My effort for the 2013 NaSoAlMo challenge.

This song started with the electric baritone guitar part.

Wrong War

A test of the passive "limiter" circuit described by the late Fred Nachbaur in his "Dogzilla" amplifier here:

http://www.dogstar.dantimax.dk/tubestuf/dzart-6.htm

Some analysis on my blog here:

http://prairieboxes.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-nachbaur-diode-limiter-part-1-basics.html

 The program consists of a test tone and a DI-recording of my Danelectro 63 baritone guitar:

* 5 seconds of 1 kHz sine wave, increasing linearly in amplitude from 0 to full scale.

* A simple chord pattern.

* A simple single-note lead.

Each guitar section is normalized to full scale in order to just hit the last knee of the limiter.  The program is repeated for each of the following:

* Dry sound

* Through the limiter.

* Through a 160 Hz 1st-order highpass, normalized, and then through the limiter. (This was skipped for the 1 kHz test tone).

* Through the limiter, re-normalized, and then through the limiter again.

* Through a 160Hz 1st-order highpass, normalized, through the limiter, re-normalized, and then through the limiter again.  (This was skipped for the 1 kHz test tone).

* Since the output impedance of the limiter is fairly high, I didn't use my interface's aux return, but rather the DI input.


Test of a passive "Nachbaur limiter"

Test of my diode clipper circuit.  Yamaha RGZ211M played through the circuit, recorded direct with various pickup, volume & tone settings.  No processing other than editing and normalization.

Blog post about the circuit is here: http://prairieboxes.blogspot.com/2015/05/an-op-amp-diode-ladder-clipper.html


RGZ211M Through Breadboarded Op Amp Diode Clipper

Now that the composition is in the public domain, here's a recording I made in 1992 or so, armed only with my Roland D-50 synthesizer and Tascam 488 Portastudio.

HIPY PAPY BTHUTHDTH THUTHDA BTHUTHDY

This is an old cassette demo.

Update: Diane's new version of this song is here: https://music.dianemariekloba.com/track/playground-of-stars

(I played bass, organ and drums.)

Lyrics were by https://soundcloud.com/dianemariekloba and I wrote the music & performed.

As Mars is coming close again, the song is being revisited, so look for Diane's new version soon.

(Image credit: NASA http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/new-hubble-portrait-of-mars)

Diane Marie Kloba - Wound Around

I recorded this many years ago after watching Emir Kusturica's "Time of the Gypsies" (Дом за вешање). It came from the visual imagery of a scene taking place on a misty river during the feast of Saint George.

The "lyrics" are the nonsense that came out when I tried in real time to read a selection from Victor Hugo's "Quatrevingt-treize" (in the original French) backwards.

Saint George's Day

Recorded with a company iPhone while I was on a business trip in April 2010.

Nature and city sounds outside hotel window, San Juan, Puerto Rico

Nature sounds outside Río Prieto water filtration plant, Ponce Municipality, Puerto Rico

I composed and recorded this in September 1992.

At the time, I was experimenting with an odd nonatonic scale: C - D - D♯ - E - F♯ - G - G♯ - A♯ - B - C

It's essentially a chromatic scale, except for the notes of an F augmented chord.  (At the time I "discovered" the scale, I thought of it as a C Hungarian minor with an added major 3 and minor 7).

Later, I learned that this is one of Olivier Messiaen's "Modes of Limited Transposition", which means in this particular case ("Mode 3") there are only 4 "keys" of the scale (C - C♯ - D - D♯).  Starting at other pitches gives a set of pitch classes identical to those from one of the original 4.

Reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modes_of_limited_transposition

Instruments used (as I recall):
* Roland D-50 Synthesizer
* Roland R-5 Drum machine
* Yamaha RGZ-211M guitar (with E-Bow and slide).
* Hamer Chapparal 5-string fretless bass guitar

Panicman

My first effort at a Disquiet Junto assignment.  Read about the assignment (0390: Pace Quickens) here:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0390-pace-quickens/

The Source Song:
In November 2018, I had just moved my [upright] piano to a new location in the house (which also involved reinforcing the floor structure under the new location). I improvised a slow (no metronome, but about 45-50 BPM) piece and recorded it with my DR-05 from the soundboard side. I posted it to Soundcloud as a sketch/work-in-progress:
https://soundcloud.com/oakbloodthree/black-saturday-piano-sketch

The Treatment:
I sped it up exactly 1/3 as suggested in the assignment, using just a resample. This brought the pitch up by a perfect fourth. Since the original recording was fairly organic, I added two synthetic elements: A slow bass synth and an arpeggiated synth that sometimes synchs up with the shaky time of the original recording.

Update: I created an Apollo 11 - themed video for this: https://youtu.be/vPYMFai9_FA

disquiet0390 - Still Black; Still Friday; Still Slow

This is my effort for the Disquiet Junto Project 0392: Another Country

Read about the project here: https://disquiet.com/0392/

Here is the microdemocratic anthem for the people of AgFutures, a government from Malka Older’s novel *State Tectonics*.  Here’s a relevant excerpt describing the government:

“...Based on ads, the main contenders seem to be local or regional: O!Canada!, a retrograde government trading, like so many do, on nostalgia; and, less prominently, AgFutures, which targets farmers but also attracts agricultural scientists and people who believe themselves ‘culturally farmers’.”

