Disquiet Junto Project 0663: Drive Way
The Assignment: Record a piece of music that complements the hum and whir of a hard drive.

This week’s project was proposed by novelist Robin Sloan (Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, Sourdough, Moonbound) in response to a post I made on social media about the annoying sound of an HDD drive I accidentally purchased. I had mistakenly thought it was an SSD drive. We previously did a project inspired by Sloan’s work almost exactly 7 years ago, at the end of August 2017 (more details at disquiet.com/0296).

Step 1: Either record the sound of an HDD drive or use a field recording available online, such as this one from Freesound:

https://freesound.org/people/eardeer/sounds/401271

Step 2: Consider how that drive sound, even when quiet, could be irritating if heard while one is listening to music.

Step 3: Per Sloan’s proposal, “record music to harmonize with, or play against, the whirr.” (It’s up to you if you want to include the sound of the drive along with your music.)

. . .

Deadline: Monday, September 16, 2024, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.

More on the 663rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Drive Way — The Assignment: Record a piece of music that complements the hum and whir of a hard drive — at https://disquiet.com/0663/

The image associated with this project is licensed thanks to a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported. It was taken by Evan Amos — whom Popular Science has reportedly referred to as “gaming’s most famous photographer” — as a part of Vanamo Media.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Laptop-hard-drive-exposed.jpg

Disquiet Junto Project 0663: Drive Way

701733178214 [disquiet0663]

acoustic bass and hard drive hum
hard drive sound courtesy of eardeer on freesound
https://freesound.org/people/eardeer/sounds/401271

000000000001111111111111111111111111111000000000000001111

More on the 663rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Drive Way — The Assignment: Record a piece of music that complements the hum and whir of a hard drive — at https://disquiet.com/0663/

disquietjunto

disquiet0663_drivedriftingaway

I mixed a number of hard drive recordings and combined the result with a drone sequence created in Pure Data.

More on the 663rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Drive Way — The Assignment: Record a piece of music that complements the hum and whir of a hard drive — at https://disquiet.com/0663/

The image associated with this project is licensed thanks to a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported. It was taken by Evan Amos — whom Popular Science has reportedly referred to as “gaming’s most famous photographer” — as a part of Vanamo Media.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Laptop-hard-drive-exposed.jpg

Drive Drone (disquiet0663)

Holly Myers — disquiet0663

Dancing Grains - Disquiet Junto 0663

Recorded & mixed on 13 Sep 2024 by Jim Lemanowicz at Blissville Electro-Magnetic Laboratories of Massapequa. 

Process notes -
Bitwig - I started in Bitwig by pulling four samples from Freesound.org, including the one offered for use with this project. After this, I applied different settings of the Tuner device, very wet, different stretch modes and some limiting before exporting the 4 stems. 

I grabbed my iPad and sat in the cool night air with AudioKit’s Synth One and recorded a few slow takes on the same arpeggio. 

Ableton Live - 
- I pulled in all four of Freesound samples. I warped each one differently, grouped the HDD Sounds together & applied pitch correction in Nectar along with some CHOWTapeModel. I grouped the other two sounds together and applied Corpus on a beam setting.
- I used 6 different pieces of the Synth One recordings, with some filtering applied to some and used Caellum Audio’s Tape Cassette 2 on one of these tracks.
- I pulled three bits of a Max session from 19 Apr 2024 as some icing on this cake, using the same basic Corpus patch as the second Freesound set.
- I mixed it - just went with it

Title - I just liked how the word "orchard" contains the word "hard." 

Artwork/Photography - 
Sunnyside, Queens, NY 08 Sep 2022

Samples used from ffb.soffa obtained from Freesound.org
- 04 625269__ffbsoffa__toilet-flush-gentle-w-water-admission
- 02 625266__ffbsoffa__1

Samples used from eardeer obtained from Freesound.org
- 03 379004__eardeer__wire_sawnoise_4
- 01 401271__eardeer__toshiba-hdd

This work is published under a Creative Commons License.

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This original version of “Peach Orchard Skiffle” was submitted as part of Disquiet Junto Project 0663: Drive Way. The Assignment: Record a piece of music that complements the hum and whir of a hard drive.

