Disquiet Junto 0655 Soothing Sounds II
The Disquiet Junto project this week asks for music for babies.
I'd begun thinking through different ideas and then spoke with my oldest son, who's home from uni for the holidays.
As I explained the Junto project I remembered my attempts to soothe him as an infant.
First-time fathers learn a number of lessons, from how hospitals view them as a liability to feeling inadequate when a baby wants to be fed.
I can't remember how I arrived at this technique but it sometimes worked.
I would hold my baby close and sing while turning on the spot.
The key lesson I would impart to first-time fathers is the importance of skin-to-skin contact at every opportunity.
With my first child I was too worried to hold him, but subsequent kids got stuck to my chest at the first opportunity and it seemed as though they knew who I was much earlier.
It's not easy being a father and working through the changing dynamic from being a couple to becoming a family.
The best thing is to be ready to provide comfort, ensure your partner has a glass of water during breastfeeding and let go of expectations.
That last point is one that becomes obvious as soon as you enter the hospital and the birth plan is forgotten as the staff do what they think needs to be done to cure the pregnancy.
As you become accustomed to being the least important person in the room, you begin a journey that's different for everyone but entirely your own opportunity to revisit your own upbringing with a new perspective.
It's no wonder that many relationships don't survive this shift, so be ready to play a new role and marvel at the little joys as they arrive.
The smell of the newborn; the moment you feel they see you; that first smile; and then the months of teething,
And shit -- so much shit.
Literal, metaphorical and it's a fertiliser that makes life grow.
Disquiet Junto 0653 Break a Rule
The Disquiet Junto project this week asks participants "Stop doing something you always do."
As a longtime contributor to the Junto, I have shared so much of my life in various recordings.
If you were to go through previous projects you'd find everything from making my favourite dish (kimchi) through to having a bath and also making love.
There really isn't much that I haven't already tried and shared with the Disquiet community!
I arrived at the idea of not contributing to the Junto this week, however it seemed as though that would go without notice if I didn't record something for the prompt.
So I've arrived at the idea of sharing an update on a recent activity that's taken me in a different direction and have decided that I won't publish it on the forum where contributors are encouraged to share.
naviarhaiku547 – night deepening…
As for the video, it's another that I downloaded from Archive.org for a different project and was available on my desktop.
Disquiet Junto 0652 By the Tale
The Disquiet Junto project this week is to "Set a favorite story to music."
My partner suggested that I should use my Totem Story, which I wrote last year and like a lot but it got a mixed reaction from the judges of a competition.
(They thought it was inappropriate for me to write from a First Nations' perspective, which I can understand is not my experience to represent even if it is historical fiction.)
Anyway, recently I've been playing with the M-Tron Pro VST and used it for all the instrumentation except the drums.
I was aiming for a sense of uncertainty, as well as incorporating a human voice and obviously the organ is there for the religious moments.
The video came from Archive.org and was something I had on hand that seemed to suit the music, although it has nothing to do with the story.
naviarhaiku546 – The figure of a man
It features a man addressing a different sort of storm and offered a good challenge to remix the material into a song.
Disquiet Junto 0651 Why Compute?
It was my response to this week’s prompt:
Lewis asks, “Why do we want our computers to improvise?”
This week’s project: record a piece of music that responds in some way to Lewis’ question.
I often use the Random effect, as it adds little variations to the loops I make.
Today I ramped the effect up to 100% and found that Ableton Live's onboard instruments started to crap themselves.
So I sent the information out to my Roland Boutique rack and recorded the results.
Dunno, weirdly it doesn't seem so unpredictable.
Maybe I should've shifted a few more parameters?
Disquiet Junto 0650 Doppler, Interrupted
The Disquiet Junto project this week asks participants to "Record a piece of music in which a passing siren blossoms into something else entirely."
I've used my tenor guitar with some pedals that were at hand, although the recording is noisy in a way that I didn't intend -- maybe the lights?
naviarhaiku544 – out of my dreams
This weekend I fitted a double-kick pedal to a bongo drum and tuned the bass banjo, then spent days jamming on riffs.
Eventually my partner ventured that it needed something and suggested the frog.
