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

David Creese of the University of Newcastle plays an ancient Greek song taken from stone inscriptions constructed on an eight-string "canon" (a zither-like instrument) with movable bridges. (Audio file is ©BBC)

What Ancient Greek Music Sounded Like

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 is all snare drum, and having no sense of rhythm, it's an exploration of what kind of sounds you can make from all corners of it- turns out a lot. From the rubbing my hands in circles around the skin, where there was a blemish that made a abrasive punctuation, to the metal label on the side which was raised and could be rubbed with a stick, to the hole in the same label that allowed a small stick to get inside the drum, etc. The main rhythm is wet hands on the drum, which stuck a little bit and so created this delay coming up. Lots more, like more than 20 different sounds, probably used about 10 in here.

As I said I have no sense of rhythm so a lot of this is out of phase, etc. So I say thanks for your indulgences everyone.

This was a lot of fun.
Dedicated to Dave, who deserved better.

-------------

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/

Disquiet0612 - DavesDrum

Heavenly motes: canadian gerund.

More on the 668th weekly Disquiet Junto project, All Right Then, Keep Your Secrets — The Assignment: Bury a secret sound until it is no longer identifiable — at https://disquiet.com/0668/

From Samothrace to Eelbu - disquiet0668

More on the 671st weekly Disquiet Junto project, In the Air Tonight — The Assignment: Make an atmosphere of your own — at https://disquiet.com/0671/

Ferry Music - disquiet0671

More on the 676th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Sub Melody — The Assignment: Bury a slow melody deep inside a drone — at https://disquiet.com/0676/

top slureen - disquiet0676

Joe describes celebrating Christmas in the hospital.

©Joe Frank Holiday Selections

Joe Frank Holidays

Celebrate at Cedars : from At the Dark End of the Bar

barping capybara 20250102

An improvised recording made with my Gretsch duo jet on 2/20/25. This one began spontaneously, almost accidentally, as I was recording some mic placement tests (SM57 in front of my Vox AC15). Once the riff started developing I decided to run with it and see how I could develop it. I was a little amazed I managed to bring back close to the same riff at the end.
Art from my drawing series, 20 Lines.

Improvisation for Electric Guitar, #03

Ok this song is a remake of a song off my third album. Holly liked it and wanted to sing to it. So here we are! 

Prince April

More on the 705th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Book Start — The Assignment: Let the beginning of a book help you begin a new piece of music — at https://disquiet.com/0705/. This week’s project was proposed by Neil Stringfellow.

I Got My Things and Left [disquiet0705]

GUNTER HOTEL FEELING (DEMO MIX)

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.

Disquiet0612 - DavesDrum

Troll Tunes

Related tracks