One for the jazz fans
Disquiet Junto Project 0692 Combust a Move
The Disquiet Junto project this week is to "Record a piece of music in which the sound of fire — match, burner, cigarette, etc. — provides the primary source for the rhythmic track."
This morning I recorded the matches and lighter, then used a video from the 2016 Queensland Burning Man event to create a bass with Sinevibes Reactive.
Disquiet Junto 0691 Un-Ravel
In hindsight I can see how I got here, as there's been a lot of interest in my rapping recently. The kids at the primary school where I work often ask me to rhyme.
As I listened to Ravel I admired the strings and thought they would be great in a hiphop-style track. Then I slept on it and woke up thinking about putting words to it.
When I went to publish the result I looked again at the Junto assignment and wondered if I'd strayed too far?
There's no One Way
Last weekend I recorded a quick vocal performance and then spent the week making it work in two different tracks.
I like the rawness of the version above, then it was surprising how much the arrangement in the version below changed the tone of the delivery but I went further with edits and going pop.
Disquiet Junto 0690 Knot Bad
The Junto assignment this week is to "Interpret wood grain as a graphic score."
Funnily enough, wood grain has been a motif in my household in recent weeks.
My son and I brainstormed a short story idea about someone reading the rings on a slab of timber used as a table.
The River Red Gums in our region are long-living trees and often prompt my pondering about watching centuries pass.
Over the years I've used the image of these trees and the rings as a record, so it wasn't difficult to interpret wood grain except to keep the idea to a graphic score.
Here is an earlier recording of a River Red Gum.
Disquiet Junto 0689 Supporting Players
The Junto reminded me of the musical squeaks of my drum stool, so I set about loading up a bunch of samples and then put a bassline to it.
Then I got cold feet and re-read the instructions and wondered if it really considered other studio furniture.
Anyway, I woke up in the morning and wanted to honour the squeaky stool.
naviarhaiku583 – out of the blue
Apparently these tress have been introduced in the last 30 years, but require more rainfall a better quality soil than is generally available in our landscape.
However, I know the peachy quality of morning light and often appreciate it in the bathroom, so I made a track to give a sense of that ambience.
Disquiet Junto 0688 Sign Up
The Junto assignment this week is to "Interpret a routine public sign as a musical instruction.
Step 1: Think about signs you see near where you live or work, the sort of routine public signage one generally takes for granted. Consider in particular signs that, unintentionally, are open to broader interpretation than might have been intended.
Step 2: Choose a sign from Step 1.
Step 3: Willfully interpret the sign you selected in Step 2 as a musical instruction of some sort.
Step 4: Record a track in which you follow the musical instruction you inferred in Step 3.
I thought about my drive to work and remembered the sign for ducks near the McCaughey Park in Yanco.
This ducks crossing sign is one that I remember first seeing when I went to university in Canberra and later incorporated into this video I made after becoming a parent.
The ducks suggested a delay, as they lined up with smaller ducklings as the decay.
So I took the track that I'd been playing with and edited the ukulele part to a series of snippets, making it the mother duck.
Then I found a delay after looking around in my effects.
Most of those I have at hand emulate analogue tape-based delays and this called for an effect more like a digital delay.
Disquiet Junto 0687 Applied Science
The Junto assignment is to "Record a piece of music that explores physiological and behavioral techniques."
Last week I had a lesson in playing djembe and the teacher introduced a rhythm based on a heartbeat with two hits and a rest, so I thought to use that in this track.
The behavioural aspect is how I can't help but make a dance track with a steady rhythm like that.
Video from a recent project at the Leeton Pool, which addresses many needs for me.
naviarhaiku582 – here and there
I know that probably looks vague, but the results are still developing and won't be known for a little while yet.
naviarhaiku581 – plunging my hand
I'd misread the poem and planned to film myself blowing bubbles at the pool, then my camera wouldn't record.
It wasn't until I decided to read the poem again that I realised it said "hand" and not "head" as I first thought.
Disquiet Junto 0686 Catch Your Breath
The Disquiet Junto instructions this week:
Step 1: Sit for a moment and slow your breath.
Step 2: Continue with Step 1 for a bit longer.
Step 3: Pay attention to your breathing, in and out, in and out. Don’t record yourself. Just listen, and feel.
Step 4: Consider how the process of breathing in and out slowly can lend shape to a piece of music. Again, just do this through personal consideration of the act of breathing. This project isn’t an exercise in audio sampling.
This has been a glass-half-full-kinda month for me.
So as I sat and considered a bunch of nagging thoughts arose in me.
Since my favourite way to distract myself has been jamming on instruments, it wasn't much of a leap to lending the breathing activity to shape a piece of music.
naviarhaiku580 – quiescence!
I decided it suited my mood and recorded three instruments in one day, although my family were watching TV when I wanted to record the bass so it wasn't on camera.
