I looked up images of leaf development and used those as inspiration to improvise on the piano. I shaped the recorded midi track to make into a piece.

More on this 580th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Evo Evol Evolve (The Assignment: Record a piece of music that develops like an organism evolves), at: Disquiet Junto Project 0580: Evo Evol Evolve – Disquiet

More on the Disquiet Junto at: Disquiet Junto F.A.Q. – Disquiet

Subscribe to project announcements here: Disquiet Junto by Marc Weidenbaum (Disquiet.com)

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0580-evo-evol-evolve/

Leaflet improv/mptu (disquiet0580)

My take on this week’s topic is based on the idea of an evolving eco system and how individual organisms contribute to their environment.

In my case, the environment is my small studio in the attic of my house and the individual organisms are the various synths, modular and otherwise, that are all connected to one another in some form. More specifically, my method is as follows:

1) I have selected a single tone or very simple sonic element that I think best represents the character of a particular synth, module or a self contained patch;
2) Each of these tones or sonic elements are triggered and fed into a chaotic looper, in my case the Soma Cosmos in combination with “Airport Looper” created for the Zoia, which are fed back into each other via a matrix mixer;
3) I wait to hear what happens;
4) The aim is to resist triggering further tones and sonic elements but since evolution is not a predictable or rule based process, I might do so. After all, I am also part of this eco system, and as such, cannot keep silent.

Instruments used: Buchla Easel Command, 1010 Music Synthbox, Arp 2600, Arturia Drumbrute, Microfreak, Microbrute 2s, Lyra-8 and the Inner.

Disquiet0580

I had some fun with this one, a wrong take on Butterflies' life cycle. They are supposed to arrive to the prettier stage in the end but my track moves backwards, from a gentle and nice pastoral in the first section to a cheesy jazz ballad, then chaotic and quite ugly electro-acoustic free-jazz third section.
It's always the same "theme" with variations, that was my actual "exercise" here.
I used
Celesta
Vibraphone
Fretless bass
Drums
Piano
Synthesizers
Orchestral samples


DD, Friday 10 and Saturday 11 February 2023
Photo by Fleur

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0580-evo-evol-evolve

Butterfly Backwards(disquiet0580)

Disquiet Junto Project 0580: Evo Evol Evolve
The Assignment: Record a piece of music that develops like an organism evolves.

Out of curiosity, I had just bought a sequencer called ZOA, so I decided to go with the "Game of Life" approach of this sequencer (chances are I'm not alone in this). In case you're not familiar with the concept: Conway's Game of Life is a cellular model of evolution in which the life of each cell depends on the life of neighboring cells. In ZOA, each cell is a note and four sequencers play these notes according to additional rules. ZOA adds features like MIDI, and I liked that a lot. 

What I didn't like was the randomness of the melodies, but hey, isn't life random in the first place? (Big debate… let's say: Sometimes it feels random...) I had pushed the development by changing the probability of the notes by hand. If the game of life had come to a halt with some dead pattern, I would have used that, but I didn't want to force it.

I played with many instruments and patterns, but in the end I reduced it to two tracks of eighth notes. For the beginning and the end I chose a cheap fade-in, fade-out, because life came quietly and very slowly out of nowhere, and I think that according to current scientific knowledge, one day it will end like that and just fade out.

Self verdict: The track is soulless and meaningless, like the evolution of life, which need not mean that listeners could not hear either soul or meaning in it if they felt like it.

--

ZOA (Mac/iOS)
https://www.audiosymmetric.com/zoa.html
I'm in no way affiliated with it and there are many alternative MIDI tools doing "life" patterns. ZOA is not without its limits, but I found it a very interesting addition to my pattern park.

LIFE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life

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More on this 580th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Evo Evol Evolve (The Assignment: Record a piece of music that develops like an organism evolves), at: https://disquiet.com/0580/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0580-evo-evol-evolve/

What Comes Up Must Come Down [disquiet0580]

This was my contribution for the Disquiet Junto Project 0580:Evo Evil Evolve.

Here’s a copy of my post on the Disquiet Junto 0580 discussion thread:
This is my interpretation of the evolution of plant communities through the ages – from the smallest of flora to massive forests. It's also an imagining of photosynthesis beginning with the first rays of morning sunlight.

I initially created this over a year ago but ended up totally reworking most of it for this project. The final couple minutes is a little too over-the-top than what I would have liked, but I decided to keep it rather than rework that section. 

Main audio was created on an iPad using Spectrum Modal, Zoa and Xynthesizr apps, and imported into Ableton Live. Supporting tracks were added using FRMS, Pigments, and Minifreak V software instruments. Forest image by Casey Horner via Unsplash.

More on this 580th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Evo Evol Evolve (The Assignment: Record a piece of music that develops like an organism evolves), at: Disquiet Junto Project 0580: Evo Evol Evolve – Disquiet
More on the Disquiet Junto at: Disquiet Junto F.A.Q. – Disquiet
Subscribe to project announcements here: Disquiet Junto by Marc Weidenbaum (Disquiet.com)
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co 1: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0580-evo-evol-evolve/

Sifting Morning Light [disquiet0580]

The life of a plant kept springing to mind, full of life, growing new shoots breaking then eventually changing colour and beginning a slow decay into lifelessness, returning to the earth.

I recorded a short organ loop to cassette, ran that into the CalSynth Rangoon, split into ALA cumulus and used 4x LFOs to vary amplitudes over time.

