Disquiet Junto 0456 Line Up
The Disquiet Junto activity this week has introduced to the art of Agnes Martin and I've interpreted her painting Untitled 5 (1998).
naviarhaiku350 – Flutteringly
The haiku shared by Naviar Records this week brought to mind a blue butterfly I recently observed.
As it flew around the forest, it made swift changes in direction.
So I've written a piece of music with a few changes.
The synthesiser part is a transcription of a haiku I wrote about a butterfly.
Both the poems were encoded as music using Solfa Cipher Secrets.
Disquiet Junto 0455 Inner Invertebrate
The Disquiet Junto this week asks participants to
I tried to engage my son in a conversation about how to do the Junto this week. "You're overthinking it," he replied. "Jellyfish don't have brains."
As we continued our bike ride, he did venture that Vapourwave or Japanese-style electronica from last decade might sound good.
That conversation gave me a couple of ideas, but I don't think either ended up sounding much like his idea.
Disquiet Junto 0454 Lsoo Vneg
When the email arrived, my mind went in two directions and the result incorporates both ideas.
The first impulse was to use the footage of my partner talking about Acacia Montana, as the common name includes my middle name.
That term for a kind of shrub comes from the Wemba-Wemba people of western Victoria and, early in our relationship, Jo explained its form and it seemed like an analogy for my diverse interests.
Using that website, I created a couple of MIDI files for the synth that can be heard in the second part of the song.
naviarhaiku348 – whenever gazing
Disquiet Junto 0453 Dial Up
The Disquiet Junto assignment this week is to "Imagine the technologically mediated First Contact through sound."
After my ideas became overwhelming, I opted to pick up my Yamaha Tenori-On and use a pulsing sound that I knew was available.
As I played with it, I got the idea that my simple noodling also represented a kind of first contact with the instrument -- since I'd forgotten much of how to use it.
Reflecting on reflections
Listening back on the track I published yesterday and surprised by the result.
Too much reverb!
Then I cycle through the usual responses, from "reverb always seems stronger after rendering the track" to "but wouldn't I have noticed that? I must've been in a hurry to finish."
And then I remember a lecture I missed decades ago.
The reason I think of that anthropology lesson is it's the example I turn to when reflecting on how brains filter room reflections.
Way back on that day I'd asked my girlfriend to use the Walkman I bought for recording interviews to collect audio from the lecture.
When I listened back there was so much reflected sound that I couldn't listen to the discussion.
It took so much concentration to listen to the lecturer that I gave up.
I expect that tape would now transport me to the exact room since it literally reflects the size of that location.
Now whenever I think of the ability of a human brain to filter sound, I think of that moment.
Everyday our ears deliver conversations in rooms without a thought for the reflected sound, which is around two-thirds of the noise we hear.
Yet it isn't until you try to listen to a recording that you realise the incredible real-time processing that our brains are undertaking in listening to someone speaking.
I suspect there's a similar process when I'm working on a song.
Before I render the recording, I've listened to it so many times that my brain is compensating for the reverb.
Those wonderful modelled room reflections from Ocean Way and Capital Chambers are being removed from my listening.
Then, the next day, I hear the song with refreshed ears and hear how heavy-handed I've been in adding those effects.
The lesson I've learned today is that I am in a hurry to finish and should give myself an extra day before publishing my songs.
naviarhaiku347 – two voices that sound alike
First, it's springtime and I'm seeing lots of wattles in blossom.
Second, the "two voices that sound alike" could be the instruments in this track.
Particularly the two synth lines, which are the same patch, but also how the bass and guitar are soloing in similar ways because I can't really do anything more.
Disquiet Junto 0452 Let’s Scream
The Junto this asks we work with a scream and, since I didn't feel like screaming, I found a famous scream to include.
It's the "Mendoza!" yelled by McBain in The Simpsons, used in Iris2 as a synth patch.
naviarhaiku346 – pause pause pause
It uses alternate takes and layers up the guitar parts, running all the MIDI parts through an icy pad and keeping four guitar lines.
Disquiet Junto 0451 Ursula’s Silences
I've incorporated silences into the track through including pauses before different sections.
To do this I built up the scaffold of the song by playing the drums along to this song I've been enjoying recently.
Then I settled on a handful of notes on the bass, which led me to decided they were part of a Phrygian mode.
Today I added a guitar part to fill out the song and attempted a melody.
