Fresh from the cauldron, I present a corrosive transmutation from silver to gold! You can even hear the ingredients crack, pop, and sizzle during the process.

What's the recipe? I used two takes from an old session (called Silver and Gold) with my beloved Cocoquantus (hence the crack, pop, and sizzle). A new plugin called Secta can split an audio file dynamically into different frequency ranges - it works nicely on some material but not on others. I managed to extract a low-frequency version ("copper"), some high mids ("tin"), and an envelope-gated version ("sulfur"), the latter. 

My initial idea was to phase-cancel the generated parts with the original track. That didn't work, as I was too stupid to apply the technique on a stereo track. So I faded out the original loop, built a transition with copper, lead, and sulfur, and ended with the gold track. 

Magic.  

* * * 
Disquiet Junto Project 0628: Alchemical Brothers The Assignment: Explore an aspect of the ancient occult science using music.

Step 1: There are, we’re told, seven stages of alchemy, the ancient occult science concerned with the transformation of matter. The third of these stages is “Separation,” which is symbolized by the element of air. Since air is closely associated with the transmission of sound, Separation suggests itself as a stage of alchemy that might be explored through music. Read up a bit on alchemy.

Step 2: Produce a piece of alchemy-inspired music that explores the concepts of “transformation” and “separation” as you interpret them.

(...)

More on this 628th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Alchemical Brothers — The Assignment: Explore an aspect of the ancient occult science using music — at: https://disquiet.com/0628/

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-0628-alchemical-brothers/

Trying To Find Gold In The High Mids [disquiet0628]

A sequence of recorded sounds transmuted using occult practices.

More on this 628th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Alchemical Brothers — The Assignment: Explore an aspect of the ancient occult science using music — at: https://disquiet.com/0628/

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-0628-alchemical-brothers/

The image associated with this project is a detail from a 16th century alchemical text in the public domain.

Occult Transmutation (disquiet0628)

“Earth is turned into water black and blue / And water after into air under very white,” wrote George Ripley in his 1471 work The Compound of Alchemy. “Of this Separation I find a like figure.” Heavy stuff.

Suss Müsik believes all sound to be a process of experiential transformation, a constant shifting of directional timbres and tones. Musically speaking, it’s difficult to explain why some sounds seem to have more success combined with others. It might simply be our biases at work (Suss Müsik, for example, uncovers alchemy in any classic Thom Bell production). Or perhaps something more mystic takes place on a subconsciously metaphysical level. 

The approach Suss Müsik took with this week’s Junto was to begin quite literally with blue and white noise, pushing and turning the voltages the same way an acoustic instrument might move air into water. The sound was manipulated by various self-built electronic gadgets and MIDI devices. The piece was composed (well, more like discovered) and recorded quickly to 8-track.

The piece is titled Tetraptative, a Middle English adjective whose only appearance in written or spoken form is believed to occur in Ripley’s text:

And Separation is called by Philosophers definition, 
Tetraptative dispersion of the said four elements.

More on this 628th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Alchemical Brothers — The Assignment: Explore an aspect of the ancient occult science using music — at: https://disquiet.com/0628/

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-0628-alchemical-brothers/

Tetraptative [Disquiet0628]

Due to winter weather in my area, I've been taking the bus.  I have a 5 minute drive to the mall where I park and then hop on an express bus for the 12 mile ride to work in downtown Des Moines.  Leaving the car behind and taking the bus is a transformative process for me because I haven't taken public transportation and been at the mercy of schedules in a long time, so it's a change.  I do appreciate the time on the bus, and I always open my iPad to sketch out some music projects, listening in earbuds.

And that's how this piece started - on the bus.  I have to compose with all the noise and heated air rushing around me.  After I get home, I run it through my boxes, and turn it into something else.  In that way, it's a kind of alchemy.

The title, "Rode Here on the Bus" is a direct lift of the beginning lyric of "Dreams Tonite" by Alvvays.  "Now you're one of us, it was magic hour."  Yep, transformative - and alchemy is a kind of magic.

A rare full track from me.  Usually I cap them at 30 or 60 seconds.

Wear good headphones.  I like Grados.  I own three pairs.

