Disquiet Junto 0314 Ice in a glass
"Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something of it" is traditionally the first Junto each year.
I think this is the seventh time I've followed these instructions and it's still challenging to make music from this material.
Ice in a glass becomes kinda abrasive quickly when listening to short loops over and over again. Those high-pitched transients are sharp even when unbroken.
Naviarhaiku207 – the woman
My original inspiration was a sea shanty after reading about shipwrecks, then I MIDI'd the chord progression and brought the shanty in to Live.
Disquiet Junto 0313 Audio Diary
I'm preempting the Disquiet Junto's annual audio diary with this edit of snippets from some of the recordings I've made during 2017.
When I searched my files I found 100 videos but to keep it simple I selected 60 and gave them a second each.
Recorded music in band breaks
Disquiet Junto 0312 Amplify/Magnify
Some weeks the Junto directions fly out of my mind soon after I start recording. This was one of those weeks.
The exploration of the difference between 'amplification' and 'magnification' was straightforward and can be heard in the first and second 30 seconds.
My idea was to use a diaphragm microphone to amplify a quieter sound, then use a contact microphone as I've described them as having an effect like a microscope.
The source here is a candelabra that I liked the sound of enough to buy at an opp shop.
I suppose the reverb does kinda invert the idea of magnification but making it sound more distant.
Disquiet Junto 0311 Ceramic Notation
Graphic scores are one of the ideas I've learned from the Disquiet Junto and at times they've led to some great tracks.
This week isn't one of those times but I've still enjoyed the process, particularly for producing something despite feeling lacklustre.
When I looked at the photo I decided the boxed items were notes an octave apart and those in-between were a fifth.
As there are 14 items I decided to make the time signature 7/8 but, while getting the notes in place, decided it sounded better 3/4.
Originally I'd thought I might route hardware for the result but once I started adding distortion I knew I'd keep it in-the-box.
Which led to the challenge of producing a video and in this situation previously I've simply filmed the Spectrum effect to visualise the track.
For the video above I filmed Spectrum three times, coloured each take red or blue and layered them.
Disquiet Junto 0310 From Memory
The Disquiet Junto this week asks participants to recreate a sound from memory.
I've chosen a birdsong that I hear when camping in Matong State Forest for Burning Seed.
Music In Objects
There's a lot to like in this series of videos but making music with a bicycle is especially fun.
Disquiet Junto 0309 Military Matrix Mixer
The Disquiet Junto this week conflates two different matrices, one a military tool for judging radio signals and the other a mixer used for merging signals.
Thinking about distorting signals led me to think of effects pedals, whiles thinking about merging signals led me to think of my Roland TR-707 for its individual outputs.
The result here runs the drum outputs through various pedals, then merges them together again.
I've used a Bass Synthesiser pedal on the low tom and the Talking Machine pedal on the high tom, as well as Space Echo on the high hats and a Lofi Machine on the snare.
Disquiet Junto 0308 Giving Thanks
The Disquiet Junto this week has a Thanksgiving theme, asking for a piece that expresses gratitude.
I've a lot to be thankful for and spent Friday wondering who or what to focus on. Then on Friday night I visited my friend Alicia Boyd's Tumblr and liked her prose 'Liberation Please'.
While the theme isn't exactly gratitude, it does pick up on a few themes for me. I met Ms Boyd at Burning Seed, an event which has changed my life, and she recently appropriated a line from one of my haiku. So I thought I'd show my gratitude for her interest in my writing by appropriating some of her's.
This morning I experimented with making the words sit on a chord progression and then quickly recorded this take.
Naviarhaiku202 – wind blows its way to sea
Here's my last minute response to the haiku shared by Naviar Records last week.I was going to a meeting when I heard a chiming sound and identified the source as the flagpoles outside the bowling club.
That evening I returned and made a record, which has been effected in Ableton Live.
I liked the idea that the wind in Leeton continues onto to the sea that is at least 500km away.
Naviarhaiku201 – In the calm stillness
Disquiet Junto 0306 Music in Motion
The Junto this week asks participants to compose and record a piece while traveling.
As far as constraints go, I didn't have plans to go anywhere this week and asked my partner to drive to the op shop while I attempted to make up something musical.
