More on this 294th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Offline Status: Pay tribute to the late Bassel Khartabil by turning his spoken words into music. — at:

https://disquiet.com/0294/

Thanks to Niki Korth, Jon Phillips, and Barry Threw for encouraging this project. More on Bassel here:

http://freebassel.org

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-0294-offline-status/

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0294: Offline Status

date released. 18.08.2017

pure data

voice of Bassel Khartabil

I can't see you (disquiet0294)

Starting with the provided audio, I began the piece with the full audio clip, unmodified except for some reverb. I then added some piano (envelope and filter tweaked make it a little interesting) and some rhythm constructed from the audio. The piano plays a chord shifting from major to minor, and is then accompanied by a bell that plays the root (G#) but shifts in timing via a loop with an odd-numbered length. Done in Ableton Live and "performed" by turning clips on and off and shifting scenes, rather than constructing it.

More on this 294th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Offline Status: Pay tribute to the late Bassel Khartabil by turning his spoken words into music. — at:

https://disquiet.com/0294/1

Thanks to Niki Korth, Jon Phillips, and Barry Threw for encouraging this project. More on Bassel here:

http://freebassel.org

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-0294-offline-status/

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

disquiet0294 darksnap (for Bassel)

©All rights in this music belong to W:I:L
my contribution also to the benefit album in honour of Bassel Khartabil
"A Future in Commons - A Tribute to Bassel Khartabil"
https://afutureincommons.bandcamp.com/
Closing song for my imaginative album "Spinning Wheel"

More on this 294th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Offline Status: Pay tribute to the late Bassel Khartabil by turning his spoken words into music. — at:

https://disquiet.com/0294/

18.8.17 WI:L - Seven Seconds[disquiet0294]

First I record the beat from the two little noises at the beginning from the audio, after I scratched a bass from the audio, all that with samplr on IPad, played guitar and at the end the whole sample.

I Can´t See You, But I`m Not Blind (disquiet0294)

Disquiet Junto Project 0294: Offline Status
Pay tribute to the late Bassel Khartabil by turning his spoken words into music.
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0294-offline-status/8904

pulled the sample into protoplasm at different octaves then ran that through loop alienizer, ambience 0.1, podfarm2 with some delays, analog chorus, rotary drum + horn. 
used the rhythmic start and gradually had the speech coming in so that it would sound kinda natural when it comes in clean at the end

didnt use any other sounds.

o k (disquiet0294)

This past week was not an easy one in the US, nor in Barcelona (one of Suss Müsik’s favorite cities). We seem to exist today in a space between anticipation and the mundane. We fear that a catastrophe that may never occur will cause our demise, but the height of anxiety is in the waiting. As Richard Wright wrote in his classic novel Native Son: “There was but a long stretch of time that was very short, and then — the end.”

The sampled quote by Bassel Khartabil is a greeting followed quickly by an apology. “Hello I’m sorry,” sang Michael Stipe in the late 80’s. Suss Müsik imagines that most interactions contain at least some amount of regret for what might have been. We like to hope that times of crisis bring about a cycle of affirmation, but that’s not always how things work out. Bassel’s life was too short; the wait for his release took too long. Cruelly, both ended in a single event.

For this short piece, Suss Müsik interpreted Bassel’s vocal inflections as a form of notation. Early in the sampled recording, one can detect the plop plop that an Apple MacBook Pro makes when the sound volume is adjusted. We replicated this rhythm and used it to form base tempo. We then built upon this spine with bits of binaural cello and phased piano polyrhythms. 

The piece is titled Fatra, which means “interval” in Arabic.

More on this 294th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Offline Status: Pay tribute to the late Bassel Khartabil by turning his spoken words into music. — at:

https://disquiet.com/0294/

Thanks to Niki Korth, Jon Phillips, and Barry Threw for encouraging this project. More on Bassel here:

http://freebassel.org

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-0294-offline-status/

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

Fatra [Disquiet0294]

I Can’t See you
Performed by DD in Paris, France, August 18th 2017.

