Disquiet Junto Project 0690: Knot Bad
The Assignment: Interpret wood grain as a graphic score.

Step 1: Find a piece of wood, the grain of which captures your imagination.

Step 2: Consider how the shapes of the grain might be interpreted as a graphically notated score. (If you are not familiar with the concept of a graphic score, read up.)

Step 3: Record a piece of music in which you interpret the grain of the wood you selected in Step 1 as a graphic score.

Deadline: Monday, March 24, 2024, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.

Details: https://disquiet.com/0690/

Disquiet Junto Project 0690: Knot Bad

Challenge: Find a piece of wood, the grain of which captures your imagination.

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0690-knot-bad

Hi, I've been working on percussion tracks, so I took this picture (taken in souther Spain), it is not really "shapes of the grain" but the pikes are so massive and menacing that I couldn’t stop thinking as a good notation for a spicy percussive track. I see short, high transient sound anyway.
So I decided to use my new Oberheim DMX virtual instrument exclusivelly, changing pitch and sound for the toms to represent those spikes.
Anyway, glad to be back on a junto, cheers DD

Performed by DD 2025 on a Oberheim DMX by @gforce-software

Spike Knot - disquiet0690

More on the 690th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Knot Bad — The Assignment: Interpret wood grain as a graphic score — at https://disquiet.com/0690/

disquiet0690

Credits:
Ángel L. Martínez: bass ukelele, bass guitar

The music is an interpretation of a pattern on a piece of wood as graphic notation.

More on the 690th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Knot Bad — The Assignment: Interpret wood grain as a graphic score — at https://disquiet.com/0690/

The Tree as the Eye in the Forest (disquiet0690)

My track notes regarding the creation of this track can be found here: 

Disquiet Junto Project 0690: Knot Bad
The Assignment: Interpret wood grain as a graphic score.

Step 1: Find a piece of wood, the grain of which captures your imagination.

Step 2: Consider how the shapes of the grain might be interpreted as a graphically notated score. (If you are not familiar with the concept of a graphic score, read up.)

Step 3: Record a piece of music in which you interpret the grain of the wood you selected in Step 1 as a graphic score.

[Disquiet Junto 0690] Contin You'd Uhm

The graphic score used, featured as the cover art, is a photo I took of part of a wood-panelled ceiling in my home. The track, in four continuous sections, comprises a mix of layered electronic sequences created using Pure Data with additional sounds and editing carried out using Audacity.

Knotty Pine Perusal (disquiet0690)

Ooooh good ... Here's another track that the SoundCloud algorithm refuses to recommend to potentially interested listeners ... If you're interested in music that a robot doesn't consider 'music', why not give it a listen! 😜

More on the 690th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Knot Bad — The Assignment: Interpret wood grain as a graphic score — at https://disquiet.com/0689/

more halF unusuaL

halF knoT [disquiet0690]

This week's Disquiet Junto prompt instructed us to find a piece of wood with interesting grain, and interpret it as a graphical music score.

My music desk is a pretty solid piece of furniture, and the dark stain makes the wood grain stand out prominently. I noticed that the grain on one side of the desk contained two interlocking swirls, and the radiating pattern reminded me of a magnetic field. So I decided that this week's composition would be played with wood and magnets.

I used a contact mic to record the percussion part, playing the top of the desk like a hand drum. Then I recorded three layers of guitar played with an ebow: an electromagnetic "guitar pick" characterized by infinite sustain. Ebow has the drawback of making dynamics difficult but I was able to make it growl and howl enough to get some texture and noise out of the performance. 

The bass layer was played on a Schecter Damien 7-string guitar with an altered tuning. I managed to play the bottom string freehand with the ebow, floating rather than resting on surrounding strings, which required multiple takes unfortunately. I just really, really needed that low B♭. The other two guitar layers were played on the St Vincent guitar. 

Offboard, the guitars went through my standard bank of stomp boxes, including an Eventide Harmonizer, Keeley Halo, ARP-87 and Julia pedals from Walrus, and a trusty RAT distortion pedal. DAW effects were mainly reverb and Chromaglow, plus a stereo delay and EQ on the percussion part.

