Disquiet Junto Project 0627: Just Ice Society
The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it.

Welcome to a new year of Disquiet Junto communal music projects. This week’s project is as follows. It’s the same project we’ve begun each year with since the very first Junto project, way back in January 2012. The project is, per tradition, just this one step:

Step 1: Please record the sound of an ice cube rattling in a glass, and make something of it.

It’s great if you can record your own ice sounds, but if you want some help, the always awesome Jason (Bassling) Richardson has provided some source audio:

WAV:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/e8qpnf0i1r2xhw1/bassling_-_pindari_glasses.wav/file

MOV:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/swq09kq409qhecg/bassling_-_pindari_glasses.mov/file

Background: Longtime participants in, and observers of, the Disquiet Junto series will recognize this single-sentence assignment — “Please record the sound of an ice cube rattling in a glass, and make something of it” — as the very first Disquiet Junto project, the same one that launched the series back on the first Thursday of January 2012. Revisiting it at the start of each January ever since has provided a fitting way to begin the new year. By now, it qualifies as a tradition. A weekly project series can come to overemphasize novelty, and it’s helpful to revisit old projects as much as it is to engage with new ones. Also, by its very nature, the Disquiet Junto suggests itself as a fast pace: a four-day production window, a regular if not weekly habit. It can be beneficial to step back and see things from a longer perspective.

. . .

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, January 8, 2024, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, January 4, 2024.

. . .

More on this 627th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Just Ice Society — The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it — at: https://disquiet.com/0627/

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-0627-just-ice-society/

Disquiet Junto Project 0627: Just Ice Society

An Individual Conditional Expectation (ICE) is a type of plot that demonstrates the deviation from a predicted occurrence when some aspect of it changes. Resembling statistical visualizations popularized by Edward Tufte in the 1980’s, ICE plots represent information as a series of lines each representing a separate, unique data point.

Every new year brings a period of reflection, inevitably coupled with an optimistic array of good intentions. One might be compelled to plot these on an ICE or similar chart detailing progress toward a given milestone. For Suss Müsik, the 2024 plan includes critical objectives like “be nice, mostly” and “try to avoid hospitals.” The bar is admittedly set low around here.

For this recurrent Junto project (one of Suss Müsik’s favorites), the sound of ice in a glass was sampled and run through a sort of handmade grain synth. This weird rhythm makes its appearance later in the piece, following an organ prelude accompanied by an arpeggiated bell/harp pattern. The voices were digitally stretched to resemble nothing more than long breaths, perhaps metaphorically representing the deep exhale one emits after a challenging year.

The piece is titled 2101.06986, in tribute to the filename of a 2021 paper by three authors describing the use of slice visualization to model machine learning algorithms. (Another Suss Müsik 2024 goal is “title more pieces after numbers,” because why not).

More on this 627th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Just Ice Society — The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it — at: https://disquiet.com/0627/

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-0627-just-ice-society/

2101.06986 [Disquiet0627]

This is my contribution to this week's Disquiet Junto Project - as every first project of a new year the assignment is to create music from recording of an ice cube rattling in a glass.
I used PaulXStretch to create ambient sounds from two short, only 1 second long recordings I made rattling an ice cube in a glass. Then I added individual effects to the different sound-scapes and arranged those outputs to the track you can listen to here.

More on this 627th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Just Ice Society — The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it — at: https://disquiet.com/0627/

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-0627-just-ice-society/

Ice Forever  (Disquiet0627)

More on this 627th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Just Ice Society — The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it — at: https://disquiet.com/0627/

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-0627-just-ice-society/

Thanks to Bassling for the Ice recording see his submission here .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHp3Igh7JSg

Chilling With Ice (disquiet0627)

A response to Disquiet Junto 0627: Just Ice Society.

The vocals were created using AI-enhanced text-to-speech, using content adapted from WikiHow. 

Recorded and produced at NOSIGNAL Multimedia Labs, The Shambles, Chicago, IL USA.

About Disquiet Junto 0627: https://disquiet.com/2024/01/04/disquiet-junto-project-0627-just-ice-society/

Disquiet Junto

Making Ice at Home May Seem Overwhelming (disquiet0627)

More on this 627th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Just Ice Society — The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it — at: https://disquiet.com/0627/

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-0627-just-ice-society/

Slicing The Ice (disquiet0627)

Modified recordings of ice cubes.

