Disquiet Junto Project 0678: Commonplace Playlist
The Assignment: Create a sonic diary of the past year with a dozen (or more) super-brief segments.

As has become the tradition at the end of each calendar year, this week’s Junto project is a sound journal: a selective audio history of your past 12 months.

Step 1: You will select a different audio element to represent each of the past 12 months of 2024 — or you might opt for even more elements, choosing a segment for each week, or each day, for example. These audio elements will most likely be of music that you have yourself composed and recorded, but they might also consist of phone messages, field recordings, or other source material. These items should be somehow personal in nature, suitable to the autobiographical intention of the project; they should be of your own making, your own devising, and not drawn from third-party sources.

Step 2: You will then select one segment from each of these (most likely) dozen audio elements. If you’re doing a dozen items, one for each month, then five-second segments are recommended, for a total of one minute. Ultimately, though, the length of the segments and of the overall finished track are up to you.

Step 3: Then you will stitch these segments together, equally weighted, in chronological order to form one single track. There should be no overlap or gap between segments; they should simply proceed from one to the next.

Step 4: In the notes field accompanying the track, identify each of the audio segments.

Deadline: Monday, December 30, 2024, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.

Details: disquiet.com/0678

Disquiet Junto Project 0678: Commonplace Playlist

Disquiet Junto submissions

0:00 Janvier: dictaphone handpan
0:16 Février: synt D05
0:32 Mars: otis 210424
0:48 Avril: tape 0006
1:04 Mai: tape 0012
1:20 Juin: tape 0033
1:36 Juillet: 07 operator backup 11 
1:52 Août: zadar sea organ 26 août 17h40
2:08 Septembre: dt A10 sofia (C10)
2:24 Octobre: 10 operator backup 11
2:40 Novembre: electro-mechanical ventilation (VMC)
2:56 Décembre: dt Norda

More on the 678th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Commonplace Playlist — The Assignment: Create a sonic diary of the past year with a dozen (or more) super-brief segments — at https://disquiet.com/0678/

2024 sound journal disquiet0678

Check out the accompanying visuals at https://youtu.be/UA7ynWm0t74

Here are the links to full videos for each 10 second snippet, January to December 2024:

December 2024: https://youtu.be/f8gy5dZQX3M
November 2024: https://youtu.be/2AUEC9qD69U
October 2024: https://youtu.be/riLSFwyHed4
September 2024: https://youtu.be/72mXDi5sUeU
August 2024: https://youtu.be/Sp4ZHHzsAGc
July 2024: https://youtu.be/GWVLIyx5kMM
June 2024: https://youtu.be/asYHnyxSXZc
May 2024: https://youtu.be/YcUq1eRvUDA
April 2024: https://youtu.be/2WlUiN3crBQ
March 2024: https://youtu.be/2yy4OxpBybE
February 2024: https://youtu.be/8-DOBssq2So
January 2024: https://youtu.be/2SJWl-c4LOQ

More on the 678th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Commonplace Playlist — The Assignment: Create a sonic diary of the past year with a dozen (or more) super-brief segments — at https://disquiet.com/0678/

Year's end,
all corners
of this floating world, swept.

The final poem of the year is by the greatest haiku master of all.

Haiku by Matsuo Bashō (translated by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto): https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/basho

To find out more and participate, visit https://www.naviarrecords.com/haiku-music-challenge/

visuals (YouTube)

halF annuaL [disquiet0678] [naviarhaiku573]

More on the 678th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Commonplace Playlist — The Assignment: Create a sonic diary of the past year with a dozen (or more) super-brief segments — at https://disquiet.com/0678/

Disquiet Junto | Commonplace Playlist - disquiet0678

More on the 678th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Commonplace Playlist — The Assignment: Create a sonic diary of the past year with a dozen (or more) super-brief segments — at https://disquiet.com/0678/

My review consists of 12 parts, one for each month:
01 Track from Jamuary, named split in two halves 
02 Field recording from the local carnival.
03 Track Karbid / Schpokau, inspired by a documentary about a factory in the GDR.
04 Disquiet 0643
05 Field recording from a mountain village.
06 Disquiet 0651
07 Field recording form another mountain village.
08 Disquiet 0658
09 Disquiet 0661
10 Field recording from the seaside.
11 Track Something Slow For November
12 Disquiet 0677

Disquiet0678 - Rückblick

5 seconds from each month in 2024. mostly taken from unedited tascam recordings; april and june are field recordings, all others are mostly jams with my smaller eurorack palette case

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More on the 678th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Commonplace Playlist — The Assignment: Create a sonic diary of the past year with a dozen (or more) super-brief segments — at https://disquiet.com/0678/

disquiet0678 - 2024 (60sec)

**Disquiet Junto Project 0678: Commonplace Playlist**  
The Assignment: Create a sonic diary of the past year with a dozen (or more) super-brief segments.