Tascam ministudio DS -> Split into CalSynth Rangoon + ALA Cumulus + one dry signal. All outputs into ALM Tangle quartet with 4x LFOs applied to the CV inputs. Some light master FX applied in Ableton.
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More on this 580th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Evo Evol Evolve (The Assignment: Record a piece of music that develops like an organism evolves), at: https://disquiet.com/0580/

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-0580-evo-evol-evolve/

Death and technicolor [disquiet0580]

Disquiet Junto Project 0580: Evo Evol Evolve

The Assignment: Record a piece of music that develops like an organism evolves.

Step 1: You’re going to record a piece of music informed by evolution. Think of stages of evolution, perhaps choosing a specific animal or other life form that evolved over time.

Step 2: Record a piece of music that evolves as it proceeds, based on the patterns (phases, stages) you explored in Step 1. And yes, animals that went extinct are a potential subject. 
——————
Because of this prompt I have been grappling more than usual with half-baked wonderings such as: how might individual-level agency, curiosity and desire eventually contribute to the sum total of evolution if even at all? What does it mean to think of mutations as risky miniature acts of selective rebellion? And how does it feel subjectively for each life form to find themselves as tiny unwitting participants within vast unfolding and unfathomable processes? 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

I decided that mainly I wanted to use the prompt as an excuse to try to take the perspective of an emergent proto octopus - I love that they are some of our most distant and mysterious evolutionary relatives. Well the resulting track is my emotional response to some of these vague, re-volving and unresolved themes anyway. It is perhaps one of the most amorphous things I have ever allowed myself to create so far.

Animoog Z was the only synth I used this time. Oh and I used some aquatic samples to modify a few of my timbres too. This was a fun feature to tinker with.

I dabbled with ZOA generative sequencer in iOS, and incorporated factors of 8 wherever possible, in an attempt to embed some kind of simplistic nod to evolutionary processes. I have also obviously tried to layer my sounds incrementally, to suggest emerging and merging mutations and complexity. But in the end this was all just a jumping-off point for something more intuitive and emotionally exploratory. I enjoyed this prompt, even though the results feel unfinished to me.

Image credit: NOAA Ocean Exploration & Research from USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

More on this 580th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Evo Evol Evolve (The Assignment: Record a piece of music that develops like an organism evolves), at: disquiet.com/0580/

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

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

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-pr…80-evo-evol-evolve/

Proto Octopian disquiet0580

Various monosynth filter sweeps played against each other and modulated by a couple of Felt Instruments' Smugi sequenced filterbanks. The idea being the sound evolves until it reaches a point of overrunning the system and then extinguishes itself. As I write this, during a second extreme weather event in a matter of days, I can't help thinking of our tenure as a species and the likelihood our evolution may come to a shuddering halt of our own design.
--
More on the Disquiet Junto at: Disquiet Junto F.A.Q. – Disquiet

Subscribe to project announcements here: Disquiet Junto by Marc Weidenbaum (Disquiet.com)

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co 1: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0580-evo-evol-evolve/

swept (disquiet0580)

Disquiet 0581 - this weeks challenge was to download a rhythmic field recording and make it part of a track or incorporate it somehow.

Thanks to Scott Fletcher for having provided the original material. It is used thanks to a Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0). Original track at: https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/helsinki-downspout/

I loaded the field recording into Ableton and put it into a drum rack. I then took all the bits between the beats (hiss and non rhythmic parts) and started to mess about with these, adding filters and effects and also playing them as drum hits - that is how the track opens. 
I them loaded all these hiss parts into a synth and stretched and played them as keys, creating the additional synth sounds with effects changing the sounds somewhat.  After jamming about for 30 / 40 minutes I hit reccord and laid down a fairly basic arrangement. 
I tweaked this slightly, adding a little more effects until I had a nice short experimental track i'm pretty happy with!

More or less the whole track was made with the source sounds but it's debatable if the original sound is recognisable?  However I took the prompot to "to sample and rework the source material" as a guide! 

Disquiet Junto Project 0581: Helsinki Downspout

The Assignment: Use a rhythmic field recording as the foundation for a new track.

Step 1: This is a shared sample project, one in which all the participants will utilize the same provided recording, about a minute and a half long, as the rhythmic element for their own music. Access the track, originally recorded by Scott Fletcher and used with his permission, here:

https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/helsinki-downspout

Step 2: Listen to the provided track several times. Think about ways to map its content, perhaps making notations about when certain unique, momentary aspects surface.

Step 3: Record an original piece of music for which the provided music is the underlying rhythm. You might take this quite literally, using the source as it is, resulting in a track that is precisely 1:35 long. Alternately, you might elect to sample and rework the source material. If you go the latter route, make certain that the original sound is, at least at some point in the finished track, recognizable.

Step 4: Because this is a Creative Commons resource, be sure to identify Scott Fletcher as the original recorder of the source material, and include a link to the source track. Identify the license as: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0).

Audio Obscura - Helsinki Downpour [disquiet0581]

More on this 581st weekly Disquiet Junto project, Helsinki Downspout (The Assignment: Use a rhythmic field recording as the foundation for a new track), at: https://disquiet.com/0581/

Thanks to Scott Fletcher for having provided the original material. It is used thanks to a Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0). Original track at: https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/helsinki-downspout/

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-0581-helsinki-downspout/

Helsinki Downspout Crackles (disquiet0581)

both sides of the journey.m4a

Ambient electronica, Berlin School, Chillout & Kosmische Space Musik from Munich, Germany. ► Soundcloud is my musical diary - expect lightfooted drafts, soundchecks, playthings & misfits here. ► Go Bandcamp for finished pieces & more serious musical works.

What Comes Up Must Come Down [disquiet0580]

Krakenkraft & Etherkraken