There's this sound in here--I know I've heard it before, long ago, it's just hard to recall--oh, I know!  It's WATER FLOWING!  We used to have that around here.

really cool interplay. the transient urban din vs. the permanence of the garden's (non-turtle) residents. each with its own set of constants.

Awesome how you stop paying attention and then all these timestretches start playing with your brain... subtly intense stuff!

terrific! i feel entranced and somewhat drenched.

A set of tracks from the 29th weekly project from the Disquiet Junto group. 

The Assignment: Make music from running water, inspired by William Gibson's novel Count Zero.

More information on the group at: 

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info

More on the specific project at:

http://disquiet.com/2012/07/19/disquiet0029-countzero/

Disquiet Junto Project 0029: Count Zero

Track made for the disquiet junto challenge with the theme 'Landscape Architecture' - an unobtrusive path through musical flora...

IDEA
With this assignment I immidiately thought of long walks in forests following the smallest wildlife trails instead of marked paths. Sometimes you start somewhere that seems an almost impassable wilderless, but gentle steps in the soft green leads the way to a path unfolding.

COMPO
I started with simply Cmajor. The happy feel associated with the major scale felt appropriate for the feeling you get when you know you are on the right track. Like I did before, I played with a generative tool for a while and took some fragments.
The percussive/drum part is quite heavy (an 808 kick, snare and crash) for my normal way of working, but I felt like it really underlined the idea of a path getting more obvious as you go.
Now, I dont know wheter the end result does fit the assignment "unobtrusive path", but all the same I'm happy with what came out.

GEAR
DAW: Samplitude X3
VST: Arturia Jupiter-8, NI Kontakt instument, heavy use of stock plugins
HARDWARE: Elka Rhapsody, Roland D10, Zoom R24
image:own

A Path Unfolding

A Path Unfolding [disquiet0528]

I used the phrase "Please Stay on Paths Fragile Vegetation" as a way to build a system of notes based on each letter of each word.  There's 6 small "movements" in the piece - one for each word.  In addition, I recorded a short walk through the woods just after a snow fall.  I was trying to stay off of the vegetation, but had to cross several small piles of sticks that gave way under foot.  There is a guided walking meditation obscured underneath some of the notes.  This track was intended for inclusion in the Disquiet Junto Project #0528 - Landscape Architecture.  More here: https://disquiet.com/0528/


More on this 528th weekly Disquiet Junto project – Landscape Architecture (The Assignment: Forge an unobtrusive path through musical flora) – at: https://disquiet.com/0528/ 1

More on the Disquiet Junto at: https://disquiet.com/junto/ 1

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

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0528-landscape-architecture/

Stay On Paths - Disquiet0528

More on this 529th weekly Disquiet Junto project – Squared Off (The Assignment: Explore the number 23) – at: https://disquiet.com/0529/

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-0529-squared-off/

Ouroboros & Enigma23 (disquiet0529)

Disquiet Junto Project 0529: Squared Off
The Assignment: Explore the number 23.
Major thanks to Eanna Butler for helping come up with this project:
More on this 529th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Squared Off (The Assignment: Explore the number 23) — at: https://disquiet.com/0529/
More on the Disquiet Junto at: https://disquiet.com/junto/

NonsenseXXIIIcablesloop(disquiet0529)

Disquiet0529 Question 23

“The sun is not the well-behaved neighbor we would like to imagine,” says Sten F. Odenwald, the author of a book entitled The 23rd Cycle: Learning to Live with a Stormy Star. During the year 2000, at the peak of the sun’s 23rd cycle (according to when scientists began tracking solar storm activity), the number of observed sunspots reached its highest recorded peak to that point. 

Geomagnetic storms are defined by changes in the disturbance-storm-time index (or DST), measured in units called nano-Tesla (nT). Think of it as something like barometric pressure, only on the sun. A geomagnetic storm is considered an intense “super-storm” when it reaches a minimum DST of less than —250 nT.

As the 23rd cycle closed in the year 2008, Odenwald warned that outbreaks of solar storm activity would only increase in future cycles. The historical models are already sobering; a geomagnetic storm caused the March1989 failure of Québec’s entire power grid, leaving six million people without electricity and causing auroras seen all the way to Texas. The minimum DST of this storm was —589 nT. (It would have been a delicious irony if the integer was 529, but alas).

With this cheerful tidbit in mind, Suss Müsik considered how the ionosphere of sound could be rendered unstable, causing fragments of foreboding beauty. A sampled bowl was refactored using a grain synthesizer, its shimmer used in parallel with a distressed organ sound. A Red Panda Particle pedal was used for the looping parts at 23 BPM.

The piece is titled DST —589 nT and was recorded live to 8-track.