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

More on the 663rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Drive Way — The Assignment: Record a piece of music that complements the hum and whir of a hard drive — at https://disquiet.com/0663/

---

Look for me at patreon.com/blisterpop - patrons get my albums for free!
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Peach Orchard Skiffle  (disquiet0663)

Disquiet Junto Project 0663: Drive Way

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0663-drive-way/68624/1

Step 1: Either record the sound of an HDD drive or use a field recording available online.
Step 2: Consider how that drive sound, even when quiet, could be irritating if heard while one is listening to music.
Step 3: Per Sloan’s proposal, “record music to harmonise with, or play against, the whirr.” (It’s up to you if you want to include the sound of the drive along with your music.)

I wanted to add a futuristic element to this suggestion. The ambient drone is paired with distorted plucked synths, while evolving bass growls blend with the futuristic rumble of a cyberpunk car. I wanted to evoke the dystopian feeling of driving through abandoned, overdeveloped landscapes. The eerie atmosphere is intensified by dissonant, off-key sounds, with sharp, jarring moments created by the clashing harmonics of the lead synths. This track is designed to engage the listener’s imagination of this scenario while also provoking discomfort through sonic shocks. I hope you appreciate this piece by not enjoying it! 

*I used and AI image generator to create the cover art; suggestions described the  cyberpunk dystopia I wanted to present to the listener*

MAX DURHAM - CYBER-DRIVE (disquiet0663)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luUCgQ84sO4
More on the 663rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Drive Way — The Assignment: Record a piece of music that complements the hum and whir of a hard drive — at https://disquiet.com/0663/

Exquisite Heartbeat (disquiet0663)

More on the 663rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Drive Way — The Assignment: Record a piece of music that complements the hum and whir of a hard drive — at https://disquiet.com/0663/

Hello! I’m super new to this, but had lots of fun with this week’s prompt. I was inspired by the intro to Sonic Youth’s “I Love You Golden Blue”, particularly the way in which musical instruments are mixed with mechanical sounds/beeps to create a poignant, emotional atmosphere. There’s just something about sad robots and machines which gets me - I will never not cry watching WALL-E. I isolated a “beep” from one HDD recording and transposed its pitch to create the various beeping sounds in the piece. I mixed these beeps with a recording of another HDD drive (which runs throughout the piece), and layered string synths, strings and piano. The piano part bounces off the clicking of the HDD, as if its melodic twin. Free time and dissonant harmonies were used with the aim of slightly unsettling the listener. The piece swells to an emotional crescendo, before abruptly stopping when the HDD is powered-off. Hope it’s an interesting listen!


* Cover image generated by AI.

harddiskdrive_disquiet0663

Bittersweet (Disquiet0663)

The Assignment: Record a piece of music that complements the hum and whir of a hard drive. More on the 663rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Drive Way — The Assignment: Record a piece of music that complements the hum and whir of a hard drive — at https://disquiet.com/0663/ 

This week’s project was proposed by novelist Robin Sloan (Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, Sourdough, Moonbound) in response to a post I made on social media about the annoying sound of an HDD drive I accidentally purchased. I had mistakenly thought it was an SSD drive. We previously did a project inspired by Sloan’s work almost exactly 7 years ago, at the end of August 2017 (more details at disquiet.com/0296).  

Step 1: Either record the sound of an HDD drive or use a field recording available online, such as this one from Freesound:  https://freesound.org/people/eardeer/sounds/401271 

Step 2: Consider how that drive sound, even when quiet, could be irritating if heard while one is listening to music.  

Step 3: Per Sloan’s proposal, “record music to harmonize with, or play against, the whirr.” (It’s up to you if you want to include the sound of the drive along with your music.)