More on this 627th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Just Ice Society — The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it — at: https://disquiet.com/0627/

About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/ 1

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

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0627-just-ice-society/

Ice Troll (disquiet0627)

More on this 627th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Just Ice Society — The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it — at: https://disquiet.com/0627/

About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/ 1

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

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0627-just-ice-society/

Just Ice Society

Disquiet Junto | Just Ice Society - disquiet0627

For this challenge, I re-used the samples I made way back for Disquiet 0262 in 2017.  This time though, I processed the sample using the modular - One side of Lubadh playing the sample, the other echoing it, then Clouds and Rings both process it as well. I then played the faders on my mixer to create a track, that sounds quite warm for an ice bath! 

More on this 627th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Just Ice Society — The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it — at: https://disquiet.com/0627/

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-0627-just-ice-society/

Warm Ice (Disquiet0627)

For some reason I wanted to capture the sound of ice melting and rattling, which took a bit of experimenting.  After capturing the audio, I created 16 short samples for my 1010Music Bit box which I then trigged with the Torso T-1. I added a layer of moody ambience from the Terra and subjected everything to the effects lurking in my Zoia.

Disquiet0627

Matching the “have a drink” prompt I wanted to make something positive, funky, so I added basslines, a beat (lifted from a pretty famous 1974 pop hit that has to remain unnamed) and a “chant”.

I wish everyone a positive year full of joy!

More on this 627th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Just Ice Society — The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it — at: https://disquiet.com/0627/

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-0627-just-ice-society/

Disquiet0627 - Clink clink

You can see the original video recording of cross-shaped ice cubes in a pint glass, which was used to make all the sound in this track @ https://youtu.be/ghHGnZrGFA0

More on this 627th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Just Ice Society — The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it — at: https://disquiet.com/0627/

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-0627-just-ice-society/

visuals (YouTube)

halF icE [disquiet0627]

This was my contribution for Disquiet Junto Project 0627: Audio Journal 2023

Here’s a copy of my post on the Disquiet Junto 0627 discussion thread:

I remembered I had fun with this project last year, and enjoyed participating again this year.

Ended up using the same ice recording I made for last year’s project.  This time, I sampled it into Slate+Ash Cycles and created two tracks – one using the Loops engine and the other the Grains engine. Layered two additional tracks using Choreographs. No other effects were used except what were in the plugins. Created and mastered in Ableton Live using iZotope Ozone 11 and FabFilter Pro L-2 Limiter. Photo by Andrea Leopardi via Unsplash.
 
More on this 627th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Just Ice Society — The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it — at: https://disquiet.com/0627/
About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/ 1
Subscribe to project announcements: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0627-just-ice-society/

Glacial Morning [disquiet0627

Happy and healthy 2024, everyone! 

This was meant initially for last year’s ice cube challenge, but somehow, it didn’t work out last January. I poured ice cubes in a big glass bowl and shoved them around, and from these sounds, I made some hihats, several shakers, and a lead voice (starts in the last third). I don’t use much shuffle in my tracks, but this time, thanks to Borsta and Skaka, there’s a tad more groove than normally. 
Used Choreographs for bells and chords, Sines for a wash… and that’s that. 

___

Disquiet Junto Project 0627: Just Ice Society
The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it.

Welcome to a new year of Disquiet Junto communal music projects. This week’s project is as follows. It’s the same project we’ve begun each year with since the very first Junto project, way back in January 2012. The project is, per tradition, just this one step:

Step 1: Please record the sound of an ice cube rattling in a glass, and make something of it.

