For this project, the sound of three animals is combined into an unlikely vocal trio.  I chose a whimsical approach with "Four Variations of Cat Bird Pig".  It's a very short piece, barely a minute.  Only bits from the source recordings were used, along with a touch of reverb and pitch shifting.

More on this 94th Disquiet Junto project, in which the sound of three animals is combined into an unlikely vocal trio, at:  http://disquiet.com/2013/10/17/disquiet0094-naturalisttrio/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:  http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Four Variations of Cat Bird Pig (disquiet0094-naturalisttrio)

Glistening, gentle, and reflective... and loop-able secular holiday music.  

"Some Snowflakes" was created in Samplr on my iPad Air based on sounds originally made in Ableton Live.  The source sounds were also the same loops I used for a track I made earlier in 2013 called "Snowflakes" which has not yet been released as of December 13, 2013, but should be soon.

For more about my music, visit http://www.markrushton.com or subscribe to my email newsletter at http://mailinglist.markrushton.com/

More on this 102nd weekly Disquiet Junto project (Record original secular holiday music: glistening, reflective, gentle) at:  http://disquiet.com/2013/12/12/disquiet0102-sonictinsel/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:  http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Some Snowflakes (disquiet102-sonictinsel)

Recorded on Monday, March 28, 2011 - a field recording - while waiting for my daughter to finish school band practice, I realized that another band of older students was practicing nearby.  This is the overlap, plus some hallway sounds.

Two Band Practices Overlap

“Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something of it” 

Like last year, I used the Samplr app for iPad for processing the ice recording. 

Two standard ice cubes from a freezer tray were put in an 8 ounce drinking glass and nervously shaken in front of a Zoom H1.

Once the loop was in Samplr, I created six views but only used three.  The sample was lowered four octaves in each view and reverb added.  I recorded it live after I found a mix that I liked.

This year I wanted something more restrained, but with an underlying amount of tension.  The background sounds like it's bubbling.

The picture is by me, taken a few days ago as I drove by the Buddha on a hill along Scott Boulevard near my home in Iowa City.  I watched this Buddha get carved all summer long by numerous people working in the hot sun.  Now it's ridiculously cold out with winter and the Buddha looks like a giant snowman in that landscape.

For more about my music, visit:  http://markrushton.com/

More on this 105th Disquiet Junto project (“Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something of it”) at:  http://disquiet.com/2014/01/02/disquiet0105-ice2014/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:  http://disquiet.com/?p=16588

Join the Disquiet Junto at:  http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

The Nervous Rhythm (disquiet0105-ice2014)

My musical senses are in an industrial/noise mode recently.

I used Samplr on my iPad Air.  Made several different recordings.  Arranged the recordings in Sony Acid until I created something I liked.

For more about me and my music, visit http://www.markrushton.com

In addition to what I have here at Soundcloud, I now have all my commercially available recordings at YouTube for free streaming:  https://www.youtube.com/user/markrushtoncom

Thanks to a Creative Commons license, this track contains elements of music by Juan Manuel Castrillo (“Horizontales,” from the album by that name on the netlabel Impulsive Habitat), J. Surak (“Improvisation for Prepared Autoharp,” from the album If You Smell Gas on the netlabel Zeromoon), and Maddame Cell (“Auto Tempo 1,” from the album Autotempo on the netlabel Xylem).

More on this 111th Disquiet Junto project (“Rework work from Impulsive Habitat, Xylem, Zeromoon (via actsofsilence.com)”) at:  http://disquiet.com/2014/02/13/disquiet0111-actsofcommons/

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 netlabel websites:

http://impulsivehabitat.com/releases/ihab084.htm

http://museumofmicrocassetteart.bandcamp.com/album/moma086-if-you-smell-gas

http://xylemrecords.bandcamp.com/album/autotempo

The audio was sourced from reviews posted originally at the excellent website actsofsilence.com, which is run by David Nemeth.

Industry (disquiet0111-actsofcommons)

This week’s project is a celebration of the new album by Dave Seidel, who also goes by Mysterybear. Titled ~60 Hz, it just came out on the great Irritable Hedgehog record label.