Solo electric guitar performance, using real time FX (only chorus, reverbs and delays) most notably some peculiars reverbs from my Line 6 pedal board (Particles, etc) and a very long Lexicon random hall (38sec)
No Synths, no overdubs.  

A bit too long perhaps? But wanted to keep the mantra-like repetitive feel  so here the whole performance. 
The sentence I Can’t Hear You comes from Bassel’s spoken voice snippet and from some free (online) text-to-voice conversion tools.

Created for:
Disquiet Junto Project 0294: Offline Status

Pay tribute to the late Bassel Khartabil by turning his spoken words into music.
Download an audio file, just seven seconds, of Bassel speaking. In it you’ll hear his voice, as well as the lo-fi glory of mundane Internet communication, and some beeping inherent in everyday digital tools. You’ll use all this audio in your own track...


Photo by Clem Onojeghuo

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-0294-offline-status/

@disquiet

*A disquiet Junto compilation inspired by Bassel Khartabil is now available:
 https://afutureincommons.bandcamp.com/
sit pax in morte inveniam te,(disquiet0294)
This week we knew the story and where it ended. After many failed attempts with meaningless results, I settled on Bassel’s voice and cello. This follows a similar note structure of my earlier piece Two Square Metres musically, but with a cello as the only instrument. The audio of Bassel was played live in iPulseret and held at the last word, then slowly played backwards for the remainder. This was brought into Cubasis with some parts being layered. The cello part was played live in FingerFiddle, with a short delay and reverb later added in Cubasis. A bit of reverb and eq overall finished the piece. The truncated ending seemed harsh, but after different trials with fade outs, it just fit, for better or worse. The title is my poor attempt at latin, meaning ‘may you find peace in death’.   
More on this 294th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Offline Status: Pay tribute to the late Bassel Khartabil by turning his spoken words into music. — at:

https://disquiet.com/0294/

Thanks to Niki Korth, Jon Phillips, and Barry Threw for encouraging this project. More on Bassel here:

http://freebassel.org

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-0294-offline-status/

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

Season of our Disquiet

Sit Pax In Morte Inveniam Te,(disquiet0294)

**Production Notes**

Whereas it’s relatively easy for me to do ambient music, regular composing is really something I have to learn the hard way. I wanted to get this one right, so I took some more time for it.    

I used a M4L tool (J74 Progressive) to get some inspirations for chords and arps in B minor. Extracted some lines bass and piano phrases, lamellae, strings and brass parts. 

I added a vocoder to Bassels Khartabil voice and tamed the frequencies a bit. Then I started isolating phrases like „I can’t see you“ or „I’m afraid“ from the source material. 

The most complicated part was to stay within the two minutes range. It ends abrupt - and we all know why. 

* * * 

**Disquiet Junto Project 0294: Offline Status

Pay tribute to the late Bassel Khartabil by turning his spoken words into music.

Note: Tracks from this project, and from previous Bassel-related Junto projects, may be played on the Over the Edge radio show on August 24th.

Step 1: This is the second of two consecutive projects we’re undertaking, following the news of Bassel Khartabil’s death. (If you’re new to the Junto, Bassel was an open-source coder who did a lot of work in CGI before being imprisoned in Syria. Word of his execution just recently became public. This is the sixth project we’ve done about him over the years.)

Step 2: Download the following short snippet of an audio file, just seven seconds, of Bassel speaking. In it you’ll hear his voice, as well as the lofi glory of mundane Internet communication, and some beeping inherent in everyday digital tools. You’ll use all this audio in your own track for this project. It’s on dropbox.com.

Step 3: Listen closely to Bassel’s voice and the other sounds that make up the file from Step 2.

Step 4: Record a piece of music that either begins with or ends with the full audio of Bassel’s voice. Use your own original instrumentation as well as elements extracted from the audio file as part of your composition to either extend from or lead up to the provided audio.

Five More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: If your hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to include the project tag “disquiet0294” (no spaces) 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: In the following discussion thread at llllllll.co please consider posting your track:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0294-offline-status/

Step 4: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 5: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Deadline: This project’s deadline is 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, August 21, 2017. This project was posted in early evening, California time, on Thursday, August 17, 2017.