Disquiet Junto 0685 Pick-Me-Up
The Disquiet Junto assignment this week is to "Treat a set of sounds like a game of pick up sticks."
I decided to use a collection of chords like the colours of the pick up sticks, then added a little intro for them being dropped into place, and repeated that for when they fall during the game and are packed up.
Rainger FX Minibar
It looks novel, but I think a blend of lemon juice and soy sauce might have given me the best distortion that I’ve heard in my bedroom.
Klon clone
I got curious after looking at Klons and their copies
Doesn’t reach the higher fuzz of the Boss DS1, but worked well before it to add that peaking feeling.
Kinda missing the bass though, so probably better suited to adding volume for solos.
If I played solos on the guitar!
Actually, maybe I should try it on my basses?
naviarhaiku579 – Mount Asama
After finishing an assignment, I started playing guitar and trying different effects.
Something about the decay of the distortion led me to think it was suitable for the haiku shared by Naviar this week:
One of the four great haiku masters, Yosa Buson studied both Japanese and Chinese poetry. He was also an accomplished painter, and most of his poems were accompanied by paintings, resulting in a more diverse and individual set of works than the one by his main historical influence, Basho.
The event Bosun refers to is the eruption of Mount Asama in 1783, which instantly killed over 1,000 people. The toxic ash traveled 100 miles to Edo, making farmland useless and causing many more people to starve.
Disquiet Junto 0684 Early Bird
The Disquiet Junto assignment this week is to "Record not so much an alarm as a guided wakening."
It prompted me to think back over previous Junto projects that involved waking, particularly "Morning Music" from 2016.
(Another favourite involved an alarm, which was my 40th Junto ten years ago now.)
Lately my days involve needing to get going and I thought I'd make a track that's got some drive.
I used a video from 2016 showing the Mirrool Creek in flood, which seemed appropriate for emerging from sleep.
Fender Player Plus Meteora HH
The humbuckers have led me to grab a few distortion pedals off the shelf and the neck one sounds huge.
I like the split pick-up option, although the volume levels jump around.
It's body good balance with the big green arse sitting comfortably on my knee.
This Meteora design is destined to be another classic from Fender, I think.
Plug-in to the potential
Like a great man once said, "I have a dream..."
Ever since I fell deeply in love with Chase Bliss Audio's collaboration with Goodhertz on the Lossy pedal, I have begun imagining other effects that might be taken out of the box and into a smaller box.
Here are some of those ideas based on taking the VSTs and AUs that I often use and whispering at a shooting star to put a wish into the universe and see if anything manifests.
While I've only got ten digits to keep track of these brainfarts, let's start a tally.
10.
They already have brought a range of effects and amp emulations to market, but what about something as simple as their Verve Machines adding saturation in stereo?
I would use the fattening potential of these colours on a variety of instruments, particularly synthesisers and drum machines.
9.
While UA have brought nice reverbs to their range, I am hoping that someone is throwing lots of money at Sean Costello.
His Valhalla-branded reverbs are so beautiful and, aside from Walrus Audio's Sloer pedal, I can't think of too many that bring some of that Shimmer-style lusciousness outside of a Lexicon.
8.
Sure, Permut8 might be an even more engaging option with MIDI or even the Synplant synth, but I really want to crush my bits with a Speak&Spell-esque interface.
7.
Since Sinevibes are already making effects for Korg's platform, maybe it isn't such a leap for them to expand more into hardware and their Reactive effect is one that's been great at really pushing an instrument or sample to become something else.
6.
Aside from their decision to use Comic Sans font, it is really exciting to play with "concatenation synthesis techniques" to arrive at surprising results.
5.
There's a module for their Ohmicide distortion, which was always a lot nastier than I wanted and preferred Predatohm for delay, so the French developers are clearly already moving in the direction of packaging their tasty sounds.
4.
George Yohng's W1 Limiter is one of my favourites and gets slapped onto lots of my channels, so I feel it would be a very useful addition to the pedalboard.
Maybe it's too transparent for most people but I love being able to put it into a spot and never notice it again.
3.
Or a T-shirt, I feel like that little angry phallic-like banger is ready for more fame.
He could be the first plug-in to spawn an animated series!
Although, now that I think about it, a Delay Lama would also be a cool character to develop.
2.
Okay, seriously, I don't know where to begin with Airwindows.
There are just too many possibilities and, while I can't have them all, I think there's a gaping hole in the pedal market for more channel strip-style effects like the JHS Colour Box.
1.
I'm old enough to remember when this was the Coldcutter and it should be a no-brainer since the grandfathers of remixing have already kinda put their stealthy toes into the hardware market with the Zen Delay made by Erica Synths.
naviarhaiku578 – one by one
Big Spoon
One of the great things about coming of age in the 1990s was the music
A
friend of mine makes a strong argument that 1993 was the greatest year
for albums, which doesn’t capture all of my favourites but does stack up
a bunch of amazing releases.