It’s great if you can record your own ice sounds, but if you want some help, the always awesome Jason (Bassling) Richardson has provided some source audio:

WAV:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/e8qpnf0i1r2xhw1/bassling_-_pindari_glasses.wav/file 3

MOV:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/swq09kq409qhecg/bassling_-_pindari_glasses.mov/file 3

Background: Longtime participants in, and observers of, the Disquiet Junto series will recognize this single-sentence assignment — “Please record the sound of an ice cube rattling in a glass, and make something of it” — as the very first Disquiet Junto project, the same one that launched the series back on the first Thursday of January 2012. Revisiting it at the start of each January ever since has provided a fitting way to begin the new year. By now, it qualifies as a tradition. A weekly project series can come to overemphasize novelty, and it’s helpful to revisit old projects as much as it is to engage with new ones. Also, by its very nature, the Disquiet Junto suggests itself as a fast pace: a four-day production window, a regular if not weekly habit. It can be beneficial to step back and see things from a longer perspective.

(…)

More on this 627th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Just Ice Society — The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it — at: https://disquiet.com/0627/

About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/ 1

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

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0627-just-ice-society/

Cold Hands [disquiet0627]

Pronged Burst Cleanser (disquiet0627)

I've done every "ice" project since the start in 2012, so for this year, I took a previous year's ice sound, ran it through my setup, and then carved out a brief edit that was repeated 13 times at random in a 30 second time period.

Join my email list:  https://markrushton.substack.com

More on this 627th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Just Ice Society — The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it — at: https://disquiet.com/0627/

13 Cubes (disquiet0627)

sound art for disquiet0627

More on this 627th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Just Ice Society — The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it — at: https://disquiet.com/0627/

About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/ 1

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

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0627-just-ice-society/

a strange tasting drink (disquiet0627)

On this saturady we set up the recording and producing stuff in my child's room and played a bit. Later in teh afternoon I remembered that the disquiet was on, and the challenge was to make a track with the sound of ice cubes in a glass, as every first week of the year. So my 10 year old and I recorded ice cubes in a glass (actually the ice cubes had heart shapes and fish shapes, as they came from one of these silicon trays from IKEA). We experimented with the sounds in ableton live, and the most exciting results came from the Granulator instrrrrument. We have an electric piano in the child's room and it was connected to the computer via midi, so it allowed for playing clusters in the ice-sound grains. This is what you hear. There was also the sheet music for Moon river from my sons piano classes, so I tried to play that on top of it, in a kind of found-sound but actually found-sheet-music inspirational move. The result is nice melancholic, but a bit dull, I thought. A good track needs content. Should I sing over it? But what. 
Suddenly I thought of the ice cap and how it is melting and climate change. First I tried to find a youtube video with someone talking about that, or a podcast, but this was difficult, and youtube has mostly stuff with background music, so I ditched this idea. So I googled data on the ice cap, and found this webpage called "arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis". At the bottom of the page was the information I looked for: The loss is huge, but the decrease is slower than it already was. Is this good news? Who can tell. Questions remain.

Questions remain (disquiet0627)

Disquiet0627 2024 - 01 - 06 1116

Edited live jam, ice samples through no-input mixer feedback. I improvised for about 20 minutes. Cut it down to 4 segments that total 2 minutes. I also re-ordered the 4 segments into what felt like a fun structure. The ice samples come from my ice junto 1 year ago. 

The idea was to revisit the problem I was focused on last year with that junto piece — chasing a stronger sense of development and direction in my pieces. But through something closer to my current focus on live improvisation.

Last year when doing the ice prompt disquiet junto I was at a bit of a turning point in my production process. I knew my happy place was keeping production as close as possible to improvisation. But wanting stronger direction and development in my music led me to explore the slower process of editing and building things out on a DAW timeline. In the last 6 months I took a 180. I moved back to focusing mostly on improvisation, but with a new interest in structure. 

It’s been rewarding to revisit the material and problems I was playing with last year through a fresh lens. 


Disquiet Junto Project 0627: Just Ice Society
 The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it.
Welcome to a new year of Disquiet Junto communal music projects. This week’s project is as follows. It’s the same project we’ve begun each year with since the very first Junto project, way back in January 2012. The project is, per tradition, just this one step:
Step 1: Please record the sound of an ice cube rattling in a glass, and make something of it.

More on this 627th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Just Ice Society — The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it — at: https://disquiet.com/0627/
About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/ 1
Subscribe to project announcements: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0627-just-ice-society/

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

New Old Ice [disquiet0627]

disquiet0627 2024-01-08 Icetrain

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.