Disquiet Junto Project 0550: Abrupt Probability
The Assignment: Make music based on a chance graphic score.

This project is the first of three that are being done in collaboration with the 2022 Musikfestival Bern, which will be held in Switzerland from September 7 through 11. The topic this year is “unvermittelt,” which is a little tricky to translate. Literally it’s “unmediated,” but it can also mean “sudden,” “abrupt,” or “immediate.”

We are working at the invitation of Tobias Reber, an early Junto participant, who is in charge of the educational activities of the festival. This is the fourth year in a row that the Junto has collaborated with Musikfestival Bern.

Select recordings resulting from these three Disquiet Junto projects will be played and displayed throughout the festival.

Also, if you post your graphic score (see below) for this week’s project, it will be considered for display at the festival, either in public viewing box or in the Cage Room.

Step 1: Consider the nature of everyday randomness.

Step 2: Devise a situation (thrown coins, drained tea leaves, patterns in condensation, etc.) that depicts randomness visually.

Step 3: Take a photo of the chance-inducing scenario you decided upon in Step 2.

Step 4: Edit the photo from Step 3 to create a graphic score.

Step 5: Create an original piece of music that is an interpretation of the score you created in Step 4.

Also: When posting the track, describe a bit of your thinking and process.

. . .

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, July 18, 2022, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, July 14, 2022.

. . .

More on this 550th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Abrupt Probability (The Assignment: Make music based on a chance graphic score) — at: https://disquiet.com/0550/

Thanks to Tobias Reber and Musikfestival Bern for collaboration on this project. More on the festival at:

https://www.musikfestivalbern.ch/
https://www.instagram.com/musikfestival_bern
https://www.facebook.com/musikfestivalbern

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-0550-abrupt-probability/

Disquiet Junto Project 0550: Abrupt Probability

This piece is a response to the 550’th prompt from Disquiet Junto  - this time a collaboration between Tobias Reber from Musikfestival Bern.

I’ve taken four images, displaying the randomness in nature - boards from a deck, a flower, the sky and 3 pigeons on a roof, and enhanced, extracted and encoded random figures from it. (See the accompanying image). 

The resulting sequences of numbers are used either as rhythmical or pitch “notes” - and everything is scaled around A Super-Locrian scale.  Four tracks are thus constructed (theme, bass, pads and bd) around these encodings.

I’ve added small fx and extra “pulsing rhythms” for interest.

More on this 550th weekly Disquiet Junto project – Abrupt Probability (The Assignment: Make music based on a chance graphic score) – at: https://disquiet.com/0550/

Thanks to Tobias Reber and Musikfestival Bern for collaboration on this project. More on the festival at:

https://www.musikfestivalbern.ch/

https://www.instagram.com/musikfestival_bern

https://www.facebook.com/musikfestivalbern

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

disquiet0550 - n8ure

disquiet0550: As I walked around the side of the house, this lily blossom was looking directly at me. It caught me by surprise, and threw my orientation askew. I captured with my camera, brought it into SnapSeed and mirrored the image.  When I read Marc's description for this project, this image and this happenstance - this abrupt probability - is all I could visualize. The accompanying track is inspired by the image and the happenstance. I used a simple percussion track, a classic Wurlitzer piano track, and two guitar tracks representing the petals of the flower.

Brain Wafers Disquiet0550 Abrupt Probability

Inspired by the image posted on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/p/CgCrL52rd4k/

More on this 550th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Abrupt Probability (The Assignment: Make music based on a chance graphic score) — at: https://disquiet.com/0550/

Thanks to Tobias Reber and Musikfestival Bern for collaboration on this project. More on the festival at:

https://www.musikfestivalbern.ch/
https://www.instagram.com/musikfestival_bern
https://www.facebook.com/musikfestivalbern

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-0550-abrupt-probability/

burlap haft

halF abrupT [disquiet0550]

There was an incident at Suss Müsik headquarters this past week. During the overnight hours, a bird appeared to have met its abrupt demise as the result of an encounter with another animal—a cat or raccoon, perhaps. Nature is cruel and often mysterious. “[It is] in the womb of nature,” wrote the artist Paul Klee, “at the source of creation, where the secret key to all lies guarded.”

Dunno about that … but whatever took place, Suss Müsik’s porch was the stage for an ornithological unvermittelt featuring a random arrangement of blood, feathers, and at least one disembodied talon. Darwin might have described the scene as one species demonstrating “injurious variations” over another; in other words, natural selection at work. For Suss Müsik, it was an unexpected opportunity to test the garden hose’s pressure-jet feature.

