Disquiet Junto 0630 Creative Sufficiency
The Disquiet Junto prompt this week invites participants to set a limit on the items they'll use.
As I had a bunch of gear plugged together, it wasn’t too hard to take a guess what I’d use and then add a few more for mastering the result.
There was a loop that I’d already made in Live that used three instruments and seemed, um, sufficient.
The prompt this week reminds me why I plugged these items together, as I’d been looking for a way to get more use from them but didn’t want to start an open-ended project that didn’t get a result.
So, to limit my opportunity to start planning all the things I could use, I set myself a constraint by deciding the items needed to fit within the bread crate.
naviarhaiku525 – vernal seas
I have too many delay pedals and am thinking about selling a couple, but this one has a novel interface with a joystick to manipulate the repeats.
This is also the first time I've recorded my secondhand Eastwood tenor guitar.
Disquiet Junto 0629 Jigsaw Logic
The Disquiet Junto project this week is a remix, so I've revisited a track that was recorded while on a residency in Stuart Town last year.
Disquiet Junto 0628 Alchemical Brothers
The Disquiet Junto prompt this week invites an alchemical process into one's music-making.
I worked from the assumption that drums are good and 303 too, then arrived at acoustic and digital instruments in conjunction.
naviarhaiku522 – lightning
Part of my process was to limit the number of inputs to suit the six-channel mixer.
So I decided to put everything into a bread crate, which turned out great as you can poke leads out through the grate at the bottom.
The song was something I'd partly sketched earlier in the year and one of a number that I hope to realise with this collection of instruments and effects.
There's a Roland TR-707 on drums that I should use more often, as well as a Novation Mininova and Korg NTS-1 that were both also being neglected.
Disquiet Junto 0627 Just Ice Society
The Junto begins each year with the direction to "record the sound of ice cubes in a glass and make something with it" (or something like that, I forget!)
Some years ago I recorded my out-laws' glasses to make this project more convenient, as it often occurs around the hottest day of the year and they have air-conditioning that's quieter than mine.
I was really sloppy with the ice cubes as they sound better slurping around and even better when they fall on the carpet.
Those moments I've repitched to become snare and kick parts in the percussion.
naviarhaiku521 – basking
So I recorded the track I've been jamming on this week.
Disquiet Junto 0626 Audio Journal 2023
The final Disquiet Junto prompt each year has been an opportunity to survey one’s media and it’s always fascinating to see the scenes thrown together.
It’s a great insight into what participants have been making outside of the Junto too.
So I was disappointed to see my 2023 seemed quieter than previous years (and here I note this is my ninth video response to the Audio Journal prompt).
I can spot there were many visits to material from previous years, as well as reusing recordings through successive projects.
At first it disappointed me to see there were no videos published on my Youtube in June, then I remembered that was the month that my partner had pneumonia and the Ngurambang exhibition opened in Griffith.
That was hectic!
Other highlights not captured here include an exhibition about Murray Cod, winning the “Champion Exhibit” award in a local art competition and being commended for a short story.
All the best for the new year and I’m looking forward to hearing what you’ve been recording this year, cheers.
naviarhaiku520 – Winter sky
They sound rich, so I find myself just grooving along and enjoying what follows.
I am hoping to get better at programming the sequencer, as the MIDI inputs don't trigger everything.
Disquiet Junto 0625 Noise Ceiling
The Disquiet Junto this week asks participants to imagine the sound of the room in a photo.
I looked at the pic and in the other room my son was cooking an apple pie in a halogen oven, so I thought it sounded appropriate.
Disquiet Junto 0624 Fresh Pair
The Disquiet Junto project this week asks participants to combine a couple of influences.
I'd been playing with a melody that reminded me of the gargle of a wattle bird, then arrived at giving it an accompaniment that I found kinda jazzy.
(Admittedly, jazzy for me lately is electric piano and pizzicato double bass samples.)
Then I added more electronic elements and thought it sounded like early Senor Coconut.
And, before long, I was imagining the winter that Uwe Schmidt spent in Melbourne before he moved to Santiago.