I got the five pieces, converted them to WAV files, extracted about 30 seconds of each file, and loaded them into Samplr on my iPad.

Eventually I crafted the files into the following track, which is rather bass heavy, has a bit of reverb, and is rhythmic.  Wear good headphones while listening.

In my own work recently, I've been creating more longer-form ambient-ish singles, so I took the entire five minutes to create something that zones me out.  

The title is an anagram of Dave Seidel's name.

Pic is from my local grocery store.  Can't remember when, maybe a month or two ago.  It's been a long cold winter here in Iowa City, Iowa.

For more about me and my music, visit http://www.markrushton.com

Or sign up for my mailing list at:  http://mailinglist.markrushton.com

More on this 114th Disquiet Junto project — “Combine elements of Dave Seidel’s album ~60 Hz (Irritable Hedgehog)” — at:  http://disquiet.com/2014/03/06/disquiet0114-60hz/

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 is from Dave Seidel’s ~60 Hz album, released on the Irritable Hedgehog record label. More on the album at:  http://recordings.irritablehedgehog.com/album/dave-seidel-60-hz

Leaded Vise (disquiet0114-60hz)

I couldn't do this at my house for a number of reasons - the biggest being that the number of active katydid in our neighborhood have decreased in the past couple of weeks and I really wanted to do this with katydids in the mix.

So not long after I got the email for the Junto, about 8:30pm, I got in the car (cars have windows), and I ended up a mile and a half east of my house on a road near the high school called Glendale.  Driving around at night, most people would probably describe it as a "nice, quiet neighborhood" due to the complete lack of traffic, pedestrians, and street lights.  It was perfect.

Rolling down the front windows of my car, I plugged my headphones into an audio recorder and placed it on the dashboard.  Between me and the steering wheel was my iPad Air running Samplr, using the Air's speaker.  Some variations were recorded.  I used the final one for this.  I did a little tweaking of the volume in post-production, but other than fades on the ends that's it.  Everything was recorded live to one audio recorder.

The katydids and crickets mixed with the drones are so hypnotic here.  I'm very happy with it.

More on this 143rd Disquiet Junto project — “Play a live duet with the world outside your window″ — at:  http://disquiet.com/2014/09/25/disquiet0143-tuningthehood/

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

Join the Disquiet Junto at:  http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:  http://disquiet.com/forums/

Photo associated with this project by Takashi M and used thanks to a Creative Commons license:  https://flic.kr/p/fgQjCP

Glendale (disquiet0143-tuningthehood)

The original piece was an early sketch called 140621-space2:  https://soundcloud.com/markrushtoncom/140621-space2 - it was only saved as a project file and was never rendered into a recording.

140621-space2 later morphed into the completed track "Sightseeing in Space":  https://markrushton.bandcamp.com/track/sightseeing-in-space

For the purposes of this Junto, I recorded out 140621-space2 as a reference point.  It's definitely unfinished to my ears.

I saved off a copy of the project so I could make "A Small Box of Chocolate Bunnies".  Out of the five samples in the project file, two were completely quieted.  I might have made a slight volume adjustment in one of the remaining live samples, but not much.  After recording, I made some adjustments in overall volume and faded the ends.

With the headphones on, this does sound rather like something that might be in the background of a Lynch movie.  It's quite textural and dark.

More on this 144th Disquiet Junto project — “Remove parts from an unfinished composition to create a finished composition″ — at:  http://disquiet.com/2014/10/02/disquiet0144-eraserhead/

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

Join the Disquiet Junto at:  http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:  http://disquiet.com/forums/

A Small Box of Chocolate Bunnies (disquiet0144-eraserhead)

Wear good headphones.

Crafted from a very small section of an old loop I loaded into Samplr for iPad, my white noise features undulating bass in the left channel and a digital hiccup slightly after halfway through.

More on this 147th Disquiet Junto project — “Record 8 seconds of white noise in your own personal style″ — at:  http://disquiet.com/2014/10/23/disquiet0147-slightnoise/

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

Join the Disquiet Junto at:  http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:  http://disquiet.com/forums/

Danger (disquiet0147-slightnoise)

I got lucky with this recording.

