I fed the source audio through 3 different effects: a ring modulation patch in Excalibur, one for Industrializer, and a fairly tame Triad patch. The first 15 seconds have no effects, then their levels begin to rise and fall.

I then added a sound from Iris; I pitched it low enough that it sounded sinister, which determined the character of the entire piece. Two more patches from Grain and one from Malström play for brief intervals. I chose to keep them to the same pitch or chord throughout, to mimic the behavior of chimes. I used Synapse's Deep Reverb set to 18 seconds to lave them in reverb.

I also instantiated Glitchmachines' Cataract to provide me with something noisy. I chose a file I recorded 5 and a half years ago, of my infant daughter drinking her bottle. Just playing the first bit of it in a loop worked, once I added distortion with Trash. It now sounds like a clock ticking and squeaking.

The end result feels like part of a soundtrack for a surrealistic horror film, thus the title.

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More on this 485th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Strange Weather (The Assignment: Remix the pure sounds of Chris Kallmyer’s traveling wind chimes to your own musical purposes) — at: https://disquiet.com/0485/

More on Chris Kallmyer at: chriskallmyer.com.

Major thanks to Alex Hawthorn for support: alexhawthorn.com

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-0485-strange-weather/

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

Image associated with this project is by Chris Kallmyer and used with the artist’s permission.

Gnawer's Theater [disquiet0485]

I took 5 fragments of irregular length (< 2 bars) from "Glace-Neuf", the piece I created for Junto #418 (one of the ice cube projects).

I duplicated and reordered the fragments, introduced regularity by playing a fragment every 2 bars, and added a long reverb to avoid silences. To inject some interest, I decided to add a granular repeat effect (Puremagnetik's Granule) that fades into being throughout the piece, achieving its maximum just before the end. There is also a very soft pad from Iris 2 playing a minor chord once in a while, again to fill out the aural space and to add a bit of contrast over time.

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More on this 509th weekly Disquiet Junto project — The Long Detail (The Assignment: Create a piece of music with moments from a preexisting track) — at: https://disquiet.com/0509/

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-0509-the-long-detail/

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

The image associated with this project is a detail from a painting by Piero della Francesca (1415-1492).

Ice shards cut my palm and then melted away

January. I began with fragments generated by the Evolution Sequencer Rack Extension and then expanded them into a nice intro for a piece, which however cries out for a better orchestration than a single patch. I really should return to this.

February. From "Declination Path", an incomplete piece where I try to be more energetic and crisp than the ambient mush I tend to produce usually.

March. I have been working on more Trance pieces in 2021 and I have definitely improved since I started trying to produce some back in 2018. I am comfortable creating individual sections, but making a satisfying full piece is harder; this is from a piece that stopped at bar 56.

April. From "Gnawer's Theater", a piece from Junto project 485.

May. My 6 year old daughter has asked to make music with Daddy a couple of times this year. I will set up a piece with a drum loop and maybe some chords then let her improvise at the keyboard playing a lead patch.

June. I've been working intermittently at an ambient album titled "Coelacanth". This is from a piece built around a field recording of birds I made in Iceland in 2015, over which I have overlaid plaintive drones.

July. From "Galois Thermionic", one of the pieces from the album "Algorithmic Noise" I released this year on Bandcamp (branchpredictorunit.bandcamp.com). I used to think the reaction to my ambient project was discouraging; this was worse by far.

August. I have produced a lot of pieces over the years based on samples of speech from right-wing broadcasts. These are the most original music I have ever created and I find myself listening to them repeatedly. While I had always hesitated to make them available (lest my satirical intent be mistaken as celebratory), and frustrated with the performance of my second alias (see last month), I decided to be bold and release "In Satan's America" as Deep State Puppet (deepstatepuppet.bandcamp.com). My play counts indicate I really need not have bothered.

September. From "RADAR", a piece that was composed to be symmetrical, with the second half almost exactly a mirror image of the first. For vocals, I used the ST-1 Speak & Tweak Rack Extension to voice three palindromes: radar, rotor, tenet. 

October. This piece is called "Nutmeg" for no good reason. With a better title I'd be satisfied with it.

November. A sketch of a psytrance track, using D16's Phoscyon TB-303 emulator.

December. A completed trance track I'm happy with, that uses a sample from an old movie to good effect. Put your spacesuits and helmets on and move out!

