More on this 309th weekly Disquiet Junto project (Military Matrix Mixer: Mix music according to a military standard for relative message clarity) at:

https://disquiet.com/0309/

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-0309-military-matrix-mixer/

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

Image associated with this project is a detail of the cover of the FM 24-6 Radio Operator’s Manual, Army Ground Forces, June 1945, courtesy of the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/Fm24-6

Disquiet Junto Project 0309: Military Matrix Mixer

went from high signal strength to high readability
focus, clarity --> power, bass, noise
harmonica sample and guitar fx

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Disquiet Junto Project 0309: Military Matrix Mixer
Mix music according to a military standard for relative message clarity.

Step 1: Familiarize yourself with the concept of “five by five,” in which five “readability” levels and five “signal strength” levels are aligned in a matrix. Messages are rated from 1 to 5 in readability (unreadable, readable now and then, readable but with difficulty, readable, perfectly readable) and from 1 to 5 in signal strength (scarcely perceptible, weak, fairly good, good, very good).

signal to noise -disquiet0309-

53135 (disquiet0309)

halF teN [disquiet0309]

5. Mátrix [Disquiet 0309]

[disquiet0309] kick the gong around

I used these “five by five” matrix mixer combinations as a sort of guidance — readability + signal strength:

1.	perfectly readable + very good
2.	readable + good
3.	readable but with difficulty + fairly good 
4.	now and then + weak
5.	unreadable + scarcely perceptible
6.	unreadable + very good
7.	now and then + good
8.	readable but with difficulty + fairly good
9.	readable + weak
10.	perfectly readable + scarcely perceptible

Configured a sequence on my Moog Mother 32 and recorded it live while manipulating effects (my first foray into recording like this). Added delays, beat repeat, EQ, and compression in Ableton.

Needed some noise.

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More on this 309th weekly Disquiet Junto project (Military Matrix Mixer: Mix music according to a military standard for relative message clarity) at:

https://disquiet.com/0309/

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-0309-military-matrix-mixer/

Advisors (disquiet0309 Military Matrix)

5x5(disquiet0309)

(warning: extreme volume changes!)

The assignment was to create a piece of music that referenced the concept of “five by five,” in which five “readability” levels and five “signal strength” levels are aligned in a matrix.

I decided to take the concept kind of literally, taking a spoken word "broadcast" and marring it with volume changes. Six "changes" seemed about right, so then I tried to find a poem short enough to read and process six times in this piece.

I ended up finding an old writing exercise - I only had the results of the exercise, not the prompt, so I have no idea where these words came from. I think the challenge was to take six random words and use them in a poem.

I read it six times in a row. From there, I used envelopes to make six "variations" on this spoken-word theme, according to the matrix.
* Increasing volume, increasing "noise"
* Same
* Random changes in signal strength and noise
* Increasing volume, increasing "noise"
* Decreasing volume, decreasing noise
* Decreasing volume, random changes in noise

At first I mapped this all out to make a magic square, but I realized I would end up with linear movements, and that's boring. So then I used a random number generator to put me at random points on the x and y axes of volume and noise.

To get noise, I ran the recording of the poem through a vocoder, using a glitchy jam session from years ago.

That felt a little boring, so then I ran it through SPEAR to figure out any pitches, and I wrote a piano part based on the pitches that showed up.

After that I felt like the glitchy jam session was a little too familiar to me (I've used this particular recording more than a few times), so I tried to also feed in some highly processed vocals into the mix.

That felt, conceptually, a little better (voice interrupting voice), but then I lost the noise that inspired the piano accompaniment. So I blended the voice in with the noise.

Not sure this is done (or particularly listenable?), but it got me writing again after a dry spell and made me challenge myself, which is good!

* * * * *
More on this 309th weekly Disquiet Junto project (Military Matrix Mixer: Mix music according to a military standard for relative message clarity) at:

https://disquiet.com/0309/

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-0309-military-matrix-mixer/

Party-Line Politeness (disquiet0309)

For Disquiet Junto Project 0309 -

First of all, matrix mixers are cool things! I could imagine what one was, and yes, it appeals to me! Matrices and mixers - what's not to love?! I especially love the simplicity of the idea, and what's possible.

So I used five instrument tracks for this Junto, and mixed them together - using five sends (Echobode, Eos, Antresol, Toraverb, and Corpus). Four Chromaphone tracks, and one Protoplasm, for the instruments. The project is just five clips (plus the drum beat I tapped out on the default 606 kit that comes with Ableton), but I hope the variations keep it musically interesting.

Hope you enjoy...

The Mediator's Watch (disquiet0309)

Numbers Station(disquiet0309)
Massive quick and dirty. Had slightly larger plans for this week, but it came down to the final hours and I had little to use. So out with the 5 minute musical approach and in with the strictly radio slant. A recent conversation regarding cold war radio led me here, and I had already started making patches in iVCS3, the ‘Putney’ EMS VCS3 emulator for iOS. Using AUM mixer, two channels from the Putney and one channel from Zeeon were routed into Cubasis and recorded live. Zeeon provided the morse code signal and both the static and pattern noise were from the Putney, one as a inter-app and the other a AU3. The last track was recorded in iVoxel for a disguised code number voice, hopefully adding to the cold war feel. 55 seconds seemed almost too long, but I think the relation and time to evolve through the 5 signal strengths justified the pain :-)

More on this 309th weekly Disquiet Junto project (Military Matrix Mixer: Mix music according to a military standard for relative message clarity) at:

https://disquiet.com/0309/2

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/2

Subscribe to project announcements here:

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

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0309-military-matrix-mixer/1

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

Season of our Disquiet

Numbers Station(disquiet0309)

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.