Nice mixture and development. That is one angry printer!

This is a song I had made and forgotten about.  I wonder if it needs anything else or if it works as is?

More on this 544th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Feedback Loop (The Assignment: Share music-in-progress for input from others) — at: https://disquiet.com/0544/

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-0544-feedback-loop/

morning song [disquiet0544]

More on this 544th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Feedback Loop (The Assignment: Share music-in-progress for input from others) — at: disquiet.com/0544/

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…0544-feedback-loop/

Track - 9 [disquiet0544]

In his excellent book The New Analog, Damon Krukowski suggests that listening to a quadraphonic recording is a simulacrum of the geocentric model proposed by Alexandrian astronomer Ptolemy in 150 (CE). Ptolemaic cosmology assumed that the Earth was a stationary object situated at the center of the universe, and that other heavenly bodies traveled uniformly in a perfectly circular motion around it.

A different stereophonic geometry can be observed in “gandy dancers,” a nickname given to African American railroad workers in the 1920’s. Their job was to maintain and repair miles of railways in the segregated US south: replacing rotted cross-ties, refilling ballast, locking pieces of track into place, and straightening and leveling the lines to ensure safe train passage. The workers were known for their synchronized, graceful ballet that required strength and agility. 

An important aspect of railway work was the transport and installation of heavy steel rails lining both sides of the track, a process called “dogging” in which a lead workman served as the “caller” or “call man.” The caller would sing a four-beat song to mark time, and the rest of the crew would follow in rhythm, working shoulder-to-shoulder in pairs. As they tamped the ballast under ties raised with square-ended picks, the workers engaged in call-and-response to ensure that all tasks were executed safely and correctly. 

For this week’s project, Suss Müsik took inspiration from a 1939 field recording* of Zora Neale Hurston singing a traditional railroad “spiking” tune. A pair of percussion “lines” represent two sides of railroad track, each treated with glitched stereo delay in opposite left-right channels. A synthesized melody accompanies the lyric, which was passed down from a Jacksonville caller named Max Ford. The hammers heard in the original were intended to replicate the sound of spikes being driven into cross-ties, and they’re faithfully included here with bidirectional panning.

The piece is titled Gandy Dancing and is presented in honor of those who risked physical safety to produce not only infrastructure, but also a rich cultural legacy. May we celebrate their voices heard softly in the thick southern humidity, the kudzu creeping slowly onto the railway edges. 

Learn more about gandy dancers from this fascinating Folkstreams documentary: https://www.folkstreams.net/films/gandy-dancers.
More on this 549th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Sidelines (The Assignment: Get intentional with stereo) — at: https://disquiet.com/0549/

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-0549-sidelines/

*Citation: Kennedy, Stetson, Herbert Halpert, Zora Neale Hurston, Herbert Halpert, and Zora Neale Hurston. Dat Old Black Gal. Jacksonville, Florida, 1939. Audio. https://www.loc.gov/item/flwpa000005/.

Gandy Dancing [Disquiet0549]

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)

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

So for a while now I’ve been using sequencers or midi or some kind of note information in my sessions.
Decided to break this rule and create a modular patch with just modulation for controlling sound.

More on this 551st weekly Disquiet Junto project – The Bends (The Assignment: Get less strict about something you’re strict about) – at: https://disquiet.com/0551/

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-0551-the-bends/

Analogue Chicken & Modulation Sauce (disquiet0551)

I have to admit, I'm a sucker for applause. With the attention economy for artists in full effect, I’m guilty of wanting as many  plays as possible for my music. As we all know, the first entries in any playlist get played more often, so I tend to rush the Disquiet Junto projects in order to be fast. This is just stupid, because you shouldn’t measure success by just quantity. 

 So I bent my expectations this time, forced myself to work slowly, took all the time I needed to get the piece as finished as you can get in four days. Instead of just going for the melodic parts, I added some drum parts this time, which took a while. Still, after having spent at lease 12-18 hours, the piece isn’t ready yet. I may leave it for a while and come back to it later. 

_______________________________________________________________

Disquiet Junto Project 0551: The Bends
The Assignment: Get less strict about something you’re strict about.

Step 1: Think about things you’re strict about when you make music. Maybe you only work in a minor key, or you never use drum machines, or you always stick in 4/4, or you never revisit past work, or something else entirely.

