Indie - Jigsaw

Khaçadur Avedisyan - Oratoryo

PROCESS
Transposed the swype into notes by turning the QWERTY keyboard into a musical keyboard:
1. Correlated the major scale to the letters following G by repeating the octave pattern though the alphabet (e.g., J=C, N=G, V=A, etc...)
2. Assigned low octave (1) and high octave (3) to the bottom and top rows, respectively, of the qwerty keyboard.
3. Mapped "silence" against the above interpretation, such that "SILENCE" transposed to E(2) B(3) E(2) E(3) G(1) C(1) E(3), which turns out to be an articulation of E-minor or G-major, depending on your mood. As the E begins and resolves the sequence, E-minor is where it begged to fall in the end.

The droning bed of the track is my falling into all the notes contained in the word "silence" in a NanoStudio for iPad synth, looped once and held through the end.
The floating over that is an eBow, "swyped" as it were through the notes that make up "silence," using the octave positions dictated by the keyboard.
I had the notes under the entire swype, between the letters of "silence," mapped out, and planned on realizing the actual symbol more in the piece. I ran out of time, however, as I had to stop recording when the toddlers above me started playing indoor basketball. This is a regular occurrence, I feel fortunate, however, they didn't start rolling through their (uncarpeted) apartment on their Razr scooters or tricycles, which is their favorite pastime. That becomes thunder on the ceiling that not even Dinosaur Jr's Green Mind played at full blast can drown out. So instead of more guitar layers, you get a loop of one of the average ball bounces on my ceiling picked up by a condenser mic and run through a tape delay pedal. Hence the title of my track.

Vertical Lyfe = no true silence, just a specific sort of "city silence." It's an active-listener silence, because you have to tune things out in order to achieve it. I meditate better for having lived in NYC for the last 20 years, I think, because I have to work for the meditation. That said, I don't wish to live in an anechoic chamber, but sometimes dreams of a house in the country, with nothing but sounds of rustling leaves and distant rushing water, just take me over. 

PROJECT

Step 1: Consider the symbol that results from using the Swype technique to enter the word “silence” on a keyboard, as shown in image at this URL:

http://goo.gl/swcNxA

Step 2: Develop sonic associations with this symbol.

Step 3: Produce a short piece of music informed by those associations.

Step 4: Upload the finished track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.

Step 5: Listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Length: Your finished work should be between one and three minutes long.

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More on this 146th Disquiet Junto project — “Make a short piece of music based on a typographic symbol for the word ‘silence’″ — at:
http://disquiet.com/2014/10/16/disquiet0146-swypingsilence/

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/

Vertical Lyfe [disquiet0146-swypingsilence]

she didn’t feel suspicious - or paranoid
she didn’t see the distance - into the void
she learned to play with all the memories - like toys
she said it made it easier to drown the noise

she worked for years - to create confusion
as she waited for life to reveal itself as an illusion
along the way she learned not to search for conclusions

as we drove the roads around my house
she wasn’t gonna stop until she broke down
all those angry hours

she said, “don’t tell me when to turn around...
“i’ll tell you when we turn around
“just keep driving towards the moon
“don’t you dare turn around

6am underneath the subway tracks
she said if that train was a plane I’d jump right on its back
then she rolled her eyes and taught me how to fade to black

as we drove the roads around my house
she wasn’t gonna stop until she broke down
all those angry hours

she said, “don’t tell me when to turn around...
“i’ll tell you when we turn around
“just keep driving towards the moon
“don’t you dare turn around


Turnaround, Annie

this week's disquiet junto project really connected to me.

it was to record a short piece of music representing an imaginary not-too-distant future when people regularly have a quiet music, a personal score, surrounding them, just as one might wear perfure or cologne.

this is mine, in the most personal sense. this is the bubble I surround myself with when I venture outside.

/ mikael

More on the process:
I wanted to get a few things across with this - first, it needed to be a mellow, low-key track. it shouldn't be a loud garish thing, but something that's more in the background.
secondly, I wanted to have elements sort of fade in and out during the track - hinting at being there, but at times disappearing behind other sounds.
and finally, I wanted to incorporate some real ambient urban sounds - in this case a field recording I made several years ago walking around Toronto.

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/


sounds that surround [disquiet0150-sonicperfume]

PROJECT
Please record the sound of an ice cube rattling in a glass, and make something of it.

