tie me up [disquiet0079-juntofate] 

The 79th Disquiet Junto project involves remixing the soundtrack for the 1966 film 'Manos: The Hands of Fate" to make a downtempo instrumental. The source material for the remix was determined by throwing a die a number of times and simple arithmetic. 

The source material for this piece was track 17: "Bondage", which is an uptempo piece comprising drums and piano.

The blocks for this improvisational piece were extracted from the source material and processed in Ableton Live.

To this end, a drum loop was edited from the track, slowed down and gated to give a feeling of pace but not a rhythm as such. Several piano instances were extracted from the track and heavily processed, each with its own different eerie quality.

Once all the blocks had been established, a controller was used to be able to play with the volumes and start/stop of the different clips live. An improvised performance was recorded and bounced to file.

Further Information: 

More on this 79th Disquiet Junto project, in which the score to the movie Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966) is remixed to make a downtempo instrumental, at:

http://disquiet.com/2013/07/04/disquiet0079-juntofate/

More on the contest at:

http://goo.gl/GXAXf

More on the original film at:

http://www.manosinhd.com/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

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

tie me up [disquiet0079-juntofate]

Disquiet Junto Project 0082: Minimal Haydn

This week’s project is another in a series of explorations of the concept of genre as a constraint. The genre this time is “minimal techno.” The source material is from another genre entirely: “classical,” specifically chamber music in the form of the third movement of Franz Haydn’s String Quartet in F Major.

Approach:
Not having much time this week and not used to composing minimal techno, I simply chose a couple of instances in the music which I thought could lend themselves to becoming frantic loops through heavy processing in Ableton Live.

I don't really consider the end result of my approach to have been successful as regards the aim of the assignment. The piece I deliver isn't really minimal techno nor can the original bits of the source material be heard in their original form at any point. The track is really a continuous build from start to finish, with only a couple of elements, more akin to the sound of a plane lifting off than a minimal techno tune. Perhaps with more time to play around, I could have devised an overall cleaner sound and more compositional elements towards building a piece that is truly in the style of minimal techno.

I deliver this 40 minutes behind schedule...

Lift Off [disquiet0082-minimalhaydn]

Disquiet 0124: Derive and Thrive.

The aim of this project was to create a new track using the first 45 seconds of each of the three tracks provided (further info below). 

The first 45 seconds of each of these tracks were edited out into three files which were then loaded into the Samplr app of the iPad (two instances of each to fill in the six available slots.) After playing around for a short while and deciding what process to use with each slot, I recorded myself "live improv'ing" with the arrangement. 

Further information:
More on this 124th Disquiet Junto project — “Recombinate work from the netlabels addSensor, As4cords, and Audiotalaia” — at:

http://disquiet.com/2014/05/15/disquiet0124-deriveandthrive/

More on the Disquiet Junto at: http://disquiet.com/?p=16588

Join the Disquiet Junto at: http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

The source audio for this track is available for free download from these three netlabel websites:

More on Erissoma’s “The miracle in the human brain” at:
http://www.addsensor.com/addsensor_html.htm

More on Kayaka’s “O” at
https://archive.org/details/Kayaka-Cp

More on D’Incise’s “Graphein” at
http://www.audiotalaia.net/catalogue/at071-dincise/

Live Improv Threemix [disquiet0124-deriveandthrive]

Музыка ко мне (google translation into Russian for "Music Come to Me") was created as part of the 13th Disquiet Junto project, namely: "There is a tremendous classical chamber-music ensemble in Los Angeles. Its name is wild Up, and it has provided to us the first movement of its recording of the Chamber Symphony, Op. 110a, by Dimitri Shostakovich. [...] You are invited to make something new from this source material. Please use only the source material".

More on wild Up at http://wildup.la
Listen to the original recording at http://wildup.bandcamp.com
More details on the Disquiet Junto at http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto

THE APPROACH
A. Creative approach

The music of Shostakovich has always had an eerie quality for me. It is this quality which I aim to highlight with my approach. Two ideas (one experienced, the other imagined) come together in my approach:

- First, remembering my experience listening to a Bela Bartok quartet being played in a 13th Century church and hearing all sorts of instruments that weren't there. The power of the music and the natural reverb of the place were enough to conjure up an orchestra and a choir...

- Secondly, the idea of this Chamber Symphony coming to Shostakovich in a dream, struggling with confusing patterns and phrases that come and go, distilling into a seed which generates a musical idea.

