selections

More on this 494th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Insect Menagerie (The Assignment: Record a 20-second clip of the sounds of an insect that you yourself have invented) — at: https://disquiet.com/0494/

Thanks to Tobias Reber and Musikfestival Bern for collaboration on this project. More on the festival at:

https://www.musikfestivalbern.ch/
https://www.instagram.com/musikfestival_bern
https://www.facebook.com/musikfestivalbern

More on the Disquiet Junto at: https://disquiet.com/junto/

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

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0494-insect-menagerie/

There’s also a Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.

The image associated with this project is by dr_relling, and used thanks to Flickr and a Creative Commons license allowing editing (cropped with text added) for non-commercial purposes:

https://flic.kr/p/6RPmAq

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Insect Menagerie - disquiet0494

Disquiet Junto Project 0221: Morning Music
The Assignment: Compose something — quiet, peaceful, refreshing — you’d want to wake up to.

Took a bit of the opening music from NPR’s Morning Edition. Time stretched various amounts, layered and edited, bit of Borderlands added to create a dreamy soundscape. 

Thanks to BJ Leiderman for the Morning Edition theme music.

I posted a second, extended  version on my other Soundcloud page at:
https://soundcloud.com/project-dirigent/my-morning-edition-extended-version-for-radio-and-very-large-orchestra-disquiet0221-morningmusic

The photo associated with this project is by Alf Eaton, used thanks to a Creative Commons license: https://flic.kr/p/8NUM/

More on this 221st weekly Disquiet Junto project (“Compose something — quiet, peaceful, refreshing — you’d want to wake up to”) at: http://disquiet.com/0221/

More on the Disquiet Junto at: http://disquiet.com/junto/

Creative Commons license granted. 


Dreamscape [disquiet0221-morningmusic]

Disquiet Junto Project 0222: Bounded Foundation
The Assignment: Compose a piece for contemporary dance — with a “soft top” and a “shifting bottom.”

This track grew out of the project ‘Breath Dance’ and is based largely on samples of my voice. 

For the top level I recorded a variety of utterances and played short slices with Borderlands and Samplr creating cloud-like, granular clusters.  In Samplr I used the Bow tool to create very short slices of sound moving them around quickly. 

I included some of the original voice samples (played in Samplr) and distributed them throughout the track. They sound haunting, like ghosts inhabiting the piece.

The shifting bottom and some of the longer sustained pitches were created with samples of a pitch pipe played in Samplr using the Bow and Tape+Scratch tools. 

It ended up sounding very dark and mysterious. There is a vague, recurring semi-tone interval (minor sixth) that gives it a haunting quality. 

More on this 222nd weekly Disquiet Junto project (Compose a piece for contemporary dance — with a “soft top” and a “shifting bottom”) at: http://disquiet.com/0222/

More on the Disquiet Junto at: http://disquiet.com/junto/ 

Creative Commons license granted.

The image associated with this project is by Tom Gill and is used thanks to a Creative Commons license: https://flic.kr/p/qX8pyN


Bounded Foundation [disquiet0222-boundedfoundation]

Translated: "There's a cat on the gamelan."

In a complete departure for me, I decided that this challenge - many different random number checks, careful timings, and so on - were much better suited to automation than trying to run them myself, so instead of an improvisational approach, I decided that I'd program this instead.

I decided that I'd use ChucK for this - it's well-suited for dynamically adding and removing layers and programatically arranging and synthesizing music.

I started out by stealing bits from the modal-o-matic example; this is a program that randomly plays different configurations of the ModalBar unit generator. The only really salvageable part (for my piece, anyway) was the code that did the different strikes and positions on the virtual bar. Playing around with this, I decided to use a single note (middle C) with different strikes, positions, and presets on every note as an ostinato, and then create dynamic "shreds" that would compute the note timings and durations according to the original plan.