I had to go down to the Iowa City Public Library to pick up Kindertotenwald, a book of prose poems by Franz Wright, which is the basis for David Sylvian's long form composition "there is a light that enters houses with no other house in sight", which is a collaboration between Wright and Sylvian, and also had contributions from Christian Fennesz and John Tilbury.  The library was kind enough to purchase a copy at my request.

In addition to this, I had a book to return, which I did at the outdoor drop, and that's where I started the recording.  I've picked up reserved books many times at the ICPL and you don't need a librarian to fetch it (it's self-serve), so it's almost always a breeze.  I figured I could go from the outdoor drop, get my reserved book, and come back out to the outdoor drop in 3 minutes, and I was right.

The library's always busy as it's located in downtown Iowa City right by the Pedestrian Mall, a closed road walkway near the University of Iowa campus.  

Once I scoped the self-checkout area, I saw a family from Africa with several children trying to finish and I chose a station right by them, hoping to pick up their voices - which were not speaking English.  The youngest one became upset and the parents finished quickly and scurried him away, and I knew I had audio gold.

After that, it's a nice comedown with the wind, the automatic doors, occasional voices, and leaves that I walked through.

I did very little processing.  Just a touch of reverb and some delay.  I liked the way the beeps at 1:08 and 1:13 turned out, and that was that.

I've done this sort of thing before with field recordings made in downtown Iowa City.  An example would be the track "On The Town" from my album Hide Yourself In Plain Sight:  https://markrushton.bandcamp.com/track/on-the-town

More on this 149th Disquiet Junto project — “Take a walk around the block and make something from it″ — at:  http://disquiet.com/2014/11/06/disquiet0149-processingthepresent/
 
More on the Disquiet Junto at: http://disquiet.com/junto

Join the Disquiet Junto at:  http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:  http://disquiet.com/forums/

Photo associated with this project by Jerolek and used thanks to a Creative Commons license:  https://flic.kr/p/9piCmd

Getting Kindertotenwald (disquiet0149-processingthepresent)

It's a very recent piece I made from Samplr.  Lots of movement, texture, and drift.  It could be 45 seconds, it could be an hour.  In this edit, it's only 3 minutes.  Immediate familiarity but with a sense of complexity, and without being overpowering.

More on this 150th Disquiet Junto project — “Record a subtle personal mobile score” — at:  http://disquiet.com/2014/11/13/disquiet0150-sonicperfume/

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

Join the Disquiet Junto at: http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:  http://disquiet.com/forums/

Photo associated with this project by Ben Crowder and used thanks to a Creative Commons license: https://flic.kr/p/B5gLF

Haberdasher (disquiet0150-sonicperfume)

An 8 second piece created using Samplr.

More on this 153rd Disquiet Junto project — “Record a short sound intended to be set on repeat” — at:  http://disquiet.com/2014/12/04/disquiet0153-groovelock/

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

Join the Disquiet Junto at:  http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:  http://disquiet.com/forums/

Image associated with this project by Stuart R Brown:  http://flic.kr/p/mFQC3

Depool (disquiet0153-groovelock)

These are from voicemails I've listened to over the past year.  Each 5 second edit is from a different month, starting with January and ending in December.  The first 11 are one voice, and the last one is a different voice.

I really prefer asynchronous conversation in the digital age where smartphones always lack the sidetone of land lines.  You'll rarely catch me talking on my smartphone for more than 30 seconds unless I'm leaving a voicemail.  That's just my thing.

Voicemails have factored into sound collages I've made since the mid 1980s, particularly in a lot of unpublished material I've been involved with.  It's almost always humor or satire, but sometimes things have veered into areas where if I published it I would get sued because of rights issues so those things are kept as private jokes.

This bunch of clips should all be regarded as humor (e.g. "Amy Fisher" rather than "Anal Fissures").

Anyway, I wanted to do something different than play 5 second snippets of music or whatever.  This stuff made me laugh over the past year, and I hope others get a chuckle out of it.

