Being in the music business

Disquiet Junto 0360 Fishbowl Progressions

The Disquiet Junto this week asks for a piece of music in which:

the relative position and movement of sounds are as important to compositional development as are melody, harmony, and rhythm.

Types of current musical artists

South of Taxi

White Toast

Here's another remix of the recent 12-hour Junto.

Where I took direction from Junto number 166, Slow By Steps, for the previous remix, this one takes direction from Junto 332, Lucky Numbers.

I've selected files to include in the remix based on the Powerball results.

Disquiet Junto 0359 Broken Clock

The Junto this week involves remixing an earlier activity.

I'd been meaning to try remixing my recording for that activity and already had an idea to revisit an even earlier Junto for directions, see Slow By Steps here.

The guitar part in my recording seemed suited for slowing a short loop, and I went back to the original recordings to use two takes.

Drum kitted out

Had a minor epiphany this week when I realised that owning two drum kits means I can have one really big drum kit.

Now adjusting my fills for those extra toms and cymbals.

Disquiet Junto 0358 Rhythm + Blue(s)

I've taken the Junto instructions literally this week and put a blue shading on video of drumming.

Emily Yang on ambient

Ambient music is perhaps sort of a record of cultural exhaustion, of being caught in situations that seem to demand a collapse of context. It seems to say — if we have found our present cultural landscape unlivable, the best we can do is create miniatures of it for ourselves.

naviarhaiku252 – The wire fence is tall

The haiku shared by Naviar Records brought to mind memories of my uncle Neil.

He spent a month at Bathurst Jail for refusing to pay a fine for having rabbits on his property.

That institution had a fearsome reputation and Neil spoke of hearing unsettling things at night.

In my mind those things might've been the stories of beatings by prison guards that have heard elsewhere.

Disquiet Junto 0357 Clock Work

The Assignment: Base a piece of music on your previous 12 hours

As I read the Junto email, I’d just seen my kids onto the school bus after making them breakfast.

The previous 12 hours had been dominated by around eight and half hours of sleep.

Other activities included coffee, muesli, lovemaking and having a bath.

I began writing lyrics to describe a dream but didn’t record them.

When I started writing the song for sleep, I picked the acoustic guitar.

At first I worried about noise, then realised background noise was important.

So I recorded all the guitar in the backyard to get sounds from throughout the 12 hours.

Disquiet Junto 0356 Ground Swell

The Junto this week asks for a recording of a place made with layers to create unease.

I'm not sure I understood the instruction but had an idea of a place where I've been frightened and used a recording of my clothesline to create unease.

My house is on the wrong side of the tracks and, while there are routes to get to town, the quickest journey requires negotiating the railway.

This usually isn't difficult but with small children, it can prove challenging.

The biggest fright was having a train round the corner while my son was trying to get his bike over the tracks.

When he was younger, I'd read a Thomas the Tank Engine story to him about a ghost train.

It was an image that combined with this project, although it might not be obvious.

I liked the idea of being stuck on the tracks in some sort of nightmare scenario.

Aaron Levy on the role of artists

The role of artist is to occupy precisely this position of exchange, unclarity, and discomfort; maneuvering along a ‘liminal axis,’ the artist accesses a landscape of potentiality.

Adrock rocking the Maestro

Pic from the New York Times' interview with the remaining Beastie Boys, showing a Maestro pedal.

Disquiet Junto 0355 Sonic Vivisection

The Disquiet Junto this week asks participants to "consider the concept of vivisection" by operating "with incisions on a live sound in real time."

At first I thought about live dub, as I've been remembering watching the Mad Professor perform at Vibes On A Summers Day in Bondi some years ago.

Then I remembered my drum-triggered effects rig and thought I'd loop some chords I've been playing on my ukulele.

There's a couple of small incisions, to edit out the click-track on the Jamman looping pedal and then to add a short vocal sample.

The title comes from a piece of graffiti I used to see in the Woden Plaza Bus Interchange last century.

Still reigning

Toasted

Back when I decided to stop uploading tracks to Soundcloud, I started filming toasted sandwiches as a way to share music on Youtube.

This is my latest jam.

Pleasant electro rock music with punchy rhythm

Neko Case on ear fatigue

Ear fatigue is real. There's a certain point in the day where every frequency in my voice has a witness protection program box over it, and I can't hear that frequency any more. It's time to go. It's like when you look at a certain color too long and all you see is the opposite color on the spectrum because the cones in your eyes have become fatigued; they cannot maintain that level of intensity anymore.

Another Lifetime