Length: Keep your piece to under two minutes.

(…)

More on this 294th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Offline Status: Pay tribute to the late Bassel Khartabil by turning his spoken words into music. — at:

https://disquiet.com/0294/

Thanks to Niki Korth, Jon Phillips, and Barry Threw for encouraging this project. More on Bassel here:

http://freebassel.org

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-0294-offline-status/

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

So Sorry [disquiet0294]

This week's Junto pays tribute to the late Bassel Khartabil by turning his spoken words into music.

I took the sample and listened through, selecting out interesting blocks of sound. The two large gaps with no speech both sounded quite like heartbeats, which I felt would serve as a reminder of his life, and conversely by their absence his death. To this I added a sparse arrangement of percussive sounds all taken from the sample.  
No other sound sources were used.  I found the 'hello' part of the speech sounded quite questioning when given a large reverb, and gained a new and more disturbing meaning when paired with the 'I can't see you'.  I had hoped to make a more uplifting track that celebrated his life and work, but in truth this music reflects the sadness and anger I feel at what is just a horrible situation.

More on this 294th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Offline Status: Pay tribute to the late Bassel Khartabil by turning his spoken words into music. — at:

https://disquiet.com/0294/3

Thanks to Niki Korth, Jon Phillips, and Barry Threw for encouraging this project. More on Bassel here:

http://freebassel.org

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-0294-offline-status/

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

I Can't See You (Disquiet0294)

Live Octatrack performance using extensive resampling and modulation.

disquiet0294 - For Bassel

Looped/ stretched/filtered audio, plus banjos. The banjo is tuned as it happened to be when I picked it up. Open strings plus two fingered. notes in rough imitation of the source audio's last two words, "see you"
Source audio at http://bit.ly/2vQ80Lm

More on this 294th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Offline Status: Pay tribute to the late Bassel Khartabil by turning his spoken words into music. — at:

https://disquiet.com/0294/

Thanks to Niki Korth, Jon Phillips, and Barry Threw for encouraging this project. More on Bassel here:

http://freebassel.org

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-0294-offline-status/

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

Hello Everybody And Sorry I Can't See You [Disquiet0294]

I felt the original sample of Bassel's voice (heard unaltered at the beginning of the piece) was sad to listen to, so I wanted to take his words and turn them into a positive, if still melancholy, message. 

I ran the original mp3 through noise reduction, which cleaned it up a bit, making it easier to edit and then stretched the length of the words in Ableton.

I thought about how his legacy and voice will continue in a digital space, and rearranged his words to “I Can See Everybody”.

I loaded the sample back into Ableton using a vocoder plugin, creating the melody around the new phrase and mixed it with the original voice. Then I accompanied it with some sparse synth and piano background.

**

Step 1: This is the second of two consecutive projects we’re undertaking, following the news of Bassel Khartabil’s death. (If you’re new to the Junto, Bassel was an open-source coder who did a lot of work in CGI before being imprisoned in Syria. Word of his execution just recently became public. This is the sixth project we’ve done about him over the years.)

Step 2: Download the following short snippet of an audio file, just seven seconds, of Bassel speaking. In it you’ll hear his voice, as well as the lofi glory of mundane Internet communication, and some beeping inherent in everyday digital tools. You’ll use all this audio in your own track for this project. It’s on dropbox.com.

Step 3: Listen closely to Bassel’s voice and the other sounds that make up the file from Step 2.

Step 4: Record a piece of music that either begins with or ends with the full audio of Bassel’s voice. Use your own original instrumentation as well as elements extracted from the audio file as part of your composition to either extend from or lead up to the provided audio.

More on this 294th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Offline Status: Pay tribute to the late Bassel Khartabil by turning his spoken words into music at:
https://disquiet.com/0294/

Thanks to Niki Korth, Jon Phillips, and Barry Threw for encouraging this project. More on Bassel here:

http://freebassel.org

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

I Can See Everybody [disquiet0294]

As I listened to Bassel's voice, the words that came to mind immediately were "lost in time" and "forever" and "space communications." I immediately saw images of giant dish antennas in some Nevada desert devoid of people or animals. Just radio hiss & static and the occasional gust of wind & dust. Long after civilization has collapsed and disappeared and we've all gone, all that'll be left of us will be recorded tones and notes and voices on radio and mp3 files.