More on this 156th Disquiet Junto project — “Create a sonic diary of the past year with a dozen five-second segments” — at:  http://disquiet.com/2014/12/25/disquiet0156-audiojournal2014/

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

Join the Disquiet Junto at:  http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:  http://disquiet.com/forums/

Voicemails (disquiet0156-audiojournal2014)

Ice/glass, recording, edit, reverb, down 2 octaves in Acid Pro, render, down 2 more octaves in Acid Pro, render, edit out 20 seconds from rendered track, add to Samplr/iPad, layer & mess with, record out a small portion, edit, take that file and PaulStretch 7.88x BlackmanHarris, edit to 4 minutes.

But then I had to edit this track to one minute in length because of a bug that occurred when I downgraded my Soundcloud account from Pro Unlimited to free.  Seems it reverted to my old "Solo" Soundcloud account (which is no longer being offered) and there were some technical problems which I've been assured by Soundcloud support will be cleared up in the next week or so.  Even on vacation from my job as a software tester it's a Busman's Holiday.

More about my music at http://markrushton.com

My podcast is at http://ambient.libsyn.com

Occasional email list at:  http://mailinglist.markrushton.com/

More on this 157th Disquiet Junto project — “Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something of it.” — at:  http://disquiet.com/2015/01/01/disquiet0157-icemusic2015/

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

Join the Disquiet Junto at:  http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:  http://disquiet.com/forums/

Photo associated with this project by Michael Scott used via Creative Commons license:  https://flic.kr/p/5vyz3G

Tundra (disquiet0157-icemusic2015)

I try to stay away from the news because it's always so negative or boring.  It doesn't help that newspaper web sites are nasty places with pop-outs, modals, auto-play videos, Facebook comments, and god knows what else lurking behind those Flash widgets.

But I liked this "least important story" because whoever wrote the opening paragraph did it with a lot of rhyme.

Around 1986, when I was living in Kansas City, I purchased the LP "Break Through In Grey Room", an album of cut-up recordings by William S. Burroughs (who lived in nearby Lawrence, Kansas) and which proved to be very influential to me.

For this Junto's instructions, instead of going for the literal "noise" I went for "tiny parts heard out of order" - which included a bit of an "almost-homophone", something I repeat in the brief coda as a matter of clarification once you've heard the full original statement.

If you want to hear more music by me, visit http://markrushton.com

I also have a podcast of my music and sometimes more in-depth presentation at http://ambient.libsyn.com

More on this 158th Disquiet Junto project — “Go from noise to signal with words” — at:  http://disquiet.com/2015/01/08/disquiet0158-syllablegumbo/

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

Join the Disquiet Junto at:  http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at: http://disquiet.com/forums/

Pro-Marijuana President (disquiet0158-syllablegumbo)

I missed a lot of Juntos due to moving houses and other issues.  The current house has a big room about 500 sq ft without any furniture other than a dining room table and art.  The ceilings are 12 foot high, wood floors, so there's lots of echo.  Understandably, I want to record stuff live in this space, and that's what I did here.  Output from my old laptop to some computer speakers with a subwoofer.  The recorder was put on a dining room chair maybe 20-25 feet away from the speakers.

Drum machines aren't my thing, but I tried to keep the program semi-interesting when on repeat, and for me that has to include a bit of silence in there.

Stricter In The Air (disquiet0169-html505)

More about this track at:  http://markrushton.com/?p=1126

The two source tracks originally made available at:
http://www.archive.org/details/Stomp
http://www.archive.org/details/Michael_Lapchaka-Rezeda_Czardas
 
More details on the Disquiet Junto at:
Disquiet Junto http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info
 
Thanks respectively to Katerina Janouskova, Éric Legendre, Naoyuki Sasanami, and M. Emre Meydan for the translations that appear at the bottom of this page in Czech, French, Japanese, and Turkish. 

Oto (disquiet0012-cutpaste)

Central Discount is an Amish-run salvage grocery store located about 15 miles SW of Iowa City.  Bent And Dent is what the Iowa City townies call it.  The store is open 3 days a week: Mon, Wed, and Sat.

