After watching the wonderful TV series "In My Skin", I tried to compose a track to match this touching story. While playing the piano melody on my midi keyboard, I recorded the mechanical sounds of the keys using a smartphone and a dictaphone.
This recording approach was inspired by this week's Disquiet Junto project, but doesn't follow that prompt closely.
These recordings (treated with various effects) were mixed with the piano, and strings and synth sounds were added to the track, all to support the guiding emotion drawn from the story.

More on the 689th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Supporting Players — The Assignment: Elevate the presence of your non-instrument equipment — at https://disquiet.com/0689/

In My Skin - the Sound of Sound  (Disquiet0689)

My track notes regarding the creation of this track can be found here: 

Disquiet Junto Project 0690: Knot Bad
The Assignment: Interpret wood grain as a graphic score.

Step 1: Find a piece of wood, the grain of which captures your imagination.

Step 2: Consider how the shapes of the grain might be interpreted as a graphically notated score. (If you are not familiar with the concept of a graphic score, read up.)

Step 3: Record a piece of music in which you interpret the grain of the wood you selected in Step 1 as a graphic score.

[Disquiet Junto 0690] Contin You'd Uhm

More on the 690th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Knot Bad — The Assignment: Interpret wood grain as a graphic score — at https://disquiet.com/0690/

Smell You in My Clothes (disquiet0690)

found some wood grains in my dining table. obvious jump is from grains to granular, so went with a looping sample going into beads. the graphic score is the sequence of darker grains - roughly up/down is pitch, darker areas introduce more noise, and each grain in the wood triggers a burst granular sample, starting with a larger grain becoming smaller

(that's the idea anyway)

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More on the 690th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Knot Bad — The Assignment: Interpret wood grain as a graphic score — at https://disquiet.com/0690/

disquiet0690 - along the grain

More on the 690th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Knot Bad — The Assignment: Interpret wood grain as a graphic score — at https://disquiet.com/0689/

SONG 80 - DisquietJunto0690 - Knot Bad

I've not posted a Disquiet Junto track since project #646 about a year ago but did try in January but was locked out of this Soundcloud. I'm at home today with a bit of free time so thought why not - now i've been able to get back into Soundcloud. Enjoyed making this, the idea to unravel Ravel was too good to pass up. I imagine my approach isn't very original- I just cut up the source audio and added effects and cut some frequencies in the source. I then slowed the tempo down as the tracks progresses which created gaps and space in the audio clips which I had already locked in place. The gaps fill with the reverb and delay and late on I added some choir sounds to give the piece a new dimension and direction which I liked. 

More info on this challenge here: 
Disquiet Junto Project 0691: Un-Ravel
The Assignment: Make a recording of a string quartet fall apart.

Step 1: Download the first movement of the Ravel string quartet at this URL: https://bit.ly/un-ravel

The original source is the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/3-capet-sq-col-d-15057-60-ravel-1928-mov-3/

Step 2: Listen to the track closely.

Step 3: Create a new piece of music by employing the provided recording as source material. The goal for your piece is that it should make the Ravel sound like it is falling apart — that is, like it is unraveling, or un-Ravel-ing.

Tasks Upon Completion:

Label: Include “disquiet0691” (no spaces/quotes) in the name of your track.

Upload: Post your track to a public account (SoundCloud preferred but by no means required). It’s best to focus on one track, but if you post more than one, clarify which is the “main” rendition.

Share: Post your track and a description/explanation at https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0691-un-ravel/

The Great un-Ravel-ing [disquiet0691]

My track notes regarding the creation of this track can be found here: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0691-un-ravel/71303/7

**Disquiet Junto Project 0691: Un-Ravel**  
The Assignment: Make a recording of a string quartet fall apart.

Step 1: Download the first movement of the Ravel string quartet at this URL: [https://bit.ly/un-ravel](https://bit.ly/un-ravel)

The original source is the Internet Archive: [Capet String Quartet - Ravel (Col. D 15057-60) 1928 : Capet String Quartet : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/3-capet-sq-col-d-15057-60-ravel-1928-mov-3/)

Step 2: Listen to the track closely.