The piece begins with Bassel's recorded message. I sampled the entirety of his message and set it to self-sequence at set intervals throughout the track (I used Reaper). The blips and bleeps and blorps are those intervals, playing, via modulation using the Madrona Labs Virta. The main instrument playing is an acoustic bass (created using Madron Labs Kaivo). In the background too, the "volume increase/decrease" sound is used as a reference point/tempo. It's supposed to signify Bassel forever pressing the "volume increase" button on the laptop because he cannot hear us. And the volume increase also never comes to an end for us, as we will never be able to hear his voice again. This is all we have left of Bassel. There is a third instrument too--I used a self-generating tone machine (made using Madrona Labs Aalto) and modulated via pitch control.

I think it is important to embrace the lofi nature of the recording as life is full of "lofi" moments that we cannot erase or remove or make to sound clean and pretty. If anything, the lofi sounds and hiss and muffle are there to fill the empty spots and broken moments. It's the GLUE of life.

disquiet0294 anhedonia everything

I didn’t add any other sounds or instruments. Everything is made from Bassel’s voice, using Paulstretch and Audacity effects.


----------------------------------------------

Disquiet Junto Project 0294: Offline Status

Bassel Khartabil 22 May 1981 – 3 October 2015

Pay tribute to the late Bassel Khartabil by turning his spoken words into music.

Note: Tracks from this project, and from previous Bassel-related Junto projects, may be played on the Over the Edge radio show on August 24th.

Step 1: This is the second of two consecutive projects we’re undertaking, following the news of Bassel Khartabil’s death. (If you’re new to the Junto, Bassel was an open-source coder who did a lot of work in CGI before being imprisoned in Syria. Word of his execution just recently became public. This is the sixth project we’ve done about him over the years.)

Step 2: Download the following short snippet of an audio file, just seven seconds, of Bassel speaking. In it you’ll hear his voice, as well as the lofi glory of mundane Internet communication, and some beeping inherent in everyday digital tools. You’ll use all this audio in your own track for this project. It’s on dropbox.com.

Step 3: Listen closely to Bassel’s voice and the other sounds that make up the file from Step 2.

Step 4: Record a piece of music that either begins with or ends with the full audio of Bassel’s voice. Use your own original instrumentation as well as elements extracted from the audio file as part of your composition to either extend from or lead up to the provided audio.

More on this 294th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Offline Status: Pay tribute to the late Bassel Khartabil by turning his spoken words into music. — at:

https://disquiet.com/0294/

Thanks to Niki Korth, Jon Phillips, and Barry Threw for encouraging this project. More on Bassel here:

http://freebassel.org

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

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

I Can’t See You [Disquiet0294]

This weeks Disquiet was to make use of a Skype recording of Bassel Khartabil, a software developer murdered by the Bashar regime in Syria.

Rusty disquiet0294

Thanks for another inspirational project this week.

I opted for using Bassel's statement for the end, building a track with a rather maximal approach.

Starting with recording a simple guitar line on my ES-330, I added layers of bass, micro samples and variations and ended up with something rather melancholic but funky.

All put together in Ableton.

Hope you like it!

More on this 294th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Offline Status: Pay tribute to the late Bassel Khartabil by turning his spoken words into music. — at:
disquiet.com/0294/3

Thanks to Niki Korth, Jon Phillips, and Barry Threw for encouraging this project. More on Bassel here:
freebassel.org

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

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

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:
llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-pr…294-offline-status/

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

Offline Status [disquiet0294]

all sounds except the shimmering bell like sound are made from the short file, Bassel´s voice.