More on the 690th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Knot Bad — The Assignment: Interpret wood grain as a graphic score — at https://disquiet.com/0689/

Lost in the Ironwood (disquiet0690)

This week's task is rather serendipitous in that I am actually engaged in some minor wood working this weekend. I recently built a small Buchla 100 system (and its case), consisting of what is shown in the image and the as yet unhoused (and not shown) 114 touch control module, which is what the piece of unstained pine sitting on top of the Buchla is destined for. I selected pine because my woodworking skills are still rather rudimentary so working with higher priced and more difficult lumber makes me nervous. Plus, there is something comforting about pine's ubiquity and approachability. Making a mistake with pine seems excusable. Doing so with walnut or oak less so. That said, I got to thinking about the pine that I picked up at my local lumber shop in terms of the conditions under which it is grown and the vast quantities of trees that are stripped from the land so that people like me can make boxes for their vintage synthesizers. Sonically, I imagined this as a somewhat discordant drone, with peaks and valleys and occasional moments of harmony. The trees grow, mainly in a state or quietude, before they are cut down and processed to the sound of chain saws and saw blades. And then everything goes quiet again as the next crop is planted.  Graphically, I notated this imagined scenario as a series of constant lines, punctuated here and there with peaks, valleys, bright and dark spots, representing in part the knots and impurities in the pine but also the experience of the piece of wood in its transition from tree to commodity. Everything you hear was created on my humble System 100, which was first fed through the Empress Zoia pedal using the "soft focus" effect created by Christopher H.M. Jacques and then further transformed in Logic using "fragments," and "motion" from Arturia, with hints of the unprocessed Buchla emerging here and there. And there was panning. Lots of panning, so headphones are the preferred listening approach.

Smell You in My Clothes (disquiet0690)

voice grain - disquiet0690

This was my contribution for Disquiet Junto Project 0690: Knot Bad. The Assignment: Interpret wood grain as a graphic score.

Here’s a copy of my post on the Disquiet Junto 0690 discussion thread on Lines:

This was inspired from a live edge black walnut board I’ve had for many years. I used to do some woodworking, and this is a souvenir from those days. I might someday incorporate it into an art or craft project, but for now, I keep it around as something to be simply admired.

I used the horizontal grain patterns and the imperfections in the middle of the board, as the graphic score. First, I assembled a Morphagene reel using slices from various pieces I created as well as field recordings I had. Included in the samples was a recording of the sounds of a piece of wood being lightly dragged across the surface of the board that included the imperfections. This created a drone like foundation using the modular synth. I then created some tracks in Ableton Live following the “notation” of horizontal center grains and notches. Used Slate+Ash Cycles for instruments and Valhalla Delay for effects. I also added an outdoor field recording from our front yard. 

I imagined sights, sounds, music and other memories that the tree might have experienced when it was alive.  Those things, embedded within the grains of wood, are released here with this soundscape as a remembrance of those years. At least, that was my intention.

More on the 690th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Knot Bad — The Assignment: Interpret wood grain as a graphic score — at https://disquiet.com/0690/

Memory From A Walnut Grove [disquiet0690]

Recorded, mixed & mastered on 22 Mar 2025 by Jim Lemanowicz at Blissville Electro-Magnetic Laboratories of Massapequa, USA. 

Organ & effects

Photography - Jim Lemanowicz, 21 Mar 2025, Massapequa, NY, USA

©2025 Jim Lemanowicz

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This original version of “The Buyer With The Asymmetrical Nose” was submitted as part of Disquiet Junto Project 0690: Knot Bad. The Assignment: Interpret wood grain as a graphic score.

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

More on the 690th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Knot Bad — The Assignment: Interpret wood grain as a graphic score — at https://disquiet.com/0690/

The Buyer With The Asymmetrical Nose (disquiet0690)

More on the 690th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Knot Bad — The Assignment: Interpret wood grain as a graphic score — at https://disquiet.com/0690/

I built my contribution around a photo of the floor in our hallway (see cover) into which I interpreted short phrases for four different instruments. First, I wanted to record different wind instruments, but then decided to give the rarely used Ableton Note a go. To this I recorded live percussion, which was a disaster. You can hear my comment “bireweich” in the background, which means “totally ridiculous” in Swiss German (direct translation = soft pear, with pear probably meaning head in this context). I kept the recording anyway and cut it into a loop, to which I added a patch in MiRack which I tried to operate according to the cloudy yellow notes. Et voila: four from the floor.

Lovely spring - or autumn - to everyone!


Disquiet0690 - Four From The Floor

found some wood grains in my dining table. obvious jump is from grains to granular, so went with a looping sample going into beads. the graphic score is the sequence of darker grains - roughly up/down is pitch, darker areas introduce more noise, and each grain in the wood triggers a burst granular sample, starting with a larger grain becoming smaller

(that's the idea anyway)

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More on the 690th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Knot Bad — The Assignment: Interpret wood grain as a graphic score — at https://disquiet.com/0690/

disquiet0690 - along the grain

More on the 690th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Knot Bad — The Assignment: Interpret wood grain as a graphic score — at https://disquiet.com/0689/

SONG 80 - DisquietJunto0690 - Knot Bad

[disquiet0690] woodsy

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.