The Assignment: Combine two Nils Frahm solo piano pieces into one.

More on the project at:

http://disquiet.com/2013/01/17/disquiet0055-twoscrews/

More on the Disquiet Junto group at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Disquiet Junto Project 0055: Two Screws

Junto Disquiet

September 20th marks the 30th birthday of Berlin pianist Nils Frahm, but also the day he has chosen to give his fans a special gift in the form of 9 songs he recorded with 9 fingers, entitled 'Screws'.

Nils experienced an unfortunate accident which saw him fall from his bunk bed located directly above his studio, which resulted in a broken thumb. But through inspiration from his fans and after a gentle walk and talk through the park with a close friend, he decided to deal with the situation in the only way he knew – playing his piano.

With four screws surgically placed inside his thumb, he started recording with his remaining 9 fingers, what later resulted in 9 intimate piano recordings.

Fans can download 'Screws' as mp3s or in full 24-bit 44.100 kHz audio quality here (http://screws.durtonstudio.com), and pre-order a Vinyl/CD edition from the Erased Tapes online store (http://erasedtapes.com/store/index/ERATP046), which will be released later this year.

'I am sitting in front of a sheet of paper. My right hand is bending over my left thumb. The first day I got out of my cast I could bend it by 15°. Now I am already at 50° and that makes me happy. Things are going uphill...

As you can imagine, it is really bad news for a pianist when he gets diagnosed with a broken thumb. That day I was sitting in the emergency room, feeling rather dizzy while thinking of a zillion shows coming up and all the people involved around it. I realised in that moment how busy things have become. It is hard to turn down interesting projects and opportunities, since I surely love my work. It actually never felt like work. Playing piano and playing it for wonderful people is the greatest joy I can imagine.

For a couple of days I felt like this all could be over. How pathetic. But hey – also feeling sorry for yourself has its place somewhere. All of a sudden I had so much time, an unexpected holiday. I cancelled most of my schedule and found myself being a little bored. Even though my doctor told me not to touch a piano for a while, I just couldn't resist. I started playing a silent song with 4 fingers on my left and the remaining 5 on my right hand. I set up one microphone and recorded another tune every other night before falling asleep.

The day I got rid of my cast I had recorded 9 little tunes. They have helped me feel less annoyed about my accident and reminded me that any good is something I can only achieve, when I am making the most out of what I've got.

Thank you all for listening!

With lots of love,

Nils


9FINGERS North American Tour 2012

09/16 New York (US) – West Park Presbyterian Church 
09/21 Boulder (US) – Cherryvale Studios
09/22 Colorado Springs (US) – The Mesa
09/23 Santa Fe (US) – O'Shaughnessy Performance Space @ Santa Fe Uni
09/24 San Fransisco (US) – private show (RSVP only)
09/29 Seattle (US) – Decibel Festival @ Broadway Performance Hall
09/30 Portland (US) – Classic Pianos
10/03 Mexico City (MX) – Mutek

ERASED TAPES 5th Anniversary Tour w/ Ólafur Arnalds & A Winged Victory For The Sullen

10/08 HAMBURG (DE) – Fliegende Bauten
10/09 PRAGUE (CZ) – Palac Akropolis
10/10 BUDAPEST (HU) – Trafo
10/11 MANNHEIM (DE) – Alte Feuerwache
10/13-14 BERLIN (DE) – Radialsystem
10/15 AMSTERDAM (NL) – Paradiso
10/16-17 LEUVEN (BE) – Stuk
10/18 LONDON (UK) – Hackney Empire
10/19-20 ISTANBUL (TR) – Salon IKSV

PREVIOUS PRESS:

'No. 42 Best Albums Of 2011' -The Guardian
'Felt is a transportative album, a balm for troubled minds.' BBC Music
'Frahm’s hyper-intimate recording technique for the album makes Felt a captivating listen' (9/10) DIS

★ ★ ★ ★ – Popmatters ★ ★ ★ ★ – Uncut ★ ★ ★ ★ – Clash ★ ★ ★ ★ – Mojo

OFFICIAL WEBSITES: screws.durtonstudio.com · facebook.com/nilsfrahm · twitter.com/nilsfrahm · erasedtapes.com

Screws

Buy CD/LP/DL

Nils Frahm - Do

Nils Frahm - Re

Disquiet Junto Project 0050: -.......--.-..-...-

For the morse code I used SuperCollider to generate it. Dash is pink noise with a "square" envelope which is varied between 0.03 and 0.07secs long, dot is a very short sine envelope. The spacing between each sound has a varied length to give it some movement, there are general minimum times.

This was then moved in Ableton Live mixed and the other sounds added. 

More on this 50th Disquiet Junto project at:

http://disquiet.com/2012/12/13/disquiet0050-morsebeat/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Code [disquiet0050-morsebeat]

More on this 51st Disquiet Junto project at:

http://disquiet.com/2012/12/20/disquiet0051-audiojournal/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/


twenty twelve [disquiet0051-audiojournal]

I found this one really hard and have struggled with it, but here it is.

Method: 
1. End of the cat in the ocean, which went into SuperCollider, this code cuts it up and replays it in a random order with different samples left and right.

2. The intro of broken robots, this went straight into Ableton live and was messed up in there.

3. A 2.17 second sample from broken robot, this went into SuperCollider and I used code to cut it up into micro-sounds and to also generate the beat track.

All this went into Ableton where is was arranged and fx's applied.

///////////////////////////

This Disquiet Junto project was done as a celebration of the efforts of the Bump Foot netlabel, and to support its employment of licenses that allow for derivative works. These Junto netlabel remix projects are intended to promote reworking as itself a means of music distribution. This track is comprised of three pieces of music, all originally released on Bump Foot: "Bongo" off the Aguas Tonicas album titled Los Desposeídos, "Broken Robots" off the Gridline album titled Red Music, and "The Cat in the Ocean" off the Pics Frunk album titled Low Voltage. More on the Bump Foot netlabel, and the original versions of these tracks, at http://www.bumpfoot.net/.

