Disquiet Junto Compositions

1. Bell (melody):  our town courthouse bells tolling at 6 pm
2.  Boom (background): CR78 samples, echo and MangleVerb
3.  Ringmod (beat): Melda Oscillator, Ring Modulator, and Frequency Shifter (in that order), then InEarDisplay's Danaides

This one was a lot of fun - got to be a bit more musical than some of my prior pieces - plus, I'm learning to mix and master as two separate processes.  It's much easier to get the mix sounding good if I'm not worrying about hitting the magical 0dB mark at the same time.

More on this 85th Disquiet Junto project, in which a song is made with three simple parts (oscillator, drum machine, field recording), at:

http://disquiet.com/2013/08/15/disquiet0085-3parts/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Bell, Boom, and Ringmod [disquiet0085-3parts]

Recording of an empty room in my house - the siren was completely unexpected.  Processed with PaulStretch, Mangle, Transverb, and Quadrant.  Melodies courtesy of MbiraGen.  Tracked and mixed in StudioOne.

More on this 167th Disquiet Junto project — “Marking the 3rd anniversary of Bassel Khartabil’s incarceration, turn the silence of a room into something soothing” — at:

http://disquiet.com/2015/03/12/disquiet0167-freebassel/

More on Bassel Khartabil at:

http://freebassel.org/

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/

unexpected [disquiet0167-freebassel]

First Junto track I've tried - in point of fact, first thing I've recorded in years!  Didn't really have anything in mind when I sat down to work on it, other than a desire to use the constraints of the project as a creative impetus.  As far as process goes, I stacked the three component tracks in Audacity, then time-stretched, snipped, and aligned things until I had a pleasing shape.  From there, one of the tracks went through a fair amount of mangling in Hourglass.  Finally assembled the piece in Studio One, added pitch shifters and delays to add motion, a touch of compression and eq to glue it all together, and then laid on a dollop of reverb for good measure.

More on this 68th Disquiet Junto project, the intent of which is to draw attention to the benefits of a Creative Commons license allowing for derivative works, at:

http://disquiet.com/2013/04/18/disquiet0068-deriv/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

This track is composed from material extracted from three pre-existing tracks (“The Find Beauty, Even in the Mundane,” “Immaterial Girl,” “Libertarian Entertainment Automaton”) by C. Reider, all of which were released on the album The Conjuncts on the deriv.cc netlabel, and were themselves derived from the following: “Garden City” and “Ventilation” from Tulse Hill by Hannah Marshall; “LichenWall” from Gardening by Steve Moyes; “Eighteen Events” from Not One Nor by Daniel Barbiero; “Awkward Customer” from [m2012/30-09] by Restive; “cues two three” and “cue six” from Cue Sheet by Sighup; “Sending Dreams to She Downstream” from Pocket Suite by He Can Jog; “The Palsgraf Scale” from Weights and Measures by Gurdonark; “Bonus Track” from Pale by Leo Bettinelli and Pol Nieva; “Haunted Grace” from Haunted Grace on SoundCloud by Jess Lemont a.k.a. Be A Waterwolf; “Ochiita” from Gently Annoying by Xesús Valle; and “Once More With Intellect” from [m2012/30-09] by Restive.

Derivolution [disquiet0068-deriv]

This one was quite a challenge - I set myself a goal of transforming the samples into somewhat musical sounds, rather than doing a noise piece.  "Air" was the hardest - I couldn't come up with a really good pitched sound that I liked, so we'll call the 3rd movement a noisy interlude...  At any rate, my objective was to make each movement evocative of its element, I'm very interested to hear what folks think.

This is my second Junto, second week in a row (go me!).  This process is really pushing me to learn my tools, and to get the proverbial cork out.

As far as gear goes, this was tracked in Studio One.  Sample manipulation courtesy of Audacity and Paulstretch.  Kontakt and XFade Looper feature prominently (and yes, that's XFade in the 4th movement - I didn't cheat! :)  ), effects were pretty much limited to Valhalla reverb, PSP delay, and the ever-lovely audio manglers from InEar Display.

Thanks for listening!

More on this 69th Disquiet Junto project, which involves creating a single piece of music from samples that represent each of the four elements, at:

http://disquiet.com/2013/04/25/disquiet0069-4elements/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

All the source audio is from Freesound.org. The earth sample is by ABouch, the water by aesqe, the wind by Bosk1, and the fire by suonho:

Earth: http://www.freesound.org/people/ABouch/sounds/174938/

Water: http://www.freesound.org/people/aesqe/sounds/39901/

Wind: http://www.freesound.org/people/Bosk1/sounds/144083/

Fire: http://www.freesound.org/people/suonho/sounds/3202/

The Four-cornered World [disquiet0069-4elements]

I must admit, this one was quite a challenge.  I had a hard time getting my head around the project, and ended up just constructing rhythms that I thought complimented the drones.  That said, I'm learning more and more about my tools, and I continue to enjoy what I'm discovering about my own creative processes by participating in the Junto.