I'm not sure it's successful. My mate Paul pointed out there's a discordant note.
Disquiet Junto 0305 Three Princes
The Junto this week asks for three loops of different lengths drawn from an archive of Sri Lankan music, then made into a song.
My loops came from "Aadarayai_Karunawai" and "Sri_Maha_Bodhimulehi" and "Umba_Kiya_Kiya" but they ended up being relatively in sync.
When I settled on these samples I was using a different percussion part from the last of those songs, which had a 6/8 riff.
Then I got tired of the musical part over the top of that rhythm and found there was a 5/4 break in the track, so I settled on using it.
After doing this I looked at the other two loops, a horn I think and three bell chimes, tweaked their lengths only a little and found they were 20 beats, 10 beats and the drums were 5 beats.
So I played the bass a bit more and found a kinda disco part that seemed good for a chorus.
Sonification versus musical metaphors?
This video explains some of the frustration I've had with arbitrary sound choices.
For me the question first arose when numerous friends shared this video with me:
I understand the tree rings are triggering the piano but it seemed like sleight of hand when they suggested I was hearing the tree.
Then there are the contact mic apps that use the sound source to trigger a sample. Again it's a somewhat arbitrary process to suggest the object being struck is creating the musical result.
I think sonification is an interesting process but one that would be better described as a musical metaphor.
Naviarhaiku200 – We’ve explored miles
Couldn't let the 200th haiku shared by Naviar Records pass without a response.
Yesterday I took four chords on the ukulele, looped them with a Jamman pedal and fed them into my gated rig.
It was the first time I'd used the effects chain in a while but it seemed appropriate as it's a technique used to interpret previous haikus.
Then I added a bassline and made a couple of edits, before waiting overnight for the video to render.
Yesterday I took four chords on the ukulele, looped them with a Jamman pedal and fed them into my gated rig.
Then I added a bassline and made a couple of edits, before waiting overnight for the video to render.
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.
Stockhausen's Helicopter Quartet
When I read about Karlheinz Stockhausen's Helicopter Quartet it seemed like a concept that wouldn't be realised, yet this version from 2012 isn't the first performance. That happened in 1995, only two years after it was written.
Disquiet Junto 0299 10bpm Waltz
The Disquiet Junto this week asks for a waltz at 10bpm.
Think I ended up thinking about how 20bpm differs from 10bpm than considering what 10 beats per minute means and feels like. Rather than thinking about the instance of how the down beat of 10 bpm differs from, say, 20 bpm,
In the process I noticed that Ableton Live will only go down to 20bpm and the Ohmboyz delay said 80bpm. Ten beats per minute just is. So. Very. Slow.
It took me a while to settle on an approach for this Junto. On Saturday I started reminding myself of a chord progression on the ukulele and ended up playing arpeggios. This helped to pick the six-note sequences on the four strings of my electric uke in 3/4 time signature.
The track was recorded in a single take, then I've added two delays to flesh it out.
The video was shot on Friday morning when I couldn’t sleep. I guess this happens often enough that on the morning I heard the sprinklers and went back to the house to get my camera. I’ve often admired the way the floodlight projects the gum tree onto a screen of water created by the sprinklers.
If I was a music reviewer
Clearly music criticism isn't what it used to be.
When I wrote music reviews it seemed best to try and be objective.
So I'd guess the music critic above has a novel way of listening to albums for the guitar to get that effect :)
Disquiet Junto 0298 Dungeons & Drum Machines
The Disquiet Junto this week uses dice as a compositional tool in the style of rolling character attributes in the Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying game.
As shown, I rolled a 13 and a 14. Notes were DCAGAF, beats were a half note then two quarter notes.
Then I thought I'd roll four 10-sided dice to determine tempo, getting 99 and 93. That led to 192bpm but the track has a halftime feel, I think.
This track was recorded quickly using a Jomox kick and the 707's high hats through chorus and Space Echo pedals.
I played the chords on my MIDI guitar and ran them through an Oddity pad, before adding a bassline.
The track opens with D minor but I decided to experiment with a bassline in G, as I remembered that I find those two chords hard to distinguish.
And, again like D&D, I found myself in a daydream every time I'd hit play. If there hadn't been a deadline of Monday night, I mightn't have ever exported this result.
