and effects to add depth and dimension, sometimes changing pan slightly helps even more.
The samples used were the vocals on Front 242-Headhunter where they conveniently count up numbers. The music is mine(based on their sound) and made with Cubasis, Patterning, Audioshare and Oceanaudio. I used the above techniques on vocals and Micrologue synths. @disquiet

More on this 242nd weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Make (and annotate) a track that provides an example of a trick/skill/tip you want to share about a piece of musical software or hardware” — at:

http://disquiet.com/0242/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

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

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

http://llllllll.co/t/share-yer-knowledge-disquiet-junto-project-0242/4218

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

Season of our Disquiet

Front...(disquiet0242)

For this weeks Junto I have two techniques I wanted to share. They are both in the same song and were part of a video project for One Track Mine. I used Brian Eno's Apollo album as my source. The video was inspired by the Rosetta project a few years back, the orbit and landing on a moving comet. I took a clip of the first few seconds of each track on the album and loaded them onto separate tracks in Cubasis. Then played them all at once so they meshed into a single mass of sound. Then that audio was imported into Sector, a circular randomizer/sequencer app, which I used to build into a simple sequence that was broken apart by randomized clips of the audio from the album, which are never the same clips during each playback. So essentially I wanted to share the technique of track stacking and randomized slicing of audio in a sequence. Nothing all that special or ground breaking but it was fun to do. The video can be seen here:

https://youtu.be/k8vhHNdYmC8

More on this 242nd weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Make (and annotate) a track that provides an example of a trick/skill/tip you want to share about a piece of musical software or hardware” — at:

http://disquiet.com/0242/3

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto/2

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/1

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

llllllll.co/t/share-yer-knowledge-disquiet-junto-project-0242/4218



Apollo [disquiet0242]

Disquiet Junto Project 0242: Share Yer Knowledge
The Assignment: Make (and annotate) a track that provides an example of a trick/skill/tip you want to share about a piece of musical software or hardware.

- In working with Ambient music and Sound Design, we are often creating drones and otherwise mangling samples. The method I wanted to show was that you don't need to just work with a single sound source (sample).
- Paul Stretch in Audacity, Ambient_v0.3, The Mangle, and on an iPad - iDensity, csGrain, and Borderlands examples of software I use for this purpose.
- I will often create a number of tracks e.g. 2 - 20 and mix them to my liking. Then I will do a mix down (hence the title - Vertical for multiple tracks and a mix down in LogicPro is a Bounce)and take the result and run it through any of the software listed above.
- The result can be a new track/sound/drone with much more character than a drone made from a single source. So instead of creating a bunch of drones and combining them, you are working in reverse order - combining a number of sounds/tracks and creating a drone from it.
- In this piece, I created four tracks: synth sequence, bass and two ambient sounds. I bounced those and then created two drone like tracks. The first was created by running the bounce through ambient_v0.3 (a more swishing sound) and the second using Paul Stretch (a more choral sound).
- The piece open with the 2nd drone and the 1st drone is brought in briefly twice with automation.
- The original four tracks can be heard by themselves at 0:37 - 0:47. Then the 1st drone is faded in - full at 1:04. Then the 2nd drone is faded in at 1:17.
- A couple of notes:
    - Most of the software mentioned will add harmonics so if your original bounce has tones in the 5Khz range, you may need to EQ the top end of some of your creations (as I did in this case), because the 15 - 20Kz range could get annoying.
    - This source ran through a I, bIII, V progression, but you can also just keep the source in a single note range, or whatever you want.
    - If there is something you don't like in the result, you can either EQ it (massage it) or go back to the original tracks and modify them to generate a different result.
    - Think big. There have been a couple times where I created a piece, and it just wasn't good enough. I took the whole mix down and ran it through something else and came out with a piece which was much better.

More on this 242nd weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Make (and annotate) a track that provides an example of a trick/skill/tip you want to share about a piece of musical software or hardware” — at:
http://disquiet.com/0242/3

More on the Disquiet Junto at:
http://disquiet.com/junto/2

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

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:
llllllll.co/t/share-yer-knowledge-disquiet-junto-project-0242/4218

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

The image associated with this project is by Susanna Bolle, and is used thanks to a Creative Commons license:
flic.kr/p/8F9Jmz

Vertical Bounce [disquiet0242]

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.