PROCESS
My 54th Junto contribution is my first stab at the ice challenge.
Dropped ice into a brandy sniffer.
Recorded into Samplr for iPad then sliced and diced with Samplr's onboard effects and my guitar pedal board.
The ringing of the glass after the ice hit, pitched down a couple octaves and slowed, provided a distant church bell effect. 
The drone bed was the same ringing granulated through an EHX Superego pedal and fed through Earthquaker Devices Afterneath and Strymon blueSky reverbs.
Added more reverb, as well as amplitude modulation in the DAW (Sony Acid Pro 7.0).

There are 12 "chimes" of the bell. Noon or midnight - it's up to you to decide…

:^D

RIG
brandy sniffer, ice cubes (medium sized, automatic ice maker), Samplr for iPad, Earthquaker Devices "The Warden" compressor, tc electronic flashback delay, EHX Superego Synth engine (send/receive: EHX POG2 + EQD Arpanoid), EQD Afterneath delay/reverb, Strymon blueSky reverberator, Line6 POD-XT (tube pre-amp emulator setting), MOTU 828 mk2, Sony Acid Pro 7.0

META
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/

for whom the ice tolls [disquiet0157-icemusic2015]

this track came to me in a roundabout way. I had pursued it down entirely the wrong sorts of alleyways for much too long before I realized we should switch roles for a bit and let it chase me around instead.

and here we are. running around in circles, laughing our heads off.

(I took the photo at the ROM in Toronto)

the messenger

recently, music has been a struggle, rather than a joy. I've been going down roads that lead nowhere, with no particular perspective or point to make.

this is the first track in a rather long time that I've felt like making. 

the vocals are by french singer barbarella, and the stems are available for download and use here - http://ccmixter.org/files/barbarella/16514
 

galicia

alan watts reflected in a disco ball

LYRICS

there’s a rip in the galaxy
sounds like wind through a door
it’s headed for us full speed ahead
we’ve got nothing to lose anymore

so no more running from the past
running from the dark
searching through the void
chasing love

let’s fly this town tonight
dance away from these city lights
take our cues from distant satellites
let’s fly this town

over the horizon lies 
a ring of endless light
made of the dreams we carried
through our coldest nights

there’s no more falling out of time
falling for the cons
calling out in vain
waiting on love

let’s fly this town tonight
dance away from these city lights
take our cues from distant satellites
let’s fly this town

fly this town

here's my contribution to this week's Disquiet Junto project (198th).

it's the type of project I really like - take parts from other people's work and assemble into a new thing. in this case it was five tracks from an album by Chris Zabriskie.

I wanted to make a track that showcased Chris' music without putting too much of "colab" in it, so I used the source materials only for this.

process:
for each of the tracks I cut out snippets I thought I could work with, found the BPM and key (manually, by playing a piano with the music), and then transposed them to match.
in this case I settled on 95 BPM, key of Bb minor.

a note on the snippets - in a few cases I cut out many snippets and pieced them together as a new whole - either because there were melodic bits that would be hard to work with, or because of chord changes.

then I worked on EQ to make sure that each snippet had room to breathe in the mix - often had to carve out bass or mid-range energy.
after that I started arranging the tracks to see which would play well together - some parts complementing each other better.
I used track 02 extensively to create a base layer for the track and added others to complement. the number of tracks from the album that play at any given point range from two (at the intro) to four (at 0:40 - 1:00).
finally I added a few gating effects here and there.

as always, made with Propellerhead Reason, Panorama P6, Sennheiser HD-650, and Apogee Duet.

hope this serves as an introduction to Chris' music.

More on this 198th Disquiet Junto project (“Create an overture for a full-length album”) at:

http://disquiet.com/2015/10/15/disquiet0198-overtureremix/

The source audio for this project is the album Thoughtless by Chris Zabriskie, more on which here:

http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Chris_Zabriskie/Thoughtless

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/

The image associated with this project is the cover of the original Chris Zabriskie album. The photo is by Patrick Scott Bell.

this is zabriskie [disquiet0198-overtureremix]

I upload music for film/commercials. For inquiries and licenses contact me. I am a film composer born in Niigata, Japan. Music has been part of my life since an early age. I am interested in small moments, the subtleties of change, and using music to capture the essence of the fleeting moment. I find inspiration in nature, in quietly observing people and their interactions, in the beauty of sounds and in art. I am a multi-instrumentalist and compose in a wide range of musical genres, from classical to avant-garde, from organic and natural sounds to electronic music, from full range orchestral music to singular haunting melodies.

Indie - Jigsaw

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