Cracks DAW

naviarhaiku464 – from the mist

Thought I'd try composing with my Moog gear for the Naviar Records haiku prompt this week. 

You, having just recorded

Disquiet Junto 0569 Think Thank

The Disquiet Junto project this week is to "Make music inspired by something or someone you’re thankful for."

I think this has become something of an annual feature, as I seem to remember previous Thanksgiving Day-themed projects.

And I'm fairly certain that for those I thanked my partner, Jo.

This week I'm using the Zoia Empress pedal, which has been getting a lot of use.

The other day as I was jamming on this chord progression, my partner walked in to say she thought the pedal was one of my best purchases because she liked the sounds and that I was playing my guitar more often.

So I'm grateful for Jo's support and encouragement.

Music producer looking

 

Marisa Anderson on improvising

I grew up playing classical. In classical music, there’s a boss. What’s on the page is the boss. What the composer intended, that’s the boss. In classical music, you’re not your own boss ever. That’s fine, that’s for a reason. Any song that’s sung tends to lend itself to having a structure that you have to follow. Words are the boss, a lot of times. They’re the boss of how a song goes, when it starts and when it ends, and what order the emotions lay out in.

I’m not against structure. I’m not even against doing things the same way. But in the creative process, I like to be free. Once it’s the performance, there’s room for all of it in my music. Some things I do exactly the same, and that’s its own fun thing, is to adhere to that. Some things I do differently. In performance, what changes is the dynamic in the room.

Disquiet Junto 0568 Slumber Mill

 

The Junto project this week is to "Create a piece of music that begins with the hallmarks of a nightmare and then gradually transforms into a more positive piece through the use of piano chord C6/9."

You can see that I tried to use a bunch of things.

First I tried to program the chord into my Subharmonicon and then added a nightmarish quality with a drum machine circuit bent by Diabolical Devices, as well as my Atomosynth Mochika running through a bass synth pedal.

Then I attempted to play the chord on my Organelle through a variety of patches.

The title came from a weird dream I had last night, which involved trying to leave an unhappy musical therapy session and finding it was being held in a sprawling share house populated with hip younger people.

They don't know

 

naviarhaiku462 – Icarus

The haiku shared by Naviar Records this week resonated with me after I read the comments from author Kimberly A. Horning:

"I began writing haiku about four years ago. I try to write daily, giving myself Sundays & holidays off. ‘Ku is a kind of discipline for me—much like a daily walk or yoga practice. Haiku quite simply saved my life.”

In 2017 I set myself a challenge to write a haiku everyday and it's a practice that I've mostly maintained since then.

However, when I learned that many of my poems were better described as senryu, I shifted my style and started a new blog to collect those pieces this year.

A couple of times in previous years I've collected poems as rensaku-style pieces and shared those as a response to Naviar prompts.

Last year I offered one of these pieces to an anthology of poetry written during the pandemic and the book launch was held last night.

As part of that event I decided to spice up my reading by using the Cut-up technique and set it to music.

You can see that my partner assisted me by pulling lines from out of a hat.

Horning's aim "try to write honestly about my struggles with depression" led me to think I should record a reading of my piece as a response to the prompt shared by Naviar this week.

Wicca Wicca

 

Disquiet Junto 0567 Three Meters

The Junto assignment this week is to "Make music in 5/8, 6/8, and 7/8 time signatures."

It took me a little while to transcribe a chord progression that I've been jamming on with a ukulele, then I plugged in a drum beat and a bass line.

To give it shape, I slip into 4/4 and then back to the original loops.

Not entirely sure I have the time signatures correct, as I was trying to use an arpeggiator to set one part, but I like the result for now.

Bassling at Navigate Arts

The inFREQUENCY tour played in Tanja last weekend and here's a pic from my set, taken by Scott Baker (Dron Skot) and he also designed the projections. 

The song idea in my mind

Disquiet Junto 0566 Outdoor Furniture Music

The Junto prompt this week is to "Imagine the ur-ambient Erik Satie musique d’ameublement concept en plein air."

It sent my mind back to the recordings made while on a residency in Wyangala.

In particular I wanted to use the Pied Butcher Bird's song and I've taken a cue from the melody early in the piece, before the singing starts properly after the fifth minute.

My instrumentation is a wineglass preset in the M-Tron library with Valhalla's Supermassive for ambience.