this sounds so good and your process for this sounds SO interesting! hopefully you pick it up again someday

Disquiet Junto Project 0703: That’s How You Got Killed Before

The Assignment: Revisit something that you just couldn’t get to work last time.

Step 1: Think of something difficult you were trying to accomplish, something music-related that you just couldn’t get to work. It may be a piece of software, or a playing technique, or a part of a musical work-in-progress.

Step 2: Block out time and dedicate that time solely to putting a lot of effort into doing what you previously couldn’t. Even if you don’t solve the problem this time around, you will likely make some form of progress.

Step 3: Record something that reflects, expresses, or otherwise involves the effort you expended in Step 2 above.

Deadline: Monday, June 23, 2025, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.

Details: at https://disquiet.com/0702/

Disquiet Junto Project 0703: That’s How You Got Killed Before

Disquiet Junto Project 0698: Second Third
The Assignment: Record the second third of a trio.

There were many pieces I liked a lot from part 1 and I tried out a couple of combinations. 
I settled on the track by Samplair: https://soundcloud.com/user-248104983/disquiet0697. 

I combined this with a recording of some ‘extended technique’ zither. 
The extended technique being that the zither is excited using a fast rotating disc with a magnet attached to it. Depending on the frequency with which the magnet rotates (compared to the resonant frequencies of each string), it can force oscillations in one or more strings. The sound this produces is quite rich and complex with lots of movement.

Interestingly, the combination of these sounds, which can at times be quite harsh and distorted, with Samplair’s ‘nightmare carnival’ made for a track that I found… rather soothing.

More on the 698th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Second Third — The Assignment: Record the second third of a trio — at https://disquiet.com/0698/

Soothing nightmare carnival (disquiet0698) - with Samplair

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

More on the 700th weekly Disquiet Junto project, View Frame — The Assignment: Share a peek out your window and some sounds inspired by the view — at https://disquiet.com/0700/

250601 [disquiet0700]

used this photo from my window as a graphic score. the elements in this photo mapping to elements in the track.

most sounds in here come from a contact mic applied to the window itself, or the frame.

five lines [disquiet0700]

Disquiet Junto 0702 invited us to misuse our audio software in service of recording a piece of music. I reversed my process by naming the song before starting. I needed that for the cover art, which would literally inform the sound of the music.

I exported the cover as a bitmap image. I imported this into Audacity as raw data, ran it through a low-pass filter, and exported the result as a .wav file. To meet the misuse criteria, I loaded the resulting audio into an impulse response utility to use as the basis of a series of convolution reverbs. 

I then recorded the aux output of each of the four tracks of the song, each channel shaping the sound with an image-derived reverb.

Interestingly, there is no bass track. The B♭ bass tone that beats throughout the piece is a frequency artifact being generated by the bitmap. It's a fundamental tone hidden in the image data. Cool, right?

More on the 702nd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Chain of Applications — The Assignment: Make music by misusing a piece of music software — at https://disquiet.com/0702/

Misused Menace (disquiet0702)

More on the 702nd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Chain of Applications — The Assignment: Make music by misusing a piece of music software — at https://disquiet.com/0702/

Mangled Metronome (disquiet0702)

Disquiet Junto Project 0703: That’s How You Got Killed Before

This one’s been sitting on my hard drive for 16 months. It came from a session with my friend and collaborator Bobby Rangell — we had recorded some flutes for a job, then took advantage of being in the studio to jam a bit: bass and flute, sometimes with a drum machine click.
It was a super productive day. I later revisited and shared many of those flute-based tracks… but this one?
Like the others, it was just two tracks: mono flute and stereo bass, with a 2-bar drum machine loop. But I made a patching mistake that day — the bass came out super thin and low, and mixed weirdly with Bobby’s long reverb. So I just… deleted my bass track. Why? No idea.
Months later, I went back to it — and found only Bobby’s flute and a 3-note Roland 707 kick pattern. No idea what I originally played. Worse: Bobby’s blowing was super abstract. I couldn’t even figure out the key. Still can’t.
Then I got Marc’s email this morning and thought, why not try something different?
Instead of trying to remember what we did, I improvised on top of Bobby and the 707 kick playing electric bass, just following my own ideas and added some drum loops that weren’t there when we played, then I played a Fender Rhodes and some synth textures following my new bass, trying to structure what was probably and abstract free impro.
instead of trying to figure out what key were we playing in (I recall in all our impros we just kept one steady key) I introduced chord changes, played around with modulations, and laid down harmonies that don’t necessarily match what Bobby was playing. So now you hear his flute moving freely over harmonies that were never there in the original — sometimes clashing, sometimes strangely aligning. I liked the tension it created.
I spent a full day in the studio doing this. Honestly, I don’t think it’s done, but I’m leaving it here for now.
Side note: if anyone asks “what’s the point of the Junto challenges?” — this is it.
Sure, I could have called Bobby back and spent the same 8 hours creating something much more polished and coherent from scratch. But we never would have ended up with something like this. And without this challenge, I never would’ve bothered digging into a broken, abandoned track like this.