Disquiet Junto 0450 Texture Analysis
The Disquiet Junto activity this week involves "field recordings made at Carlo Bernasconi AG, a company that has been working in stone for over a century. The sounds range from machines to manual tools to spatial ambience."
These recordings were made by Tobias Reber and the project is a "collaboration with the 2020 Musikfestival Bern, which will be held in Switzerland from September 2 through 6 under the motto 'Tektonik'" -- which I used for a track title.
Participants are invited to "listen for aspects of the recordings that attract your ears" and "create a piece of music combining elements from as few or as many as you chose".
My ears gravitate toward transients, and the tool sounds in particular were useful for creating percussion.
Most of the sounds I've used at their original pitch, but I did transpose one down for the kick sound by an octave and a half.
One of the sounds of distant machinery was also looped and I added a sidechained compressor linked to the kick, so it would be heard near the end of each bar.
To the percussive loops I've added some sounds of machinery, particularly where the pitch shifts, which gives a further sense movement in places.
Then I've added more of the tool recordings, as well as machinery.
The latter has been gated using Beatrepeat and I added a little distortion and delay to make that more dynamic.
Finally, I created busses for reverb and stereo-panning, as well as some more saturation.
The video shows copper smelting and comes from the Prelinger archive.
I searched for "mining" and thought this section looked like it might relate to the sounds heard.
This is my 233rd video response to a Disquiet Junto prompt and the full playlist can be found here.
Disquiet Junto 0449 Page Machine
The Disquiet Junto assignment this week is to "Read a page of text from a book as if it were a musical score."
I settled on page 18 from the introduction to Matsuo Basho's The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
The layout of the page appealed to me, as it looked like it might be a drum intro and it was 8 August -- so I thought I should use 808 samples.
The syllables became high-hats, while the capitals denoted kick drum and the punctuation triggered sound effects from the M-Tron Pro VST.
Then I decided to add a riser to convey the interpretive text, as it kinda serves to raise the rest of the writing.
And, finally, I flicked back to the contents page and took that last entry's page number to be the tempo.
Disquiet Junto 0447 Listen Ahead
This week the Disquiet Junto asks "Imagine...what your world will be like six months from today."
The instructions prompted me to record Jo's song, which she'd asked to do after returning home from a solstice event."
Disquiet Junto 0446 WWWLDD
The Disquiet Junto activity this week involves responding to World Listening Day.
It's prompted me to share a soundtrack I composed from field recordings for an exhibition by the Murrumbidgee Field Naturalists at the Leeton Museum & Gallery.
It was composed to be looped in the background and accompany the many photographs members have taken of the natural Riverina environment.
The material draws on a decade of field recordings, which have been layered to provide a rich sense of the landscape.
Seems an appropriate recording to share for World Listening Day.
Disquiet Junto 0445 Aare Tribute
Then I remembered a recording I'd made at the beach late last year.
So I've combined the video of Wagga Beach with my track for relaxing by the river.
Disquiet Junto 0444 Bot Ensemble
The Disquiet Jutno assignment this week is to "Make music as directed by the great twitter.com/InstrumentBot account."
As I looked over the Bot's tweets, I took in the repetition of terms and started to formulate an idea.
Language like "tiny explosions" and "metronome" led me to think about recording drums, while the metallic descriptions reminded me that I'd been meaning to record various things in town.
Disquiet Junto 0443 In Two Landcapes
For the Disquiet Junto this week, I've taken two different field recordings and combined them to make one track.
It was with a sense of deja vu too, as I'd considered doing this for Project 0436.
The video above uses the footage I shot of the "2 tracks" sign, which I thought would be a clever nod to the idea but ended up using galahs roosting instead.
Galahs are still a feature this week, as they can be heard returning to their treetops on an evening when I'd filmed a sunset for Naviar's haiku project 0331.
You can also hear my son amusing himself, as I asked him to keep an eye on my camera while it recorded the weathervane.
You can hear my bike brake near the end.
Disquiet Junto 0442 One Sentence
The Disquiet Junto this weeks asks participants to compose a piece of music based on a mapped exploration of a sentence.
Around the time that direction arrived, I read a poem that uses musical imagery and decided that it might be considered a long sentence.
Today I had some time to record myself reading the poem and using Ableton Live's MIDI mapping function to compose the music.
Disquiet Junto 0441 Three Stones
The Disquiet Junto asks for a piece of music that considers how stones can be thought to connect with where they originated.
