Disquiet Junto Project 0612: Drum Vector
The Assignment: Walk the listener through variations on the same percussive instrument.

Thanks to Mahlen Morris for having proposed this project.

Step 1: Pick a single percussion instrument.

Step 2: Record between 4 and 12 different short examples (roughly 20 to 60 seconds each) of playing that instrument. Imagine that each recording is by a different musician exercising a different aspect of the instrument. Make no deliberate attempt to match key or tempo or sonic quality between them.

Step 3: Imagine moving through space over the course of time, and encountering the sounds — overlapping somewhat — as you proceed. Arrange the recordings over the course of a track so that at least one and at most five of the examples are audible at any one time. To further the spatial movement, each could fade in at the beginning and fade out. They might, as well, move from position to position within the stereo field.

Step 4: If you wish, consider adding a noise bed underneath the entire piece to sew all of the pieces together, to provide a sense of the space one is moving through.

. . .

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, September 25, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, September 21, 2023.

More on this 612th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Drum Vector (The Assignment: Walk the listener through variations on the same percussive instrument), at: https://disquiet.com/0612/

Thanks to Mahlen Morris for having proposed this project.

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-0612-drum-vector/

Disquiet Junto Project 0612: Drum Vector

Electronic percussion sequences created in Pure Data with a touch of reverb & additional noise.

More on this 612th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Drum Vector (The Assignment: Walk the listener through variations on the same percussive instrument), at: https://disquiet.com/0612/

Thanks to Mahlen Morris for having proposed this project.

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-0612-drum-vector/

Drum & Hum (disquiet0612)

This was my contribution for Disquiet Junto Project 0612: Drum Vector

Here’s a copy of my post on the Disquiet Junto 0612 discussion thread:

At first, I wasn't sure how to approach this project. Briefly fooled around with various ideas and percussive instruments, till I finally settled on composing this in Ableton Live. Not sure how accurately I followed the assignment though but at least I had fun.

Five tracks were created using Ableton Live's Wavetable synth, all with the Mallets/Crockhausen preset and Max for Live Octopulse sequencer. Different parameters for the synth and sequencer were adjusted for each track to try to emulate five different musicians. Audio was processed with Minimal Audio Cluster Delay and Arturia LX-24 reverb. Background noise/drone from AudioThing Noises. Image by Neosiam via Pexels.
 
More on this 612th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Drum Vector (The Assignment: Walk the listener through variations on the same percussive instrument), at: https://disquiet.com/0612/
Thanks to Mahlen Morris for having proposed this project.
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-0612-drum-vector/

Five Radials At Obtuse Angles [disquiet0612]

• Key: F min / C min /A min     BPM: 95     Time signature: 4/4     DAW: Reaper
    • Instruments: Xiaoluo
    • Plug-ins: NI East Asia, Komplete Kontrol, Izotope Neutron, Ozone
    • The Assignment: Walk the listener through variations on the same percussive instrument. 
    • Used the Chinese Percussion Instrument “Xiaoluo”
    • Played the instrument for different lengths of time
    • Layered the items 1 to 5 deep
    • Length of Song = 4:12 approx.

More on this 612th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Drum Vector (The Assignment: Walk the listener through variations on the same percussive instrument), at: https://disquiet.com/0612/

Thanks to Mahlen Morris for having proposed this project.

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

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

disquiet0612 - Xiaoluo Route

Disquiet Junto Project 0612: Drum Vector The Assignment: Walk the listener through variations on the same percussive instrument.

More zither.
When recording with a contact microphone, the different parts of the zither — the wooden body, the metal pegs, the strings; all of them hit, scraped, scratched, bowed and plucked in different ways — can produce a wide variety of quite striking, percussive sounds. From small and pretty, to huge and menacing. Contact mics are great at making relatively small objects sound big, which combines well with the fact that the zither strings act as resonators, so sounds get a very long tail: like a tuned reverb.

As the prompt suggested, I made a couple of improvised recordings, trying to get a bunch of different sounds out of the setup. Most of them are loops consisting of several layers. One recording used a sampler where different zither sounds were loaded into memory and then played using a step sequencer. I used some relatively straightforward software effect chains for audio processing: combinations of compression, saturation, delay, reverb. I used them mostly in a static way. That is to say: my playing was focussed on the physical instrument and the various techniques of playing it, rather than on audio mangling.

For the final piece, I edited and arranged the different recordings. I liked the notion of ‘moving through space over the course of time, and encountering the sounds’ as suggested in the prompt, so making everything sound as if it could have been played in a single space was the main objective;  playing with timing, loudness, filtering, spatial effects, stereo width and stereo positioning. Interesting challenge!

