More on this 358th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Rhythm + Blue(s) / The Assignment: An exercise in genre — at:

https://disquiet.com/0358/

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:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0358-rhythm-blue-s/

There’s also a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet to join in.

Image adapted (cropped, text added) from a photo by KoiFish Communications, used via Flickr thanks to a non-commercial Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0):

https://flic.kr/p/7Pkq3f

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/

Disquiet Junto Project 0358: Rhythm + Blue(s)

This was my contribution for Disquiet Junto Project 0627: Audio Journal 2023

Here’s a copy of my post on the Disquiet Junto 0627 discussion thread:

I remembered I had fun with this project last year, and enjoyed participating again this year.

Ended up using the same ice recording I made for last year’s project.  This time, I sampled it into Slate+Ash Cycles and created two tracks – one using the Loops engine and the other the Grains engine. Layered two additional tracks using Choreographs. No other effects were used except what were in the plugins. Created and mastered in Ableton Live using iZotope Ozone 11 and FabFilter Pro L-2 Limiter. Photo by Andrea Leopardi via Unsplash.
 
More on this 627th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Just Ice Society — The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it — at: https://disquiet.com/0627/
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-0627-just-ice-society/

Glacial Morning [disquiet0627

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]

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.

Alchemic Separation (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)

starting with https://soundcloud.com/blaaroed/disquiet0636-left-tt16tt, followed the branching paths in the trio of projects sequenced in a linear form

arranged in ableton live mostly drawing volume envelopes and a delay send at the end of each segment

based on these excellent contributions:
- https://soundcloud.com/blaaroed/disquiet0636-left-tt16tt
- https://soundcloud.com/user-807707609/left-and-right-mirage-disquiet0637
- https://soundcloud.com/raincat-306596410/metal-mirage-disquiet0638-w-blaaroed-he_nu_ri
- https://soundcloud.com/merlebardenoir/the-middle-path-disquiet0638
- https://soundcloud.com/encym/wc2h-8lh_disquiet0638
- https://soundcloud.com/alanblip/part-2-disquiet0637
- https://soundcloud.com/dandante/disquiet0637-right-2-of-3-suborbital-hang-glider
- https://soundcloud.com/analoc/0324-disquiet-junto-638-midways


--

More on the 639th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Path Ways (4 of 3) — The Assignment: Rework musical trios using the constituent parts — one of two ways — at https://disquiet.com/0639/

disquiet0639paths - full house

recorded a basic dub techno inspired patch and slowed it down to half speed, then recorded some glitchy percussiony things over it

--

More on the 645th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Speed Trap — The Assignment: Record something, slow it down, and then record over it — at https://disquiet.com/0645/

disquiet0645 - radial velocity

Faces

rhythm (disquiet0358)

Disquiet Junto Project 0358: Rhythm + Blue(s)Step 1: Consider the term “rhythm and blues.” Not the genre, just the term.
Step 2: Imagine what you might think “rhythm and blues” meant in terms of music had you never previously heard “rhythm and blues” music.

I got infatuated with Blues when I was a kid (Howling Wolf, John Mayall and Muddy Waters mostly) but back then the term Rhythm and Blues was a bit confusing to me, I remember somebody pointing out that The Who and the Stones were considered as R&B bands at their beginning. The Who R&B? ok...
In my young little head it was more mashed up with soul and funk, Stax and Motown music from the 60’s. 
Anyway, R&B was way far from the “Pop-HipHop” thing they refer to now with that moniker.
So I took all this as a license to submit whatever I’m working on really.
If somehow aliens studying mammals on this part of the universe end up thinking Fats Domino, The Who and Rhianna all play the same style off music, you can count me in (out?).

For this one I went for a 6/4 beat (4+2 unusual for R&B I presume) but used normal instruments for that style:
Electric Guitars (x2)
Wurlitzer piano
Farfissa Organ
Electric Bass
Drums

Sounds more complex than it is actually, it is just a lazy Friday jam.
DD, Paris, Friday 9th November 2018


More on this 358th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Rhythm + Blue(s) / The Assignment: An exercise in genre — at:
https://disquiet.com/0358/

Rhythm No Blues (disquiet0358)

released 11.09.2018


with pure data + trumpet

hey you, give me the rhythm (disquiet0358)

Zen Zero(disquiet0358)

Processed rain sounds and undulating electronic rhythms working together.

*

The Assignment: An exercise in genre.

Step 1: Consider the term “rhythm and blues.” Not the genre, just the term.

Step 2: Imagine what you might think “rhythm and blues” meant in terms of music had you never previously heard “rhythm and blues” music.

Step 3: Record a short piece of music that expresses the idea of “rhythm and blues” that occurred to you in Step 2 above.

*

More on this 358th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Rhythm + Blue(s) / The Assignment: An exercise in genre — at:  https://disquiet.com/0358/

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

Ultramarine (disquiet-0358)

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.

I make way too much electronic music.  This account is solely for my contributions to the Disquiet Junto.  Follow me at Spotify, my mailing list, or my podcast, all linked here.

Ultramarine (disquiet-0358)

Ambient Rushton

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