As has become the tradition at the end of each calendar year, this week’s Junto project is a sound journal: a selective audio history of your past 12 months.

Lines link: 

My notes: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0678-commonplace-playlist/70171/19

Much like the previous year's assignment, the excerpts here are drawn from a variety of sources: phone recordings, hand-held recorders, specialised rigs, phone videos, an AudioMoth and a couple of Junto assignments.

A lot happened this year. From a creative standpoint it was one of the most creatively active periods I can remember, covering virtually every artistic outlet I wrap my practice around.

- 1. January - pipe knocking, work office building, Urrbrae.
- 2. February - drying seaweed at low tide, Little Gorge (Fleurieu Peninsula)
- 3. March - Lawrence English rings bell at Adelaide Festival of The Arts opening event, North Terrace, Adelaide. (audio extracted from phone video)
- 4. April - my installation work, Self Noise in-situ recording. *Neoterica* group exhibition, Adelaide Railway Station concourse.
- 5. May - guitar sketch, home.
- 6. June - mid-morning tide, Rapid Bay (Fleurieu Peninsula)
- 7. July - Junto 0655 excerpt.
- 8. August - Caffe on Bungala, Normanville (Fleurieu Peninsula)
- 9. September - Sulphur crested cockatoos on the way home from work, Urrbrae. (audio extracted from phone video)
- 10. October - Fleurieu Folk Festival ambience, Willunga. This is the end of a recording where a work colleague sees me and asks if I'm recording the surrounding ambience, which of course I am.
- 11. November - Junto 0670 excerpt.
- 12. December - AudioMoth recording of ultrasonic vocalisation from grey-headed flying fox passing over home in Parkside at 9:02pm, 20th December. Audio excerpt transposed down 36 semitones.

[Disquiet_Junto_0678] 2024 in summary

Disquiet Junto Project 0394: You & Me

The Assignment: Accompany the music made by a species other than your own.

This is a project for World Listening Day.

Step 1: Think of an animal you would like to accompany. It may be one in your possession, like a household cat, dog, or bird, or perhaps it might be one for which you’ll need to locate a recorded example.

Step 2: Acquire audio of the animal you selected in Step 1, either by making a recording or locating one.

Step 3: Create a new piece of music by playing along with the audio acquired in Step 2. In the final mix, you and the animal you accompany should be heard at equal levels of prominence (of course, you may also trade off).

--------------

Track notes:

This track was created with audio extracted from a video my partner had made of our cat, Neko snoozing in the afternoon. Her snore is supringly musical. I looped the recording in Max with a fzero~ object employed to detect the fundamental frequency of Neko's snore. The fzero~ is then delayed and used to provide the frequency for a triangle wave; in effect, creating a call and response to Neko's snore. In addition to this, each time a fundamental frequency is detected by fzero~, this triggers a snapshop~ with the output control the waveband of a noise filter. A couple of signal buses are also set up with tapout~ feedback set to near-infinity, creating a consistent sonic texture. Panning of the channels is controlled with cycle~ objects, whose respective phase are constantly shifting.

The title of this track is taken from a quote I came across recently by Japanese sound artist, Toshiya Tsunoda: "If you think about it carefully, the activity of an actual space always moves. [...] Place is always moving, like a sleeping cat." [1]

[1] https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/essays/quiet-storms_toshiya-tsunoda

Tristan Louth-Robins, July 2019

[disquiet0394] (place is always moving) like a sleeping cat

Disquiet Junto Project 0395: Acoustic Expanse
The Assignment: Make music with (samples of) the biggest guitar in the southern hemisphere.

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0395-acoustic-expanse/24269

This project was proposed by Jason Richarson. There’s just one step:

Step 1: The biggest guitar in the southern hemisphere is in Narrandera, Australia. Junto member Jason Richardson recorded a wide range of samples of the guitar and made them available under a Creative Commons license. Now it’s time for you to play this guitar. Get the samples at big-guitar.com/download.

----------------------------

Track notes:

The inspiration for this piece comes from my childhood/teenage observation of my dad's guitars hanging in the living room and how human voices, impulse-like sounds and other musical instruments would - depending on their loudness and/or proximity - ocassionally cause these stationary instruments to resonate sympathetically and sound.

I started by selecting a few nice resonant tones from the Narrandera big guitar. Looping these in Ableton so that they drifted in and out of phase with each other, I removed the attacks from each of the notes to create a continous drone that pulsated periodically. I sent the output from Ableton - via a 20w amp - to a Digitech exciter (i.e. transducer) which I placed on the soundboard 'sweet spot' of one of my dad's old guitars. This guitar has been in my possession for over 20 years - a 1976 Tama acoustic.