Then I wondered if he had a lonely afternoon jamming with a wattle bird.
naviarhaiku517 – Early dawn’s pale light
It's heading toward a maximum of 40 and that gentle moment feels brief, as the sunlight begins to bite from the first direct beam.
So I tried to convey a sense of the day being brighter than expected.
Disquiet Junto 0622 Know the Shadow
The Disquiet Junto assignment asks "How do you depict a shadow in sound?"
It prompted a few thoughts for me, starting with the line that The Shadow knows the evil that lurks in hearts of men.
Finally I realised that I had an example of shadowboxing if I used the two takes I'd recorded on the drums.
Disquiet Junto 0621 The Leftovers
The Junto prompt arrived as I was wondering if I had useful bits from recording last weekend.
That session built on the drums I'd played for the recent 0619 project, but felt like I was cheating since I didn't use material from another contributor.
So that became a Naviar track and now this feels like the material has returned to the Disquiet fold.
Last night I took an alternative drum performance (notably it lacked the triplet part), as well as two ukulele recordings and added them to the bass part.
Then this morning I edited out one bit that didn't seem to gel, so there's a little jump but it probably blends in with the other edits.
naviarhaiku515 – Last bloom before autumn
The haiku shared by Naviar this week was an opportunity to jam with myself.
Disquiet Junto 0619 Beat Accrual
The Junto instructions this week is to accrue a beat over time.
It seemed obvious to record the drums, which are sitting in the living room while my son rehearses for a music assessment.
naviarhaiku513 – a black dog
So I took the MIDI information and played it through a collection of Roland Boutique sound modules in the studio I've set up in my caravan.
Disquiet Junto 0618 Burying the Lede
The Disquiet Junto assignment is to "Turn old news into new music."
I searched Trove for an article about Griffith from 50 years ago.
The Bulletin was a journal that ran for over a century and a story mentioning Griffith appeared as soon as I search the Trove database for a publication from 1973.
However, this "local" story appeared to be linked only to the name Griffith, the rest seemed to be discussing the left-leaning factions across the Australian political landscape.
I took the Mac's text-to-speech software into Matriarch via an oscillator input, then jammed with the Mood Sound Studio.
It gets satisfyingly loud toward the end.
At the time it made sense since I've been looking at another copy of The
Bulletin in Griffith, but that printed copy came from 1899 or so and
sits in an old homestead which was used as a film set this week.
naviarhaiku512 – Endless echo
It surprised me to see it echoed one I wrote recently, as well as his account of cleaning his mother's place as that's the subject of a story that I began writing recently.
So I took the opportunity to record a jam on Moogs.
Disquiet Junto 0616 Definition Jam
The Disquiet Junto project this week asks participants to "render, through sound, the two different definitions" and explore the nuance in language.
I've been playing with a new synthsiser and thought I'd consider the definition of synthesis as "the combination of components or elements to form a connected whole."
So I've layered recordings of different patches on the synthesiser.
naviarhaiku511 – in dark autumn nights
I wanted to use my new keyboard and thought reaching out to the moon would sound like rising delays, while the autumnal setting suggested F minor for fall.
It was light by the time I recorded, then I layered up the two takes that sounded best together.
naviarhaiku510 – in pre-dawn darkness
Thinking back I can see that I read it earlier in the week and then associated the scene it describes with one I wrote in a recent short story, where pre-dawn rain was making percussive sounds on scrap metal.
My haiku might be:
in pre-dawn darkness
metal makes percussive sounds
rainfall in junkyard
Anyway, that's what led me to record this piece.
This week I'm traveling and had a couple of hours with my nephew's drums.
I recorded them first, using the Rode mic that attaches to my Nikon camera.
Then I quickly put together a chord progression that would suit the C key of my tongue drum, then recorded a couple of takes on that instrument.
It would've been good to add a bass but the ukulele and tongue drum were the only instruments at hand.
Disquiet Junto 0614 Alternate Route
The Disquiet Junto this week prompted me to plug in a few previously unrecorded instruments.
This piece was composed in April, when I wrote a bunch of tracks and then had some computer problems.