Drones made with Hollow Sun's NovaLite and Oscillosine, beats are some random samples I had running around my computer.  Tracked and mastered in Studio One.


More on this 70th Disquiet Junto project, which involves creating a single piece of music from two tones and three beats, at:

http://disquiet.com/2013/05/02/disquiet0070-2tones3beats/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Selection Bias [disquiet0070-2tones3beats]

OK - this one was a lot of fun.  I went into this one knowing nothing about the sport, and ended up both learning something amazing about people's capabilities, and with a piece of music I am (if I may say so) kinda proud of.  This is my first attempt at scoring to video, and while I've always appreciated the art, I have a newfound respect for those who are skilled at it.  I started out wanting to do a "Downeaster Alexa" kind of piece, as that's one of my favorite songs, but the mood was waaay too heavy.  I think what I ended up with is fairly traditional, and deliberately tries to push some emotional buttons, but that's what scoring is all about, right?  At any rate, given the incredible courage of the sailors in this documentary, I think an over-the-top anthemic piece is perfectly appropriate.

EDIT:  Tinkered with the arrangement a bit on Monday evening, I was covering up the last segment of dialog, needed to correct that error.  I think the mix is a little better as well.

I give the director permission to use my music in the trailer for the film Sense the Wind for promotional purposes.

More on this 71st Disquiet Junto project, which involves creating a backing score for the trailer to the film Sense the Wind, about competitive blind sailing, directed by Christine Knowlton, at:

http://disquiet.com/2013/05/09/disquiet0071-windmusic/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

More on the film at

http://www.sensethewind.com/

A Sense of Where You Are (v2) [disquiet0071-windmusic]

This one was much more of a challenge than the previous Juntos I've contributed to.  I had a hard time getting my head around a way to interpret the map segment as a score.  I'm familiar (at least conceptually) with non-traditional forms of notation, but I just couldn't quite get my teeth into this one.  I finally decided to run the map image through AudioPaint, and use the output as a foundational drone.  From there, I sketched out a piece that seemed to represent the essence of my map segment - the image I got seemed to be mostly desert (at least, that's how I chose to read it), so I tried to evoke that mood.

More on this 73rd Disquiet Junto project, which involves reading a map of the San Andreas Fault as if it were a graphic notation score, at:

http://disquiet.com/2013/05/23/disquiet0073-faultynotation/

This project was conducted as part of a course of study led by Geoff Manaugh (BLDG BLOG). More on his research at:

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/san-andreas-architecture-for-fault.html

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

An Imperfect Stillness [disquiet0073-faultynotation]

Decided not to do anything melodic with this one - just some noise and a weird gamelan-ish percussion part.  I did, however, in the course of this project finally get around to learning a bit about Reaktor, so that was cool.  I'm afraid I'm getting into a rut with these non-musical-samples-as-source-material pieces.  It's so easy to just whack them through Paulstretch and then do a bit of mixing, I need to find some new techniques to explore.  Any ideas, anyone?

Oh yeah - also had this odd occurrence while mixing it down.  The stereo master has a bad DC offset beginning at about 1:10.  I tried to trim it back up at the end, but there's still a low-frequency pop or two.  

More on this 74th Disquiet Junto project, in which applause is turned into music, at:

http://disquiet.com/2013/05/30/disquiet0074-applauserousing/

Source audio of applause by unfa via:

http://www.freesound.org/people/unfa/sounds/162764/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Static Interlude [disquiet0074-applauserousing]

Whew! Been out of it for a few weeks, work and other matters have had me distracted.  However, I managed to put this one together in a few hours this evening.  Most of the work was done in Audacity, with final arrangement and mixdown in StudioOne.  I didn't go into this one with anything particular in mind, but those massive piano chords in the clip from "Aftermath" really got my attention as a central motif.  The clips are layered, with each successive repeat transposed up by a percentage following the Fibonacci sequence.  I did play a bit with Borderlands on my iPad, used it to turn the clip from "20 200 2000 20000" into a sort of percussive loop, which I then tweaked with AD's MangleVerb.  

More on this 77th Disquiet Junto project, in which the music from three different netlabels was combined to create one track, at:

http://disquiet.com/2013/06/20/disquiet0077-netlabelsplice/

This track is composed from material extracted from three pre-existing tracks: Adrià Bofarull and Joan Saura’s Cráter, Sean Archibald’s Sean but not Heard, and Unicode’s Transmission. More on Adrià Bofarull and Joan Saura’s album at http://www.tecnonucleo.org/index.php?page=release&release=38. More on Sean Archibald’s album at http://www.split-notes.com/011/. More on Unicode’s Transmission at http://archive.org/details/TON006.

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Disquiet Junto Compositions

nadaRobot