I've used a recording I made last week at Pindari, where Alan Lamb and Scott Baker built an instrument known as 'the wires' for the 2004 Unsound Festival.
My partner and I worked with Alan for the 2006 Unsound Festival, and I've recorded 'the wires' since then and trimmed trees to ensure they continue to hum.
Last week 'the wires' weren't humming, as it was very still.
You can hear the long decay from touching 'the wires' and I've created a piece of music that aims to slow their back-and-forth hum even more.
My idea was to create a sense of the geological change that revealed and distributed the granite boulders on the hilltop outside Wagga Wagga.
Disquiet Junto 0439 Self Less
The Junto this week asks for "music combining the styles of two musicians you admire."
I've attempted Duke Ellington and Mr Oizo.
Footage via Archive.org, my 225th video for the Disquiet Junto.
Disquiet Junto 0438 Deep Plan
For some reason the Junto direction prompted me to think of a Paul Keating video I'd downloaded five years ago with a view to incorporating in a track.
It was serendipitous as Keating seems to be espousing a view of listening to links back to an observation about listening that I was prompted to write this week.
Aside from the TR-707 drum beat, all instrumentation came from the Gforce M-Tron Pro VST.
Toasted tracks
One of the surprising outcomes from abandoning Soundcloud has been making videos about toasted sandwiches.
I know, right?
Back when the Ninja Tune Forum was still a thing, I realised that I couldn't just brag about a great toasted sandwich.
Since I had a funky electronic song to share, I decided to add it to my blue cheese, leek and mushroom toastie.
Now I've posted my 32nd toasted sandwich and the soundtrack features Gforce Software's M-Tron Pro VST.
Aside from the percussion, I got a lot of inspiration from the huge number of instruments that software contains.
Live listening
Playing pool with my 11-year old yesterday and he made an observation that reminded me about the context of listening.
"It's more exciting hearing your favourite song on the radio, than it is playing it for yourself."
It was a profound observation for me and captured my own experiences listening to live and recorded sounds.
The sense of time seems to shift and listening can take us into a different temporal context.
That sense of being in the moment, like when a piece of music is broadcast, is something I'd observed while listening to 'the wires' for hours.
The recordings didn't have the same quality in more than the sense of fidelity.
It wasn't the discomfort of sitting on a granite rock, nor the experience of feeling the same breezes that would trigger the wave of harmonics.
I realised it was the moment and tension created from a cascade of thoughts, as I focused intently on the details in each micro-second.
It was a sense I was hearing something for the first time.
Being present while listening might be another description, much like the sense used by 'woke' individuals about living in the moment and not dwelling on the past or planning for a future.
I remember reading that Morton Subotnick would invite strangers into his apartment so that he would get the sense of hearing his recordings for the first time.
At various times I've heard musicians comment on how there's a similar tension when recording.
Gustav Ejstes described how "If we play it too many times before we record we lose something."
Sometimes I wonder if multitrack recording has diminished the thrill of hearing musicians sharing the same room – either from a richness in the sound of a bass player recorded through the kick drum microphone; or the performances as the band make eye contact with each other.
Perhaps it extends to the idea promoted by Dr John Diamond that digitised recordings provoke stress, as our brains have to reassemble the waveforms.
The thing that seems clear is that listening is an active experience and hearing your song on the radio feels like an invitation to enjoy that moment.
"It's more exciting hearing your favourite song on the radio, than it is playing it for yourself."
It was a profound observation for me and captured my own experiences listening to live and recorded sounds.
The sense of time seems to shift and listening can take us into a different temporal context.
The recordings didn't have the same quality in more than the sense of fidelity.
It wasn't the discomfort of sitting on a granite rock, nor the experience of feeling the same breezes that would trigger the wave of harmonics.
I realised it was the moment and tension created from a cascade of thoughts, as I focused intently on the details in each micro-second.
It was a sense I was hearing something for the first time.
Being present while listening might be another description, much like the sense used by 'woke' individuals about living in the moment and not dwelling on the past or planning for a future.
I remember reading that Morton Subotnick would invite strangers into his apartment so that he would get the sense of hearing his recordings for the first time.
At various times I've heard musicians comment on how there's a similar tension when recording.
Gustav Ejstes described how "If we play it too many times before we record we lose something."
Sometimes I wonder if multitrack recording has diminished the thrill of hearing musicians sharing the same room – either from a richness in the sound of a bass player recorded through the kick drum microphone; or the performances as the band make eye contact with each other.
