Disquiet Junto Project 0580: Evo Evol Evolve

The Assignment: Record a piece of music that develops like an organism evolves.

Step 1: You’re going to record a piece of music informed by evolution. Think of stages of evolution, perhaps choosing a specific animal or other life form that evolved over time.

Step 2: Record a piece of music that evolves as it proceeds, based on the patterns (phases, stages) you explored in Step 1. And yes, animals that went extinct are a potential subject. 
——————
Because of this prompt I have been grappling more than usual with half-baked wonderings such as: how might individual-level agency, curiosity and desire eventually contribute to the sum total of evolution if even at all? What does it mean to think of mutations as risky miniature acts of selective rebellion? And how does it feel subjectively for each life form to find themselves as tiny unwitting participants within vast unfolding and unfathomable processes? 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

I decided that mainly I wanted to use the prompt as an excuse to try to take the perspective of an emergent proto octopus - I love that they are some of our most distant and mysterious evolutionary relatives. Well the resulting track is my emotional response to some of these vague, re-volving and unresolved themes anyway. It is perhaps one of the most amorphous things I have ever allowed myself to create so far.

Animoog Z was the only synth I used this time. Oh and I used some aquatic samples to modify a few of my timbres too. This was a fun feature to tinker with.

I dabbled with ZOA generative sequencer in iOS, and incorporated factors of 8 wherever possible, in an attempt to embed some kind of simplistic nod to evolutionary processes. I have also obviously tried to layer my sounds incrementally, to suggest emerging and merging mutations and complexity. But in the end this was all just a jumping-off point for something more intuitive and emotionally exploratory. I enjoyed this prompt, even though the results feel unfinished to me.

Image credit: NOAA Ocean Exploration & Research from USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

More on this 580th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Evo Evol Evolve (The Assignment: Record a piece of music that develops like an organism evolves), at: disquiet.com/0580/

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

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

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-pr…80-evo-evol-evolve/

Proto Octopian disquiet0580

far distance beckons
– hazy blue peaks loom over
calm sea horizons

haiku by Raymond Cobley https://soundcloud.com/ray_cobley

picture by Vlad D https://unsplash.com/@hiking_corgi

For more information visit http://www.naviarrecords.com/about/naviar-haiku

chants afield

halF distancE [naviarhaiku477]

i used each line of poetry from this week's naviar haiku ("travel home / even the air / has changed") to generate three separate morse code messages. each morse code message was then used to trigger its own instance of trackspacer, which ruptured either the sub, guitar or string channels of my naviar composition. in this way, my original track "even the air has changed" became "uneven, the air has changed."

More on this 586th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Chance the Eraser (The Assignment: Use probability to remove material from a track), at: https://disquiet.com/0586/

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-0586-chance-the-eraser/

[disquiet0586] uneven, the air has changed

Disquiet Junto Project 0590: Concrète Roots
The Assignment: Make music combining field recordings and feedback

This project is the first of three that are being done in collaboration with the 2023 Musikfestival Bern (musikfestivalbern.ch 2), which will be held in Switzerland from September 6 through 10. The topic this year is « √ » — as the organization explains: “the radical, or square root symbol and the power of its symbolism are central to the festival and these will be translated into music in multifarious ways.” All three projects will engage with the work of Éliane Radigue, who is the Composer-in-Residence for the 2023 festival.

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 fifth year in a row that the Junto has collaborated with Musikfestival Bern.

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

Step 1: Consider two different techniques: field recordings and feedback.

Step 2: Combine field recordings and feedback in the development of an original track.

Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0590” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your tracks.

Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0590” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation of a project playlist.

Step 3: Upload your tracks. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your tracks.

Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0590-concrete-roots/

Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 6: If posting on social media, please consider using the hashtag #DisquietJunto so fellow participants are more likely to locate your communication.

Step 7: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Step 8: Also join in the discussion on the Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to marc@disquiet.com for Slack inclusion.

Note: Please post one track for this weekly Junto project. If you choose to post more than one, and do so on SoundCloud, please let me know which you’d like added to the playlist. Thanks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is up to you.

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, April 24, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, April 20, 2023.

Upload: When participating in this project, be sure to include a description of your process in planning, composing, and recording it. This description is an essential element of the communicative process inherent in the Disquiet Junto. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.

Download: It is always best to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution, allowing for derivatives).

For context, when posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:

More on this 590th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Concrète Roots (The Assignment: Make music combining field recordings and feedback), at: https://disquiet.com/0590/ 2

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-0590-concrete-roots/

Back to nature (Part One) - disquiet0590

i very much enjoyed the lush and gentle tones of https://soundcloud.com/equinox-deschanel (Joe McMahon)'s https://soundcloud.com/equinox-deschanel/lonely-pelican-no-more-disquiet0593 (which contains elements of https://soundcloud.com/mikey_a/the-pelican-finds-a-friend-disquiet0592 and https://soundcloud.com/rabmusiclab/the-loneliest-pelican) and thought instantly about how it would sound stretched out, more shoegazey.
i used paulstretch to create a extended noise bed, imported it into ableton, a short edit to trim the beginning and then stretched the original track to match the timing of the noise part.
then i used the warping section to fix the pitch of the stretched track to original pitch
applied lots of fx - reverb for the noise parts and echo to the original, then on the master channel some granular fx by puremagnetic to add a bit of motion and chaos
panned the noise channel hard left and the original wav hard right
tape emulation applied at the end for added texture

More on this 594th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Threemix (The Assignment: Remix an asynchronously produced trio), at: https://disquiet.com/0594/

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-0594-threemix/

Of Pelicans (of sorts)[disquiet0594]

Snippet from the bass solo from Sonny Stitt's 1964 release of 'Now's the Time' - Bass Richard Davis, Drums Connie Kay ...

Iterative limiting (towards the left) and distortion (towards the right) ...

More on this 596th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Phylogeny Junto (The Assignment: Depict genres’ evolution over time in music), at: https://disquiet.com/0596/

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-0596-phylogeny-junto/

folly hang hype

halF phylogenY [disquiet0596]

More on this 597th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Goal Line (The Assignment: Get started on a plan by getting over getting started), at: https://disquiet.com/0597/

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

Subscribe to project announcements: Disquiet Junto by Marc Weidenbaum (Disquiet.com)

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0597-goal-line/

Fractal Voyager (disquiet0597)

see accompanying visuals @ https://youtu.be/4bQZ3Gwerio

bird polyphony
– treble, alto, tenor, bass,
Spring meadow concert

Haiku by Raymond Cobley https://soundcloud.com/ray_cobley

Picture by EVGENIY KONEV https://unsplash.com/photos/YEcvdJ97Oig

For more information visit http://www.naviarrecords.com/about/naviar-haiku

Proto Octopian disquiet0580

doodledigital