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

I'm still chiselling cheap teles and am currently enjoying these PAF-style humbuckers with black hardware.

Naviarhaiku632 – slowly gliding

 

The haiku shared by Naviar this week offered a snail's perspective and I sought to do it justice by singing about powerlessness and communicating within shells.

Further inspiraton was sought from Seamus Heaney's republic of conscience.

The nature of the problem

 

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.

It's 1999

 

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.

There is a thin layer of a theme in the sense that dust plays a role. 

Catherine O’Hara on the importance of having a sense of humor

My parents were blessed – they laughed until the end. That’s the best way to live, because there’s so much sadness. You’re really lucky if your sense of humor is encouraged, because I think we’re all born with it, and if it’s encouraged in your life, that’s a gift.

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.

When you start working

 

Naviarhaiku630 – one leaf falls

The haiku shared by Naviar prompted me to remix parts that I recorded this week.

Me wringing the last drops

 

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.