The surface of the Tama in effect becomes a resonater for the Narrandera guitar tones as they are 'transplanted' into the acoustic body of the Tama. Throughout the recording I occasionally strum the strings of the Tama - slack tuned and in approximate harmony with the Narrandera guitar tones. I also physically move the transducer from the Tama's sweet spot to other areas of the soundboard surface; which in effect, articulate different resonant qualities of the Narrandera guitar tones, and also makes audible some of the discrete artefacts of the Narrandera recordings.

[disquiet0395] acoustic transplant

I was wracking my head on the drive down to my mum's farm this weekend. I'd made plans to start building a much-talked about aeolian harp on the property using found materials and various bits and pieces I had lying around my home studio. I was (over) thinking aspects of resonance, wire lengths, fundamental tones, harmonics, etc and in between this I was also thinking about this week's challenge.  A couple of days work resulted in the MiddlePhone* (see pic and footnote below) and an outcome for this weeks Junto challenge.

I attached one end of a slinky to the chimney flue on the MiddlePhone, and the other to a tin can. I fixed a contact mic to the interior surface of the chimney flue and pointed a shotgun mic off into the distance. Hitting record, I stretched out the slinky/can and hummed an improvised melody into the can for about a minute.

In the recording you can hear two simultaneous recordings which have been mixed together: the slinky's contact with the flue, and the shotgun mic; which is fixed on my position with the stretched slinky/can. I've mixed the track so that you hear only the shotgun mic recording at first (w/peripheral sounds) and then gradually crossfade into contact mic; the latter revealing the reverberent/harmonic effects of the slinky, as well the articulation of resonances. Which most of the resonances are derived from the flue/slinky combo, I'm fairly certain the network of stretched wires have had some effect too.

The MiddlePhone*

Yesterday afternoon, I deviated dramatically from my original design plan for the aeolian harp; to such an extent that it resembled a completely different instrument - which you can see pictured in the track cover. It comprises of an old tallowwood fencepost jammed between the branch stumps of a Melaleuca tree. The post has thin wires attached to it which are tightened and fixed to the ground, as well as run over an oil drum and also connected to a chimney flue. The wind interplays with it discretely, but is most effective as a ridiculous percussion instrument. However, attaching contact mics to it reveals a variety of resonances and sonic perculiarities. More recordings of the MiddlePhone to feature in the near future!

[disquiet0396] elastic hum

Track notes:

A quick and dirty one this week. I used an iOS 808 emulator, sent it through a stereo amp driving a couple of my corked speakers, using the vibrations to move and rattle objects. I stuck some old guitar strings in the cork of the left speaker to wobble about and strike a tambourine; on the other speaker I layered a tin foil bowl to rattle about. Then I move the objects around and incorporate a bit of tinfoil. I’m quite fond of the outcome; my partner, not so much.

Assignment notes:

Disquiet Junto Project 0397: Numbers Racket
The Assignment: It’s 808 Day. Do it up.

Step 1: It’s 808 Day today, August 8, the start of the latest Junto project. Let’s make it last through Monday.

Step 2: Make music with or about or somehow in the spirit of the Roland TR-808.

[disquiet0397] 808 junklet

For this week's challenge I decided to continue some explorations of the cycle~ object in Max where I've been using it (at very low rates) to control float values which oscillate back and forth; and subsequently transpose this float value to wider ranges to control things like frequency, amplitude and panning.

When thinking about the idea of 'rauschen', a lingering poetic over the past week had been a line from the song 'I Remember Me' by the SilverJews (aka, David Berman):

The tape hiss of the trees

There's always been something so striking and evocative about that line, and for me it does a wonderful thing of bridging the tricky gaps in (the English) language when it comes to accurately describing sounds. Sure, I guess imagining 'tape hiss' is pretty subjective and experiential, but for me it's such a strong (albeit, slightly surreal) poetic expression.

The objective for this week's challenge was for me to evoke the sound of wind through the trees using the hiss of a blank cassette tape. 

I set about building a little Max patch of four noise modules ,with the noise source derived from a hiss of a blank cassette played back on my old Tascam 424 Portastudio. The tape hiss recordings are routed to a bandpass filter, whose frequency range and amplitude are constantly moving. These (along with the panning) are all controlled with cycle~ objects set a different rates. When the four modules play back simultaneously, this creates a pretty dense noise texture which is constantly shifting - evoking the wind shearing through trees at varying intensities and trajectory. 

I've uploaded a breakdown of the Max patch on YouTube if anyone wants to explore the finer details of the process: https://youtu.be/5G59iszqXWw

[disquiet0398] the tape hiss of the trees

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).