@average-alien: the equipment I used was battery operated, so low voltages/current were involved.  I would not try this with anything plugged into the wall, which could produce lethal voltages!  I also covered the mic and it's leads in waterproof epoxy so that the contacts would not short together, and additionally I froze the mic in distilled water, which has a low conductivity.  I think the worst that could happen given this setup is that the mic leads could short together, in which case the recorder would see "zero" input voltage (and thus record silence).  The contact mic itself was simply made my wiring up a cheap piezo disc to an audio cable (these are incredibly cheap, and the whole setup works really well, although a battery powered amplifier would probably help).  You might want to check out this great reference: http://www.nicolascollins.com/handmade.htm.

Amazing idea with freezing the contact mic. This is inspirational. I have to do it and record those micro-clicks cause I love them. Great!

Nice job...I like the electric piano and ice melting sounds together.

enlightened track. i so want that it hints at han solo's sensory experience as he was released from his carbonite block. :^D

Great organ playing - it compliments the ice crackling so well! Really like the way the melting ice noise takes over the mix from here. Lovely ambience and feeling to the track, and a great contact mic recording.

A set of tracks from the 29th weekly project from the Disquiet Junto group. 

The Assignment: Make music from running water, inspired by William Gibson's novel Count Zero.

More information on the group at: 

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info

More on the specific project at:

http://disquiet.com/2012/07/19/disquiet0029-countzero/

Disquiet Junto Project 0029: Count Zero

Benoît & the Mandelbrots - s/t (Syff002)

2xLP + Digital Release incl. 3 Bonus Tracks
Release: April 2016

Music by Benoît & the Mandelbrots: Juan Alzate Romero, Holger Ballweg, Patrick Borgeat, Matthias Schneiderbanger
Mixed by Michael Vierling, Karlsruhe
Mastered by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin

www.the-mandelbrots.de

Syff002 - Benoît and the Mandelbrots - s/t (Previews)

This track begun and ended in one evening in the studio on May 2nd, it may well develop into something bigger and better recorded with accompaniment as it's just a sketch. I posted it up here at this stage to capture an honest moment in the writing process and a refreshing aside to the wonderfully intense work I/we are doing on my third album. The title, image and repetition in the piece explores the idea of thinking about someone who means or did mean a great deal to you as the resurgence of emotions or memories ebb and flow which also is why the cover image isn't quite at clarity. The track features guitar and reed pedal organ, played live in one take. 
Thank you for listening xx

Thoughts Of You

ambient drone instrumental for harp, field recordings, and electronics. first recording with the modular.

lap harp, ebow, fieldrecs, pedal and modular effects. filtered harp swells through tape delay and reverb pedals, some of which is then processed by a modular fx chain: mutable instruments clouds, tides, and shades. wood and glass ornament recordings were also fed through the modular, with the tides parasite firmware generating random movement for various clouds parameters.

once again, i followed a "blind" recording process, laying down one track at a time without listening to any of them until the whole piece was finished. the results were surprising, calming, lovely. a bit of glitch, slowly rising chords, and gray skies outside.

recorded for weekly beats 2016 #19: http://weeklybeats.com

clouds and wind, shifting

**Production Notes**

For this assignment, I used a free Reaktor Blocks Ensemble called „Beatrix Radio“ ([https://www.native-instruments.com/en/reaktor-community/reaktor-user-library/entry/show/9887/]). It’s an interesting sample slicer full with EQ’s, delay lines and a nice saturated reverb. 

I tweaked virtual knobs for half an hour, recorded six 1-minute pieces, picked the three most interesting ones and cut them to 10 seconds. 

As there’s a lot of movement in these samples and they aren’t fitting in a rhythmic scheme when put together, I added a high-pitched beep every 10 seconds. Also I added a Synclavier V Bass, because the low frequencies of the samples sounded too muddy. 

Mastered in Ozone. Time to finish: 2 hours. 

* * * 

** Disquiet Junto Project 0237: Combination ABCs**

The Assignment: Build a 90-second composition from three 10-second segments.

Project Steps:

Step 1: Record three 10-second sound elements. Keep in mind that they will be layered subsequently in various combinations. You might find it useful to set one or more of the elements to loop naturally after 10 seconds, but you might also enjoy the seam where a given loop begins again.

Step 2: Label the three 10-second sound elements A, B, and C.

Step 3: Create a 90-second track of the following sequence of standalone and combined elements: A, B, C, A+B, A+C, B+C, A+B+C, A+B, A.

Step 4: Your track is complete. However, you may opt to go back in and adjust transitions and add effects.

Three More Steps When the Track Is Done :

Step 1: Upload your completed track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud. It’s here:

https://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Step 2: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 3: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Background: This project is partially inspired by the recent book Dramaturgy in Motion: At Work on Dance and Movement Performance, written by Katherine Profeta. In the book, Profeta notes A/B/A as a structure for contemporary dance choreography. It’s a structure I’ve noted, as well, as being perceptible in contemporary electronic music, especially drone-based music. This project is a step toward seeing what the A/B/A structure might sound like when a third element, C, is added.

