Lots of nice 'bubbling' sounds, like were in a field of really hot springs

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

Unedited recording from the ERD/SIR(Susceptible Infected Recovered) module released 23 September from micro_research. In this recording the ERD/SIR modulates CV of an Analogue Systems RS-95e oscillator.

Details: http://www.1010.co.uk/org/ERD.html

ERD/SIR 002

Unedited recording from the ERD/ERD (Earth Return Distortion) module released 23 September from micro_research. In this recording a sine from RS-95e is passed through earth and modulated in ERD/ERD by a triangle living VCO.

Details: http://www.1010.co.uk/org/ERD.html

ERD/ERD 001

Ultramix is an a piece based  on VLF recordings of jeweller Marcos Davidson's  studio workshop in Melbourne and his ultrasonic machines.

Ultramix

A fire of pleasure like a violence of kindness

François J. Bonnet talks about ‘The Order of Sounds: A Sonorous Archipelago’, his book on the philosophy of sound and listening, explaining the motivation behind its examination of modes of listening and its mapping of plural sonic ontologies, and expanding on some of the concepts he introduces in order to take account of the ‘schizological’ nature of sound. The podcast concludes with an exclusive track by Bonnet’s alter-ego Kassel Jaeger. 

Buy the Book

Archipelagic Listening: Interview with François J. Bonnet

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]

A response to the 29th disquiet junto project where the sounds of running water collected near the coast of wollongong, Australia, were processed in reaktor.

The inspiration for this track came from the opening of chapter 17 of William Gibson's 1986 novel Count Zero.
 


Wateronstone [Disquiet0029-countzero]

Kenneth Mitchell is an interdisciplinary artist working with experimental transductions between visual and acoustic phenomena. These phenomenotechnical investigations incorporate sound, specially modified electronics, imaging and objects, eventually manifesting in installations where subtle forces and phenomena, both real and virtual are transduced into the field of experience.

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.

Wateronstone [Disquiet0029-countzero]

kmitchell

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