More about me at https://www.markrushton.com

Follow me on Spotify:  https://open.spotify.com/artist/3o7In5aHAnzK7WYGHY5Khx?si=bsotBYbgRb2uRZOSMDzMYQ

More on this 628th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Alchemical Brothers — The Assignment: Explore an aspect of the ancient occult science using music — at: https://disquiet.com/0628/

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-0628-alchemical-brothers/

Rode Here On The Bus (disquiet0628)

The Assignment: Explore an aspect of the ancient occult science using music.

Step 1: There are, we’re told, seven stages of alchemy, the ancient occult science concerned with the transformation of matter. The third of these stages is “Separation,” which is symbolized by the element of air. Since air is closely associated with the transmission of sound, Separation suggests itself as a stage of alchemy that might be explored through music. Read up a bit on alchemy.

Step 2: Produce a piece of alchemy-inspired music that explores the concepts of "transformation" and "separation" as you interpret them.

More on this 628th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Alchemical Brothers — The Assignment: Explore an aspect of the ancient occult science using music — at: https://disquiet.com/0628/

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-0628-alchemical-brothers/

transform separate [disquiet0628]

sound art for disquiet0628.

"The operation of Separation in which the black, earthbound Soul Bird splits into two white birds that retrieve the saved remains of Calcination and Dissolution."

Found objects:
Cassette audio book of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull read by the author Richard Bach. (I found this cassette over a decade ago)
Metal grill from an electric fire.
Two metal feet for baths in the shape of eagles claws. (Found on the Thursday morning of the Disquiet Junto)
Seagull feather.

I strummed the grill with the feather and clanged the metal feet.
I made a random word collage with the cassette and panned one lot of voices hard left and another hard right to create two birds from one.
The word collage was made by fast forwarding and pressing play on a tape deck. Lots and lots of layers. Some recorded with contact mics attached to the speakers, some jammed underneath and some attached to the metal grill which was jammed under the speaker.

One of the phrases that appeared in the collage was “if you wish to learn” which is where the track title comes from.

No effects, just the objects and some EQing.

More on this 628th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Alchemical Brothers — The Assignment: Explore an aspect of the ancient occult science using music — at: https://disquiet.com/0628/

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-0628-alchemical-brothers/

if you wish to learn (disquiet0628)

Disquiet Junto Project 0628: Alchemical Brothers
The Assignment: Explore an aspect of the ancient occult science using music.

Ugh… I had a lot of ideas about alchemy, sound, music, art these last few days. Many thoughts that refuse — as I now try to put them to paper — te gel into some sort of coherent whole. 
Thoughts about how contemporary electronic music is the most ‘alchemic’ of musical traditions - focussed as it is on mutation and transformation of timbres, rather than on combining various unchanging parts -- as someone composing for orchestra would do. About timbral transformation as rather fundamental for how I approach many of the things I make. About how sound has this ‘Proustian' quality of making us remember places, people, events, in fundamentally different ways than the way that for example telling a story triggers memories. About how art can use sounds and their effect on memory to transform our attention in our (daily) lives, separating our perception from the many layers of thought, expectation, ideas, stories, meanings we attach to them. About how filter coffee machines can sound like a fairytale alchemist’s laboratory…

Anyway, here’s the piece. It uses a software audio device I programmed to remove/separate the first 8 partials of a sound. Basically, what it does is use pitch detection to set the frequencies of a series of notch filters. It’s rather crude and far from perfect, especially if you use it with polyphonic material. This leads to some interesting sonic results. Playing zither into it will make it sometimes sound like a cymbal. And mixing the transformed and dry sound of a piano, produces some quite interesting sounds: a bit like the instrument was run through a bandpass filter, but with some unusual timbral effects.
I combined these processed instruments with processed (granular delayed) field recordings from my usual morning routine: making coffee. It’s a bit of a gift to future me (and my housemates), perhaps hearing this little sketch some years into the future and remembering the house, and these mornings when all is still (and these days cold and dark).

More on this 628th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Alchemical Brothers — The Assignment: Explore an aspect of the ancient occult science using music — at: https://disquiet.com/0628/

Coffee ritual (disquiet0628)

Separating a melody from pink noise and resonating a pipe through a convolution reverb.
--
More on this 628th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Alchemical Brothers — The Assignment: Explore an aspect of the ancient occult science using music — at: https://disquiet.com/0628/

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-0628-alchemical-brothers/

The image associated with this project is a detail from a 16th century alchemical text in the public domain.

transform separate [disquiet0628]

Lazenbee Industries