(Apologies to squeamish readers. There’s no way to describe this creative process without a few gory details).

For this week’s project, Suss Müsik began with a photograph of the debris described above. The image was rendered for high-contrast in order to isolate the lines of the porch floor and placement of organic matter. The blood splatters comprised a basic three-part chord structure. Ten feather clumps were divided into two sets of five; one was used to design an arpeggio for piano, the other as a motif for grain synth and second piano using particle refactoring.

The piece is titled Tatort, which translates to “crime scene” in German. It was recorded quickly to 8-track in July 2022. The bird deserved a better epitaph. 

All images visible at the Disquiet Junto project discussion: Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0550-abrupt-probability/

More on this 550th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Abrupt Probability (The Assignment: Make music based on a chance graphic score) — at: https://disquiet.com/0550/

Thanks to Tobias Reber and Musikfestival Bern for collaboration on this project. More on the festival at:

https://www.musikfestivalbern.ch/
https://www.instagram.com/musikfestival_bern
https://www.facebook.com/musikfestivalbern

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-0550-abrupt-probability/

Tatort [Disquiet0550]

first I took a black piece of paper and sprinkled ash on it
then I took a picture of it
I drew four lines
decided on four tone generation
determined the x/y parameters
then I recoded

the result was immediate
have fun listening

search for coincidence(disquiet0550)

1. The starting point was a photo of random rust patterns on a piece of wreckage found on a local beach (part of which is the cover picture of the track).
2. From this image I generated a rolling monochrome video sequence to serve as a pictorial score.
3. The musical interpretation is an electronic sequence created in Pure Data & edited in Audacity. The creation of both video & sound  involved elements of randomness or indeterminacy.
4. I also combined all the elements into a video which can be accessed at: https://vimeo.com/730561794
or: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjmTgE1DI7M
More on this 550th weekly Disquiet Junto project – Abrupt Probability (The Assignment: Make music based on a chance graphic score) – at: https://disquiet.com/0550/

Thanks to Tobias Reber and Musikfestival Bern for collaboration on this project. More on the festival at:

https://www.musikfestivalbern.ch/

https://www.instagram.com/musikfestival_bern 1

https://www.facebook.com/musikfestivalbern

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-0550-ab

Score (disquiet0550)

More on this 550th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Abrupt Probability (The Assignment: Make music based on a chance graphic score) — at: https://disquiet.com/0550/

Thanks to Tobias Reber and Musikfestival Bern for collaboration on this project. More on the festival at:

https://www.musikfestivalbern.ch/
https://www.instagram.com/musikfestival_bern
https://www.facebook.com/musikfestivalbern

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-0550-abrupt-probability/

Song From The Junk Drawer (disquiet0550)

Graphic score based on interpretation of drained tea leaves.

Patch on my modular system is built on a repeating sequence of 8 triggers from which the pitch is also derived (Turing Machine) - on/off state initialised from the graphic score shown. Sequence flips in and out of double speed (intrinsic to patch, not part of score).

3 latching gates (gt1, gt2 and gt3) and two control voltages (cv1 and cv2)are used to control various parameters of the patch. These are also as shown in the graphic score and determined by arrangement of tea leaves.

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Music Thing Modular Turing Machine, Control
Erica Synths Black Hole DSP
Addac Manual Latches

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More on this 550th weekly Disquiet Junto project – Abrupt Probability (The Assignment: Make music based on a chance graphic score) – at: https://disquiet.com/0550/

Thanks to Tobias Reber and Musikfestival Bern for collaboration on this project. More on the festival at:

https://www.musikfestivalbern.ch/ 1

https://www.instagram.com/musikfestival_bern 1

https://www.facebook.com/musikfestivalbern

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-0550-abrupt-probability/

disquiet0550 - tea leaves

This track was inspired by the Disquiet Junto Project 0550 on finding a score for a track in the random pattern of nature.
Looking into a bowl of my favourite muesli (https://www.hubermuehle.de/shop/de/Traum-Muesli-Mischung-500g.html) I was intrigued to interpret one strip of cereals as score of a track. Each different ingredient is represented by a sound.
Then I associated the cereals with the pebbles in the bed of a brook and added a field-recording I made during a hike (soon available on freesound). 