More on this 612th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Drum Vector (The Assignment: Walk the listener through variations on the same percussive instrument), at: https://disquiet.com/0612/

Hit me with your rhythm whisk (disquiet0612)

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

More on this 612th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Drum Vector (The Assignment: Walk the listener through variations on the same percussive instrument), at: https://disquiet.com/0612/

Thanks to Mahlen Morris for having proposed this project.

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-0612-drum-vector/

Mauna Kea Cycle [disquiet0612]

This was made for the #disquiet Junto 612 and the assignment was: Walk the listener through variations on the same percussive instrument. So I built a drum in VCV Rack, made several instances of it and programmed a couple of riffs. The first riff, which I made up myself, is played on two drums with different tuning. At the end I added a player who bangs the drum like monkeys do and in between you might recognise some things.

More on this 612th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Drum Vector (The Assignment: Walk the listener through variations on the same percussive instrument), at: https://disquiet.com/0612/

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-0612-drum-vector/

Drum Vector (disquiet0612)

DrumVector (disquiet0612)

“It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”
--Patrick Rothfuss

OneKind- Desist

Windharfe

An electronic sequence created with Audacity and Pure Data.

More on the 664th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Mother Beat — The Assignment: Record a piece of music in 29/16 time — at https://disquiet.com/0664/

Odd and Even (disquiet0664)

a piece of music written in 29/16 time for the Disquiet Junto.

started and completed September 19, 2024

 https://disquiet.com/0664/

median plane [disquiet0664]

So the Disquiet Junto assignment this week was simply to make a piece of music in 29/16 time. This is a super weird time signature. I remembered fooling about with Dilla-type beats using quintuplets (where you count 5s between every beat) and I figured exploring groups of 5 16ths might be worth it. It's a strange feeling to try and take a very mathsy approach, like fitting beats tightly on a fixed grid of 29 steps, and try to replicate some kind of "real" shuffle.

In the second half of the track I use this sample pack from Freesound. A Korean instrument that sounds like a koto. https://freesound.org/people/spt3125/packs/1534/

More on the 664th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Mother Beat — The Assignment: Record a piece of music in 29/16 time — at https://disquiet.com/0664/

Jet Jaguar - Kāo [disquiet0664] (free download)

Recorded, mixed & mastered 20/21 Sep 2024 by Jim Lemanowicz at Blissville Electro-Magnetic Laboratories of Massapequa.

©2024 Jim Lemanowicz

Tools used - FL Studio, Nimble Tools Misstortion 2, Puremagnetik Pastfabric, Ozone 9 Exciter & Equalizer, native FL Studio effects, Moog MF-104S Delay, kHs Resonator & Ring Mod, Output Portal, samples of rain & electric bass, FL Sakura, Ableton Live and Live native devices, PaulXStretch and the kick sample I used in this week’s Disquiet Junto.

This original version of "It's Umbrella Time Again" was submitted as part of Naviar Haiku 559, Misty Spring Rain

misty spring rains...
umbrellas high and low
aboard the ferry

by: Masaoka Shiki

Regarded as the father of contemporary haiku, Masaoka Shiki was a poet and literary critic during the Meiji period Japan.

He advocated realistic observation by “sketching” (shasei) poems and going out into nature with notebooks, thus abandoning the traditional subjects of haiku of the time. His advice for an aspiring poet was, “Use both imaginary pictures and real ones, but prefer the real ones.”

For more about the Naviar Haiku Challenge, see https://www.naviarrecords.com/haiku-music-challenge/

It's Umbrella Time Again  (naviarhaiku559)

[disquiet0664] Oh Mother

This track was created for the 665th Disquiet Junto, a weekly music challenge. This week the challenge was to listen to the first Clicks + Cuts compilation and create something inspired by it. With the exception of the 808 drums all sounds are from field recordings I made around the house.

More on the 665th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Clicks + Cuts Music Factory — The Assignment: Record a track in honor of the late Achim Szepanski — at Disquiet Junto Project 0665: Clicks + Cuts Music Factory – Disquiet 1

Disquiet Juntos

Kicks and Kluts (disquiet0665)

Nothing is fixed, everything flows

A sespuzzle pausan_02

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.

There was a time when I was involved in Science! But that was a mistake. My Passion is music. I play the pipe-organ and synthesizer, I play the organ in a few bands and I like Apple computers. I discovered SuperCollider and VCV Rack: great ways of making sounds. Enjoy them on SoundCloud!

DrumVector (disquiet0612)

Henk Lasschuit

Related tracks