Of course, these artists don’t
arrive fully-formed and, in the sage words of someone much earlier, they
stand on the shoulders of giants.
In particular for this post I
want to share a particular recording technique that has excited me, but
let’s meander a little more before we arrive at that destination.
The
music of the 1990s was exploding in all sorts of directions and some of
these were very surprising, although it seems obvious in hindsight.
Rock guitars were roaring back into fashion thanks to grunge bands.
Metal was finding new audiences and then there was the unlikely fusion with rap.
The juggernaut Judgment Night soundtrack brought together collaborations that stand up well today.
A massive leap came with the success of Rage Against The Machine, who remain one of the greatest live acts that I have seen.
The
earth literally moved for me when I saw them in the Flemington
Racecourse car park for the Big Day Out in 2008, which isn’t hyperbole —
it was the crowd stamping their feet and was more intense than any
earthquake that I've experienced.
Big Day Outs were another
benefit of being a young adult in the 1990s because you got introduced
to so many bands that mightn't have been noticed otherwise.
One of those bands at the 2008 BDO was Spoon, whose set I watched while waiting to see Battles.
Their music is beautifully crafted with arrangements that retain a spaciousness.
So
it was surprising that their sound seemed so in our faces, particularly
as I've mentioned the energy of RATM — both on and off the stage.
As
my friends and I were talking over the bands we'd seen that day, we had
pondered whether it was compression that gave this effect.
This memory came back to me recently as I was looking at guitar pedal videos.
The JHS Colour Box claims to pack something of the sound of a Neve-like console into a stompbox.
Neve is one of those names that audio geeks will recognise, because Rupert Neve is an engineer that gave airy qualities.
In
fact, there are interviews with Rupert where he speaks about how
frequencies above human hearing range are still being perceived and his
circuits flatter those sounds as they pass through the circuits of his
mixing consoles.
As I watched a video about the
Colour Box I learned it aims to provide a sound like plugging a guitar
directly into the console, as opposed to recording via a microphone in
front of a guitar amplifier.
At that moment I realised it was this sound I'd identified all those years ago.
Disquiet Junto 0683 Space Shot
The Disquiet Junto project this week asks participants to "Combine reverberant and non-reverberant."
Record a piece of music in which half of the material is recorded in a highly reverberant space (or has spaciousness applied to it through effects) and half of the material is just sound in isolation, devoid of any sense of space or place.I looked back through tracks in progress and settled on one that had an organ part that would hang in space, contrasted with busy drums.
Then I found a bit of video from my last trip to the coast and added that to the reverberant side, since it provided more sense of space.
Sweet as Honni
naviarhaiku577 – curve of time
The haiku shared by Naviar Records this week prompted me to consider how to add my own "curve of time" to this track I'd been working on.
Disquiet Junto 0682 Unring a Bell
The Disquiet Junto this week asks participants to "Please record a track in which you try to unring a bell."
Today is Australia Day and the date has become increasingly divisive as the colony celebrates the landing of the First Fleet and a growing number of people call it Invasion Day.
Our country is the only British colony without a treaty negotiated with the First Nations and in my lifetime those original inhabitants have been recognised in law with the extinguishment of "terra nullius" and acknowledgment of the ongoing connection to Country for the oldest continuous human culture.
So the idea of unringing a bell seems deeply symbolic and the best I can do is attempt to reverse time as a way of softening the blows.
I've drawn on Junto 0315 recorded for Australia Day in 2018 with a track I titled 'Circumnavigate' in reference to the date, as well as 0256's "music in place" which provides Leeton's church bells.
Since I needed to reverse the bells, I put this track together in Final Cut Pro -- although I think it would be good if Ableton Live were able to reverse video as well as audio in a future update.
Pronounciation question
Maybe I need to see if they put on a red light!
For whom the Beh tolls
Guitar pedal videos have been distracting me from my homework
How many guitarists does it take to change a lightbulb?
Ten -- one to change the bulb and nine to say "I could've done that."
(Note: that low price is in AU$)
Yet it's an observation that I soon found was done in a much more succinct and humorous way when I saw this meme:
WWED
Been a while since I dipped into Eno
His recent conversation with Stephen Fry about AI is good, but I'm enjoying this discussion even more.
One of the great contributions Brian Eno has made is promoting the 'process' driven techniques within popular music that were a part of 20th Century art movements.
Brian shares a few strategies for changing approaches in the studio and seems to be becoming more relaxed about name-dropping!
Flower power
Anyway, I'm a fan. It's great to see this idea blooming!
For a long time I didn't buy the Melee pedal because it had an angry skull on it, but I've been playing with it again recently and it's fun.
That pedal looks even nicer now it has a floral design.
If I was cynical, I might see this as a sign that guitar companies are beginning to recognise there's a feminine-identifying consumer demographic that they've been overlooking for decades!
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