Major thanks to Eanna Butler for helping come up with this project:

More on this 529th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Squared Off (The Assignment: Explore the number 23) — at: https://disquiet.com/0529/

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-0529-squared-off/

DST —589 NT [Disquiet0529]

[disquiet0529] The Grid

For Disquiet Junto 0529, the square root of 529 = 23. I used this number to set the duration(2:30 long) and to divide my track into 23 mini slices (around 6.5 seconds each) for various automations and pacing - they become rather subtle - you'd never know they are there...

after using my voice, and counting, I ended up humming into a Chase Bliss Audio Mood pedal which conjured harmonious moments that I ended up playing like a small instrument.

Last night, the sounds of my family at a Hibachi grill prompted me to capture some audio with my phone my shirt pocket.  I squared the intensity off with some in my back yard recording bamboo in the breeze.  Family time.  Alone time.  Always need both.

appreciate it / Squared Off(Disquiet0529)

Short piece tuned to 23edo, made using Aalto.

---

Major thanks to Eanna Butler for helping come up with this project:

More on this 529th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Squared Off (The Assignment: Explore the number 23) — at: https://disquiet.com/0529/

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-0529-squared-off/

l'humeur du poisson gris - disquiet0529

This track was inspired by the number 23 (as proposed by the Disquiet Junto Project 0529). The generative MIDI sequencer Transition was used (as for all Musical Bots tracks), but also Stochas for the choir.
The number 23 influenced that piece of music in many different ways. Among others the morse code of psalm 23 in English, French and German is also part of this track.

My gratitude goes to zwier for the fieldrecording of the sheep provided here: https://freesound.org/people/zwier/sounds/200329/

Major thanks to Eanna Butler for helping come up with this project:

More on this 529th weekly Disquiet Junto project – Squared Off (The Assignment: Explore the number 23) – at: https://disquiet.com/0529/

More on the Disquiet Junto at: https://disquiet.com/junto/ 1

Subscribe to project announcements here: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/ 1

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0529-squared-off/

23 Sheep (Disquiet0529)

I had just the field recording for this.  It was recorded in early 2011 at a garden center / drug store near my house.  The sprinkler was on a timer and was watering trees and shrubs late in the evening, and I heard it while exiting the store so I ran home and got my portable digital audio recorder and got about 8 minutes along with bird and parking lot sounds while sitting in my car.

For this piece, I carved out a little over 2 minutes of the field recording then added some of the rhythm source I used in Disquiet0020 Nodebeat, a looped bit of the train sound I used in Disquiet0002 Duet, along with some background color used in Disquiet0001 Ice.

Had to mix it all so the non-sprinkler rhythms wouldn't overpower the source, as advised.  I think the Nodebeat rhythm is very complimentary even if it and the sprinkler regularly go out of phase but I like it when things go out of phase.

The inspiration for this track came from the opening of chapter 17 of William Gibson's 1986 novel Count Zero.

More on the 29th Disquiet Junto project at:

http://disquiet.com/2012/07/19/disquiet0029-countzero/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info 

Prickly Sprinkler (disquiet0029-countzero)

This is four recordings of rain hitting inverted singing bowls of varying sizes. These were then cut into samples of 15, 13, 11 and 9 seconds and then looped 8 times. After the 4th repetition of each sample, I faded in the hold function on the "Ambient" VST which freezes any sound.  There was also some ping pong delay, overdrive and EQ'ing involved with each sample.

Disquiet Junto Project 0029: Count Zero 

The inspiration for this track came from the opening of chapter 17 of William Gibson's 1986 novel Count Zero.

More on the 29th Disquiet Junto project at:

http://disquiet.com/2012/07/19/disquiet0029-countzero/ ;

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

Disquiet Junto

Forecast [disquiet0029-countzero]

Disquiet Junto Project 0029: Count Zero

  This week's project is inspired by an aside that occurs at the opening of chapter 17 of William Gibson's classic cyberpunk novel Count Zero, originally published in 1986. The chapter is titled "The Squirrel Wood." It opens as follows:   "The plane had gone to ground near the sound of running water. Turner could hear it, turning in the g-web in his fever or sleep, water down stone, one of the oldest songs."  

This idea of water running down stone, of a gentle but insistent natural stream, being one of the "oldest songs" is explored further in the chapter in various subtle ways. The Disquiet Junto project this week is to explore that idea: that there is music in the natural environment. We'll makes songs from running water.  

Instructions:

  Step 1: Locate and make a field recording of source material that involves running water. It can be a stream, as in the Gibson book, but it needn't be natural. The sink, a toilet, a hose in the backyard — any such source material would be fine.  

Step 2: Extract a segment of the recording. That segment will serve as the basis for your composition, as its foundation. It will provide both rhythmic and melodic material. You can either use one long piece of the recording, or you can create the foundation of the track by combining and looping one or more brief segments of your original field recording.