Step 3: Create a new piece of music by employing the provided recording as source material. The goal for your piece is that it should make the Ravel sound like it is falling apart — that is, like it is unraveling, or un-Ravel-ing.

[Disquiet Junto 0691] Liminal Maurice

More on the 691st weekly Disquiet Junto project, Un-Ravel — The Assignment: Make a recording of a string quartet fall apart — at https://disquiet.com/0691/

Un-Ravel [disquiet0691]

the end result is not so much a string quartet falling apart as it is a resonator-granular garble, but that's how it is sometimes

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More on the 691st weekly Disquiet Junto project, Un-Ravel — The Assignment: Make a recording of a string quartet fall apart — at https://disquiet.com/0691/



disquiet0691 - gravel

The Advice

The haiku that guided this;

Winter waterfall
a rock untouched
by sunrise or sunset
(Naviar haiku challenge 607, details here: https://www.naviarrecords.com/haiku-music-challenge ),

has an obvious staring point, "Winter Waterfall" the track has finished up quite experimental.


Waterfall = white noise.
So I started with a noise source in Voltage Modular and created an evolving sequence that processed the noise output through a spectral filter bank using two instances of the WC-96 Spectral Processor from DMT Audio. I then created a rhythmic element by feeding that output through an LFO controlled envelope, passing the output on to Quadelay from Waverley Instruments. 

With the noise elements in place I added some pulses using basic VM modules then moved on. Having used a couple of tweaked Dreamsynth presets last week I decided it was time to take the deep dive and learn how to patch Dreamsynth from scratch. Dreamsynth (https://cherryaudio.com/products/dreamsynth) is deep, almost modular. I made a patch for the chord sequence; yes I know it's a bit weird but I liked it in isolation while developing the DS patch so kept it all be it sequenced, converted to MIDI and passed out from VM. While experimenting I found that if I played in a low register I got a rumbly semi random texture so I split that off and tweaked it a bit to represent the rock, triggered by a separate sequence in VM. The final element is a drone layer made from DMT Audio's "West Coast" modules (Uncertainty and Harmonic Oscillator), left over from an early experiment and passed through a band pass filter modulated by reused control, voltages from the noise sequencing. 

With all the elements in place I made two changes before recording, I added a small amount of ShimmerVerb from Eventide to the chord sequence and replaced the pure white noise that I'd planned to use at the beginning with a sample of a real waterfall from freesound (Staying close to waterfall by trader_one -- https://freesound.org/s/670515/ -- License: Creative Commons 0), because I wanted a touch of gurgling water.

With everything in place; opening waterfall, mapped physical controls, multitrack recording and no real plan. I hit record and improvised, one take, longer than I'd expected.
I'll own up to doing a lot of mastering to make the dispirit elements gel but didn't add anything significant.

Winter Waterfall - (naviarhaiku - 607)

Tristan Louth-Robins is a South Australian artist working principally in the medium of sound art and field recording. Ideas of sound and its signification are key elements in Louth-Robins' practice, traversing the space between the visual and aural his work is realised through the mediums of recordings, installation, visual art and performance. He is interested in sound and its associative implications - including its relationship to objects, technology, urban space, memory and the natural world. 


Since 2005, Louth-Robins has presented work in Australia and internationally as a solo artist, whilst also collaborating with artists, writers, researchers, musicians and performers. 

Working across a vast array of activities encompassing composition, sound design, installation art, field recording and workshops, his work has been featured in events such as the Adelaide Festival of Arts (2006), The National Regional Arts Festival (2012), Mildura-Wentworth Arts Festival (2013), Fairfax Festival (2013) and Adelaide Fringe Festival (2014); and selected works exhibited at galleries including The Australian Experimental Art Foundation (2009), SASA Gallery (2012, 2015), Light Square Gallery (2012) and FELT Space (2015). His audio works have been broadcast on radio including Radio National, Classic FM, The BBC (UK), Acoustic Frontiers (USA) and RBB (Germany).