Perhaps it extends to the idea promoted by Dr John Diamond that digitised recordings provoke stress, as our brains have to reassemble the waveforms.
The thing that seems clear is that listening is an active experience and hearing your song on the radio feels like an invitation to enjoy that moment.
Stay Home Sounds
Disquiet Junto 0437 Echo Relocation
The Disquiet Junto activity this week continues a prompt from artist and experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats:
Record someone else’s field recording of their environment playing within your own.
I've played Name Constant's neighbourhood in my backyard at first light.
naviarhaiku332 – from evening mist
When listening is grieving
Years ago I lived in an old farmhouse surrounded by cows.
I'd started seeing the woman who is now my partner and she lived on a property surrounded by sheep.
One morning as we lay in bed, she made an observation that came to mind after I wrote about grieving for a changed world.
She remarked how one way cows identify their calves is by recognising the patterns on their skins.
I'm probably simplifying it but my understanding was that the brown splotches on Friesian cattle, for example, assist mothers to find their babies in the paddock.
In contrast, I think she said, sheep listen for their voices among the herd.
I've often reflected that sheep must be always keeping an ear out for the distinctive bleat of their lambs.
My partner might have been telling me this as her family at that time would slaughter their own livestock.
It led me to consider that one can look around and, if you don't see something, you might not notice it is missing.
However, I wonder if we are always listening for meaningful sounds -- such the phenomena described as "miraculous agitations" in this old post.
In doing so we might be, consciously or subconsciously, regularly reminded of loss.
Recent discussions of being sentimental for sounds from another time has been on my mind since I started noticing how many projects online and on the radio are currently focusing on recording and listening to the changes in our landscapes.
naviarhaiku331 – Peaks of cloud
It prompted me to explore piano loops of varying lengths, while aiming to get an Eno-esque ambient result.
Disquiet Junto 0436 Planetary Headspace
The Disquiet Junto this week invites close listening to the landscape, through sharing recordings and participating in a communal soundscape:
Download field recordings by other Junto members. Play the downloaded tracks in one ear, leaving your other ear open to hear the sounds in your midst. As you listen to the stereo soundscapes, your hearing will be extended, situating you in acoustic environments that you’ll share with other participants.I've recorded the galahs that nest in a park at the end of my street.
Their chatter is a sound I associate with the town of Leeton and hearing them helps me recognise first light when I'm at home.
Grieving for a changed world
While I haven't studied the stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance), I have been prompted to consider how they make sense of the range of responses I see from people discussing the swift social changes since Covid-19 became a worldwide phenomenon.
I was just reading an interview with sound artist Maria Chávez and thought I'd share this part:
I'm not so sentimental about capturing concerts and live events, because so often they reinforce the feeling that one had to be there.
As a student of history I can see their value in providing a sense of what it is like to stand in a crowd, although the proximity effect of most microphones will likely make many listeners wonder how one endured the noises from nearby strangers.
However, like those recordings, the sentimentality for something that's both close and distant seems analogous with the experiences many are now sharing.
The recent disruptions to our lives by Covid-19 is in stark contrast to the relatively carefree experiences of only a few months earlier.
Like many others I have been going through the disappointment of re-evaluating my plans for the year and recognising it's possible some events will never be the same again.
It's a mild expression of depression but I'm sad that I can't imagine I'll be stripping off and brushing shoulders with people running around a burning effigy anytime in the near future, for example.
Yesterday I read a profile of the actor Val Kilmer that was remarkable how it illustrated a journalist grappling with uncertainties.
I found the piece fascinating for the way the article moves from trying to reconcile the actor's philosophy about illness, to trying to make sense of a series of profound changes in the journalist's life.
We're all making sense of living during a pandemic and this week I'm digging into how that manifests in creative pursuits.
One outcome for my music-making was recognising a piece I'd been looking forward to sharing had been set aside until things settle.
Cities and Memory founder Stuart Fowkes replied to my inquiry about the Future Cities project:
In the meantime, I wonder if my opportunity to record a sense of the anxiety of visiting the supermarket has passed.
This week I'm surprised how quickly people have returned to what was normal, as I navigated the groups conversing in the aisles.
I also noticed the regular messages about social-distancing that would interrupt the in-store music have stopped.
It's both a relief and a cause for concern that so many in my community have moved on from practising the measures designed to limit the spread of Covid-19.
