The compressor is like your mother

 

Disquiet Junto 0456 Line Up

The Disquiet Junto activity this week has introduced to the art of Agnes Martin and I've interpreted her painting Untitled 5 (1998).

I thought the three bands of colour could represent three chords, but as I riffed on ideas it expanded and I decided to make the seven strips into chords that shared root notes.

She thought she had found true love

Total Recall

Not bad fellas

naviarhaiku350 – Flutteringly

The haiku shared by Naviar Records this week brought to mind a blue butterfly I recently observed.

As it flew around the forest, it made swift changes in direction.

So I've written a piece of music with a few changes.

I've also incorporated the poem by Masaoka Shiki, which has been transcribed as the clarinet part.

The synthesiser part is a transcription of a haiku I wrote about a butterfly.

Both the poems were encoded as music using Solfa Cipher Secrets.

The lead singer of a band

Disquiet Junto 0455 Inner Invertebrate

The Disquiet Junto this week asks participants to

"Compose a piece of sound/music that summons up what a moment, or an instance, or a day in the life of a jellyfish is like to the jellyfish."

I tried to engage my son in a conversation about how to do the Junto this week. "You're overthinking it," he replied. "Jellyfish don't have brains." 

As we continued our bike ride, he did venture that Vapourwave or Japanese-style electronica from last decade might sound good.

That conversation gave me a couple of ideas, but I don't think either ended up sounding much like his idea.

Hey man

Disquiet Junto 0454 Lsoo Vneg

The Disquiet assignment this week is to "encode the name of someone you love into a piece of music." 

When the email arrived, my mind went in two directions and the result incorporates both ideas.

The first impulse was to use the footage of my partner talking about Acacia Montana, as the common name includes my middle name.

That term for a kind of shrub comes from the Wemba-Wemba people of western Victoria and, early in our relationship, Jo explained its form and it seemed like an analogy for my diverse interests.

The second idea arrived when I googled about how to encode text into music and found Solfa Cipher Secrets.

Using that website, I created a couple of MIDI files for the synth that can be heard in the second part of the song.

My playlists

 

naviarhaiku348 – whenever gazing

I picked up on the "gazing" aspect of the haiku shared by Naviar Records this week, rather than the pain.

Disquiet Junto 0453 Dial Up

The Disquiet Junto assignment this week is to "Imagine the technologically mediated First Contact through sound."

After my ideas became overwhelming, I opted to pick up my Yamaha Tenori-On and use a pulsing sound that I knew was available.

As I played with it, I got the idea that my simple noodling also represented a kind of first contact with the instrument -- since I'd forgotten much of how to use it.

Reflecting on reflections

Listening back on the track I published yesterday and surprised by the result.

Too much reverb!

Then I cycle through the usual responses, from "reverb always seems stronger after rendering the track" to "but wouldn't I have noticed that? I must've been in a hurry to finish."

And then I remember a lecture I missed decades ago.

The reason I think of that anthropology lesson is it's the example I turn to when reflecting on how brains filter room reflections.

Way back on that day I'd asked my girlfriend to use the Walkman I bought for recording interviews to collect audio from the lecture.

When I listened back there was so much reflected sound that I couldn't listen to the discussion.

It took so much concentration to listen to the lecturer that I gave up.

I expect that tape would now transport me to the exact room since it literally reflects the size of that location.

Now whenever I think of the ability of a human brain to filter sound, I think of that moment.

Everyday our ears deliver conversations in rooms without a thought for the reflected sound, which is around two-thirds of the noise we hear.

Yet it isn't until you try to listen to a recording that you realise the incredible real-time processing that our brains are undertaking in listening to someone speaking.

I suspect there's a similar process when I'm working on a song.

Before I render the recording, I've listened to it so many times that my brain is compensating for the reverb.

Those wonderful modelled room reflections from Ocean Way and Capital Chambers are being removed from my listening.

Then, the next day, I hear the song with refreshed ears and hear how heavy-handed I've been in adding those effects.

The lesson I've learned today is that I am in a hurry to finish and should give myself an extra day before publishing my songs.

Award shows

 

naviarhaiku347 – two voices that sound alike

The haiku shared by Naviar Records this week spoke a couple of things to me.
First, it's springtime and I'm seeing lots of wattles in blossom.

Second, the "two voices that sound alike" could be the instruments in this track.

Particularly the two synth lines, which are the same patch, but also how the bass and guitar are soloing in similar ways because I can't really do anything more.