Just discovered Disquiet Junto - seems like a fun thing to be part of! Based this little experimental drone piece on the crop circle in the photo - quick bit of counting reveals how it encodes the fibonacci sequence, from the 2/3/5/8 circles in the centre, to the 13 around the edge. So I went fibo-nutso. Put together in pure data. Meat of the track is a drone made of mix of FM & additive sines in fibo-proportions - the first few numbers also make a musical scale: 1/1 2/1 3/2 5/3 8/5 etc - so the drone plays around with that scale - the major/minor sixth shift sounds quite thrilling to me, touch of sky visitor maybe! Derived fundamental frequency from first 6 fibo-ns / 7th(21) - this is pretty close to D3. So along with the drone the volca keys plays DFAB in 8/5 euclidean arp. To give more atmosphere there is a field recording, 3 minutes of wind blowing through reeds, and at the end a bird sings - so I used this to time my performance - wrapping up when I heard the bird. These 3 elements are fed into a fibonacci-based reverb, which has a kind of tape delay effect when shifting time.

Cropcirclesss_disquiet0425

"Disquiet Junto Project 0428: Urban Moss - The Assignment: What echoes of past concerts are retained within this pole?"

I decided to get the old volca sampler out for this one. Been too long. So the intro is 30 secs of 10 different live tracks all playing at the same time, gradually swamped in reverb (Oril river (it's free!)) and then I took little, fairly obscure snippets from those tracks, loaded them into the sampler, and played around. At first I was fiddling around with a sequencer I'd made (in pure data) but it wasn't quite working out. In the end I just sat in the sun on the front step and used all 10 of the volca's memory slots to make a simple composition using its own sequencer. Then I performed it a couple of times until I got a take I was ok with, added the same reverb (though it dips out in the middle) et voila. I wanted to make something kind of melancholy, originally, what with the idea of all those past events layered and increasingly distant/forgotten - but it came out kind of upbeat... that's fine I suppose, just not what I expected, but time has its benefits too, I guess ;-) Hope you enjoy listening.

Urban-Moss_disquiet0428

"The Assignment: Record the first third of a trio that others will complete.

Step 2: The plan is for you to record a short and original piece of music, on any instrumentation of your choice. Conceive it as something that leaves room for something else — other instruments, other people — to join in."

Self-isolation is the norm here in nowhere somewhere, so knowing you're all out there in there makes me feel more companioned than usual, actually. Hope all are well.

I woke just in time to dash outside and grab a couple of minutes of dawn chorus this morning. Then I recorded myself tapping and clicking and kind of mumbling about slightly hesitant tiny adjustments regarding some pleasantly inconsequential unmystery. Then I requested [fiddle~] to follow that, playing what it read into a very basic synth. Then I made some fine edits in Reaper, and did my best to tweak the levels a bit. Exported in mono so should be easy to pan left. I wanted to make something without definite rhythm or tonality, in order to leave that side of things as open as possible. A somewhat silly sort of soundscape.

Ensemblesolitaire_disquiet0429

This is for part 2 of the disquiet junto "Solitary Ensembles". My contribution is panned right, and my asynchronous jam partner is in the left channel.

I chose a drum track played by Bassling (http://bassling.blogspot.com/2020/03/disquiet-junto-0429-solitary-ensembles.html) ...as soon as I heard those drums I knew I wanted to use them - they just sounded fun to me, and I liked the live/human feel. I could feel drum-face.

So first off I tried doing a beastie boystylee rap, bit tongue in cheek, but still: NOPE. Then I tried making it more conversational, but I was talking to myself, so it still came out too weird. So then, somewhat despaired, I sat down and recorded 7 takes of spontaneous improvised speech, and I had quite a lot of fun chopping them up, taking bits from each of them, sometimes letting all 7 play at the same time. But the overall effect was displeasing - I could sort of taste my desperation and despair and a touch of crisis coming through - even though it was all done with a random sense of humour, too... 

So I slept on it, and this morning I woke up and wrote a poem, and I tried giving it its first read through while listening to Bassling's drum track, and to my surprise it kind of fitted. I had to do about 5 takes to really learn how to fit the poem to his track, and in the end used the best of 3...