More on this 550th weekly Disquiet Junto project – Abrupt Probability (The Assignment: Make music based on a chance graphic score) – at: https://disquiet.com/0550/

Thanks to Tobias Reber and Musikfestival Bern for collaboration on this project. More on the festival at:

https://www.musikfestivalbern.ch/ 1

https://www.instagram.com/musikfestival_bern 1

https://www.facebook.com/musikfestivalbern

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-0550-abrupt-probability/

A Brook Ripples Over A Bed Of Muesli (Disquiet0550)

More on this 550th weekly Disquiet Junto project – Abrupt Probability (The Assignment: Make music based on a chance graphic score) – at: https://disquiet.com/0550/

Thanks to Tobias Reber and Musikfestival Bern for collaboration on this project. More on the festival at:

https://www.musikfestivalbern.ch/

https://www.instagram.com/musikfestival_bern

https://www.facebook.com/musikfestivalbern

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-0550-abrupt-probability/

Missing Sign (disquiet0550)

[disquiet0550] The Rocks The Sea And A Printer Gone Astray

I recently read the essay "Ritual and its Consequences" by Adam Seligman and Robert Weller. In their typology of rituals, there is an "aleatoric" ritual, characterized by affirming roles (the diviner, the oracle, the composer, ...) and at the same time subverting control of the self. So I conceived of a little "partitura divination" ritual which puts control over the outcome to a tool:

0. I contemplated a little on "everyday randomness" as suggested.
1. I chose a Lovecraft themed Tarot deck – part funny, part fishy, part creepy. 
2. I drew one card for the title and theme of the track: 6 of swords. The set of Swords tells the story of "The Dunwich Horror" in this deck. Unfortunately, the minor arcana aren't named, but the card depicts (I guess) a midnight summoning by Wilbur Whateley and his grandfather. So the theme is clear and the title will be "Grampas Curse".
3. Next, I shuffled and drew 2 cards for an A and B part of the track. A: Page of Pentacles (story: "At the Mountains of Madness"), B: Wheel of Fortune (X). 
4. For each of these, I drew 4 cards to determine an 8-bar loop each, so every card stands for 2 bars of music. 
5. The result: a visual, random score which can be interpreted in many ways.

I wanted every card to represent a musical idea or element, so here comes: 

- I will call the top level card, the 6 of daggers/swords, as L1; the next lower level cards, Page of Pentacles and Wheel of Fortune, as L2; and the 8 cards in the lowest order, L3.
- L1 defines the overall feel of the song. Moreover, as a constant element, I will have a common element during the whole song – a bass drone playing the root note.
- L2
	- The track (and A-part) will be in C minor (meaning Aeolian).
	- The B-part might be in Eb major (Ionian). Why? Well, first off all because it's common. And then because the Wheel of Fortune is trump 10, and the 10th scale degree is the third an octave above. (Honestly, this reasoning came to me much later than the decision, so it is kinda random. But fitting. Pure Magic!!!)
- L3
	- Each card stands for 2 bars of one chord (which may be extended differently). 
	- Since Aces in Tarot represent the root of an element, well, yeah, that's gonna be a I chord. Major arcana are spicy or borrowed chords. Minor arcana will just give us the scale degree.
	- So we have an A-part consisting of ii°-III-i-bii° and a B-part consisting of [X]-[Y]-ii-I. For X and Y I thought about a dominant chain, so it will be III7-VI7-ii-I (= V7/V7/ii-V7/ii-ii-I). 
- (L2) Page of Pentacles: A horrified man tries to rescue his research from an Elder Thing. The monster is revealed and now it's fight or flight. So we need some action in the A-part.
- (L2) Wheel of Fortune: Two dragons crawl about a wheel consisting of 8 eyes. (I think in most Tarot decks it's a Sphinx and two Egyptian Gods.) The wheel keeps spinning, in ever changing stasis, so we need a less energetic B-part.
- (L3)
	- 9 of Cups: an Egyptian deity moves in a disturbing dance. We'll work with diminished.
	- 3 of Cups: Seems like a feast, but not with too many participants ... So we'll make this an augmented instead of a major chord.
	- Ace of Swords: The root of all evil ...? This has to represent Yog-Sothoth, after all. A minor b9 seems in order.
	- Temperance: Alright, this is easy. Obed Marsh sells his community to fish people. Got it. A diminished chord from a different scale? The only thing is: A more stable chord would be nice, since this is the fruition of Obed Marsh's plan ... 
	- The Stars: Keziah Mason and Brown Jenkins fill a sacrificial bowl with blood. This is suspenseful; a minor Major7 chord? 
	- Judgement: Very thrilling - a midnight summoning, again. (There were a lot of these in the 20's.) This is a dominant to our ii-chord.
	- 2 of Cups: Our ii-chord, finally. 
	- Ace of Pentacles: The root of the B-Part, so it's a I-chord. Stable, not altered, just a plain major chord.