B. Technical approach

The approach to this piece has been an elaborate take on the "circle of fifths" method which I already used in another remix in 2011 (http://soundcloud.com/jai_r/carlos-ruiz-acoustdeep-quick).

In this case, I took the 10 samples provided and loaded them into a single NI Kontakt insrument, all of them centred around C4, panning them approximately according to their position in an orchestra, and layering them in such a way that Key Velocity determined what sample was triggered, and using Midi Latch to keep the sample playing until released by the Panic button.

I recorded myself in Cubase playing a circle of fifths, starting in C3-C5 and ending in C4 (in most cases playing two instances of each note, in different octaves). I then edited the Cubase recording to simulate the Midi Latch effect and bounced the audio. 

I repeated the bounce using a different instance of NI Kontakt where the position of the samples in the vertical grid was changed around randomly. I generated a third audio track by inverting the second take.

I set up four FX tracks loaded with 4 NI Guitar Rig presets (Space, Water, Air and Filtered Delays) to add eerieness.

Reverb, Compression, EQ and Stereo Enhancer were added to the master track, and changes in the EQ improvised and recorded. The Reverb mix proportion varies throughout the piece from completely Wet to almost Dry.

My technical limitations make the end result far from perfect and sonically cluttered, but structured in such a way that I hope conveys the idea of a dream coming to an end, waking up with the start to a musical piece. 

Any comments are more than welcome. Enjoy!

Музыка ко мне [disquiet0013-wildup]

Disquiet Junto Project 0016: Back/Foreground

Plan: This week's effort is the 16th weekly Junto, and it is a shared-sample project. The theme is "background and foreground." There are two provided samples, one of sandpaper and the other of dice. Please make one track employing both samples. You can transform them in any way you wish. You can add other elements if you choose to. However, one of the two samples should provide the predominant background sound, and the other should provide the predominant foreground sound. Which does which is up to you. You'll find the samples here:

http://www.freesound.org/people/HerbertBoland/sounds/28541/
http://www.freesound.org/people/Robinhood76/sounds/60857/ 

Process Description

In this case the results of a random technical approach led to the concept of the piece.

Delays and reverb were added to the sandpaper sample, which was repeated, panned and bounced to a single file. The resulting file was then time stretched. Interested in the result, the process was repeated. The resulting file reminded me of bombs going off in the distance, albeit weird digital zapping bombs...

Having never lived a war (thankfully), I began to wonder what it must be like to be in a shelter for hours, listening to your town being bombed incessantly. How is it for families with kids? How do they shelter their kids from the horrors outside? Is it possible to completely get past the fact that you're in a shelter that could be hit at any moment? 

I harbour a guess that they may play games, play music, anything to escape or get their minds off the grim reality they're experiencing. So, I searched for a couple of samples on freesounds.org that could help me recreate this:

The first sample is by Acclivity: http://www.freesound.org/people/acclivity/sounds/49133/

This is the recording of a Chinese family waiting for their flight at Dubai Airport. Though I'm sure shelters in the past didn't have a PA system going off in the background, I wouldn't be surprised if the future brings us fully equipped shelters where we can continue our consumer life in the depths of war...The fact that this was a Chinese family conditioned the second sample I looked for.

The second sample is by Dobroide: http://www.freesound.org/people/dobroide/sounds/71866/

This is a recording of a Chinese street musician, though it is recorded in the streets of Seville (Spain).

In a turn of events, the background is brought to the foreground at the end. I would've liked for the the sandpaper sound to be much more present in the mix at the end and for it to be less "zappy" and more "bomby", if you know what I mean.


More info on the Disquiet Junto: http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto

Accompanying image downloaded from: http://asianhistory.about.com/od/modernchina/ss/Chinas-Boxer-Rebellion-in-Photos_12.htm

There's a War out There [disquiet0016-backforeground]

Bachstract Expressionism [disquiet0036-cstillconcerto]

Instructions
Select part of the MP3 of J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, II. Andante provided. Transform that sample, through any methods you desire, into something that you feel meets the definition of "abstract expressionism" provided by the Clyfford Still Museum: "marked by abstract forms, expressive brushwork, and monumental scale." 


Idea

Take Brandenburg Concerto No.2 in F major 2nd Movement Andante as the initial blob of paint on a canvas Spread the paint, deform any shapes into an abstraction of the original.

