Frequency IV

Celeste 74

[disquiet0575] Thin

Air 2023 II

This piece is created from a variety of experiments with speech sounds. The piece refers to a beautiful, melancholic poem by Jorge Luis Borges entitled Descartes. But this is not a setting in the classical sense. Instead, I took a few lines of the English translation of this poem and put together the words as best I could from phonemes taken from language teaching videos of over 50 languages - spoken by women and men - letter by letter. This was the basic material and all the sounds of this piece are developed from it without exception. Of the poem itself, no words or fragments of words appear in the piece that might be intelligible. Everything is pure sound. The harmonic-melodic material of the piece is derived from the Liebestod of Wagner´s opera Tristan und Isolde. Although I am not a great fan of Richard Wagner, this is a touching piece of music whose grand, romantic gesture is (at least for me) nevertheless admittedly outdated in these disillusioned times. So it is a reminiscence that also plays with the idea of the multilingual recitation of Borge´s poem by women and men - maybe a strange love story across language barriers. The harmonic sequence of Wagner´s piece was mirrored on a twelve-tone row and the resulting material was then subjected to various other serial processes and microtonal pitch changes according to the pitches of the phonemes. In a few places, however, the original music has remained recognizable, appearing for moments like a shadow.

For the sonic transformations, I worked with spectral software, such as Steinberg's Spectral Layers and TS2 from Ircam labs. Later, granular software came into play, such as U&I's MetaSynth and accSone's Crusher X. I also converted individual phonemes and whole words into wavetables for further processing using the Waldorf Iridium.

Air 2023 II

Strange Dreams of a Turtle...laughing at us.

Strange Dreams Are Made Of This(NaviarHaiku488)

More on this 605th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Fifty Fifty (Compose a piece of music with as much silence as notes), at: https://disquiet.com/0605/

Thanks to Jason Richardson for having proposed this week’s project.

About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0605-fifty-fifty/

more halF unusuaL

halF halF [disquiet0605]

In The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, the late Milan Kundera describes how “the space [of memory] is an obstacle to progress.” Kundera also advises us that “the memory of revulsion is stronger than the memory of tenderness,” perhaps implying that the things we forget can be as beneficial to our mental state as what we choose to remember.

Sigmund Freud believed that we repress childhood memories in order to avoid facing the sexual impulses buried within our minds. The actual science isn’t quite that salacious. The boring truth is that children of a certain age simply haven’t developed the cognitive or linguistic skills necessary for recalling people, places, or events.

Ah, but something happens to children between the age of 18 to 24 months. That’s when toddlers are able to recognize themselves in the mirror, thus realizing that they exist as a “me” in a world populated by other “me’s.” From that point forward, the child is the protagonist of an autobiography yet to be written.

This wondrous, perhaps intimidating realization was the theme behind Suss Müsik’s Junto contribution: a sad but simple piano sequence played sparingly on the nature of realization. The chords represent wide-eyed glances into the vaguely familiar; the spaces question what it all might mean.

The piece is titled Kundera in honor of the author, who recently passed away in July 2023.

More on this 605th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Fifty Fifty (Compose a piece of music with as much silence as notes), at: https://disquiet.com/0605/

Thanks to Jason Richardson for having proposed this week’s project.
About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0605-fifty-fifty/

Kundera [Disquiet0605]

release date  :04 _08_2023  
More on this 605th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Fifty Fifty (Compose a piece of music with as much silence as notes), at: https://disquiet.com/0605/

Thanks to Jason Richardson for having proposed this week’s project.

About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/ 1

Subscribe to project announcements: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0605-fifty-fifty/

Shinrin - Yoku (disquiet0605)

NO.A#002

Combine two or more pre-existing 60 BPM tracks into something new — at half the speed.

Disquiet0610 - Combineinto30

Disquiet Junto Project 0611: Music That Listens to Itself
The Assignment: Record a piece of music that repurposes itself as it proceeds.

Background: On September 29, 2023, there is going to be an event at a place called the Berkeley Alembic, in Berkeley, California, where I’ll play recordings of music that share a specific theme, and I’ll discuss the sounds with the people who come to listen. The event is titled Music That Listens to Itself, part of the Expanded Listening series developed by Erik Davis (Techgnosis, Burning Shore). That is the theme. Part of the goal of this project is to develop tracks for potential inclusion in the event, and to pursue ideas related to the event’s theme.

Step 1: The underlying idea is to produce music that, so to speak, listens to itself. This would be music that employs techniques to revisit itself — repurposes itself — as it proceeds. From reverb to echo to tape loops to granular synthesis to accessing a buffer, various techniques serve such a compositional and performance purpose. Consider a means to achieve this result.

Step 2: Record a piece of music that employs the technique you focused on as a result of Step 1. Please note: for the Berkeley Alembic event, I’ll be sharing music that is particularly quiet, particularly appropriate to a meditative state of mind. You don’t need to record quiet music for this project, but quiet music is what I’ll be playing at the event.

Additional details: disquiet.com 1. Tickets: eventbrite.com 3. About the venue: berkeleyalembic.org 1.

Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0611” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your tracks.

Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0611” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation of a project playlist.

Step 3: Upload your tracks. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your tracks.

Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0611-music-that-listens-to-itself/

Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 6: If posting on social media, please consider using the hashtag #DisquietJunto so fellow participants are more likely to locate your communication.

Step 7: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Step 8: Also join in the discussion on the Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to marc@disquiet.com for Slack inclusion.

Note: Please post one track for this weekly Junto project. If you choose to post more than one, and do so on SoundCloud, please let me know which you’d like added to the playlist. Thanks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is up to you. About 10 minutes maximum is best, and probably no shorter than three minutes.

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, September 18, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, September 14, 2023.

Upload: When participating in this project, be sure to include a description of your process in planning, composing, and recording it. This description is an essential element of the communicative process inherent in the Disquiet Junto. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.

Download: It is always best to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution, allowing for derivatives).

For context, when posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:

Memory of a loss - disquiet0611

Picking Up Pieces - 5 4 24, 11.19 PM

Post-classical ambient minimalism for crepuscular airports.

Kundera [Disquiet0605]

Suss Müsik

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