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More on this 522nd weekly Disquiet Junto project — Just Backdated (The Assignment: Create a sonic diary of the past year with a dozen (or more) super-brief segments) — at: https://disquiet.com/0522/

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-0522-just-backdated/

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

Dub jacked, stat! [disquiet0522]

I chose to apply different distortion effects on each of the three spoken tracks to make things more interesting—though they no longer blend into one mess of sounds, of course. Added single notes from a pad with a multitap delay, which helps the mood a bit.

More on this 98th Disquiet Junto project, in which three original spoken texts are combined into one track, at:

disquiet.com/2013/11/14/disquie…098-wovenaudiobio/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

Groups – Disquiet-junto

An Unattainable Dream [disquiet0098-wovenaudiobio]

The original article discusses a real-world case where music students were able to encode information in a score by making a given note correspond to a letter. The problem being that the piece will then sound like a cat walking across a keyboard.

What if instead we were to encode a letter by a succession of notes and/or chords? It would then be possible to make a more natural-sounding piece, one that might not risk raising suspicion.

I decided to use ASCII code (See https://www.asciitable.com), specifically the 64 values between 32 and 95, which cover letters, numbers and punctuation. Subtracting 32 from the standard values, we get
space = 0, A = 33, ... Z = 59

Values between 0 and 63 may be represented by 6 binary digits. Divide those into two groups of 3: all we need is a way to represent 8 different values through notes. One possibility is to make use of a triad. Given a C major chord, let us associate each note to one of the binary digits.

Number   G  E  C
   0     0  0  0  Rest
   1      0  0  1  C
   2     0  1  0  E
   3     0  1  1  C+E
   4     1  0  0  G
   5     1  0  1  C+G (power chord)
   6     1  1  0  E+G
   7     1  1  1  C maj

Any message can now be encoded by a succession of two notes/chords. However, the piece will all be on the tonic chord of the C major scale. We can use another chord as well, as long as there is no possible confusion. I chose the IV chord, F-A-C, which works as long as it remains in root position, i.e. the C note is an octave higher than the C note for the I chord. Other diatonic chords will create confusion, so we only have those two to draw from.

Suppose our message begins with the letter A. It is encoded by the number 33, which in binary is written 100001. Break this into two groups of three: 100, 001. This corresponds in turn to G, C (or, if you choose to use the IV chord here, High C, F). We can write this as a pair of 1/8 or 1/16 notes, so that the flag links the relevant notes.

The end result is a rather dull and uninspired melody, which to my mind feels quite believable if it's supposed to have been produced by a beginning student. For the recorded piece, I had the score "performed" on piano with a random velocity for each note. I also added a choir pad which plays diatonic triads without much concern for the piano melody. Who could guess that this piece actually says:

TALKING ABOUT MUSIC IS LIKE DANCING ABOUT ARCHITECTURE...

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More on this 546th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Code Notes (The Assignment: Make music that includes a secret message) — at: https://disquiet.com/0546/

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-0546-code-notes/

Image by Wapcaplet, used (text, color added) thanks to a Creative Commons license:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Enigma_rotor_set.png

Elementary Steganography [disquiet0546]

I took the top row of images to derive the beat. Sharp peaks suggested a snare, rounded hills a kick drum, and the small bumps a subdued sound. So I derived three variations of a very simple beat. I wanted to shy away from a realistic heartbeat sound, figuring everyone else would use that…

For the melodic layer, I used the second row. This time I treated the grid as a MIDI grid and just drew 16th notes to match. I did not take too many pains to be fully accurate. Here each of the three patterns repeats for 2 measures in 6/4.

The tonal layer, taking its cue from the roman numerals on top, uses a I, II and then III chord from a B minor scale for two measures each. To add interest to what was otherwise a fairly dull texture, I put in a bitcrushing plugin and automated the bitrate, depth, and wet/dry mix according to the bottom row of images -- once again drawing in curves without freaking out too much about getting it perfect.

The sequence of 3 melodies is repeated 3 times, so we end up with 18 bars at 62.5 bpm. At 1:45, it's a trifle long for a "moment musical" given that there is so little change in it. Had we been allowed a fourth layer, I might have added incidental noises for more interest.

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More on this 120th Disquiet Junto project — “Write a song based on the heartbeat of Marcel Duchamp” — at:

http://disquiet.com/2014/04/17/disquiet0120-duchampbeat/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/?p=16588

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

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

Photo associated with this Junto project sourced from the following URL, which notes “Image – margins cropped for clarity – is courtesy the artist, P! and Simone Subal Gallery”:

http://blakegopnik.com/post/81699274569

Entre Deux Battements De Coeur [disquiet0120-duchampbeat]

Working with samples provided by Marcus Fisher.

