The assignment this week is to "Make music with nothing but rocks."
I recorded a selection of stones, mostly collected from Valla Beach, along with a couple of bricks.
These I edited in Ableton Live, repitching most, as well as adding a resonator and Sinevibes Reactor for the bass part.
The Junto assignment this week is to "Play into the distraction."
My Sunday morning routine includes watching ABC's Insiders program about Australian politics, which this week featured a distraction in the form of discussion of the Prime Minister's appearance on a podcast.
I should declare at this point that I have never subscribed to a podcast and don't understand why I would want to listen to such inanities, particularly when a transcription can be consumed much quicker.
As the venerable Fourth Estate disappears with the loss of journalism, and takes with it the important function of digesting policy and presenting a range of views rather than regurgitating press releases, we're left with mindless entertainment such as social media rushing into the vacuum.
An example of the inanity of this situation was provided in the distraction that followed Anthony Albanese's admission that he fancied Kylie Minogue, which is surprising because I think it would unAustralian to say one doesn't admire her contributions to popular culture that continue over decades.
So I found myself playing the blues as the esteemed journalists on the Insiders couch discussed the depths plumbed by the Prime Minister as a range of other significant policy discussions were disregarded without any acknowledgement of Ms Minogue's undeniable sex appeal.
I've been playing with the idea of using two Chase Bliss Habit pedals as a way of providing instrumentation.
Originally this was patched for my double-neck guitar, but I thought I'd try the Nukulele for this piece.
I think it's the most audacious instrument that I've seen in years, with the resonant strings crossing over all those extra pickups.
It gives me hope that something as much as a mainstay as the Stratocaster design can still develop, because so much of contemporary culture seems stuck looking backwards.
And it reminds me there are a pile of pickguards and guitar bodies that are waiting for me to do something different.
The assignment this week is to "Interpret [a] gauzy window treatment as an audio effect."
My first impulse was to record the guitar set-up I recently plugged together that uses a Chase Bliss Audio Lossy pedal, but my kids are home and I haven't much opportunity to jam to arrive at something worth recording.
So I wasn't sure I'd respond to the Junto, until I watched Hamnet with my daughter last night.
There's a moment after the death of the titular character where he's shown beyond veil of death and it's literally filmed through a dark piece of cloth.
(Hopefully that's not a spoiler for anyone but, frankly, if you didn't already know that the death of Shakespeare's son Hamnet has been thought to have contributed to his play Hamlet then it's probably not a film you'll be watching anyway!)
This led me to ponder whether the window gauze might be something more than a filter or a gate?
Also, this morning my Facebook Memories included the Junto track Beatin' Leeton from six years ago that I thought would be good material to manipulate.
From there my idea was that going beyond the veil in this case is to use Ableton Live's convert to MIDI functions as a way to go beyond the audio tracks, with bass and drum parts generated with those transcriptions being fed into arpeggiators as well as the aforementioned effects.
The face of my delivery guy, Eric, came to mind and I really couldn't.
One wonders if it has inside it a speaker and one end and a mic at the other, or maybe a really big spring?
A wit elsewhere remarked that it is a room reverb, but I don't think I could fit my drums inside.
Susan Rogers, a recording engineer turned academic, once said to me that the future of music lies in timbre, which is where the abstract notion of notes becomes so much more engaging through the inflections of instruments and the memories they create and prompt.
Wish I knew which Charles Sturt University student created it, but it's been adopted for my senryu-style blog: Zen Roo.
I took the bass recorded for the Junto and experimented with faster drums, before reevaluating the piece at a slower tempo.
The Junto project is to "Interrupt an ongoing process."
I think gating is a versatile effect and almost everything benefits from it, aside from some recordings where it draws attention to itself.
To demonstrate I recorded a simple bassline and ramped up the threshold on the gate until it mutes near the end, before rolling back down again.
Okay, so I was reading about AI and realised the audacity of Fender's strategy in claiming the S-shape (for Stratocaster) as entirely their own.
After seven decades and innumerable versions of the famous ergonomic double-horn shape, the recent moves to prevent others from using the design have put an ugly shade to the company.
Previously I thought that their decision was in response to the quality of Chinese counterfeits and my experience has been that Chenders offer a value that overshadows the original, especially since Fender guitars often lack the features they expect consumers to buy afterwards like better quality pickups and other parts.
The thing that occurs to me is that claiming the design, along with the legacy of Leo Fender in previous months, is it provides a moat for their business:
A moat is what protects a business from competition. The term comes from Warren Buffett’s image of a castle surrounded by water. The castle is the business; the moat is whatever prevents rivals from storming the walls. A moat might be a famous brand, a patent, a network effect, control over scarce resources, high switching costs for consumers, or a regulatory barrier that makes it difficult for competitors to enter the market. The deeper the moat, the easier it is for a firm to charge high prices, preserve margins, and survive imitation.
So I wanted to revisit my track for the Junto this week and tighten it up, like a cherry blossom.
Using an alternate take of the drums, I gated the guitars and added some effects.
The Junto project this week is to "Write outdoors hold music for a single-lane tunnel entrance delay."
As I had been jamming along to a track that's about the five minutes recommended for this assignment, it was easy to record that part.
Then I came up with a few chords that sorta fit, and recorded bass afterwards.