It's a very plain and white metal building.  Inside, there are no electric lights, only skylights, and not many of them.  Concrete floor.  Metal carts.  It's a cavernous space.  Half the shelves have nothing on them, so it's reminiscent of old scenes of Soviet-era grocery stores.  They don't take plastic, only cash and checks.  There's no bar code scanners.  No beeping.  No music playing overhead.  No intercom.

Saturday is the worst day to shop as it's packed.  And no, the Amish don't really shop here.  You get the occasional Mennonite mom & kids during the week.  Mostly, it's the well-fed (non-Amish) looking for a deal.  And they're constantly in your way.

It has all the usual boxed foods, chips, soup cans, salad dressings, and whatnot.  It comes from different stores, Meijer and Walgreens and others, likely from Chicago.  In the past I've seen and bought the occasional odd Indian snack food.  It's not uncommon to see things originally priced at $4.29 marked down to 25 or 35 cents, but staples like boxed scalloped potatoes will run 75 cents.  Most, but not all, have passed their marked expiration date.

I wasn't sure how this recording would work out.  The day before, I made field recordings at Coral Ridge Mall in Coralville (a suburb of Iowa City) and got an excellent recording of a Zamboni smoothing the ice at the skating rink that's openly adjacent to the food court.  I wasn't sure I could top that (largely an undulating drone punctuated by passing voices), but I think this recording at Central Discount does.  Plus this recording has more of the "store recording" feel that was sought.

Down the first long aisle, it's a jam.  Lots of people pushing carts, or not pushing carts and getting in the way.  Near the end, I got under an odd-looking ceiling fan moved by a piston with an electrical cord that likely runs out to the generator along the side of the building.  Yes, the building does have electricity, but not much.  Cash registers and the ceiling fans are about it.

This ceiling fan made a sound that was irresistible to me, but it was a mess of people and carts and noise when I first went by.  I did some shopping in another part of the building and came back when the crowd had moved through.  I stood there trying to conceal the Zoom H1 that I held, and pretended to look at the boxes and packaging.

It's an excellent rhythm, I think.  Vaguely middle eastern or Indian with a slight hint of jazz.  And since the crowd had largely moved on, I got a nice "store ambiance" coming from the rest of the interior of the building.

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 37th Disquiet Junto project at:

http://disquiet.com/2012/09/13/disquiet0037-asrealasitgets1/ 

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

Disquiet Junto - http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info/

Central Discount 120915 [disquiet0037-asrealasitgets1]

"Artificial Field Recording" - I decided to interpret this as constructing a field recording of an alleged department store from non-specific elements of what a field recording of a department store or retail space would typically have.

The basis for this piece, In Our Dream Department Store (Ask Me I Might Go), is a Google Voice message from a friend who was demonstrating a noise canceling microphone for cell phones called "The Boom".  They're expensive.  He was outdoors between two buses that were loudly idling and wanted to know what it sounded like.  I've got to admit, it sounds like a fantastic microphone.  Much of the noise wasn't heard by me, although he had no way of telling this as the sound of the idling buses was a monstrous roar to his ears.  Some of the sound did leak through as he got too close to the buses.  About half the samples were from this voicemail.

From there, I used numerous past recordings to fill in the sound.

One sample was of the natatorium where I swim laps.  It's the part where you can hear a woman singing.  The speakers are four stories up and the space is quite cavernous.

Another sample is from a few years back when my wife and I pushed our youngest daughter on a small metal merry go round in a park.  The recorder was placed under the ride.  That's the sound you might think of as an escalator in the middle in the recording.

Also mixed in more deeply is a field recording of a political caucus.

The rest are a bunch of different synth sounds recorded over the years to simulate phones, bar code readers, intercom alerts, and air conditioning systems.

The title is comprised of parts of lyrics from Bill Nelson's "The Crystal Escalator in the Palace of God Department Store" and David Sylvian's "Late Night Shopping".

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 37th Disquiet Junto project at: 

http://disquiet.com/2012/09/20/disquiet0038-asrealasitgets2/
; 

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

Disquiet Junto - http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info/

Mark Rushton

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