More on this 294th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Offline Status: Pay tribute to the late Bassel Khartabil by turning his spoken words into music. — at:
disquiet.com/0294/3

For Bassel >>><<< disquiet0294

Disquiet Junto Project 0294: Offline Status

In memory of Bassel Khartabil, born in Damascus in 1981, who was executed while in captivity in his native Syria. Bassel's positivity and open, humble nature is the inspiration. In the worst possible circumstance, he remained steadfast, for himself and for those who care for him. For me, he is the public face of strength and courage, in a world that can be dominated by malevolence. His work as a developer for Creative Commons projects, his contributions to archaelogical presevation thru the medium of modern technology, and his advocacy of an available internet for all, all represent the type of man Bassel was, Bassel is.

Lots of stuff used here. Bassel's spoken voice from the Disquiet Junto project and processed for clarity, the wonderful and free DVS Saxophone VST, TAL Uno LX, a sample of waves at a strand, and lots of effects, including FogConvolver, Eos, Crystallizer, BlackHole, and the wonderful FractureXT and Permut8.

Photo by Joi Ito - www.flickr.com/photos/joi/4670781482, CC BY 2.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20155366

Apologize for nothing, Bassel.

All sounds either Bassel or guitar. 

Underlying bed is reversed "Amazing Grace" mixed with three tracks of Bassel's phrase ~13x stretched: One track is him harmonized and pitched down to F#; One is him disambiguated as noise; One is him just straight up sloooowed doowwwn. 

Floated over the affair with an eBow.

This track marks my 69th Disquiet Junto contribution.
https://soundcloud.com/thereflectors/sets/disquietwesty

My studio suffered an irreparable crash last week while attempting the first of these two most recent #freebassel projects. Kind creative forces graced me, however, with a few workarounds and a long-overdue seat kick into a more current-era workflow. I hold onto the thought that all my tech disruption (forced unwinding and time-zero reconfiguration of twenty+ years of habits) would make Bassel, well, just laugh. I hope that laughing's all he's doing now.

This is the fourth track I've recorded in honor of Bassel. The first couple made it into their respective Junto weeks:
https://soundcloud.com/thereflectors/intransitive-disapperance?in=thereflectors/sets/disquietwesty
https://soundcloud.com/thereflectors/freebassel-disquiet0202?in=thereflectors/sets/disquietwesty

One project stalled in the concept phase, but instead of letting it languish, I fleshed it out into something 100% different than intended (with lyrics!), and it became a Dylan-esque acerbic romp through a world refusing to change:
https://thereflectors.bandcamp.com/track/lonesome-faraway-sounds

This track here, though, was the first one of these for Bassel I recorded knowing he will never hear it. Killed the urgency and upped the poignancy, I guess. Wish I was less numb about all this.

In the end, pessimism breaks people quicker, and with more permanence, than fear. The greatest weapon used against free-thought warriors such as Bassel is not to make them scared - it's to make them feel alone in their fight.

Your being here, though, listening, proves he's not alone.

Peace.

RIG
Guitar: Peekamoose Custom Workhorse M2

Pedalboard: SmallSound/BigSound Sparkle Motion -> SS/BS Mini F*ck -> tc electronic Flashback Delay -> EHX Superego (Send/Receive: EQD Arpanoid -> EHX POG2 -> Diamond Tremolo) -> EHX Freeze -> EQD Grand Orbiter -> EQD Afterneath -> Strymon blueSky Reverb -> Pigtronix Infinity Looper

Amp: Fender SuperChamp X2 (set to vintage Princeton Reverb voice)

Hardware:
MOTU 828mk2 -> MacBook Pro
Windows PC (DIY)

Software:
Paulstretch (standalone, Windows 10)
Dropbox
Harrison Mixbus 4 (DAW and mastering)

PROJECT: 
Disquiet Junto Project 0294: Offline Status

Pay tribute to the late Bassel Khartabil by turning his spoken words into music.

More on this 294th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Offline Status: Pay tribute to the late Bassel Khartabil by turning his spoken words into music. — at:
https://disquiet.com/0294/

Thanks to Niki Korth, Jon Phillips, and Barry Threw for encouraging this project. More on Bassel here:
http://freebassel.org

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-0294-offline-status/

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

sun child [disquiet0294-offlinestatus]

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.