Actually, it makes a lot of cents given the sheer volume (pun intended) of musical gear sold to churches.
One of my favourite account signatures was on a forum while researching PAs that said "Turn it up for Jesus!"
Elsewhere on the internet, I was surprised that Rick Beato went straight for the top and argued that the new CEO should resign from Fender.
My feeling is that Fender has jumped from the pot and into the fire, but that few commentators have realised their existential threat developed from tackling the wave of quality Chinese-made counterfeit instruments.
Racism seems to be the only thing keeping a portion of Fender's fanboys behind the brand.
No one willingly wants to be indie. The great beauty of pop music is that it is a joy machine.
The Junto assignment this week is "Imagine you’ve been invited to compose music for a nature documentary about slugs."
I decided it needed something squishy and found this video by Michael Verdi on Archive.org
Fender have been a topic of ire here in recent months
When the company won a copyright ruling in the EU earlier this year I thought things looked grim.
The iconic guitar brand is owned by an investment firm and it seems obvious to anyone who has tried a variety of products that they sell over-priced instruments to maximise profits.
So I was shocked when I saw an apology issued by one retailer, as it showed the brand were using their dominance to limit competition.
With the ruling against Chinese copies in Europe they were given an opportunity to further entrench their advantage to monopolise the market.
Stratocasters were patented in 1956 and Leo Fender died in 1991, so it is another example of how copyright law is harming innovation.
Can you imagine what guitars might look like if the market was not dominated with the message that designs from the mid-20th Century are the best available?
Many are celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Telecaster, yet is it really a design to put on a pedestal and say there is nothing to improve?
(Nashville models with a Strat-style middle pickup say differently, obviously.)
When I had that thought it prompted me to consider ideas about what else could be done, such as adding pickups for individual strings and multiple outputs.
It will be interesting to see if the Fender brand becomes toxic to consumers, because they lost my support last year for less.
The Junto prompt this week is to "record something epic," which I took somewhat literally.
I had a cheeky idea to record a bad cover of the song 'Epic' and claim it was something!
Having never heard those footsteps for myself, I knew there was a broad scope for creative interpretation!
The Junto project this week is to "Record the first third of a trio."
This is a quick recording on my modified Nukulele electric guitar, where I mostly just jam on the D string.
Ableton Live seems to think it's around 117 BPM, which is where I usually land.
There are two outputs, each going through an Alexander effect pedal.
A Wav file and a Mov file are available.
I explain in the video below.
I've been excited in the past by reverb models that offer recreations of famous spaces, like topline recording studios.
Then a friend invited me to listen to her performance while lying on the floor with my eyes closed.
She began a drone and my sense of the environment shifted.
I forgot where I was as the illusion of floating in a 'no space' pushed back the walls with a never-ending note.
Since then I've had similar experiences with classical Indian music and pondered the sense of spirituality that follows from losing sense of the self.
This is just a test.
The Junto this week is to "Do something you do too much even more."
I'm often noodling away on a guitar and sometimes recording these unedited performances to publish.
So my Junto recording this week has a recording within a recording with the Chase Bliss Habit pedal looping back on earlier parts.
This is my Nukuele guitar with four strings and a bass pickup under the D, so that part of the performance is also doubled with the second output going to Ottobit.
Anyway, I talked about this guitar earlier...
I made a few recordings, but this one using a guitar tuned BEBE worked best.
The idea was to add a pickup for bass, then I decided to use the DADA tuning that I've been enjoying.
Anyway, aside from the comments comparing Frankenstein and the effects of meth (but surprisingly no one proposing it's what the monster would look like on meth, or if Dr Frankenstein took drugs?), I anticipated someone would tell me to grow up and stop shit-posting for giggles.
However, I didn't expect it would be Facebook posing the question whether I should have messed with one of the most beloved guitar designs.
The Easter long weekend isn't over yet and the project has completed, aside from curing the liquid nails.
I had a set of Artist branded single coils from a better guitar that went with the brand names on the headstocks, as well as new split pickups for bass.
When gluing the bodies together I became concerned about the space between the necks, which brought the mahogany garden stakes next to me into focus.
The stake through the heart of the guitar monster is evocative, so I wiped back the black paint along the seam.
I've taken to the idea that silence disappears, using a pedal to loop the ukulele.
Last year I searched through files from previous years to compile my first album since 2021.
A lot has happened since then, and the music was diverse and a challenge to sequence for my new album: BOUT
It was part of a bigger project to gain skills in mastering audio that was supported by a Country Art Support Program grant from Western Riverina Arts and Create NSW through financial assistance from the NSW Government.
Since watching a video of Angine de Poitrine I have been wanting a double neck guitar.
Then I remembered that guitar and bass can sound really conventional together.
So I have used an electric ukulele and a Chase Bliss Habit pedal with bass.
Aside from showing him how to use the tuning key, I mentioned Ringo's recording technique.
Now it looks like washing on a rainy day and sounds like Lars' cardboard boxes on Justice For All to me, but my son was into it and played solidly for about an hour.
While my photo doesn't show a fig tree, it was taken near one.
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.
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?
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.
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.
"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."
Originally my piece had vocals, but I thought it suited Naviar's sound to go for a more minimal instrumental.
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.
I've been recording responses to the Disquiet Junto for over a decade