Performed by Daniel DIaz (June 2025) and Bobby Rangell (March 2024)
Photo by DD, Carilo, Argentina. 2025

That’s How You Got Killed Before (disquiet0703)

More on the 703rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, That’s How You Got Killed Before — The Assignment: Revisit something that you just couldn’t get to work last time — at https://disquiet.com/0703/

disquiet0703 - Environmentally-Sustainable Victorian Home

This week's Disquiet Junto prompt challenged us to revisit something musical—a piece of software, an idea, a technique—that we couldn't get to work in the past, and to dedicate time to improving it, capturing the result in music.

I decided to go with my Sequential Prophet-6 analog synth. I had inherited it from an ex who moved out of the country, and for complicated reasons just never really connected with it as an instrument. Intellectually, I knew that it was a fantastic synth, but I didn't know how to make it mine, if that makes sense. I couldn't speak through it. What's worse, the last time I had fired it up, it exhibited a rare but not unknown bug where every sixth note would be extremely loud, rendering it unplayable.

But today I decided to try again, to give it a second chance. I set aside time to just play around with it, experimenting with patches and tweaking parameters. I realized that the volume bug wasn't happening, the synth was being cooperative. Eventually I landed on a set of ideas that I think work well together. Most importantly, I feel like I can hear my voice in this piece, through an instrument that I couldn't do that with before. I'm even playing the lead synth like I do an ebow guitar. 

What a great prompt and a great experience.

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More on the 703rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, That’s How You Got Killed Before — The Assignment: Revisit something that you just couldn’t get to work last time — at https://disquiet.com/0703/

I Don't Trust This Prophet (disquiet0703)

I always keep a quantity of unfinished, discarded or 'dead' material which I attempt to resurrect from time to time. In this case, after considering and experimenting with various possibilities, I eventually combined two contrasting electronic sequences (drone and random noise), slowed them down by a quarter and added a touch of delay, etc.

More on the 703rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, That’s How You Got Killed Before — The Assignment: Revisit something that you just couldn’t get to work last time — at https://disquiet.com/0703/

Quarter-Speed Resurrection (disquiet0703)

too long between waters - disquiet0703

After going years without participating in a Disquiet Junto, I saw the prompt this week and leapt at the chance to participate. I have several unfinished tracks floating around and this was one where I tried a new technique with, but fleshing out an arrangement around that technique was eluding me, so I took my piano part and treated it differently. I arrived in a different place than I thought I would and enjoyed the outcome so decided to bounce it.

light from the courtyard - disquiet0703

Recorded, edited, mixed & mastered on 11 Sep 2025 by Jim Lemanowicz at Blissville Electro-Magnetic Laboratories of Massapequa, USA.

Synth, samples, effects

Photography/Art - Jim Lemanowicz, 21 Oct 2020, Manhattan, NYC, USA

Music & art © 2020, 2025 Jim Lemanowicz

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This original version of “How Monotonous, Herr Pencil” was submitted as part of Disquiet Junto Project 0715: Err Apparent. The Assignment: Make a mistake on purpose. Build something from it.

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

More on the 715th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Err Apparent — The Assignment: Make a mistake on purpose. Build something from it — at https://disquiet.com/0715/

How Monotonous, Herr Pencil (disquiet0715)

Disquiet Junto's 715th prompt was simple: record yourself making a mistake on purpose, and emphasize the error through repetition. 

Long-time readers will know that I favor narrative in my pieces, so I created a little vignette: we listen in on a frustrated pianist in a parlor, as she tries to improvise on a piano with a bad E4. (The piece was improvised, but it was refined over a couple of takes.) 

Features synthetic piano, organic vocal, and ambient field recording.

More on the 715th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Err Apparent — The Assignment: Make a mistake on purpose. Build something from it — at https://disquiet.com/0715/.

Improv in A minor (on a piano with a sticky key) (disquiet0715)

My take on this was to use glitches or extraneous sounds that crop up in field recordings. These are usually edited out but here I extracted some from a couple of recordings and joined them to form a continuous sequence. After extending this sequence and adding a touch of reverb and delay I combined it with an evolving electronic drone.

More on the 715th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Err Apparent — The Assignment: Make a mistake on purpose. Build something from it — at https://disquiet.com/0715/.

Field Glitches (disquiet0715)

disquiet0715 - mistake

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.

Tape-based explorations in sound. Get your AI trash out of here.

too long between waters - disquiet0703

Arable Lands

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