Name: Nornsword by Matt Thomas
Duration: 8 min 26 s
Description: Exploration evolving from lissadron script (by LFSaw) from monome's norns shield, plus o-o-o script (by infinitedigits). Also incorporated some of the Dronecaster script (Twin Peaks drone by 21echoes) and some Korg Monotron Delay for some textured layers. Additional processing done through VCV Rack. Live percussion.

a tonal track.

guitar loops, self help tape through hc-tt, koma field kit/fx, night time field recordings of rural new york. a drone sample of my dad's voice.

The Private Night Behind My Eyelids

field recording at a rural cemetery + blackbox sampler + op-1 + koma field kit/fx + landscape stereo field

The Cream of the Gallows

Recorded & mixed Mar 11-13 2022 by Jim Lemanowicz at Blissville Electro-Magnetic Laboratories of Massapequa.

©2022 Jim Lemanowicz

This original version of "Anger Issues" was submitted as part of Disquiet Junto Project 0532: Other Means. Make music about something you find difficult or unproductive to talk about.

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

Subscribe to project announcements here: tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Process notes -

This is comprised of three recordings assembled together on 13 Mar 2022
- a guitar from 12 Mar 2022, recorded by laying the guitar horizontally on a table and going at it with some metal rods, a glass slide, a plastic bar-thing called a "triller," an ebow, a bent piece of flat metal and then via a MIMI Fuzz, a Joyo D-Seed II and an Ammoon Pock Loop.
- a "no-input" Behringer Xenyx 1202 mixer (fed back into itself) from 11 Mar 2022.  Look for Sarah Belle Reid's videos on the subject for more info on how that is done.  That was my first time doing that. 
- There are also some sliced bits from an older track, a 10 Mar 2012 guitar track where I used some of Live's random MIDI capability to then trigger the slices.  

As this type of guitar/noise recording has some roots in some of my own experiments from the early 90s on 4-track, I've tried to simulate that by *almost* not allowing more than 4 tracks to be playing at once, along with some tube/tape settings from Live's native devices.  As the track progresses, I mix in Live's Echo device and Live's Hybrid Reverb device.  I then mastered this by using iZotope Ozone Elements.

This album was originally released under the artist name "Heatsink."

Music For Shopping

Anger Issues (disquiet0532)

Apologetically Horny by Modern Crochet 

A short sound poem illustrating one sad sorry car horn surrounded by an uncaring and angry world. 

Recorded, assembled, mixed and mastered 14-16 Apr 2022 by Jim Lemanowicz at Blissville Electro-Magnetic Laboratories of Massapequa.

©2022 Jim Lemanowicz

This original version of "Apologetically Horny" was submitted as part of Disquiet Junto Project 0537: Penitent Honk.  Do sound design for “a missing gesture” of vehicular life.

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

Subscribe to project announcements here: tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Process notes - 
Instruments & materials - Arturia V2, Neutron semi-modular, small modular rack, Ableton Live 11, a handful of car samples downloaded twenty+ years ago, attribution unfortunately unknown.

This track was originally released under the artist name "Modern Crochet."

Apologetically Horny (disquiet0537)

"Shooting The Moon, 26 Times 100" by Wishbook

I rubbed the oil from my eyes, turned my head and passed to my left.  I withdrew and then reinserted the Atari 2600 cartridge.

Recorded & mixed - 11 Jan 2016, 15 Jul 2007 & 19 May 2022 by Jim Lemanowicz at Blissville Electro-Magnetic Laboratories of Massapequa.

©2022 Jim Lemanowicz

Process notes - 
Two recordings I made of sax were stretched & split between 26 tracks in Ableton Live to a length of 100 seconds.  

Background - 
In the early '80s, it was common among my small circle of friends to try to mess with both the Atari 2600 and 800 physically and logically, in an entirely random fashion - that's always been "hacking" to me.   We also played Hearts frequently.  Sometimes the most exciting thing about that was "Shooting the moon."  