More on the 663rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Drive Way — The Assignment: Record a piece of music that complements the hum and whir of a hard drive — at https://disquiet.com/0663/

Image: Don MacKeen 2024

computer drone [disquiet0663]

(with apologies to mark fell)

sample of failing hdd, looping, going into a slew limiter and a comparator to derive some semblance of rhythmic patterns, these used to trigger percussion, chord pads and high pitch bursts

freesound ref for sample: Old crashed hard drive by tix99 -- https://freesound.org/s/626912/ -- License: Creative Commons 0

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More on the 663rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Drive Way — The Assignment: Record a piece of music that complements the hum and whir of a hard drive — at https://disquiet.com/0663/

The image associated with this project is licensed thanks to a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported. It was taken by Evan Amos — whom Popular Science has reportedly referred to as “gaming’s most famous photographer” — as a part of Vanamo Media.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Laptop-hard-drive-exposed.jpg

disquiet0663 - cyclic redundancy

Disquiet Junto 0663 was an invitation to compose music to accompany a spinning-platter hard drive. 

I thought I would miss this one, as I was traveling abroad these past two weeks without any gear, not even a pair of decent headphones. But inspiration struck at the kitchen table in a rented flat in Manchester UK and there was no ignoring the impulse. This piece was recorded off the tempo grid, the notes were painted in a piano roll, and the automation was done with a trackpad. A very different creation experience and set of constraints for me! 

I like a little percussion with my drones, so I used the new stem splitter feature in Logic Pro to extract a few isolated samples of the hard drive chitter to establish a rhythmic foundation.

You will experience the song differently played through computer speakers vs headphones, and I can't say which way is the right way.

More about Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/0663

The Lake Shore Drive Incident (disquiet0663)

This was made for the Disquiet Junto 0663 with the assignment: Record a piece of music that complements the hum and whir of a hard drive.
More on the 663rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Drive Way — The Assignment: Record a piece of music that complements the hum and whir of a hard drive — at https://disquiet.com/0663/

More on this track at https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0663-drive-way/68624/27

Drive Way (disquiet0663)

Disquiet0663 - Drive Way

ss down stream disquiet0663

caché (disquiet0663)

Feature-reel here: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DAB6YcrNYpE/

hear the hum of the drive
the quiet spin of bits
everything i‘ve ever known
caché
caché
caché

feel the spin of the drum
the riot king of lips
everything i‘ve ever seen
caché
caché
caché
caché

This week's assignment: 
- Step 1: take the sound of an HDD drive.
- Consider how that drive sound, even when quiet.
-  Step 3: Per Sloan’s proposal, “record music to harmonize with, or play against, the whirr.”

Gladly used this soundfile:
https://freesound.org/people/EverydaySounds/sounds/378913/?attribution=1
Failing Hard Drive by EverydaySounds -- https://freesound.org/s/378913/ -- License: Creative Commons 0

Enjoy!

+++
More on the 663rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Drive Way — The Assignment: Record a piece of music that complements the hum and whir of a hard drive — at https://disquiet.com/0663/

caché

caché (disquiet0663)

disquiet0663

From (and including) a recording of a backup drive. Expert Sleepers' Spectral Conquest is used on three tracks to isolate several pulsing frequencies. These tracks are used to sidechain a gate on three tracks containing a XILS 4 from XILS Labs, with the result being processed by various plugins, including Devious Machines' Infiltrator, and Baby Audio's Humanoid. The original recording is blended in at the start and end of the track.
--
More on the 663rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Drive Way — The Assignment: Record a piece of music that complements the hum and whir of a hard drive — at https://disquiet.com/0663/

platter chatter (disquiet0663)

More on the 663rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Drive Way — The Assignment: Record a piece of music that complements the hum and whir of a hard drive — at https://disquiet.com/0663/

Drive way (disquiet0663)

Artists in order of appearance

synxwtf

eardeer

Puniho

Hewm.Marrow

jobro

Credits

hard drive: eardeer
piano:  synxwtf, Puniho, Hewm.Marrow, jobro
loops & effects: Professor MTZ

More on the 663rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Drive Way — The Assignment: Record a piece of music that complements the hum and whir of a hard drive — at https://disquiet.com/0663/

The image associated with this project is licensed thanks to a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported. It was taken by Evan Amos — whom Popular Science has reportedly referred to as “gaming’s most famous photographer” — as a part of Vanamo Media.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Laptop-hard-drive-exposed.jpg

Spare Parts from the Drive Way (disquiet0663)

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.