It was harder than I thought it would be, putting my voice out there - trying to put something meaningful & interesting across & not letting too much of my defensiveness or social anxiety get in the way... This is my fourth time contributing to the junto, and I've got quite a lot of respect for the people involved, so this made it a challenging but ultimately fruitful endeavour - I learnt some stuff putting myself through a few loops & reflecting...

Thanks for listening!

Ensemble Solitaire v2 (disquiet0430)

*stem(s) here: https://soundcloud.com/sam-knot-poet/hi-again-only_stem *

Reverb drenched warbling of the repeated phrase "Hi again" over the lovely drone from Equinox Deschanel / @joe-mcmahon ( https://soundcloud.com/joe-mcmahon/where-i-was-drone-only-disquiet-0429 ) & the atmospheric and subtly manipulated field recording + synth from Stray Wool / @everythingdies ( https://soundcloud.com/everythingdies/the-last-day-disquiet0430?in=disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0430 ) this being part of ( Disquiet Junto Project 0431: Solitary Ensembles x 3 | The Assignment: Complete a trio by adding a track to an existing duet by two other musicians. ) Peace & love!

Whereiwas-Thelastday-Hiagain_disquiet0431

This is a remix, of sorts, of this ( https://soundcloud.com/michel-banabila/fase-3-disquiet-solitary-ensembles-x-3 ) by @michel-banabila, which itself featured ( https://soundcloud.com/supple_be_disquiet_junto/disquiet0430 ) by @supple_be_disquiet_junto which itself featured ( https://soundcloud.com/matthewh538/solitary-ensembles-disquiet0429 ) by @matthew538 ...well that's a few layers deep but then this stage 4 (remix) of the disquiet collaborative junto thingy, which has been loads of fun and good for thee elf. 

In the end with this track I chose, well I just loved the vibe, like Mr Banabila said "just pretending nothing is wrong in the world" - that really came across, and I found it to have a sweet funny buoyant vibe - and so early this morning I just played it out loud a couple of times and improvised, just recording straight into my phone, and those recordings open & close the remix. The central section is words I wrote quickly after, with the general idea of a kind of weird dad and his daughter talking, performed while listening to the tracks. Actually something weird happened and one of the tracks said the tempo was 83bpm, so I changed it to that, from 120, not realising that would slow the whole thing down, thus recorded my performance at 2/3rd speed - for a while I quite liked this ultra-slow wonky version, but in the end I felt it was better for everyone if I just put it back to its original tempo :) Anyway I really enjoyed doing this, I hope it gives some peeps pleasure to hear. It's a bit weird maybe, but weird is good. Weird is good. 

Peace.

Earth Roll - Banabila, mdh, supple.be & me (disquiet0432)

A work in process peep into my woodshed, faintly exasperated conversation about... creativity? With my dear, long-suffering, friend: the computer. Accompanied by twiddling knobs on Korg Volca Bass/Keys/Sample, sequenced in Numerology with just a splosh of echoechoecho. I've had this sitting around for years but was being far too perfectionist about it at the time so really lost patience with myself - all the original sequences etc are lost now, so just went back to the original recording and did a bit of editing (Reaper) - minimal post-production just a bit of compression & limiting from Limiter no.6

I can't remember what I used to do the voice, it was some sort of old freeware amiga, or maybe commodore 64, emulator. We chatted in real time, me just saying whatever came into my head & then helping 'puter reply by typing words into his wee mouth, out through speakers into the room (and my Zoom H2n) just as day was dawning one September morning (2016), and then I edited some of the pauses out, etc.

Since then I've got rid of all the programs I can't afford - which is nearly all of them, as I have had no income for some time - I don't want to be a pirate, I want to help and contribute, so am going all free and open source, and am planning to rebuild my way up to being able to make this level of stuff (+++) by coding my own sequencers etc in Pure Data, gonna take some time, mind, I int no programmamama.

Have reserved my rights on this as thinking might be able to put an EP out? But always up for collaboration & can change this if needs be. This is for the disquiet junto:::

More on this 435th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Disquiet Junto Project 0435: Woodshed Report — The Assignment: Share something you’ve been working on (and respond to what others post) — at:

https://disquiet.com/0435/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

unclewaybaaack

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