Disquiet Junto 0297 Domestic Chorus
The Junto this week asks for a domestic portrait.
After I found the bathroom door no longer squeaked, I wasn't sure what to record.
Then I remembered the toasted sandwich I'd filmed but had yet to edit. It was waiting for an appropriate track but instead I found loops within it to build a song.
If you haven't seen my remarkable sandwiches, there are more here.
None of the loops have been repitched but I did run one through a resonator and another through a Sinevibes effect.
I seem to have edited myself out of the conversation, probably because I prefer to hear my partner's voice.
A Future In Commons
The Juntos responding to the imprisonment of Bassel have been among the most poignant, particularly the one that drew on his letter from prison in Syria.
Rupert Lally put together this compilation from Junto tracks and all the proceeds go to a memorial fund hosted in Bassel's name by Creative Commons.
His name was Bassel Khartabil. He was a coder and open-source advocate born in Syria, the same country that would later imprison him and execute him. During his incarceration, and during the extended period when his death was presumed but not yet confirmed, his story became a rallying point around the world. His plight inspired essays, and conference sessions, and political statements. And it inspired music. All the tracks in this collection are sourced from different projects undertaken by members of the Disquiet Junto music community to keep Bassel’s story alive.
Headphones
While I've never tried Beats headphones, I have recently bought a new pair of cans.
A friend trumpeted Sennheiser HD650 and Sonarworks Reference software, which uses EQ calibration to correct the sound in the headphones.
This software has been good for my mixing, which has increasingly relied on using headphones since I realised the room I use needs treatment and I was overcompensating the lower frequencies.
Hopefully I've moved on from muddy sounding mixes like this one.
I bought a pair of HD600 after reading a few reviews and decided to draw the line at paying the extra $80.
The Sennheisers are a nice pair of headphones. I found the packaging over the top but there is a sense they provide extra detail, although they aren't as comfortable to wear as my cheaper cans.
The other headphones I have are AKG K240s, which are closed and get a bit hot around the ears in warmer months.
These AKGs are mostly used while recording but provide a very flat and somewhat clinical response, although there is a sense the higher frequencies can vary from how a mix will sound over speakers.
I also have several pairs of Grado headphones, their SR60 and SR60i and a pair of Alessandro Grado that my brother thought were rubbish and gave to me.
I used these last pair lots in recent years and like them for comfort and the flattering warm mid-range.
Thanks Ableton
Ever since I embraced video editing with Ableton Live, it's simplified my workflow for remixing and enabled me to stop using Soundcloud.
For a while there was a drawback in the way Live would shrink video resolution and change the frame rate of footage.
I've written about this previously and was surprised to find it was about a year ago that I wondered whether Ableton would address this in their tenth version of Live.
So I was surprised when I exported a video yesterday and saw a bunch of new options.
It turns out that when I updated to Live 9.7 last weekend that they've started to address my video export wishes.
Thanks Ableton! Wonder if this points to future developments incorporating video into the digital audio workstation?
For a while there was a drawback in the way Live would shrink video resolution and change the frame rate of footage.
I've written about this previously and was surprised to find it was about a year ago that I wondered whether Ableton would address this in their tenth version of Live.
It turns out that when I updated to Live 9.7 last weekend that they've started to address my video export wishes.
Thanks Ableton! Wonder if this points to future developments incorporating video into the digital audio workstation?
Disquiet Junto 0296 Clustered Primes
The Disquiet Junto this week involves interpreting prime numbers.
I'd had a conversation with my son earlier in the week about composing music that uses overlapping time signatures.
It's one of those techniques that I return to from time to time, particularly using a 4/4 drum beat with a 3/4 bassline.
This song adds a 5/4 drum beat and a 7/8 organ part.
The looped vocal introduces each part. The lyric about three accompanies the 3/4 303-style part, then discusses five as the drums begin, before mentioning seven with the organ.
The lyrics were quickly written and recorded. I think I could spend more time de-essing them though.
