BRIGHTER SUNS (2022) - for solo electric guitar and electronics

*IMPORTANT: you can listen to an improved version of this work following this link: juliozuniga.info/works/brighter_suns.html *


Nico Couck, electric guitar (Nadar Ensemble)
Live recording, May 21, 2022

BRIGHTER SUNS

The European fire-bellied toad is, in fact, a frog. (No fire, either.) However, this is more than compensated by its satisfyingly fun-to-say Latin name: Bombina bombina. They also produce antimicrobial peptides in their skin secretions – the even more fun-to-say ‘bombinins’. 

Native to eastern mainland Europe – recorded here in the protected land of Poland’s Barycz Valley Landscape Park – they use their internal vocal sacs to produce their “whoop” call: the mournful, slow-motion honk immortalized here. Imagine the sound that clowns might make when they cry and you won’t be far off.

Bombina bombina mysterious call

Experimenting with long envelopes and slowly evolving timbres/textures.

Timbral Study 3

winter dawn
all forest paths
are mistakes

Winter Dawn - Naviarhaiku474
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Haiku by Yossarian https://twitter.com/InFacsimile
Picture by Simona D'Auria https://unsplash.com/@sidphoto
Music : SON (Strange Ordinary Necessities)/Eugene Nx 
Bandcamp : strange-ordinary.bandcamp.com/music
IG: www.instagram.com/strange_ordinary

Winter Dawn

Statum

This is my submission for this week's Disquiet Junto assignment.

More on this 610th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Speed Limit Pt 2 (The Assignment: Combine two or more pre-existing 60 BPM tracks into something new — at half the speed), at: https://disquiet.com/0610/

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-0610-speed-limit-pt-2/

Jovian Sferics [disquiet610]

This was my contribution for Disquiet Junto Project 0611: Music That Listens To Itself.

Here’s a copy of my post on the Disquiet Junto 0611 discussion thread:

Here's my attempt to create music that listens to itself by using delay, reverb, granular and tape effects. As the piece progresses and additional tracks were added, the mix levels of the effects were increased. Tried not to go overboard but might have done that anyway. Some tones toward the end started to feedback on itself, so had to dial things down a bit. 

Tracks were created in Ableton Live using Ableton's Wavetable synth, Max for Live Tombola, Sonic Beds Vol.1 by Jogging House, and Slate+Ash Choreographs/Landforms. Ambient noise tracks were added using Audio Thing Noise and FIELD by ELPHNT. Effects used: SoundGhost Drift, Cableguys Shaper 3, Baby Audio Transit, Inorganic Audio Liquid, Arturia Coldfire, Audio Damage Other Desert Cities, Sugar Bytes Graindad, Strymon BigSky, ValhallaRoom and Phonolyth Cascade.  Image by Vedanti via Pexels.

More on this 611th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Music That Listens to Itself (The Assignment: Record a piece of music that repurposes itself as it proceeds), at: https://disquiet.com/0611/
Some of the music resulting from this project may be included in a September 29, 2023, event at the Berkeley Alembic in Berkeley, California: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/expanded-listening-music-that-listens-to-itself-tickets-712124101357 2
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-0611-music-that-listens-to-itself/

Lesser Facets Glowing [disquiet0611]

This week's prompt was to compose music that listens to itself.

So glad you asked! I have been wanting to make a project like this for years as part of my interest in structured improvisation.

I'd still like to do something clever with MAX/MASP and MIDI, but for now I kept myself quite busy with using audio processing in Ableton Live.

Basically, I tried to construct effects chains that would grab short snippets of audio (from a piano improv and also from each other!), process them, and and repeat them much later in the piece (via gates, envelope followers, or LFOs mapped to the inputs of delays and pitch-shifters). I altered the musical material using pitch-shifters (Cableguys, Ableton's Shifter) or delays with very short settings to make percussive sounds.

I also really tried to prioritize changing pitches, with the idea that altering the source tonal material would be a fun nod to classical music's idea of theme and development.

Then I loosely grouped them into things that generated low pitches, medium pitches, and high pitches.

I had a *lot* of material at the end, so I ended up cutting out a few tracks completely. 

Beyond that, my editing was minimal. I managed to volume spikes, and I also cut out some parts of the piano improv, because the generative devices were making their own musical material!