Deadline: This project was posted shortly before noon, California time, on Thursday, July 14, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, July 18, 2016.

Length: The finished track should be 90 seconds long.

(…)

More on this 237th weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Build a 90-second composition from three 10-second segments” — at:

http://disquiet.com/0237/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto/

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place on a Slack (send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for inclusion) and at this URL:

http://disquiet.com/forums/

Beatrix Oliver [disquiet0237]

just a short test of a body eq from a clarinet loaded into the c0. square wave into c0 played with a ribbon controller. at the end the same clarinet file but distorted inside the c0 and with a smaller pulse wave into it...sounds like a brass instrument now! some room added itb

c0 - clarinet eq test

I decided to do an instructional 'how-to' for my entry, as it's easier than typing it all out. There isn't much of a song here, it's mostly instruction.

Special shout-out to Robert Nunnally (Gurdonark) for suggesting this software when I was just looking for a simple sample-playback device.

Links:

Lunchbox Battles:
[direct download] http://www.kvraudio.com/developer_challenge/2006/Lunchbox.zip
Made by: http://www.brambos.net/

Free VSTs used to make the loops:

loop 1 - lo-fi plastic piano
http://www.vst4free.com/free_vst.php?id=634

loop 2 - iowa piano
http://www.vst4free.com/free_vst.php?plugin=Iowa_Piano&id=2294

loop 3 - piano one
http://www.vst4free.com/free_vst.php?plugin=Piano_One&id=1100

***

Project Steps:

Step 1: Think of a specific trick or skill or tip you have honed in regard a particular piece of music software or hardware.

Step 2: Create a piece of music in which that trick or skill or tip is intrinsic.

Step 3: Annotate the track to detail the trick/skill/tip.

Five More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Per the instructions below, be sure to include the project tag “disquiet0242” in the name of your track. If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to my locating the tracks and creating a playlist of them.

Step 2: Upload your track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.

Step 3: This is a new task, if you’ve done a Junto project previously. In the following discussion thread at llllllll.co post your track:

llllllll.co/t/share-yer-knowledge-disquiet-junto-project-0242/4218


How To Make Ambient Music In 10 Minutes [disquiet0242]

#adamaudio #soundtrack

Original piece composed by Giordano Maselli for "ADAM AUDIO Soundtrack Competition 2016"

I hope you like it 

www.giordanomaselli.com

Rain #adamaudio #soundtrack

Disquiet Junto Project 0300: 3 chords x 100 seconds. 
Three 100 second long tracks blended together, So I’m offering to you here 300 seconds worth in just 100 seconds, more value for your time!
I played and hybrid triad,  Esus2 (E-B-F#). I wanted to hold the notes for as long as it takes, not easy with most acoustic instruments.
My choice was Electric Guitar (Stratocaster) through a Line6 pedal board to benefit from the infinite decay of that “particle” reverb I’ve been using a lot to produce reverb-drone.
Second instrument a bowed upright bass (00:06 mark, overdubbed thrice to get the three note chord sustaining for 100 sec)
Third performer: another infinite sustain acoustic instrument I own, my Indian harmonium (starts at 00:22 mark), again, overdubbed thrice to use its three different registers: lows, highs, and tremolo (an amazing mechanical, fully acoustic creepy tremolo harmoniums have, very upfront around 00:48). 100 seconds of that edited on the mix.
When the guitar chord almost vanished and all you hear is the remains of the particle reverb (00:58)  I overdubbed an arpeggiated take of the 3 note chord as an additional method to get the chord sounding for 100 seconds.
I also play a bonus bowed upright simple melody (at 00:28) to provide some variation to the plain triad. Everything was performed and mixed today at home.
No synths, no samples.	
Love
DD
FREE DOWNLOAD CC
More on this 300th weekly Disquiet Junto project (3 chords x 100 seconds) at:
https://disquiet.com/300/

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

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

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:
llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-the-300th-consecutive-weekly-project/

300 Suspended Seconds Worth (disquiet0300)

I had just the field recording for this.  It was recorded in early 2011 at a garden center / drug store near my house.  The sprinkler was on a timer and was watering trees and shrubs late in the evening, and I heard it while exiting the store so I ran home and got my portable digital audio recorder and got about 8 minutes along with bird and parking lot sounds while sitting in my car.

For this piece, I carved out a little over 2 minutes of the field recording then added some of the rhythm source I used in Disquiet0020 Nodebeat, a looped bit of the train sound I used in Disquiet0002 Duet, along with some background color used in Disquiet0001 Ice.

Had to mix it all so the non-sprinkler rhythms wouldn't overpower the source, as advised.  I think the Nodebeat rhythm is very complimentary even if it and the sprinkler regularly go out of phase but I like it when things go out of phase.

The inspiration for this track came from the opening of chapter 17 of William Gibson's 1986 novel Count Zero.