I recently bought a Yamaha digital piano and used it with an Alesis SR-16 and Bastl Softpop 2.
Disquiet Junto 0612 Drum Vector
The Disquiet Junto assignment this week is to "Walk the listener through variations on the same percussive instrument."
I decided to quickly record on the drumkit, using the camera's built-in mic without rehearsal.
Disquiet Junto 0611 Music That Listens to Itself
The Disquiet Junto assignment this week is to "Record a piece of music that repurposes itself as it proceeds."
I pondered that directive for while, at first thinking it was about establishing a leitmotif, then reading the detail about effects:
From reverb to echo to tape loops to granular synthesis to accessing a buffer, various techniques serve such a compositional and performance purpose. Consider a means to achieve this result.
This led me to use my gated effects with two chords to draw attention to how the different pedals are triggered by the drumloop to shape the ukulele part.
The effects chain splits an octave below and above, while the original part goes to the Empress Zoia pedal with the "Loopforest" preset.
On the octave below is a Mainframe bitcrusher and Bass Synth, while the octave above goes through a stereo chorus and into the Modrex.
The drumloop is going through a Platform compressor and Generation Loss, before being filtered by a Mini Kaoss Pad.
naviarhaiku504 – Lazing in shadows
Disquiet Junto 0609 Speed Limit Pt 1
The Disquiet Junto instruction is to "Record a simple track at 60 BPM in 4/4 that will be reworked subsequently by other musicians."
naviarhaiku503 – Caterpillar
Disquiet Junto 0608 Nature-to-Text
As someone, I think Brian Eno, once said “Honour thy error as a hidden intention.”
When I read the Junto instructions I thought they said to use a text-to-speech tool to turn a field recording into instructions for a composition.
Anyway, it led me to plan to use lines from my micro-journal with a recent field recording to start a composition.
After I double-checked the assignment and realised my error, I tried Youtube's auto-subtitles and Macwhisper but couldn't use a speech-to-text tool to turn a field recording into instructions.
So, I took the instruction to also include considering Eno and his hidden intention is where that recording landed.
Disquiet Junto 0607 Silence Wave
There’s just one step to this project:
Compose a piece of music in which the relative amount of sound to silence starts at zero (that is, no sound), rises to approximately 40 percent (that is, 60 percent silent) and returns to zero again. Keep the pace fairly steady.
I returned on the upright bass to the piece I first recorded.
Disquiet Junto 0606 Three to One
The project this week is to "Compose a piece of music with three times as much silence as sound."
Once again I reached for the guitar and began recording while waiting for my son to return home.
I recorded a few takes but the camera battery ran out before completing the final.
This version is the first take and I picked it as it has more silence.
In post-production I added some tape delay and reverb, as well as tube-style saturation.
Disquiet Junto 0605 Fifty Fifty
The Disquiet Junto prompt this week is to "Compose a piece of music with as much silence as notes."
It came from a suggestion I made to Marc after hearing Mozart on the radio while driving to work.
Ed Le Brocq had introduced the piece observing that it had as much silence as notes and it seemed perfect for a Junto exercise, particularly since I've found myself frustrated by making busy music.
(And, as an aside, I read Ed's book 'Whole Notes' recently and enjoyed it. One of the volunteers at the museum where I work had recommended it, saying all of the members of her ukulele group had liked it.)
Anyway, I found half an hour this morning to set-up a camera on the balcony of my out-laws place outside Wagga and recorded a few takes.
This evening I've tried to improve the sound quality by EQ-ing away higher frequencies and sneaking a bit of tape warble and delay, as well as compression.
And, I've got to add, I was pleased to read this from Marc in the Junto email:
Major thanks to Jason Richardson, aka Bassling, for having proposed this week's project. There may not be another person who's recorded as many Junto projects as Jason has, and so he has a unique sense of them. He interviewed me back in 2017 for Cyclic Defrost, and I learned quite a bit about the Junto myself during the conversation. I think frequently about an observation he made, in the context of one of his questions: "Junto themes seem to have proportion to daily life, with a number about sleeping, waking, eating, walking, etc." I couldn't agree more.
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