Sharawadji
The Sharawadji effect is an aesthetic effect which characterises the sensation of plenitude sometimes created by the contemplation of a complex soundscape whose beauty is unexplainable. This exotic term, which travellers introduced to Europe in the 17th Century from their journeys to China, designates the beauty that comes about without perceiving the order or economy of the object in question. The effect comes about as a surprise and will carry you elsewhere, beyond strict representation - out of context. In this brutal confusion, the senses get lost. A beautiful Sharawadji plays with the rules of composition, manipulates them and awakens a feeling of pleasure through perceptual confusion.Whether in a dreamlike or anxious state, we are sometimes completely deaf to the environment. However while on a walk or on a journey, our spirit can combine availability, attention, perspicacity and therefore become receptive to new things, including sonic fantasy.The beautiful Sharawadji affirms itself in contrast with the banality from which it originates. Sharawadji sounds, as such, belong to everyday life or to known musical registers. They only become Sharawadji by decontextualisation, by a rupture of the senses. The sonic matter that encourages the Sharawadji effect is up to the appreciation of each individual, in a given context, however the soundscape, and in particular urban soundscapes can, as a result of their unpredictability and diversity, favour it. The sonic wealth of nature is also susceptible of creating the Sharawadji effect.
-- Jean-François Augoyard and Henry Torgue, À l'écoute de l'environnement, répertoire des effets sonores (a dictionary of sound effects) , 1995 (translated by Claude Schryer)
Naviarhaiku190 – Poisoned Waterhole
My response employs a technique promoted by my sometime collaborator Garlo Jo, where the wind plays the guitar. See his Vent de Guitares website for more.
The passing traffic worked well to vibrate the strings, then it started to rain and the effect was magic.
So those arpeggio-like notes near the end as the rain falls are the water droplets hitting the strings, which become increasingly muted as the shower continues.
Disquiet Junto 0294 Offline Status
The Disquiet Junto this week continued remembering Bassel Khartabil, a Creative Commons web developer who was killed by the Syrian government in 2015.
Naviarhaiku189 – Verdant town of trees
My response aims to sound busy, as the town Narrandera has a wide river flowing past and is on the junction of two highways. It's no coincidence roads follow rivers, as I learned developing a soundtrack to the Reimagining the Murrumbidgee exhibition in 2013.
The result hopes to sound like a jazz sextet with double bass, percussion, drums, clarinet and flute. The video, my 65th responding to Naviar haikus, doesn't present verdant trees because the blossoms of the wattle are much more eye-catching as they announce that spring is on its way.
Disquiet Junto 0293 Emerge/Immerse
Not sure I paid enough attention to the Junto instructions to: "record a short piece of music, up to two minutes, that is about something emerging — something being brought to life, or coming out of a cave, or otherwise coming into being."
My track brings into being a chord progression I've been playing over the last few days.
I've used the Rhodes-style instrument with the MIDI guitar and kept the guitar part too.
It was recorded quickly and you can see at least one edit in the video.
Naviarhaiku188 - A sepia wash
I've been writing a haiku each day during 2017 and this was from the coldest morning of winter.
The photo was taken as I stopped outside Narrandera on the way to a meeting near the Murray River.
My track uses a Rhodes-style keyboard for a sepia wash and I've kept the vibe mellow because that's how Naviar roll.
Disquiet Junto 0292 Eclipse Music
The Disquiet Junto this week asks musicians to ponder the solar eclipse occurring in the US on 21 August.
It took a little while and then I worked to record my part before dinner.
There was only time for a single take and at first I thought I'd need to return and record another, but I decided to use the MIDI recording rather than the electric guitar.
Marimba is an instrument that appeals to me for its percussive quality but the low E of the guitar only triggers a few sampled instruments, so I've used tuba and double bass.
There's also bowed vibraphone in the mix, adding resonance in the higher frequencies.
Naviarhaiku187 – flood waters recede
My musical response uses a string section for their emotive qualities with plaintive cries from oboe and clarinet.
Disquiet Junto 0291 Lantern Effect
The Disquiet Junto this week asked for a sonic equivalent to "the 'lantern effect' — the way light is filtered through the textured material of a paper lantern."
You can see I've used my MIDI guitar, with the MIDI triggering a vaguely oriental-sounding piano and the guitar fading in over the length of the track.
My idea is that the reverb on the piano part gives the impression of the diffused light, while the emerging guitar is meant to convey the opaque view of the lighting source as you draw nearer to a paper lantern.
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