Step 2: Choose one thing from the list you made in Step 1 and think of it as a rule.

Step 3: Think about how you could be less strict in regard to the rule you focused on in Step 2.

Step 4: Record a piece of music in which you bend the rule, as you determined in Step 3.

Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0551” (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 “disquiet0551” (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:

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0551-the-bends/

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:

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, July 25, 2022, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, July 21, 2022.

Length: The length is up to you. If you usually make short pieces, maybe try something long?

(...)

More on this 551st weekly Disquiet Junto project — The Bends (The Assignment: Get less strict about something you’re strict about) — at: https://disquiet.com/0551/

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-0551-the-bends/

Sani Sanctum [disquiet0551]

Disquiet Junto Project 0551: The Bends
The Assignment: Get less strict about something you’re strict about.

I’m strict about not using presets without even changing some settings. So this is a preset track without any change to the presets. It's a Landforms preset routed through a Arturia Fragments preset and some Supermassive presets. Plus a iZotope BreakTweaker preset for some drums and again rerouted through Fragments creating those artifacts which one could perceive as strange vocals. Because I went for a drum preset with jazz in the name it really feels torn inside, which I liked at the end. 

--

More on this 551st weekly Disquiet Junto project — The Bends (The Assignment: Get less strict about something you’re strict about) — at: https://disquiet.com/0551/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0551-the-bends/

[more disquiet]

Presets Bend [disquiet0551]

The point of this disquiet junto project was to bend a 'rule' that you normally follow while making music.  I personally always make my songs change over time in a significant way.  It could be that there are different sections like a typical song or that elements fade in and out over time.  Here I created some generative patches and just let them run with a simple fade in and fade out for the whole track.

disquiet0551 dark ambient

I took old audio cassettes where I'd recorded music off BBC radio in the mid 1980s and blended three things I've never found recordings of since: Gershwin's funeral march (from Radio 4 maybe?), Richard Rodney Bennett's Siesta (arrange for piano and theremin I think) and the Brylcreem TV ad. Overlayed on this are the annoying bits where the radio presenters talk over the music. Presumably to stop people like me making pirate recordings. These were bits I couldn't/wouldn't erase as I wanted the whole track (often live sessions).

This was posted in response to the Disquiet Junto project. More on this 552nd weekly Disquiet Junto project — The Radio in My Life (The Assignment: Record music in response to a John Cage and Morton Feldman conversation) — at: https://disquiet.com/0552/

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-0552-the-radio-in-my-life/

somethings won't erase - disquiet0552

An interesting assignment. Since John Cage suggests it's kind of a ritual to "assimilate" disturbing influences and compares it to the (anthropological) idea of integrating fearsome animals by painting them, I thought I'd try with a few disturbances of my own. (Actually, I thought about this a little longer. It fits into several sociological models, e.g. Luhmann's theory of social systems: A system gets irritated by its environment and has to cope with that, by repulsion or by integration; Cage's approach is in the integrating spectrum. Or Rosa's theory of "Resonanz": We need modes and models of "Anverwandlung", roughly meaning non-forceful assimilation, to have a working, "resonant" relationship to 'our' world, else we experience growing "Entfremdung"/alienation.) 

My disturbances: The vacuum bot (my own fault); leaf blowers which get active every friday morning like clockwork in our apartment building (not my fault); and the news (well ... my fault to switch them on, I guess; and maybe we're all a little responsible for the content). So I recorded all those sounds, recorded a drone bed and arranged everything. The duration was set by the (unedited) vacuum bot sample. I tried to only slightly edit and manipulate the samples, but I felt a little LFO action on the frequencies was in order. My favorite news sample was the line "Die große Hitze", the great heat or heat wave, so this is the song's title - contrasting the leaf blowing, which in my opinion should only occur in autumn ... if at all.

Discussion: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0552-the-radio-in-my-life/57197

Disquiet0552 – The Radio In My Life (Die große Hitze)

During the early 1990s I studied Mathematics and Computer Science. The world wide web was still largely text-based and mostly empty. Today things are obviously different, though I still thoroughly enjoy art, design, cinema and music in all its forms. I have traveled all over the world for nearly two decades, visiting just over 140 countries. Japan is my favorite. All of this I attempt to incorporate into my music and art.

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

Fake Genius

Recent comments

Related tracks