Disquiet Junto

Disquiet Junto Project 0696: Chain of Layers
The Assignment: Make music change by altering its layers.

This project is the first of three that are being done in by the Disquiet Junto in collaboration with the 2025 Musikfestival Bern, which will be held in Switzerland from September 3 through 7. The festival topic this year is « Kette » — which translates, as the organization explains, to “Chain”: “Chains connect but they also bind. They create relationships but also restrictions. As a gift they look nice, feared when used in vice, and yet they can span bridges across fire and ice.” All three Junto projects will engage with the work of Svetlana Maraš, who is the Composer-in-Residence for the 2025 festival.

We are working again at the invitation of Tobias Reber, an early Junto participant, who is in charge of the educational activities of the festival. This is the seventh year in a row that the Junto has collaborated with Musikfestival Bern.

Step 1: Record 10 to 15 layers of continuous sound.

Step 2: Create a piece of music in which you only change the relative presence of those individual layers from Step 1 over time. Some light effects and panning are certainly fine, but the majority of the impact should be how the prominence of the individual layers changes.

Deadline: Monday, May 5, 2025, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.

Details: disquiet.com/0696

Disquiet Junto Project 0696: Chain of Layers

More on the 692nd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Combust a Move — The Assignment: Make music using fire for the rhythm track — at https://disquiet.com/0692/

Disquiet Junto | Combust a Move - disquiet0692

More on the 694th weekly Disquiet Junto project, 5/4ify — The Assignment: Add a beat to a pre-existing piece of music — at https://disquiet.com/0694/

The original track can be found here [ https://soundcloud.com/xiiixxi/angelfish-or-unicorn?si=f9729764e685412aad5efce4e494ff09&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing ]

Disquiet Junto | 5/4ify - disquiet0694

More of these temporal phase tracks can be found here [ https://soundcloud.com/xiiixxi/sets/temporal-phase ]

More on the 695th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Disquiet Junto Project 0695: Clean After Each Use — The Assignment: Put a piece of music through the dryer — at https://disquiet.com/0695/

Disquiet Junto | Clean After Each Use - disquiet0695

Phew! Thankfully this track didn't pass muster with the SoundCloud algorithm ... and so won't be recommended to potentially interested listeners ... Always a signal that something is probably worth a listen! 😁

See the accompanying video at https://youtu.be/wjrGJtwQnP0

This project is the first of three that are being done by the Disquiet Junto in collaboration with the 2025 Musikfestival Bern, which will be held in Switzerland from September 3 through 7. The festival topic this year is « Kette » — which translates, as the organization explains, to “Chain”: “Chains connect but they also bind. They create relationships but also restrictions. As a gift they look nice, feared when used in vice, and yet they can span bridges across fire and ice.” All three Junto projects will engage with the work of Svetlana Maraš, who is the Composer-in-Residence for the 2025 festival.

More on the 696th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Chain of Layers — The Assignment: Make music change by altering its layers — at https://disquiet.com/0696/

visuals

halF layereD [disquiet0696]

More on the 696th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Chain of Layers — The Assignment: Make music change by altering its layers — at https://disquiet.com/0696/

11 samples created from looping short sections taken from a pre-existing piece entitled 'Narrative' [ https://soundcloud.com/xiiixxi/narrative ]. The volume of each continuously sounding loop is auto-faded in and out using a pair of linked oscillators in addition to being shaped to bring each to the front once at least once throughout the duration of the piece.

Disquiet Junto | Chain of Layers - disquiet0696

Disquiet Junto 0696's assignment was to record 10 to 15 layers of continuous sound and create a piece of music only by altering their relative presence over time.

I immediately thought of the story of how the iconic 1975 10cc song "I'm Not In Love" was created. The backing vocals are lush and rich and unearthly. (If you don't know the song, just listen to the first 30 seconds or so to get the gist). The story is that the band recorded themselves each singing a long, sustained note until they had 48 notes on individual 12' tape loops. For the final recording, the tape loops were played simultaneously and mixed into harmonies live on the console, essentially turning the mixer into a musical instrument. 

With this technique as inspiration, I recorded 7 tracks of ebow guitar, each playing a different note in the A harmonic minor scale. Ebow can make dynamics difficult but I managed some good textures I think. I hand-mixed each of the tracks to come in and out in sequence, creating a rising step pattern.

Then I bounced the seven guitar tracks to a single track. This track was duplicated and pitch shifted to create 4 tracks spanning 4 octaves. This essentially multiplied my original 7 tracks by 4 to give me 28 guitars. I applied volume automation to create a primitive Shepard scale out of the result.

Aside from a couple of acousmatic accents and a low-fi kick drum, every sound is from the guitar.

More on the 696th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Chain of Layers — The Assignment: Make music change by altering its layers — at https://disquiet.com/0696/

What Became of Grandfather? (disquiet0696)

More on the 696th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Chain of Layers — The Assignment: Make music change by altering its layers — at https://disquiet.com/0696/

disquiet0696

sound art for disquiet0696.

More on the 696th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Chain of Layers — The Assignment: Make music change by altering its layers — at https://disquiet.com/0696/

hendecad cascade (disquiet0696)

This is my submission for this week's Disquiet Junto assignment.

More on the 696th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Chain of Layers — The Assignment: Make music change by altering its layers — at https://disquiet.com/0696/

250503 [disquiet0696]

Vocal Sample - Patricia Edwards - I Do - Today Is The Day [
https://www.looperman.com/acapellas/detail/14802/i-do-today-is-the-day-by-patriciaedwards-128bpm-house-acapella ]

Re- Sequencing - X I I I X X I via XiiixxiQ 
Tempo : 120bpm.

More on the 697th weekly Disquiet Junto project, First Third — The Assignment: Record the first third of a trio — at https://disquiet.com/0697/

Disquiet Junto | First Third - disquiet0697

All here, in reality, are works in progress and are therefore apt to change at any time. All those except XIII Sisters and RAW which, as many of you may have done, I literally gave away in return for their placement in a library. Something I won't be doing again any time soon. If you have a use for something you hear here please just ask.

 .ooO -------------------------------------- Ooo.

ChatGTP said of AI Music...
'Creative AI tools can be seen as sophisticated plagiarism software, as they do not produce genuinely original content but rather emulate and modify existing works by artists subtly enough to circumvent copyright laws'

Sometimes it takes a dispassionate, independent view to actually see the truth of it ...

 .ooO -------------------------------------- Ooo.

There are links to XiiixxiQ below. Your mileage may vary as to whether it decides to work on your system or not. It only runs on a Mac because I really don't have time to do all the necessary work to make it compatible with anything other than my 2015 MacBook Pro :-(. It is still being developed (for my own use) and improved, and I may yet get round to doing another release if I can find the time to tidy it all up.

Disquiet Junto | Chain of Layers - disquiet0696

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