While my photo doesn't show a fig tree, it was taken near one.
Naviarhaiku637 – first light
Disquiet Junto 0742 Sensitive Math
The instructions this week are to "Record a piece of music that exemplifies the “sensitive math” genre."
I decided the sensitive part was going to give a reflective feeling, while the math component would be varying time signatures.
Last night I did most of the composing and thought I'd come back and add a melody to be a focal point.
However, when I listened back, it seemed there was enough happening and decided a lead instrument would be too demanding.
Then I looked at Archive.org for a video to suit the track and realised it was perfect for a chick flick.
Wrangling angles
It really is refreshing to hear the zing on the low strings while taming the earache on the high ones.
I'm wondering if the angle on the pickup was originally a way to add more bite to dark-sounding wiring on early electric guitars?
Naviarhaiku636 – beyond the talus
Around the time that discussion was occuring for a collaboration between Naviar Records and Red Earth Ecology, many of those who would become involved in the Stay Cool workshops attended the Haiku Down Under event that brings together poets in Australia and New Zealand.
Lisa Germay was one of the audience and we shared a few emails after the event.
Lisa is a multidisciplinary artist who writes haiku and haibun in the traditional Japanese tradition, seeking moments of beauty in everyday experience.
This Australian living in Arctic Greenland gave a presentation that started the Stay Cool workshops, so it is fitting to share her poem and also photograph.
Her presentation can be viewed here or a summary can be read at ree.org.au/2026/02/17/stay-cool-with-lisa-germany/
The Stay Cool project will culminate in an exhibition in the city of Griffith, Australia from 20 April that will include QR code for visitors to hear the compositions contributed by the Naviar Records community.
Disquiet Junto 0741 Balance Beam
The Junto assignment is to "Write music for bell and drone."
I shared Marc's prompt with ChatGPT and asked it to create lyrics, which I recorded while creaing music.
Sound of greasy wood
Yesterday I took my shot at installing the neck gifted by Stefan onto the blank from China. Using charcoal from a life-drawing class to mark the existing boltholes on the neck to the heel, then drilled narrow holes through a neck plate.
It might be sycamore, the body is light but I've enjoyed wiping layers of oils onto the wood grain and seeing it gain a sheen. The bolts secured the neck, which has an eco rosewood fretboard that grates a little like a blackboard under bending strings.
The pickups are yet to be wired, so I've only heard the intonation by strumming and the action is still high. However, the sound beams in a way that's like an acoustic guitar. When I lift another electric guitar the body sounds muted in comparison to this greasy blank that I only just screwed a bridge onto.
While I trying to think how to describe it, I remembered an interview with T Bone Burnett:
It might be sycamore, the body is light but I've enjoyed wiping layers of oils onto the wood grain and seeing it gain a sheen. The bolts secured the neck, which has an eco rosewood fretboard that grates a little like a blackboard under bending strings.
The pickups are yet to be wired, so I've only heard the intonation by strumming and the action is still high. However, the sound beams in a way that's like an acoustic guitar. When I lift another electric guitar the body sounds muted in comparison to this greasy blank that I only just screwed a bridge onto.
While I trying to think how to describe it, I remembered an interview with T Bone Burnett:
"I don't allow any synthetic surfaces anywhere around (in the studio). I don't like modern guitars because they're laminated. If you get an old-time guitar from the '20s, '30s, '40s, '50s or even '60s – you can scrape the lacquer off.
"The new guitars are laminated, so you're already in a plastic age. You're already in an age of controlled sound, rather than an age of raw, free sound. And that's everything."
This guitar resonates in the planks that make the telecaster-shaped blank in a way that's distinct. I look forward to hearing how it sounds in front of an amp.
Naviarhaiku635 – can you hear the stars?
Originally my piece had vocals, but I thought it suited Naviar's sound to go for a more minimal instrumental.
Disquiet Junto 0740 Polychord Amorous
The assignment is to write a piece of music based on a chord progression of polychords.
Polychords were a new term and I explored combinations of three-note chords on the guitar before arriving at two progressions.
The first is a kind of A over E, I guess, which is followed by a C7 and something.
I recorded two accompaniments on guitar as I ran through lyrics, which riff on pairing chords.
One of the influences on my playing this week is Nile Rodgers, particularly the way he'll split a big chord.
Going deep
I've been recording responses to the Disquiet Junto for over a decade
Most weeks there are dozens of recordings and I've learned as much from how the members respond, as I have from undertaking the tasks.