After a few hours of programming, mostly figuring out the timing, I was about to record the final version, when I realized that because this was ChucK, I could actually run six independent copies of the piece at the same time; a couple of takes (every take is different!) and I had the final six-layer version. 

Edit: I realized on listening once I was awake that the multiple layers of pulse were obscuring the panning; split the pulsed and no-pulse versions apart and ran six of the no-pulse and one of the pulsed for the final version.

Edit edit: Soundcloud's conversion is sadly covering up the panning in the pulse track. I suggest running it yourself with headphones to get the intended effect.

https://github.com/joemcmahon/ada-kucing-gamelan.ck

More on this 235th weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Create a piece of music based on a structure determined by the roll of a single die” — at:

http://disquiet.com/0235/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto/

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place on a Slack (send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for inclusion) and at this URL:

http://disquiet.com/forums/

Ada Kucing Pada Gamelan [disquiet0235]

"Ran´s Alphonse Beyond" (Junto Project 0255)

Collaboration improvisational track with Andrew Hulett,
banjo
monome
custom software
buchla 200e
patchbay

Hazy Afternoon Banjo (disquiet0255)

This track was created for the Naviar Haiku group.
193week haiku
naviarlab.tumblr.com/

Korg MicroKorg XL+  ,  kalimba + guitar reverb pedal

2017-09-15

Fireflies over the river (Naviarhaiku 193)

TO PARTICIPATE

- Make music in response to the assigned haiku.
- If you're a Soundcloud user, upload the track on Soundcloud and message me privately with the track's URL; alternatively you can send me your composition directly via Dropbox
- Include the assignment number in the title of your track - “Title of your track (naviarhaiku214)”

Please use a Creative Commons license for your track and set it as downloadable if you wish to be included in the podcasts and compilations.

F0046 [Naviarhaiku 214 - How heavy on my eyes, the winter sun.]

Night - over
sleeping children,
sound of the waves.

Now considered as one of the most influencial modern Japanese writers, the novelist of the Meiji period Natsume Soseki was a late bloomer: his literary career officially began in 1903, with a series of haiku and renga published on various literary magazines. Between 1900 and 1903 he studied at the UCL in London, but this experience proved to be quite dramatic for the young Soseki as he’ll describe his period in the United Kingdom with these words:

“The two years I spent in London were the most unpleasant years in my life. Among English gentlemen I lived in misery, like a poor dog that had strayed among a pack of wolves.“

Despite this, when Soseki returned to Japan he exploded into prolific writing activity.

Seven days to make music in response to the assigned haiku: to particiipate visit http://www.naviarrecords.com/about/naviar-haiku

F0048 [Naviarhaiku 215 - Night - over sleeping children, sound of the waves.]

Thin Snow Scatters On the Wind (naviarhaiku256)

Naviar Haiku 256

Thin snow scatters on
the wind, melting as it falls
Cries for help for light 

Robert Hayden (1913-1980) published his first book of poems, Heart-Shape in the Dust, in 1940.

Even though he was interested in African American history and often expressed his concerns about race in his writing, he didn’t want to be identified as a black poet. William Meredith wrote about him: “Hayden declared himself, at considerable cost in popularity, an American poet rather than a black poet, when for a time there was posited an unreconcilable difference between the two roles. There is scarcely a line of his which is not identifiable as an experience of black America, but he would not relinquish the title of American writer for any narrower identity.”

Thin Snow Scatters On The Wind (naviarhaiku256)

Naviar Haiku 257
Daybreak (abstract)
daybreak;
from the middle of the rain
a skylark song

haiku by Uejima Onitsura https://terebess.hu/english/haiku/ryokan.html
picture by Aaron Burden https://unsplash.com/@aaronburden

Daybreak (abstract) (naviarhaiku257)

Disquiet Junto Project 0362: Operational Surrealism
The Assignment: Make a piece of music informed by a key text from the art movement.