More on the 29th Disquiet Junto project at:

http://disquiet.com/2012/07/19/disquiet0029-countzero/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info 

Prickly Sprinkler (disquiet0029-countzero)

This is four recordings of rain hitting inverted singing bowls of varying sizes. These were then cut into samples of 15, 13, 11 and 9 seconds and then looped 8 times. After the 4th repetition of each sample, I faded in the hold function on the "Ambient" VST which freezes any sound.  There was also some ping pong delay, overdrive and EQ'ing involved with each sample.

Disquiet Junto Project 0029: Count Zero 

The inspiration for this track came from the opening of chapter 17 of William Gibson's 1986 novel Count Zero.

More on the 29th Disquiet Junto project at:

http://disquiet.com/2012/07/19/disquiet0029-countzero/ ;

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

Disquiet Junto

Forecast [disquiet0029-countzero]

Disquiet Junto Project 0029: Count Zero

  This week's project is inspired by an aside that occurs at the opening of chapter 17 of William Gibson's classic cyberpunk novel Count Zero, originally published in 1986. The chapter is titled "The Squirrel Wood." It opens as follows:   "The plane had gone to ground near the sound of running water. Turner could hear it, turning in the g-web in his fever or sleep, water down stone, one of the oldest songs."  

This idea of water running down stone, of a gentle but insistent natural stream, being one of the "oldest songs" is explored further in the chapter in various subtle ways. The Disquiet Junto project this week is to explore that idea: that there is music in the natural environment. We'll makes songs from running water.  

Instructions:

  Step 1: Locate and make a field recording of source material that involves running water. It can be a stream, as in the Gibson book, but it needn't be natural. The sink, a toilet, a hose in the backyard — any such source material would be fine.  

Step 2: Extract a segment of the recording. That segment will serve as the basis for your composition, as its foundation. It will provide both rhythmic and melodic material. You can either use one long piece of the recording, or you can create the foundation of the track by combining and looping one or more brief segments of your original field recording.

  Step 3: Add elements and treatments to the foundation recording of running water. Do so with the intention of highlighting the water's internal sense of rhythm and melody. Do not embellish so much that the foundation recording becomes unrecognizable.   

Information:

This was a fairly rushed project as I am on business in Baltimore and New York at the moment. God bless wifi on Amtrak's Acela Express … greetings from Delaware at speed!

The recordings were made with an iPhone and the 4 track app of a dripping faucet/tap in my hotel (I had to make it drip, the plumbing was fine) and the overrun of the shower as it hit the resonant faucet beneath.

From these I was able to take a number of rhythmic, semi-resonant loops that I brought into Ableton Live for processing. If you've listened to many of my Junto projects, you'll know that I try to steer clear of pieces that only contain rhythmic constituents, so I also created a couple of granular patches from the sound waves of the water. This all seemed to give the track a post-rock/ambient feel.

These harmonic tracks were run through various instances of Guitar Rig to give some depth to the sounds. All the while, the rhythmic water sounds were pushed around the stereo field a little and given some glitchy movement.

Conceptually I saw this as pulling melody from rhythm with the latter being almost a cage within which the harmonic character is restrained.  

Credits:

Photo: Faucet in Baltimore @echosonic

  The inspiration for this track came from the opening of chapter 17 of William Gibson's 1986 novel Count Zero.  

More on the 29th Disquiet Junto project at: 

http://disquiet.com/2012/07/19/disquiet0029-countzero/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at: http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info

A Good Morning in Baltimore [disquiet0029-countzero]

The inspiration for this track came from the opening of chapter 17 of William Gibson's 1986 novel Count Zero. More on the 29th Disquiet Junto project at http://disquiet.com/2012/07/19/disquiet0029-countzero/. More details on the Disquiet Junto at http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info.

Process:
- take a 30-second excerpt from a field recording I made of the Contoocook River in Peterborough, NH
- time-stretch it 7x in Paul's Extreme Stretch
- in Csound:
-- derive the spectral centroid[1] of each stereo track
-- use the centroid to control the pitch of a pair of sinewave oscillators
-- pass the oscillator tones through some reverb
-- combine the tones with the streatched water sound, crossfading so that the tones increase in amplitude as the water sound decreases
- convert to MP3 in Audacity

Image: "Animated loop of simulated hydrogen line spectra centroid jitter." found at http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/powerfrq.html, no copyright declared.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_centroid

Subsurface Tension [disquiet0029-countzero]

This week's challenge was to make a recording using water (full details here: http://disquiet.com/2012/07/19/disquiet0029-countzero/)

For this project I froze a homemade contact mic in a container of water and then placed the container into a bowl of hot water and recorded the water melting. I've wanted to try this for a while after reading about other people who have experimented with a similar process ( e.g., http://uprlip.com/archives/1418, http://leafcutterjohn.com/?tag=contact-mic).

I also improvised some rhodes overtop of the recording to add a melodic component.

Image (CC licensed) from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefanvds/3200106072/sizes/n/in/photostream/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at: 
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info 

Melt 2 [disquiet0029-countzero]

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.

Melt 2 [disquiet0029-countzero]

Inlet

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