Disquiet Junto 0302 Gronkytonk
The Junto this week asks for a gronkytonk single, based on the genre described in Malka Older’s novel Infomacracy.
Honkytonk is a style of piano playing that emphasises rhythm and the word 'gronk' suggested something atonal or misshapen.
It seemed like an opportunity to use the recording I'd made of a statue earlier in the year, which was sitting on my desktop along with drums from last year.
I spent a while making loops from my tapping on the statue, then layered them up before giving a structure that built up as it went.
Then I experimented with re-pitching some of the loops and added gates to try and stop it from getting too muddy.
Disquiet Junto 0301 Parts > Sum
The Junto this week asks for a composition that draws the first 10 tracks on Lee Rosevere's album 5 Minute Meditations:
Create a five-minute track of your own using audio extracted from each of the first 10 tracks on the album 5 Minute Meditations. Important: The goal for your track is that while it will contain material from all of those 10 tracks, the end result (the sum) will be less than total of the constituent parts. In other words, your own 5 Minute Meditation will take Rosevere's source ambient recordings and produce from them something even more ethereal, more ambient, more artfully threadbare.
Five minutes felt too long for my track, so I took the last third and layered it on top of the other short loops I'd made from Lee's compositions.
What’s your favorite sound?
C: What’s your favorite sound?
M: I tend to think of sound in context, not alone. I teach a course about the role of sound in the media landscape, and I structured the course that way because I didn't want to do a sound studies project that suggested that sound must be considered in hermetic, theoretical isolation. The brain isn't an anechoic chamber. If anything, it's the opposite. If anything, we as humans are the opposite. Sound occurs in the context of the moment it resounds, in the way we experience it physically, and also amid the non-linear accumulation of personal and cultural associations it brings to mind. All of which said, if I had to choose one sound as a favorite, it would be the sound of ice in a glass. That is, specifically the sound of ice cubes put in a cold beverage, and especially when those cubes crackle and pop as they ever so slowly change composition. That sound is the subject of the very first Disquiet Junto, when I asked musicians to record the sound of ice in a glass and make something of it. It was already a sound I liked. I drink a small glass of iced coffee every morning, always with a couple ice cubes in it. But because of what the Junto has become, that sound has become rich with personal meaning and associations, which have in turn reinforced it as a favorite, as a true touchstone. When I did the first Junto project, that sound was the subject of it because I liked the sound. Now every morning when I drink iced coffee, I think in turn of the Junto.
Disquiet Junto 0300 The 300th Project
The 300th Junto project asks for three chords over 100 seconds.
Timing was tricky for this project in a couple of ways. I'd just returned from a week camping and didn't time the length of the chords, so they ended up a bit short.
Delay was added in Live to stretch the electric ukulele, Nashville-tuned guitar and bass to the desired length.
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