  Step 3: Add elements and treatments to the foundation recording of running water. Do so with the intention of highlighting the water's internal sense of rhythm and melody. Do not embellish so much that the foundation recording becomes unrecognizable.   

Information:

This was a fairly rushed project as I am on business in Baltimore and New York at the moment. God bless wifi on Amtrak's Acela Express … greetings from Delaware at speed!

The recordings were made with an iPhone and the 4 track app of a dripping faucet/tap in my hotel (I had to make it drip, the plumbing was fine) and the overrun of the shower as it hit the resonant faucet beneath.

From these I was able to take a number of rhythmic, semi-resonant loops that I brought into Ableton Live for processing. If you've listened to many of my Junto projects, you'll know that I try to steer clear of pieces that only contain rhythmic constituents, so I also created a couple of granular patches from the sound waves of the water. This all seemed to give the track a post-rock/ambient feel.

These harmonic tracks were run through various instances of Guitar Rig to give some depth to the sounds. All the while, the rhythmic water sounds were pushed around the stereo field a little and given some glitchy movement.

Conceptually I saw this as pulling melody from rhythm with the latter being almost a cage within which the harmonic character is restrained.  

Credits:

Photo: Faucet in Baltimore @echosonic

  The inspiration for this track came from the opening of chapter 17 of William Gibson's 1986 novel Count Zero.  

More on the 29th Disquiet Junto project at: 

http://disquiet.com/2012/07/19/disquiet0029-countzero/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at: http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info

A Good Morning in Baltimore [disquiet0029-countzero]

The inspiration for this track came from the opening of chapter 17 of William Gibson's 1986 novel Count Zero. More on the 29th Disquiet Junto project at http://disquiet.com/2012/07/19/disquiet0029-countzero/. More details on the Disquiet Junto at http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info.

Process:
- take a 30-second excerpt from a field recording I made of the Contoocook River in Peterborough, NH
- time-stretch it 7x in Paul's Extreme Stretch
- in Csound:
-- derive the spectral centroid[1] of each stereo track
-- use the centroid to control the pitch of a pair of sinewave oscillators
-- pass the oscillator tones through some reverb
-- combine the tones with the streatched water sound, crossfading so that the tones increase in amplitude as the water sound decreases
- convert to MP3 in Audacity

Image: "Animated loop of simulated hydrogen line spectra centroid jitter." found at http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/powerfrq.html, no copyright declared.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_centroid

Subsurface Tension [disquiet0029-countzero]

 Livingstone found the source of the Nile.

This track is an entry to  the disquiet junto project group on Soundcloud. Project 29 invites  tracks exploring the sound of running water inspired from a quote from the novel Count Zero describing the sound of water on stone as the ‘oldest song’.

More information at http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info 

Main source recording was of an ornamental waterfall in the remembrance garden in City of London Cemetery, Aldersbrook. The pond  is home to a large number of turtles ( dumped unwanted pets I presume – certainly nothing native to UK) recorded on Saturday 21 July 2012. Some loops and slightly time-slipped parts of the recording are played alongside the main recording. Other samples with similar sonic properties are also buried in the mix – a synthy crackle, radio static, some pulsey traffic noises, an unidentified techno track. I mixed this at high volume on headphones -  not sure how it will end up sounding on soundcloud but that’s part of the experiement.


Source of the Nile [Disquiet0029-countzero]

Interested in collaborative projects -  The more inappropriate the better.  London based. home built noise toys and circuits, broken tape recorders, hex bugs in biscuit tins. Field recordings of air conditioning outlets.broken cassettes. and maybe the odd bit of class gear.

maxims:

If you dont like the sound of out of tune guitars  then you dont like the sound of  guitars.

Try again, fail better


My 33 1/3 series book about the Aphex Twin album <i>Selected Ambient Works Volume II</i> was published in 2014. The book was one of the top 5 bestselling titles for the calendar year, and in 2015 was ranked by Pitchfork as one of the "33 best" of the 100-plus books in the 33 1/3 series. It has subsequently been translated into Japanese (2019) and Spanish (2018)

Since 2012 I have moderated the Disquiet Junto group, which began on SoundCloud. More at disquiet.com/junto. 

I've written for Nature, Pitchfork, The Wire, Down Beat, Boing Boing, NewMusicBox, Red Bull Music Academy, Art Practical, the website of The Atlantic, and many other publications. 

I've exhibited sound art at galleries in Los Angeles (Crewest), Manhattan (apex art), and Dubai (DUTAC), and I had a audio-visual installation at the San Jose Museum of Art as part of its 45th anniversary.

And since 1996 I've run the website Disquiet.com about the intersection of sound, art, and technology.

Source of the Nile [Disquiet0029-countzero]

Zedkah

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