I used four of the seven samples provided. "Nacre Voit" in Reason's Grain instrument is repitched to play chords, while the first 8 seconds of "PSU Stairs" are repeated 5 times, with a lowpass filter (and a rather steep resonance) gradually opening up. "Hands Held" is used as-is, except that it's fed to the Blue Depth reverb, as is "PSU Stairs". Finally, I used the first 2+ seconds of "Worn path" at various points throughout the piece, served up straight.

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More on this 600th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Reaching Out (The Assignment: This is a shared sample project. Rework a set of seven WAV files provided by Marcus Fischer), at: https://disquiet.com/0600/

Please credit Marcus Fischer when posting your track.

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-0600-reaching-out/

This project’s cover image is a detail of a photo by Marcus Fischer.

Intersecting Paths [disquiet0600]

I decided to use my piece "Uummannaq", from my album "Arctic" (https://xlrd.bandcamp.com/album/arctic). The song is 82 bars at 88bpm. I decided I would set aside the last 18 bars and cut up the remaining 64 bars into different-sized slices, which I would then play back in order of increasing length, finishing with the end of the song as originally recorded.

Now, 64 bars divides neatly into 32 + 16 + 16. If we apply the same pattern to each of those 3 slices, we get (16 + 8 + 8) + (8 + 4 + 4) + (8 + 4 + 4). Each time we repeat the procedure, we triple the number of slices, while the shortest length is divided by 4. Slicing things up five times in a row yields 243 slices, with the shortest one being a sixteenth note. Going one step further would be intolerably tedious, so I stopped there. I cut and reordered the slices manually in my DAW to yield this piece.

The whole process begs to be implemented in software. The user would be able to define a partition of unity into several slices and decide how many times to perform the process. For this piece, it would have been possible to reach 9 iterations, yielding a mere 19,683 slices, with the shortest being 29 samples long. Given the number of pops in the beginning in the 5-iteration version, I expect this "ultimate" version would introduce some unpleasant frequencies, though.

An algorithm to recursively partition a unit length into fractional slices is easy to implement. However, I don't know if Audacity is able to accept commands from a Python script to arbitrarily reorder a few tens of thousands of slices. It might be more straightforward to code an app that directly performs this brassage on a sound file and outputs the result. However, I certainly did not have the time to produce the code over the weekend.

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More on this 629th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Jigsaw Logic — The Assignment: Break a piece of your music and put it back together again — at: https://disquiet.com/0629/

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-0629-jigsaw-logic/

Cog Wails Jig [disquiet0629]

This was done very quickly. I took the original field recording and passed it through bandpass filters, compressors and EQs, to try to reduce the ambient noise and bring out the sound of the bells. I rendered this, then took the first 68 seconds and focused on this part, mostly because of time constraints.

I fed the rendered slice through more EQs, compressors, and two special effects: a 3Plex patch that generates plinky echoes and a fattening filter from EtchRed. The result is almost a drone, the peal of the bells being smeared into a watery background, while drip-like echoes occupy the foreground. The recording cuts off abruptly and the filter’s ringing reaction makes for a clear punctuation.

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More on this 178th Disquiet Junto project — “Emphasize the bells in an urban field recording” — at:

http://disquiet.com/2015/05/28/disquiet0178-sepulchrabells/

Source audio by Michael Raphael, aka Sepulchra, who runs the sound-library firm at rabbitearsaudio.com. Audio used with Raphael’s permission. Track originally posted at:

https://soundcloud.com/sepulchra/150526-marienkirche

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto/

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

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

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:

http://disquiet.com/forums/

Photo associated with this track taken by Michael Raphael from his Berlin hotel room, where he recorded the source audio.

Sepulchral Bells [disquiet0178-sepulchrabells]

I took the recordings I made for my first pass at this project, 2 years ago. I ended up selecting only one sample, of the ice spinning and rattling. My additional self-imposed constraint was to use only Reason’s pitchshifting Polar effect in the piece (not counting compressors and mild EQ).

I put two different presets on one bus, each of them applied to the same sample repeated 4 times; but there are gaps between the repetitions so that one of the tracks gradually falls behind, then catches up at the end. The sound is chaotic enough that this isn’t very noticeable, but it avoids monotony.

I created a new Polar patch that uses a less natural-sounding transformation of the source material, with a resonant bandpass filter to make it “sing” a bit. At times the buffer is locked for a few seconds to make it more robotic.