It seemed to me that Oliver Wendell Douglas of the television show *Green Acres* (played by Eddie Albert) was what you’d call “culturally a farmer” since he was a big-city lawyer who felt an affinity for the agricultural lifestyle. The melody of the anthem is based on that show’s theme song, but changed to ¾ time and slowed to a “stately” pace (with quotation of another familiar anthem).

The performance is as if done by the brass band of an amateur community orchestra, perhaps one that learned to play their instruments by Professor Harold Hill’s “Think System”.

disquiet0392 - AgFutures Anthem

This is my effort for the Disquiet Junto Project 0394: You & Me

Read about the project here: disquiet.com/0394/

It wouldn't be the dog days of summer without the sound of cicadas... However, I don't think these are the Dog day cicada (Neotibicen canicularis), but rather the Scissor-grinder cicada (Neotibicen pruinosus).

The likely cicada in question: http://songsofinsects.com/cicadas/scissor-grinder-cicada 

I made field recordings of the cicadas in my back yard with my trusty DR-05.  Some parts were looped, others just mixed in straight.  Tempo was synced to the pulsating of the cicadas' call.

There are a few other noises of summer in the background of the field recordings: Birds, cars, aircraft, etc.

I added drum machine (with BOOM plugin on ProTools) and a few synth tracks (Prophet Rev2).

disquiet0394 - Canicular not Canicularis

Cover on the Chemnitzer concertina of Jody Kruskal's song from <a href="http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/jodykruskal">Naked Concertina</a>.

Gone Fishing (Jody Kruskal Cover)

Capri-Fischer (Gerhard Winkler)

Solo concertina version of a Lithuanian wedding march I first heard on the compilation "Lituanie: Le Pays Des Chansons" where it was performed by L. Jūrevičius born in 1905 in the village of Miliūnai, Rokiškis district.

You can now hear the original recording here: https://www.pakartot.lt/album/lituanie-le-pays-des-chansons/marsas-rutu-vainikas-wreath-of-rues

A review of the collection is here: http://www.mustrad.org.uk/reviews/lituanie.htm

Incidentally, you could say that this tune is "where it all started" for me with the concertina back in early 2000:  I bought the CD mentioned above because I was interested in some of the vocal pieces on it.  I really liked the sound of the concertina and started looking into them.

Rūtų Vainikas (Wreath of Rue) after L. Jūrevičius

Solo concertina rendition of an original Oberek I wrote in the style of Eddie Zima & Li'l Wally. Named for the (now decommissioned) toboggan slide area operated by the Cook County Forest Preserves

Swallow Cliff Oberek

Solo concertina rendition of an old Lithuanian folk dance that just about every Lithuanian-American kid of my father's generation was required to learn on whichever instrument they took in school.

Noriu Miego (I Want Sleep)

My creation for the Disquiet Junto Project 409: Spooky 3.0

Read about the assignment here: https://disquiet.com/2019/10/31/disquiet-junto-project-0409-spooky-3-0/

Thinking about what makes music Spooky, I decided to consciously avoid the classic culturally-conditioned, received notions of musical spookiness that I could easily fall into, e.g.: Tolling bells, pipe organ, theremin, harmonic and Hungarian minor scales, etc.

I tried thinking of recent films that had spooky soundtracks, and the first recent one that came to mind was The Favourite. Its soundtrack falls into a kind of “uncanny valley” between music and not-music.  I read a bit about it and the film's sound designer, Johnnie Burn, has said basically that: "There was no composer on this film; we were working a lot in that space between music and sound..."

I also recalled another recent-but-not-quite-recent film with a spooky soundtrack: Under the Skin.  Turns out Johnnie Burn was also the sound designer on it! I guess I am now officially a fan. (Though I still consider myself an Elfmaniac.)

I wanted to make sounds that could resemble something familiar, but not quite.

To make this track, I started with a public domain recording of a Sedge Warbler: https://freesound.org/people/SiliconeSound/sounds/475048/
I reversed it, applied a gliding stretch so it starts out at full speed and slows to 1/8 speed by the end (i.e. down 3 octaves).  I chopped it up into 7 pieces and made the pieces overlap at tail to head.  Automated pans make each piece move gradually toward the center.

Additional tracks:

I played two analog synth tracks (on Prophet Rev2) using bespoke patches.  The tonal patch is using a 7-limit just tuning that repeats every septimal tritone (not-octave-repeating).

I applied distortion to the kick drum part I played (using puffy legato mallet) for “I am the Sweeper” by Diane Marie Kloba: https://music.dianemariekloba.com/track/i-am-the-sweeper

Everything was mixed with multi-tap delay and nonlinear reverb.

Image is color-processed version of Acrocephalus schoenobaenus 1 by Marek Szczepanek, from Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Acrocephalus_schoenobaenus_1_(Marek_Szczepanek)-2.jpg

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

Disquiet0409 - Uncanny

This is a demo version from the 1990s, recorded on a Tascam 488 cassette 8-track, with a little post-processing in Adobe Audition.

Inevitably Frustrated

From the demo bin.  I must have been listening to Marc Ribot when I came up with that guitar solo.

Nothing Unexpected

A friend told me the music reminded him of a deranged Christmas carol

Rabbit In My Hat

A nice little pop tune with gritty guitars.  Guitars played through two different homemade tube amplifiers and bass recorded with homemade tube DI box.

Dreamed It All Along

Former member of The Whitefish, This Busy Monster, Soylent Green, Dante's Puppet Show and The Silent Workers.
Work often with @dianemariekloba .

I only repost tracks I was involved in personally (composition, performance, production, engineering).

Oak Blood Three

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