Maybe it's denial?
I was just reading an interview with sound artist Maria Chávez and thought I'd share this part:
"I always thought field recording was just an audio snapshot, really. Now, taking the audio snapshot and adapting it to our present moment – who knew our times [would] so drastically [change] in a matter of two weeks. And my god, all of these field recordings that we’ve all been doing for the past 20-30 years, especially as the hand-held recorders got more and more accessible for the general public – I used to think of it all as, What are we going to do with all this stuff? It’s just trash, everybody’s just recording field recordings. I’d always roll my eyes. Now I’m like, You’re such an idiot. Thank god everybody was recording our world because it’s gone.
"Concerts and live events will never be the same even if they can. You know what I mean? Now that I’ve changed my mind about all of these ridiculous amounts of recording, I think somehow we all knew. That we were privileged in some way to live in this world. Everybody I knew that was really into field recordings was just frantic – once they got hooked on it, it was like a rabbit hole. Now I just feel like, My god, we’re so lucky. Now we need to make a library of everything that everyone has done and it’ll be audible postcards of our past that we’ll never be able to hear again."
I'm not so sentimental about capturing concerts and live events, because so often they reinforce the feeling that one had to be there.
As a student of history I can see their value in providing a sense of what it is like to stand in a crowd, although the proximity effect of most microphones will likely make many listeners wonder how one endured the noises from nearby strangers.
However, like those recordings, the sentimentality for something that's both close and distant seems analogous with the experiences many are now sharing.
The recent disruptions to our lives by Covid-19 is in stark contrast to the relatively carefree experiences of only a few months earlier.
Like many others I have been going through the disappointment of re-evaluating my plans for the year and recognising it's possible some events will never be the same again.
It's a mild expression of depression but I'm sad that I can't imagine I'll be stripping off and brushing shoulders with people running around a burning effigy anytime in the near future, for example.
Yesterday I read a profile of the actor Val Kilmer that was remarkable how it illustrated a journalist grappling with uncertainties.
I found the piece fascinating for the way the article moves from trying to reconcile the actor's philosophy about illness, to trying to make sense of a series of profound changes in the journalist's life.
One outcome for my music-making was recognising a piece I'd been looking forward to sharing had been set aside until things settle.
Cities and Memory founder Stuart Fowkes replied to my inquiry about the Future Cities project:
"Future Cities is delayed due to the ongoing destruction of all that our cities previously stood for! Will release that one later in the year!"I expect it's going to be a while before those futures feel possible again!
In the meantime, I wonder if my opportunity to record a sense of the anxiety of visiting the supermarket has passed.
This week I'm surprised how quickly people have returned to what was normal, as I navigated the groups conversing in the aisles.
I also noticed the regular messages about social-distancing that would interrupt the in-store music have stopped.
It's both a relief and a cause for concern that so many in my community have moved on from practising the measures designed to limit the spread of Covid-19.
Maybe it's denial?
SING!
Some time ago I challenged myself to record an album with vocals.
It's taken a while to get comfortable with the idea of sharing it, but that distance has let me observe there's a wide variety of styles among the tracks.
I'm grateful to US music educator and blogger Ethan Hein for remixing 'Prime' which was recorded for a Disquiet Junto project, as well as producer Laura "DJ Pnutz" Bolokoski for her amazing remix of the track 'Alright'.
I also found inspiration in the writing of Alicia Boyd and Ash Bond, and appreciated getting the perspectives of David Graham, Ian Joyce and Dan "Long Distance" Larkin.
Other tracks were responses to Naviar Records' haiku prompts, including 'Ghostly Melody' which was composed from my senryu poems.
The video for that song was recorded at Leeton's swimming pool and will be part of an online art exhibition organised by Dubbo-based artist Kim Goldsmith next month.
The album SING ends with an electro-metal hybrid which was written after reading a front page article in Griffith's The Area News (but then exaggerated).
As someone who loves music and writing, I had to give songwriting a go.
Disquiet Junto 0434 Beat Kit
The Disquiet Junto follows up on the kits of samples developed by the community last week, with the instruction to create music with beats crafted by fellow participants.
I've taken samples by Ausgesuchtestenohren and mode.analogue to remix my track 'Alright' with their sounds.
Immersion
It's been a few years since I last visited and I leave with so many great photographs and recordings, they appear in Junto and Naviar projects for years afterwards.
For now I'll have to make do with music.
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