I rode the faders to make these two main sources trade prominence over time. I thought the result still failed to sustain interest over time. I added the sample pitched up 3 octaves (it sounds like a rasping staticky buzz) and played it three times as the piece progresses. Then I pitched it down 2 octaves to create a sort of drum track, which plays at the end. Those four elements are varied enough that the track now doesn’t feel too long at 3:30.

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More on this 210th weekly Disquiet Junto project (“The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something of it”) at:
http://disquiet.com/2016/01/07/disquiet0210-icecoda/

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

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:
http://disquiet.com/forums/

Photo associated with this project by Michael Scott used via Creative Commons license:
https://flic.kr/p/5vyz3G

Slurry [disquiet0210-icecoda]

I started with a chord progression in D minor: i-iv-i-III-VII-iv-v-iv-i.
I sent the progression twice to 2 different synths, removing two of the notes of the triad each time, more or less at random. So we have 16 measures of partial triads, at 90 bpm.

The middle section plays on a third synth, this time outlining two chords in G minor, i (Gmin) and III (Bb).

The final section returns to D minor, exchanges the sequences between the first two synths, and copies one an octave down on the third synth. We end with two measures to let the sounds die out.

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More on this 472nd weekly Disquiet Junto project — Jam Time (1 of 3) / The Assignment: Record the first third of a trio that others will complete — at:

https://disquiet.com/0472/

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-0472-jam-time/

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

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

https://flic.kr/p/mDRT9

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

Amniote [disquiet0472]

This was built starting from Chalk Walk's piece here: https://soundcloud.com/chalkwalk-junto/jam-time-13-disquiet0472


I had thought at first to write another lead line for the piece but that exceeded my competence, especially given time constraints. I was able to write chords using a string patch (with a bit of rhythmic filtering, delay and reverb), letting them grow in complexity over time. I found out adding another layer playing the same chords an octave lower balanced better with the initial piece, otherwise the right side of the track sounded too thin. There is a third patch that plays a simple accompaniment which I felt was too cheesy by itself; my answer was to add a reverse delay to it and almost drown out the source.

After making a track that panned both contributions hard left and hard right, I tried an unpanned version, which sounds vastly better, given that I've added harmony and not another melody line. I chose to defy the instructions and offer this version as my contribution.

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More on this 473rd weekly Disquiet Junto project — Placebo Effect (1 of 3) / The Assignment: Record the second third of a trio that others will complete — at:

https://disquiet.com/0473/

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-0473-placebo-effect/

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

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

https://flic.kr/p/5bFGMU

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

Red Pills Are More Effective Unpanned [disquiet0473]

The random number generator selected Michel Banabila's With Orphaned Loop (https://soundcloud.com/michel-banabila/with-orphaned-loop-disquiet-0473-placebo-effect-2-of-3?in=disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0473).

I felt the piece sounded great already, but there was still room for percussion. I used something spare that I thought fitted the rhythms of the piece, and then introduced small variations, never more than one sound at a time. I added a granular plugin called Zerone which ramps up and then back down to zero in a slow rhythm. There is also a techno percussion loop slowed down to half-time that plays occasionally.

All of that work was maybe a bit too subtle, so as a last step I added a vocal sample from a public domain short film. Using it just once would have felt perhaps too arbitrary, so I dropped it in a second time.

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More on this 474th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Police Action (3 of 3) / The Assignment: Complete a trio by adding a track to an existing duet by two other musicians — at:

https://disquiet.com/0474/

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-0474-police-action/

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

An Obvious Lesson [disquiet0474]

The image was quite inspiring. I wanted to do an ambient piece where noise would echo the haze in the air and regular structures would echo the receding geometric perspective.

7 instances of Lectric Panda's Nostromo synth are used here, with one Viking-2 and one patch from AAS Player. Noise comes from HazeMate's Noise Generator, rather strongly processed. I was trying to get an organic feel despite using a plethora of very electronic sources.

To my surprise this proceeded very linearly, with almost no backtracking. I'm not going to win any awards for the chord progression, but I feel I avoided the pitfall of utter monotony. Instead of the trite fadeout I usually resort to, I decided the final section would crescendo and then halt.

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More on this 476th weekly Disquiet Junto project — IAH Forecast (The Assignment: Here’s your next single’s cover. Now record it.) — at:

https://disquiet.com/0476/

The image that is the source of this project is by Robert Boyd (www.thegreatgodpanisdead.com) and has been used with his permission.

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-0476-iah-forecast/

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

ymeynard

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