Grampas Curse disquiet0550

for Disquiet Junto Project 0550: Abrupt Probability
The Assignment: Make music based on a chance graphic score.

The process: 
found this random pile of objects, looked at them and tried to express what I see using synths and sample arrangements.
Partly it is the material, the angle or the imagined sound of those objects falling.

_____
More on this 550th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Abrupt Probability (The Assignment: Make music based on a chance graphic score) — at: https://disquiet.com/0550/

Thanks to Tobias Reber and Musikfestival Bern for collaboration on this project. More on the festival at:

https://www.musikfestivalbern.ch/
https://www.instagram.com/musikfestival_bern
https://www.facebook.com/musikfestivalbern

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

just as it is [disquiet0550]

chance score for a quad synth and bass c/w bikers parade

More on this 550th weekly Disquiet Junto project – Abrupt Probability (The Assignment: Make music based on a chance graphic score) – at: https://disquiet.com/0550/

Thanks to Tobias Reber and Musikfestival Bern for collaboration on this project. More on the festival at:

https://www.musikfestivalbern.ch/ 1

https://www.instagram.com/musikfestival_bern 1

https://www.facebook.com/musikfestivalbern

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

disquiet0550_makesomenoise40

As an open water swimmer, I encounter randomness on a daily basis when I compare the tide & currents chart to the actual experience of swimming in the San Francisco Bay.

When I went for a swim on Saturday morning around 9:30AM, the current chart showed that slack was at 9:42 and max flood of 1.9 knots at 12:54. The information on the chart allows me to plan my course (e.g. head out before the flood tide becomes too strong and ride it back on my return) and prepare me psychologically. But the chart never holds the full picture. Us swimmers always collect information from those who just came back from the water and ask, “Is it coming in?” “Is it going out?” “How strong is the flood?” etc.

Then, you get in the water. And no matter what was on the chart and whatever other bay creatures said, your experience is always unique. So, that’s my daily randomness made into this piece.

I used the numbers from the chart and the letter F for flood to sketch out my melody, starting on the pitch F as 1, the starting point. Then, I set 9x 1 beat counts, 4x 2 beat counts, and 2x 3 beat counts moving 2, 5, and 4 half-steps. I set my starting bmp at 80 by dividing 190 (1.9F) by 2. I also recorded the sound of the water and swimmers’ conversations.

The piece starts with information gathering from the chart (melody & counterpoint) and a comment, “it’s moving pretty good,” meaning that the flood current is strong. The drum comes from the rhythm of the words, “it’s moving pretty good.” The swimmer’s words, “funny,” “obviously,” and “certainly” demonstrate his thought process as he takes in the information on the strong flood he’s about to face. There was a fog horn in the background of this recording. So I exaggerated that on the strings.

The final 1/3 of the piece is swimmer heading out, “Have a good swim!” “We’ll keep an eye out for that orange hat.” And the sound material develops into the swimmer’s own experience, remnants of information from the chart and all transformed into something familiar but different as you swim.

Disquiet Junto Project 0550: Abrupt Probability

More on this 550th weekly Disquiet Junto project – Abrupt Probability (The Assignment: Make music based on a chance graphic score) – at: https://disquiet.com/0550/

Thanks to Tobias Reber and Musikfestival Bern for collaboration on this project. More on the festival at:

https://www.musikfestivalbern.ch/ 1

https://www.instagram.com/musikfestival_bern 1

https://www.facebook.com/musikfestivalbern

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-0550-abrupt-probability/

Take a chance on fear (disquiet0550)

Coffee Drip Of Madness (disquiet0550)

Score derived from a photograph of a blanket we have on our bed for our two cats. The photograph was then pixelated to represent an octave, then the pixels lightened until the white pixels were knocked out to leave chords. The image was then converted to MIDI with velocities based on the darkness of the pixels. The MIDI was also inverted. Once instance played through Felt Instruments Helenko and the inverted one through Ciemno. Both were processed by Unfiltered Audio's Silo. Meanwhile, the lowest notes of the original pixelation were played through Softube Monoment.
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More on this 550th weekly Disquiet Junto project – Abrupt Probability (The Assignment: Make music based on a chance graphic score) – at: https://disquiet.com/0550/

Thanks to Tobias Reber and Musikfestival Bern for collaboration on this project. More on the festival at:

https://www.musikfestivalbern.ch/

https://www.instagram.com/musikfestival_bern 1

https://www.facebook.com/musikfestivalbern

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-0550-abrupt-probability/

cat blanket (disquiet0550)

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.