PS, I always sucked at math.  

Art - Jim Lemanowicz, 27 Feb 2010

This original version of "Shooting The Moon, 26 Times 100" was submitted as part of ​Disquiet Junto Project 0541: 2600 Club.  Make some phreaking music.  Thanks to Alan Bland for proposing this concept for a project.

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

Subscribe to project announcements here: tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

This track was originally released under the artist name "Wishbook."

Shooting The Moon, 26 Times 100 (disquiet0542)

Exploration evolving from lissadron script (by LFSaw) from monome's norns shield, plus o-o-o script (by infinitedigits). Also incorporated some of the Dronecaster script (Twin Peaks drone by 21echoes) and some Korg Monotron Delay for some textured layers. Additional processing done through VCV Rack. Live percussion.

Nornsword

"The Silent, Understood" by Our Quiet Fog

Recorded, mixed & mastered May 27 2022 by Jim Lemanowicz at Blissville Electro-Magnetic Laboratories of Massapequa.

©2022 Jim Lemanowicz

Process notes - 

- Am6 inversion. 
- Ableton Random device
- Velocity device to allow for about a 50% chance of randomness  
- Arpeggiator device
- Chord device
- chose a basic EIC2 grand piano (legacy Live Pack) sound for this.  
- Scale device set to C Iwato 
-  Live's Echo device
- I used 2 Random Max4Live LFO devices

At around 26+ minutes.  Turn off looping, disable record arm, disable the MIDI track.  

Ready to review, I find a spot near 14 min and draw in a fade during the quick part and decide to give it a fade out for the purposes of the Junto.  I decide this piece will be called "The Silent, Understood"  I do an export to WAV and check the file on disk.  4:36.  A bit long for my Juntos, but whatever.  It could have been 26 minutes!  

- Ozone 9 master using a slight variation on a classical preset with some reduced lufs-iness.   

Art - captured 06 Feb 2010 with a Sony Cybershot in Massapequa, NY, USA

-----

This original version of "The Silent, Understood" was submitted as part of ​Disquiet Junto Project 0543: Disquiet Junto Project 0543: Technique Check.  The Assignment: Share a tip from your method toolbox.

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

Subscribe to project announcements here: tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

This track was originally released under the artist name "Our Quiet Fog."

The Silent, Understood (disquiet0543)

Recorded, mixed & mastered 11 Jun 2022 by Jim Lemanowicz at Blissville Electro-Magnetic Laboratories of Massapequa.

©2022 Jim Lemanowicz

Process notes - 
This was taken from one 27 minute generative session on an iPhone 12 Pro using Mood, Rozeta Collider, MF Randomizer, Rozeta Scaler in Iwato E, Discord4, PhaseDelayArray, Audiobus 3, & Audioshare for recording.  This was inspired by some things I was playing with in Discord4 while thinking about and describing to my friend some of the loose techniques I use that bring me to a blissful place musically.  

In Ableton Live, I split this into two audio tracks, 4 min in length each, with one being put down an octave and stretched to double its length in Live's Texture Warp mode.  Two other tracks were made from less-effected loops from the same generative session that were pitched down two or three octaves.

Photo/artwork, Jim Lemanowicz, 1515 Broadway, NYC 11 Aug 2014

This track was originally released under the artist name "Featherbedding."

Purple Arrokoth

Father Yog-Astley by Smile Puppy

In the fall of 2001, I started creating pieces using Fruity Loops, like many people were doing.  When I was working on this Junto in Ableton Live, using mostly the FM synth Operator, it reminded me of that time.  

Recorded, mixed & mastered 18/19/20 Jun 2022 by Jim Lemanowicz at Blissville Electro-Magnetic Laboratories of Massapequa.