The Sewing Machine and the Umbrella for Piano and Percussion disquiet0362

Particles of Me for Mallets and Strings (naviarhaiku270)

snowing
through the blizzard
particles of me

haiku by Alan Summers www.callofthepage.org
picture by Ian Battaglia https://unsplash.com/@ianjbattaglia

Particles Of Me For Mallets And Strings (naviarhaiku270)

**Production Notes**

In Ellsworth Kelly’s early works you find plenty of seemingly simple, yet beautiful collages. First Kelly painted some lines in broad brush strokes, then he cut up the paper and started to rearrange the pieces. I went for a similar approach.

- First, there’s some gnarly ”gesso” background to bring in some movement (some tonal noises made with Aalto)
- There are 5 asynchronous loops, cut in 5 pieces each (made with Blisko Cello, Aalto, and Chromaphone)
- First the loops are played as a whole, then rearranged within each sample, and for the last time, everything is rearranged by chance.

* * * 

**Disquiet Junto Project 0478: Collage of Collages**

The Assignment: Make a collage that will become part of a larger collage.

Step 1: Create a “musical collage,” however you might define it, likely using the equivalent of cut and paste. When doing so, consider the sense in which your collage might itself become part of a subsequent collage.

Step 2: If you’d like your piece excerpted for a broadcast on the Austrian community radio show Kopfkino (translated: “cinema in the head,” and also available as a podcast) by Margarethe Maierhofer-Lischka, make sure your track is set for download when you post it.

Background: Margarethe has offered to produce an online segment in collaboration with the Disquiet Junto. The theme of the Kopfkino episode will be “collage.” The episode will itself be a collage of tracks produced in this week’s Junto project.

More on Kopfkino at: https://cba.fro.at/series/kopfkino

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0478” (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 “disquiet0478” (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 tracks in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0478-collage-of-collages/

Step 5: Annotate your tracks 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.

(…)

More on this 478th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Collage of Collages (The Assignment: Make a collage that will become part of a larger collage.) — at:

https://disquiet.com/0478/

The project is a collaboration with the radio show Kopfkino, initiated by Margarethe Maierhofer-Lischka. More on Kopfkino at:

https://cba.fro.at/series/kopfkino

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0478-collage-of-collages/

There’s also a Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.

Ellsworth Kelly [disquiet0478]

The Serpent and the Egg (disquiet0478)

i took this weeks project as an impetus to just cut and paste something together, didn't let the "musical" side put me off, just revelled in the excuse to splice and juxtapose the contents of my recorder - some sounds recorded intentionally for this project, most just what was there; fragments snatched over the past three months or so.

///

... some pink noise, an aubergine being chargrilled, nextdoor's bins, a ventilation system, a brief hydrophone recording, a waterfall, a self-service check-out, various birds, some metal stairs, traffic, rain, ice, snow, various paperbags, a train station tannoy, a malfunctioning videocall, a dehumidifier, gulls, small pieces of plastic, wind, demolition work...

///

it's my age and inclination, i think, but i am deeply enamoured with collage and assemblage aesthetics; the way the world necessarily leaks in to even the most perverse and hermetic project; the way you can sort of synthesise the sheer abundance of the world; a nest of implications and connections; the way things become strange when they're oblided to be in overlap or proximity.

///

i used no effects on the final piece beyond a little panning at times, a little EQ-ing; some of the files and chopped into the thing had been processed, but for the most part - as the relentless bumps of mic-handling shoud indicate, the component sounds are essentially unprocessed.

///

More on this 478th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Collage of Collages (The Assignment: Make a collage that will become part of a larger collage.) — at:

https://disquiet.com/0478/

The project is a collaboration with the radio show Kopfkino, initiated by Margarethe Maierhofer-Lischka. More on Kopfkino at:

https://cba.fro.at/series/kopfkino

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0478-collage-of-collages/

Bounded Foundation [disquiet0222-boundedfoundation]

dirigent

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