I'm happy with this one - I think it could be done at about 2 minutes and 40 seconds, but I figure this is a good audience for a slightly longer version of the piece.

* * * * * *
More on this 611th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Music That Listens to Itself (The Assignment: Record a piece of music that repurposes itself as it proceeds), at: https://disquiet.com/0611/

Some of the music resulting from this project may be included in a September 29, 2023, event at the Berkeley Alembic in Berkeley, California: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/expanded-listening-music-that-listens-to-itself-tickets-712124101357

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-0611-music-that-listens-to-itself/

Soliaudium (disquiet0611)

In a summer night in Morvan, a duet of two tawny owls with great green bush crickets and wood crickets.

Tawny owls duet in summer - recorded in Morvan (France) w/ Gregoire Chauvot

This longish recording focusses on First Light rather than Dawn (Second Light and Sunrise), although it includes the beginnings of the latter. It ought to be listened to with good quality headphones, or good quality speakers, at a mid-range volume of around fifty to sixty per cent. The recording is unedited: one of the things that particularly interests me, and that I especially enjoy, about this early spring First Light forest soundscape (and other similar early spring forest Dawn recordings that I made during this road trip to Tasmania) is precisely its very gradual, slow, minimal, and spacious development. This sounds nothing like an overly-busy tropical rainforest. The 'silence' never completely disappears.

In this rich, dense, moist, cool-temperature southern forest of Tasmania, at the time that this excerpt begins, it is still fairly dark to the human eye. The first First Light call is (as usual) from a Black Currawong (Strepera fuliginosa), a species of Currawong that is found only in Tasmania. Its call is quite unique, very unlike any mainland Currawong, and I grew to adore it, and to recognise it as the main Tasmanian forest sentinel of dawn.

We also hear the final few night calls of Ninox novaeseelandiae leucopsis, which I would prefer to refer to as the 'Tasmanian Boobook', rather than its more common and familiar name, 'Morepork'. Both names are, of course, onomatopoeic labels provided by Europeans. But the name 'Morepork' suggests, to me, an image of radically displaced Europeans in an unfamiliar landscape, craving pork meat, and hearing this beautiful owl call as though it were expressing their own cravings: 'More pork!" (Interestingly, DNA evidence has suggested that Ninox novaeseelandiae is more closely related to the New Zealand Boobook (also commonly known in NZ as the 'Morepork') than to the mainland Southern Boobook (Ninox boobook).)

The other early caller, here, is the Yellow Wattlebird (Anthocaera paradoxa), also found only in Tasmania.

Gradually, the 'Dawn Chorus' stirs and unfurls into a more richly-populated wakefulness. Thankfully, the introduced and now feral Superb Lyrebirds, which have seriously infested this region, seem to be late risers that enjoy sleeping in: somewhat later in the original recording, they pretty much take over most of the forest soundscape.

Recorded with meditative respect upon the land of the Nuenonne tribe of the Palawa people. The recording was made with a pair of MKH 8040s in ORTF into an F3 recorder.

2023.09.23 First Light. Huon Valley. Early Spring.

Recording from the world premiere of VÍDDIR, February 19th 2020 in Grundtvigs Kirke, Copenhagen.

Performers:
Bass Flute 1: Björg Brjánsdóttir
Bass Flute 2: Marie Sønderskov
Bass Flute 3: Flavia Huarachi
Bass Flute 4: Sofia Kayaya
Bass Flute 5: Beata Preisaite
Alto Flute 1: Steinunn Vala Pálsdóttir
Alto Flute 2: Marina Cyrino
Flute: María Ösp Ómarsdóttir
Piccolo: Christine Elizabeth Clancy
NEKO3: Fei Nie, Kalle Hakosalo, Lorenzo Colombo
Bass Guitar: Skúli Sverrisson
Double Bass: Bára Gísladóttir

Recording: Alma Hede and Yangyadi (Chloe) Deng
Mix: Ragnheiður Jónsdóttir

Photo: Therese Precht Vadum

VÍDDIR

__________________________________________________
Exploring hearing, the hearable, and the hearer, as an event, a mode, and a dimension of Βeing (τὸ εἶναι).

2023.09.23 First Light. Huon Valley. Early Spring.

Hearing Beings

Related tracks