©2022 Jim Lemanowicz

Process notes
I decided to encode the names of cult leader “Father Yod” and YouTube legend “Rick Astley” via numerological nonsense via https://www.boxentriq.com/code-breaking/letters-to-numbers (Letters To Numbers (online tool) | Boxentriq). Of course, I misspelled “Yod” as “Yog,” so now that’s part of the code too. Let’s call that “Jimcryption.” This was a working title as well.

25 15 7 1 19 20 12 5 25

Happy accidents
The title is accidentally a nod towards the decay of the analog/physical world and how the decay of the digital world equals data corruption, or something like that. Much of the work was done on Father’s Day, so that was kind of a happy accident. Also, “Yog-Astley” includes the word “ghastly,” so another nice accident.

Then divided by 7 and kept both the quotient and the remainder
quotients  - 3 2 1 0 2 2 1 0 3 
remainders - 4 1 0 1 5 6 5 5 4

Then used a purported East Asian notation, Jianpu. Zeros = rests.  I wasn't altogether too careful here but I liked the results, so perhaps more Jimcryption/Jimcorruption.  

Solfège:  do  ré  mi  fa  sol la  si
Notation: 1    2   3     4   5   6   7

I am gonna go with F# for this
F♯ G♯ A♯ B C♯ D♯ E♯
1    2    3   4  5   6   7 

So my tone rows are 
A♯ G♯ F♯ R   G♯ G♯ F♯  R   A♯
B   F♯  R   F♯ A♯ D♯ A♯ A♯ B

I have 9 sets of two, so I went with 9/8, BPM of 86 with a "bridge" of half-time 43.  Ended up varying the tempo throughout the piece.

Bottom row (by 3s)
- accented the first beat of each dotted crochet 123 456 789.  
- used a lower octave
- tonal with a percussive quality - FM marimba (Ableton Operator, "Metallic Noise Pluck" preset variation)
- 8th notes, no swing
- automated a few parameters in Operator

Top row (by 4s)
- accented the first beat of each of these divisions 1234 5671 2345 6712 3456 7123 4567 1234 etc.  
- used a higher octave
- tonal, FM pluck sounds (Ableton Operator, "Plastic Marimba" preset variation)
- 8th notes, no swing
- automated a few parameters in Operator

"Bridge"
Touched on some "reverse-steganography."  Processed 1 photo of Rick and 2 of Yod and 13 wives and ran them through CoagulaLight1666.  This produced three short grainy sound samples that were then stretched to varying degrees using Live's Tones or Texture modes.  I then sliced each raw Coag track to MIDI and superimposed the marimba MIDI into each, leaving them roughly in time with the marimba part.  After that I added a Nectar plug-in to each and pitch corrected to F# maj.  Finally, the entire Coag group was passed through an Ableton Delay preset, "Full Range Spatial."  

Decided to grab some 9/8 drum ideas from a book I have - "3,5,7,9 Rock!" by Don Reid - and add these in to create sections.  Used Live's "Jazz Kit" drum rack, tweaked a bit.  I tried to accent similar to the marimba pattern and lower the probability of playing the hits off-accent (23 56 89).

Continuing with previous experiments with iZotope's mixing and mastering tools, I used Neutron Equalizer, Neutron Sculptor & Neutron Visual mixer during mixing and used Ozone 9 for mastering. Mastered it twice and chose the first attempt for this Junto.  

Artwork: Penn Station, NYC 17 Dec 2010, by Jim Lemanowicz

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This original version of "Father Yog-Astley" was submitted as part of ​Disquiet Junto Project 0546: Code Notes. The Assignment: Make music that includes a secret message.

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

Subscribe to project announcements here: tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

This track was originally released under the artist name "Smile Puppy."

Father Yog-Astley (disquiet0546)

Plaitsar

mastered by oman, anahata nada communications
artwork by amine amalie bjerregaard petersen

produced by sistor


2k18
Resonans i Tre Dele

Heretter følger jeg deg helt hjem

I use field recordings, synthesis, and live instrumentation to create textured soundscapes.

Nornsword

Matt Thomas

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