Basis

Sample of the last chord of the piece (a D major chord)

Process

- Download MIDI file of the piece (from http://imslp.org/wiki/Brandenburg_Concerto_No.2_in_F_major,_BWV_1047_%28Bach,_Johann_Sebastian%29 ), 

- Load the extracted sample onto 5 instances of NI Kontakt (with the sample centred around D3), one for each of the parts (flute, oboe, clavichord, violin, cello). Set BPM to 44 (approximately like original recording)

- Load the sample into SampleWiz, iKaossilator and ChipPad on the iPad. Record improvised playing on the apps into Cubase. 

- Process recordings and Kontakt tracks heavily, some minor mixing...

Further Information
This track is a transformation, in honor of painter Clyfford Still, of a sample of J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, II. Andante, culled from this recording:

http://archive.org/details/J.S.BachBrandenburgConcertoNo2 ;

More on the Clyfford Still Museum at clyffordstillmuseum.org.

More on this 36th Disquiet Junto project at:

http://disquiet.com/2012/09/06/disquiet0036-cstillconcerto/ ;

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

Disquiet Junto;

Bachstract Expressionism [disquiet0036-cstillconcerto]

This is my entry to the 41st Disquiet Junto Project: Dirty Minimalism

Given the little time I had to prepare this assignment, I decided to use a "building block" which lends itself to be used in a minimalist kind of way and for which I already had an improv recording available. 

I loaded the recording into the sampler part of the Moog Filtatron on the iPad and created five presets based on the processing of this file. 

An instance of each of these presets was recorded into Cubase. Minor editing to fit to the time constraint, some mixing and EQ et voila!
___

If you'd like to listen to the untampered improv recording, go to: 
https://soundcloud.com/jai_r/swell-sakaworld

For further info on 'building blocks' or 'improv', visit:
http://soundcloud.com/jai_r/sets/improv-on-ni-kontakt-or/
___

The accompanying image was taken in October 2012 outside Centro de Arte de Burgos (Spain), and is part of the piece "Falling" by Gregorio Méndez.
___

More on this 41st Disquiet Junto project at:
http://disquiet.com/2012/10/11/disquiet0041-dirtyminimalism/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info/

Swollen  [disquiet0041-dirty minimalism]

Disquiet Junto Project 0043: Dazzled Machine 


Instructions:

This is a shared-sample project. The goal is to take pre-existing field recordings and to turn them into something else. The pre-existing field recordings are the audio produced by Disquiet Junto members for projects 0037 and 0038. 

The "something else" is as follows: 

The field recordings in question are documents of retail spaces, such department stores. You'll will rework the audio from one or more of the field recordings to achieve something inspired by the following description: "There was the continuous roar of the machine at work, of customers crowding into the departments, dazzled by the merchandise, then propelled towards the cash-desk. And it was all regulated and organized with the remorselessness of a machine: the vast horde of women were as if caught in the wheels of an inevitable force." The quote comes from the novel Au Bonheur des Dames, or The Ladies' Paradise, by Émile Zola, originally published in 1883. Please pay special attention to the notion of everyday noises that in combination suggest machinery at work. 

You can use as many of the recordings as you desire, but you cannot add any other sound sources to them. You can use whatever tools you desire in your reworking of the original material. 
 
Background: The goal for this project is twofold. In the immediate sense, it is to explore field recordings for their rhythmic intent. 

The project, however, has broader intentions. It’s being undertaken in association with the exhibit As Real as It Gets, organized by Rob Walker. The exhibit will run at the gallery Apex Art in Manhattan from November 15 – December 22, 2012. Sounds produced for this Disquiet Junto project will be considered to be played in the gallery as part of the exhibit, and will also be made available to Disquiet Junto participants and other musicians and sound artists for subsequent projects related to Walker’s exhibit. 

Method: 

1.	Whilst doing other non-musical work, I played the search results for Disquiet 0037 and Disquiet 0038 in the background. The first tracks to stand out for any reason in each group were the tracks chosen for the project. The tracks chosen were: 

http://soundcloud.com/zedkah/john-lewis-westfield-stratford 
http://soundcloud.com/justin-buckley/modular-mart-established-1992

(Thanks to zedkah and Justin Buckley for making their tracks available)

2.	Four snippets from each of the tracks were edited out in Cubase and bounced to file. An additional file was bounced with two of the snippets playing simultaneously.
3.	The eight resulting files were loaded into Borderlands Granular app for iPad by Chris Carlson (more info: http://www.modulationindex.com/ , or you can read my review at oniriasounds.wordpress.com )
4.	An instance of me improvising with the app was recorded into Cubase and the recording slightly edited.
5.	Another track was created with the additional file and FX included.
6.	A simple structure was devised to create the final piece.

