April

...tick...tick...tick...

19 The Sun

baby

This week's prompt was to compose music that listens to itself.

So glad you asked! I have been wanting to make a project like this for years as part of my interest in structured improvisation.

I'd still like to do something clever with MAX/MASP and MIDI, but for now I kept myself quite busy with using audio processing in Ableton Live.

Basically, I tried to construct effects chains that would grab short snippets of audio (from a piano improv and also from each other!), process them, and and repeat them much later in the piece (via gates, envelope followers, or LFOs mapped to the inputs of delays and pitch-shifters). I altered the musical material using pitch-shifters (Cableguys, Ableton's Shifter) or delays with very short settings to make percussive sounds.

I also really tried to prioritize changing pitches, with the idea that altering the source tonal material would be a fun nod to classical music's idea of theme and development.

Then I loosely grouped them into things that generated low pitches, medium pitches, and high pitches.

I had a *lot* of material at the end, so I ended up cutting out a few tracks completely. 

Beyond that, my editing was minimal. I managed to volume spikes, and I also cut out some parts of the piano improv, because the generative devices were making their own musical material!

I'm happy with this one - I think it could be done at about 2 minutes and 40 seconds, but I figure this is a good audience for a slightly longer version of the piece.

* * * * * *
More on this 611th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Music That Listens to Itself (The Assignment: Record a piece of music that repurposes itself as it proceeds), at: https://disquiet.com/0611/

Some of the music resulting from this project may be included in a September 29, 2023, event at the Berkeley Alembic in Berkeley, California: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/expanded-listening-music-that-listens-to-itself-tickets-712124101357

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-0611-music-that-listens-to-itself/

Soliaudium (disquiet0611)

שרון גל - 20-09-23

For this assignment, I used the track https://soundcloud.com/grantlucasmuller/broke-beat-disquiet0619 as a starting point. Thanks to him for sharing it with us.

I added two instruments to it. The first one is a synth pad playing a short progression. It was difficult to get it aligned with the beat at first (also I realised later that Grant had written some explanation about it). The other instrument plays a metallic-sounding motif repeated multiple times.

The only edits on the original are a short fade-in in the beginning and some filtering during a drum fill part near the end of the track.

More on this 620th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Beat Accrual Accrual (The Assignment: Turn someone’s slow-build beat into a finished track), at: https://disquiet.com/0620/

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-0620-beat-accrual-accrual/

Broke Beat [w/ Grant Lucas Muller] (disquiet0620)

Step 1: Listen to this short recording, under a minute, of a passing train, recorded by Todd (@Toaster) Elliott:
https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/train-source-1/ 25

And, if you’d like, to this longer one, which is a little over 10 minutes:
https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/train-source-1020 13

Both are available to download.

Step 2: Record a piece of music using the field recording as the rhythm track.

Blue coal train - disquiet0635

Disquiet Junto Project 0636: Left (1 of 3)
The Assignment: Record the first third of a trio.

Please note: While this project is the start of a three-part sequence that will unfold over the course of three weeks, you can participate in any or all three of those parts.



Step 1: This week’s Junto project is the first in a sequence intended to encourage and reward collaboration. You will be recording something with the understanding that it will remain unfinished for the time being. Your part will be done, but more will happen. Read on.

Step 2: The plan is for you to record a short and original piece of music using any instrumentation of your choice. Conceive the piece as something that leaves room for something else — other instruments, other people — to join in. (Keep in mind that your piece would appear panned to the left in the finished recording, after three weeks.)

Step 3: Record a short piece of music, roughly two to three minutes in length, as described in Step 2.

Step 4: This is important: be sure to make your track downloadable because it may be used by someone else in the next Disquiet Junto project, and then after that.

===

Track notes:

One of the few things I haven't been doing much of this year is playing guitar, which is my 'primary' instrument. However, since late last year the one guitar (within reach) has been a Danelectro electric 12-string, stripped back of its thick strings to only six strings and put through through a variety of modal open tunings. A few years ago I listened to Lee Renaldo talk about this kind of retrofitting, which was called an Angel Hair guitar and was pioneered in the 1960s by country guitarists to create a light, jangly accompaniment, that in some ways is reminiscent of a pedal steel guitar's upper timbre.

I don't know how much open tunings figured at this time, but I could certainly appreciate Lee's attraction to all things unconventional and open-tuned. My current set up for this guitar is a D-A-C-E-A-E tuning, which gives it a kind of pentatonic, suspended tonality. Given the unconventional order of string gauges from bottom to top, the unison notes have an especially interesting appeal. From a fingerpicking approach, it all opens up the guitar in unexpected ways, since a regular picking technique can be inverted by the string gauge order and also feels quite different too.

So with this in mind, I recorded a repeated fingerpicking figure which exploits the unique qualities of this setup, such as the unisons and harmonic attributes of the tuning. The main guitar (soft left) is run through an EHX Holy Grail Reverb with a smidge of spring reverb, whilst an accompaniment (same guitar and tuning) is on the soft right, also run through the Holy Grail, but with the weird 'Flerb' reverb, which is a kind of modulated effect.

It's at 72bpm and runs just a shade over 2 minutes, starting a fade at the 1:46 mark.

[Disquiet_Junto_0636] Epochs (Left 1 of 3) 72 BPM

Antefix

место

104 - 12.20

New Growth

Through The Part-Time Cadavers

I'm using this account mainly for the Disquiet Junto project, I may release other things here in the future

Broke Beat [w/ Grant Lucas Muller] (disquiet0620)

Julien Stamm

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