More on this 52nd Disquiet Junto project at:
http://disquiet.com/2012/12/27/disquiet0052-bumpcc/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/


the mat sat on the cat [0052-bumpcc]

This is my first attempt to contribute to this Disquiet Junto project thing.  This week's project was to take two piano compositions by Nils Frahm, called "Do" and "Re", and remix them together.  Modifying the samples was allowed, but no new sounds could be added.

I decided to try doing something interesting as quickly as I could, with as little care as I could handle.  I threw the tracks into Ableton Live, sliced them into sample grids, and pitched several of the samples down in a haphazard manner, not paying attention to which i was choosing to modify.

Each composition was in its own track.  "Do" got a nice big load of reverb on it, plus a bit of treatment from Live's Beat Repeat plugin.  "Re" had 3 effects paths.  Path 1 filtered out all but some of the higher frequencies and added a HP filtered delay, path 2 had downsampling and LP filtering, and path 3 had a gated Beat Repeat.  Both tracks were sent a bit to a Send channel with heavy compression, "Re" was sent through another Send channel for a clean signal, and then everything was compressed a bit more.  I think compression is the coolest thing ever and I use it as much as I can because it makes me look cool, like smoking cigarettes.

This was all set up in a manner so I could press play and it could just keep going forever.  I guess that's what some folks call "generative".  I set an audio track to listen to the Master channel and armed it to record.  When I started recording, I discovered that I forgot to set it to NOT send audio back to the Master channel, and therefore got some crazy feedback.  I decided to just leave it be, and messed with the channel's amplitude to control the feedback.

------
More on this 55th Disquiet Junto project at:

disquiet.com/2013/01/17/disquiet0055-twoscrews/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

Groups – Disquiet-junto

More on the Frahm project at:

reworked.nilsfrahm.com/

floppy arm flails [disquiet0055-twoscrews]

This is a track for Disquiet Junto group. This week's task was to create a track using only sounds from 2 tracks ("Do" and "Re") from the free solo piano album 'Screws' by Nils Frahm. 

You can here the album here: https://soundcloud.com/erasedtapes/sets/nils-frahm-screws

The inspiration for this track was the idea behind the album. From the description:

"Nils experienced an unfortunate accident which saw him fall from his bunk bed located directly above his studio, which resulted in a broken thumb. 
...
With four screws surgically placed inside his thumb, he started recording with his remaining 9 fingers, what later resulted in 9 intimate piano recordings."

I imagined what would happen to somebody who couldn't play music anymore, sitting by the piano many years later, trying to remember one of his tunes and trying to play it again.

For this track I cut up the original recordings and rearranged the bits in Ableton Live and then recorded it additionally processing it through BugBrand modular, Cocoquantus and A/DA Stereo Tapped Delay.


More on this 55th Disquiet Junto project at:
http://disquiet.com/2013/01/17/disquiet0055-twoscrews/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

More on the Frahm project at:
http://reworked.nilsfrahm.com/

broken [disquiet0055-twoscrews]

Instructions provided:
This week's project involves a shared set of source material. The source audio is the free solo piano album 'Screws' by Nils Frahm. 

Frahm, who's based in Germany, posted the nine-track album of short solo works for free download while he was recuperating from busting one of his thumbs. He subsequently created a site to house all the remixed/reworked versions that admirers sent to him, as well as the videos and other responses that he received. 
 
For this project you will take two of the source tracks — "Do" and "Re" — and create a new track from them, in the process creating a work for two pianos. 
 
Source Audio:

http://public.erasedtapes.com/screws/ERATP046_Nils_Frahm_Screws_mp3.zip
http://public.erasedtapes.com/screws/ERATP046_Nils_Frahm_Screws_aif.zip

Or download the individual file directly from their links here: 
https://soundcloud.com/erasedtapes/sets/nils-frahm-screws

You can only use those two Frahm tracks as audio source material for your track, and you cannot add anything other sounds, but you can transform the two Frahm tracks as you please. In the end, though, the sound of a piano should be evident.

Information:

There's plenty of Do and Re in this piece, but I purposely wanted to ensure that the pure piano parts were color in the background of the piece. The track was created in Ableton Live, using both Max for Live and Reaktor as sound design tools. The two original tracks were chopped and granulated to created roughly six related stems all 100% derived from the original parts. These stems were mixed in Logic Pro.

As it was being programmed and mixed, the scene outside my studio window reflected the snow of the title as southern England gets its biggest downfall for the winter.

Credits:

Photograph: @echosonic

More on this 55th Disquiet Junto project at: http://disquiet.com/2013/01/17/disquiet0055-twoscrews/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at: http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info

More on the Frahm project at: http://reworked.nilsfrahm.com/

Snow and Frost [disquiet0055-twoscrews]

Question: What if I cut Re into 3 second sections, let the software re-sequence the sections into a new order, shape with a sine envelope and put through a reverb and delay effect (with varying delay time and amount)?

Answer: Above.

//////////////

More on this 55th Disquiet Junto project at:
http://disquiet.com/2013/01/17/disquiet0055-twoscrews/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

More on the Frahm project at:
http://reworked.nilsfrahm.com/

Re: question [disquiet0055-twoscrews]

With this one I wanted to create not just a rhythm track but have some texture in it, I used only Ableton Live and its built in effects.

Sound was recorded with a contact mic.

//////////


More on this 56th Disquiet Junto project at:

http://disquiet.com/2013/01/24/disquiet0056-matteroftime/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/


Re: question [disquiet0055-twoscrews]

mint loader