Accompanying picture taken in Bologna, Italy in Nov. 2011

Further Information: 
This Disquiet Junto project was done in association with the exhibit As Real as It Gets, organized by Rob Walker at the gallery Apex Art in Manhattan (November 15 - December 22, 2012): 

http://apexart.org/exhibitions/walker.php/; 

More on this 43rd Disquiet Junto project at: 

http://disquiet.com/2012/10/25/disquiet0043-dazzledmachine/; 

More details on the Disquiet Junto at: 

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info/

Shoplifter [disquiet0043-dazzledmachine]

This Disquiet Junto project was done as a celebration of the efforts of the Three Legs Duck netlabel, and to support its employment of licenses that allow for derivative works. This track is comprised of three pieces of music, all originally released on Three Ducks: "Unloop Hullaballoo" off The Fleet’s Lit Up by Alex Charles and Richard Sanderson, "Etude" off Emosphere by !Kung, and "04:54AM" off Four AM at Dusk Jérôme Poirier. More on the Three Ducks netlabel, and the original versions of these tracks, at http://threelegsduck.weebly.com/.


More on this 48th Disquiet Junto project at:


http://disquiet.com/2012/11/29/disquiet0048-libertederive/


More details on the Disquiet Junto at:


http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info/


Method
The tracks were loaded into Ableton Live. Different loops were created within the file and some were slightly warped. FX were included for some tracks and automation set.

A 10-minute improvisation was recorded. The recording was then bounced to file and imported into Cubase where multiband compression and gain were added.

Minutes 3 to 8 of the recording were edited out as instructions to the project set the duration of the piece between 2 and 5 minutes.

If you like what you hear and want to listen to the whole recording, you can find it here: http://soundcloud.com/jai_r/whole-three-legged-race 

Photo taken at Burgos Cathedral, Spain, October 2012.

Three Legged Race [disquiet0048-libertederive]

This is the full Ableton improvisation recorded for Disquiet Junto Project 0048. 

More info can be found with the edited version: http://soundcloud.com/jai_r/three-legged-race-disquiet0048

Whole Three Legged Race [disquiet0048-libertederive]

Disquiet Junto Project 0066: Communing with Nofi 

This track is a posthumous collaboration with Jeffrey Melton, aka Nofi, who passed away on March 30, 2013. It was recorded live in April 2013 atop a June 2012 Melton live recording.

We were instructed to take an excerpt from one of Jeffrey's live recordings, listen to it a few times and then play live along to it and record the result.

While listening to it, I decided to record six instances directly into the Samplr app. I prepared each recording in different ways, allowing for further live tweaking later. I then recorded myself play along to the excerpt chosen.

Jeffrey may be gone, but his music will live on... and he is now forever nofi (in his own words: "a state of being-without-boundaries (i.e. boundless, stateless)."

RIP 


More on this 66th Disquiet Junto project at:

http://disquiet.com/2013/04/04/disquiet0066-nonofi/

More of Melton/Nofi’s music at:

http://www.nofi.org/

Read Melton’s obituary here:

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/fortwayne/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=163988588

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

So long [disquiet0066-nonofi]

Life is but a Learning Process, a work in progress... 

All tracks have added info. Contact me if you like what you hear and/or if you'd like to d/l anything. Production tips are always welcome, I don't really know what I'm doin' ! :-) 

Besides my individual endeavours, I'm currently involved in three projects:

http://soundcloud.com/k-p-t - audiovisual improvisation with Greg K and http://soundcloud.com/user3301471 
http://soundcloud.com/pppt - instrumental trio with http://soundcloud.com/carlos_ruizt and http://soundcloud.com/pepeprieto
http://soundcloud.com/the-kraut-funders - improvisation based on minimum motifs taken from classic composers, with Alberto Santos and Francesca Sorrentino 

My work consists of building blocks to be used interchangeably...Parts and pieces (or the whole piece) I present here will appear again during my work with any of the projects I may be involved with, further processed or unprocessed, in a different order, with a different character, nuancing a different aspect of the piece...or just as they are here with any additions provided by other musicians...find out more about this by taking a look at set "Playing 'Improv'" and reading the rules to the game...

jai_

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