These activities are often musical, sometimes other audio formats, and interpretation is a lot more flexible than one might initially expect.
Some weeks it turns out worse than one hopes, but some weeks the results are surprisingly sublime.
There's a lot one learns along the way, but one of the highlights is when one sees something unexpected.
Just as we have many roles in our lives, there can be many versions in our audio productions and I feel I've explored other lives.
And some weeks, I see the prompt and can't help but watch my mind race ahead with possibilities.
Like this week I saw the title and got a way toward having a track finished before the prompt was published.
However, then the assignment arrived saying "Make music focused on sympathetic strings, or something akin to them."
And I realised that I'd misread the title as "Deepest Symphonies"!
Quackology
Over a few months I've sampled a variety of guitar pickups
It
began when I sensed a relationship between the bar magnet on the
underside of a pickup and a strong attack in the sound it gave to an
amplified guitar.
Different
pickups are often distinguished by their resistance, which accentuates
the placement along the strings from the neck as higher amounts are
favoured closer to the bridge.
While there are
many aspects one would expect, such as dynamics and presence, I found
the presentation of characteristics lack a specific quality.
There
are charts showing brightness and darkness, treble and bass, harsh and
muddy -- okay, I made up the last one -- but I can't think of any
mentioning quack.
The quack of a pickup is a
characteristic that exists on a similar spectrum and becomes more
pronounced as one progresses from neck to bridge.
A
quack is one expression of this sound, which begins more like a burr
that becomes more throaty and pronounced as distortion adds harmonics.
I
think telecasters are renowned for this honky character and I suspect
the harmonics with placement of the bridge pickup are central to it.
However, many highly-wound and higher-output pickups seem to also accentuate this sound.
In
my explorations I feel as though there's a scale of quack that begins
with the Texas variety of pickup, then extends into bluesier and rockier
characters as much as country.
As satisfying as the character sounds with a Tweed style distortion or a Marshall grunt, it's not always ideal.
For example, a serve of twang wouldn't sit with that classic stratocaster sound in the soaring leads of Clapton or Gilmour.
It's just a different flavour, yet the quack isn't as easy to pick as guitar builds.
I've
figured out that I like single coils more than ceramic pickups, which
use the bar magnet, and am now trialling double coils.
When
I began installing different humbuckers I found that some had a twang,
while others gave a harsh blast or a deep and thick sustain.
This is why I feel like a quack rating system is needed, and it could be represented with ducks.
I haven't paddled very deeply into the waters of humbucking, but I expect the pond is full of many styles of quack.
Potato Cake
Also amused by the "fig leaf" sticker placed over the counterfeit branding of this purchase from China.
You can feel the cheaper materials in the shiny neck and plastic tuning pegs, as well as hearing a hum from the bridge pickup; but we live in an age where cheap guitars are made by automated routing in countries that don't respect IP -- so the playability is basically comparable with another Chinese guitar aside from copying the famous Swede.
Or a combination?
The name "potato cake" comes to mind, because they're called scallops in some parts of Australia.
Disquiet Junto 0738 Speak Not
The assignment this week is: Saying something without saying it.
Somewhat appropriately the phrase ‘I think therefore I am’ came to mind.
I’d spent the morning helping my son with his composition assignment and he had a riff-driven song that was going to be a scaffold.
After lunch the phrase developed into a call-and-response riff, which suggests that my son’s scaffold also became my own.
The phrase was answered, "I am therefore I think."
As this bassline from my phrase took on soul with organ and horns, and the percussion was another cue from the source/riff track.
All parts were programmed in Ableton Live and the video is from NASA.
Les Telecaster
Naviarhaiku632 – slowly gliding
Further inspiraton was sought from Seamus Heaney's republic of conscience.
Disquiet Junto 0737 Opening Ceremony
My child has musical homework and we were discussing the option of using an existing track to scaffold a feel.
The track they chose seems unlikely to me, since it’s nearly 50 years old, but it’s been a week for revisiting old songs and I’ve been enjoying the swing in this one.
I’ve heard that James Brown thought every instrument should sound like a drum, so I’ve made as many into percussion as I could handle in this cover of a Dr John song.
Naviarhaiku631 – Spring day
A bit tangentially related the to haiku shared by Naviar this week, as I wrote a song inspired by this poem and added a video of my recent haiga exhibition.
Disquiet Junto 0736 Feed Me
The Junto assignment is to: Write a piece of music emulating the dopamine engine that is social media.
