Trying something with actual chords...eventually

Tonal Experiment #1

This piece is intended as a soundtrack to the video "Untitled #8, 2004" by the artist Josh Azzarella. I wanted to do something minimal, that supported the general mood of the visuals without calling too much attention to itself. Y'know…the way a soundtrack is supposed to.

When I first watched Azzarella's video, I "heard" a Csus4 chord, played one octave above middle C. I recorded 1 strike of this chord on a heavily distorted electric piano (about 15 seconds from keypress to fade) and stretched the results out to about 2-3 minutes. Since the video was intended to loop, I copied a section of the resulting audio, pasted it twice and reversed the first copy to create "mirrored" bookends for the intro & outro. A touch of limiter was applied in the mastering stage.

More on this 138th Disquiet Junto project — “Compose a 2.5-minute soundtrack to complement a work of silent video art″ — at:

http://disquiet.com/2014/08/21/disquiet0138-videosonicvoid/

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 track is a still from the video that inspired it: “Untitled #8, 2004″ by Josh Azzarella.

Untitled #8, 2004 - disquiet0138-videosonicvoid

Put this together from radio samples I grabbed on the OP-1 while heavily jetlagged in central London earlier this year. Hope you enjoy!

London Radio Collage

A eurorack variation of the Todd Barton Krell patch with sounds from the Music Thing Radio Music module generously thrown in.

This is an aleatoric, self-running patch. A few things needed to be activated by hand (like putting the Phonogene into "Broken Echo" mode), but beyond that the only human interaction was powering up the modular to begin the piece and then switching it off at the end.

Sound sources: DPO, Hertz Donut, Music Thing Radio Music
Modulation sources: Wogglebug, Maths, Malekko JAG, Quad Slope, Xaoc Moskwa (random mode), Synthwerks PGM-4X4 (sequencer mode)
Effects: Echophon, Phonogene (broken echo mode)
Etc.: L-1 Quad VCA/Mixer, Thomas White LPGs, Doepfer A152 & A160

Krell Radio Music (or "If Louis & Bebe Barron Had a Love Child with Charles Ives")

Edit: Ack! I just realized that I cheated. Somehow I missed this: "Select one distinct element from each of the three following recordings and construct something new from them." I hope you still find something interesting in the track...I'll pay better attention next time.

All my audio was pulled from one antique cylinder recording:

http://www.archive.org/details/colnyp-15132

Processed with Paulstretch, Ableton Live & various plug-ins

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

<a href="http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto">Disquiet Junto/</a>

diminuendo - [disquiet0006-cylinder]

The underlying vocal sample is from this public-domain recording of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, from LibriVox:

http://www.archive.org/details/franklin_autobio_gg_librivox

This Junto project was all about exploration...I really just wanted to see what kind of sounds I would discover using only the human voice as a source, and find out if I could combine these sounds into a cohesive composition. 

The opening "beat" is a single grain from the recorded reading, run through two delays and three instances of beat repeat in Ableton Live. Every time I recorded this patch it produced something different, so I took two that I liked, panned them R and L and added different EQ to each.

The main drone came from putting the entire recorded passage through Paulstretch and applying a resonator, again in Ableton Live. The passage repeats three times, the first time with the resonator tuned to a C Major, the second time to an F11, and the third to a C Major again, this time an octave up. The passage I chose: "it seem'd as if all the world were growing religious, so that one could not walk thro' the town in an evening without hearing psalms sung in different families of every street," just seemed so hopeful to me...I love the image of families on every street singing together...and I tried to capture some of that in the major chords, although I couldn't be completely honest with myself musically if the piece didn't retain some sense of edginess.

Additional sounds in the piece (with varying levels of intelligibility) came from snippets of the reading run through different effects that were "played" by hand with an X-Y pad.

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

<a href="http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto">Disquiet Junto</a>

Psalms Sung - disquiet0008-voice

gabby fluke-mogul - violin
Jacob Felix Heule - percussion
Kim Nucci - baritone saxophone, electronics
Clarke Robinson - modular synthesizer

Studio Grand - March 19, 2018 (excerpt)

A tabulaRasa Wavetable Oscillator (a DIY project by Greg Surges) is being modulated by Maths, and run through a particularly raunchy setting on a Thomas White LPG (which provides the resonance that starts around 1:24) and Doepfer A-199 (which provides the feedback kicking in around 1:37).

tabulaRocka

Two tracks stitched together, each recorded live in one take w/ no editing beyond a little eq, compression, and fades at the ends.

Piano/Modular Synth Improvisation, Parts 1 & 2

Recorded live in one pass...no editing other than a little eq, compression, and fade in/out at the ends.

Piano/Modular Synth Improvisation, Part 3

Recorded live at the Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco on December 6, 2012.

The instrument here is a rare Chimera Synthesis bC16, a small battery-powered synthesizer about the size (and shape) of an ashtray, played through a small practice amp (also battery-powered). I've been recording a series of these improvisations in a nearby parking garage over the past few months, and thanks to the Disquiet Junto, I recently had an opportunity to present this work to the amazingly kind audience at the Luggage Store Gallery in SF.

This recording was made by Mark Weidenbaum on a hand-held recorder.

Battery-Powered Synth Improvisation

This piece was done for Disquiet Night, the fourth live concert of the Disquiet Junto on December 6, 2012 in San Francisco at the Luggage Store Gallery.

The assignment was to use field recordings done during Hurricane Sandy as source material. The original instructions: "Create an original track that makes a transition from stormy to placid over the course of its duration. Your track should open fiercely and then slowly give way to calm. You can use additional instruments of your choosing, but the original field recordings should serve as source material both for the stormy and for the placid portions of your track. In other words: the calm part of the track should be built in large part from audio of the storm."

One source audio from the 2012 storm Sandy was documented by Michael Raphael, an SFX recordist who maintains the field recording blog Fieldsepulchra at http://sepulchra.com/blog. His sound effects can be found at Rabbit Ears Audio, http://rabbitearsaudio.com.

The other was done by Irene Moon, which was released as part of the Touch Radio free-download series, more on which here: http://www.touchradio.org.uk/touch_radio_86_frankenstorm.html

I composed this piece to be performed on laptop & modular synthesizer. Almost all the sounds you hear use the recordings above as a starting place, either processed in Ableton Live or on a small modular synth featuring the Make Noise Phonogene & Echophon modules. 

More on this 44th Disquiet Junto project at:

http://disquiet.com/2012/11/01/disquiet0044-sandy2012/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info/

Disquiet Junto Project 0044: Sandy 2012, San Francisco Disquiet Night

My new album, "Suburban Echoes", is now available! Performed in a parking garage on a portable, battery-powered synthesizer & amp, and recorded in one pass with no overdubs or additional processing.

Available as a free download on Bandcamp: <a href="http://clarkerobinson.bandcamp.com/">http://clarkerobinson.bandcamp.com/</a>

Suburban Echoes - Album Preview Track

Clarke Robinson - Digital/Analog Hybrid Modular Synthesizer
Jim Whittemore - EMS Synthi A (2), Arp 2600, electronics

Mixed down from a live improvisation recorded during rehearsal on March 23, 2013

20/430

Clarke Robinson is an electronic musician and improviser living in the San Francisco Bay Area. A longtime fan of punk rock, avant-garde jazz, and coffee; he now also enjoys synthesizers, electroacoustic improvisation, and tea.



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