This is the last of the Chinchin videos that I downloaded from Archive.org and they’ve been fun to mix with my tracks by matching the tempo.
I reached for it when I had the image of an automaton doomscrolling being all robotic.
Like the video, all the song fragments came from my folder of unfinished Live files.
Then I had the idea of mashing it with the song I've been working on this afternoon.
It's not terrible and seems tangentially related to the subject matter.
Naviarhaiku630 – one leaf falls
Disquiet Junto 0735 Spectrum Analysis
The Junto assignment this week is to "Write music inspired by a crayon" or specifically a colour.
It's been hot enough to melt a crayon in Leeton this week with temperatures in the mid-40s.
My colour is soft blue as I found myself fantasising about the winters in Canberra, where I grew up.
There you have those bright high-altitude skies, where the sunlight seems crisp yet the air is frigid.
It brought to mind the crunch of frost and with it the "blonde assassin" in Emily Dickinson's poem, as well as the happy flowers and their impermanence.
So I riffed on her imagery and arrived at something about unrequited love, then riffed on the guitar.
Naviarhaiku629 – autumn storm
The poem shared by Naviar Records came to mind, so I played in Live with adding a bass and synth part.
Disquiet Junto 0734 Meet Cue
The Disquiet Junto assignment this week is to "Write music for a scene from a favorite film."
A friend of my mother has a husband who taught film studies, so naturally I asked his favourite film.
It seemed like a question that he'd been asked before as without a pause he replied "Brief Encounter."
A friend of mine sends an email at the end of the year about movies and mentioned this film was on a public streaming service, so I started watching it with a view to using it in the Junto.
As I played guitar I couldn't help but use the chords that were recorded earlier in the week, so when I saw this scene I decided that it would suit a remix of that song.
Naviarhaiku628 – In the dark beyond
I had a chord progression and an afternoon, so it's a quick recording as a muddle my way through an idea.
The video is a recording made of my backyard that didn't get used for the Disquiet Junto project last week.
Fretless player
Tuxedo telecaster
I haven't been able to get the split coil to work, so might make the pull pot switch into a Gilmour mod instead.
Bill Callahan on media
My Fender bender
The
Strat pickguard looks so right with the Tele body shape and I'm happy
to make a mess of a cheap guitar before I try building one.
Chender Meteora
About two months ago I saw my guitar on a Chinese website.
The price was around a third of what I paid for a secondhand model and curiousity got the better of me, so I ordered it.
After a couple of weeks the seller abruptly cancelled the sale, possibly because the discount offered by the site undercut profitability.
I weighed up whether to continue my experiment and decided to buy a different model, rather than a replica of the one I already own.
The Chinese copy is lighter than my Mexican original, but that's not a bad thing for me.
There's a shiny finish to the neck that is a bit sticky when playing, as well as a yellow hue that seems unnatural in comparison.
I've loosened the screws and shifted them a little, but it's not quite yet symmetrical.
Otherwise it feels good, with no sharp fret edges and very good intonation.
The electrics are a bit weird, from potentiometer knobs that stick when being turned through to pickups that sound peaky in a way that suggests ceramics.
However, I am happy to change the electrics and will try some fatter-sounding pickups than the nicely nuanced Fireballs in my Fender.
I will also install split-coil switches like the Meteoras normally feature.
As a fan of hand-drawn art and the human touch one experiences from engaging with creative practise, I find the lettering on the large headstock endearing.
Disquiet Junto 0732 Color Drenching
The Junto project this week is to "Record a piece of music that you think sounds like color drenching."
I've recorded shades of my Donner DTL-100 telecaster-style guitar, which has been modified with Texas pickups and a super switch.
There's a drum loop recorded on a Korg Kaossilator, as well as a snippet of that instrument added at a couple of points.
Below is a video where I reflect on the Junto project.
Modified telecaster
Yesterday I installed a "super switch" in a telecaster style guitar and it was fiddly but added a couple of extra tones
I'd already added Texas-style pickups and they sound remarkable, but the parallel option with the new switch has got me playing chugging riffs today.
The guitar was a cheap one from Donner, which is a good model for modifications aside from the gritty eco-rosewood fretboard and slightly too small bridge pickup slot.
Modified Fender Stratocaster
Made some changes to this guitar that I was given
I was in a hurry to hear the Fat '50s pickups and also added a Gilmour mod with a pull-pot under the tone knob.
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