Disquiet Junto 0649 Concerto for [ ]
The Junto prompt led me to read a little about concerto and I got the impression that it's been one of those types of events where people have shown flair in ways.
So I started pondering what I'd want to see given the solo performer treatment and pulled out my Omnichord thinking that I could finally write a song that showcased electric toothbrushes.
Then I began to ponder my lead instrument and looked around a bit more, before arriving at the video of cowbells. These are near my office and sometimes I hear visitors using them.
So I added a beat, as one does, then thought what sounds would support a cowbell solo?
naviarhaiku543 – rain on the cherry blossoms
Disquiet Junto 0648 Shadow Boxing
This competition has given me a focus on the rehabilitation of Griffith's auxillary water tank, as I've sketched it in various media as the scaffolding progressed to the current protective skin.
So the idea of shadow boxing seemed to be picking a musical fight. Today I assembled a scaffold of my own and hit the record button.
You can see I've used Behringer's 606 and 303 with Chase Bliss' Condor and Generation Loss pedals, as well as a Korg FM Volca and a Shure SM7.
naviarhaiku542 – sudden dazzling glare
I've been jamming with a drum machine and a couple of Chase Bliss pedals, so I recorded a couple of takes and this is the second.
Disquiet Junto 0647 Day Drone
The Junto project this week is to "Make some daylight drones for Drone Day."
This took me about five minutes.
My son dismissed the results as "New Age-y" but that seemed appropriate to me.
The video shows a pair of Rainbow Lorikeets that were at the Museum the other week, which is a bit unusual but not the first time I've seen this species in the Riverina.
Disquiet Junto 0646 Empty Orchestra
The Disquiet Junto prompt this week is to interpret the literal translation of “karaoke.”
This idea of an an 'empty orchestra' led me to share a track that I sequenced using MIDI in Ableton Live.
It has some orchestral instruments, particularly viola and cello, as well as being empty through not featuring human musicians.
I've used a short video from a rockpool at Valla Beach to add interest.
naviarhaiku541 – heat in waves
At the time the delay felt overdone, but the waves of heat as angry reverberations made it seem appropriate for this.
Warren Ellis on sandwiches
If I had a sandwich named after me, I think that would be the height of my career. Who wouldn’t want a sandwich named after them? I do like a straight butter and banana sandwich. It’s incredible. That was one of the culinary highlights of my childhood, with a tin of tomato soup. My father swore the greatest sandwich that he had in his life was whipped cream, banana and sliced ham. I don’t eat meat so I would say whipped cream and banana on a pillowy white bread.
Disquiet Junto 0645 Speed Trap
The Junto prompt this week is:
Record something, slow it down, and then record over it.
I took an unused take of the drums from last week, then added tenor guitar and upright electric.
The tenor was recorded through Chase Bliss Audio Condor Mk.I and Warped Vinyl Mk.II pedals, then I added a tape-style delay while mixing.
Music wants to be free
"People think you’re a weirdo if your happiness doesn’t depend on the size of your bank account. So you must have balls of steel to do arts. It’s not that bad if you have a few like-minded people around, though.”
Music has always had the tantalising effect of being simultaneously within reach and yet unachievable.
Before Thomas Edison developed and marketed the technology to record sound, music was captured in notation and sheet music and it was a big business.
The concept of musical copyright had its beginnings in the reign of King Henry VIII of England (1491-1547) who licensed the printing of music.
This means that for centuries, if you had a favourite song, you either had to play it yourself or be fortunate enough to pay someone else.
Otherwise you might only hear the song maybe a few times in your whole life.
Then Edison's inventions led from wax cylinders to the discs that were an actual record of the session where the musicians played together.
After the Second World War a new market category developed, where teenagers with disposable incomes became a focus of the recording industry and a genre now known as Rock n' Roll developed.
I have a theory that the introduction of tape as a recording medium played a role, particularly the saturation on transients like the drum hits and expressive singing.
Then guitarists wanted that energy and it went from The Kinks cutting their speakers with razor blades to the development of distortion effects for Black Sabbath.
In many ways Rock n' Roll became the model for subsequent genres, particularly the structures used for popular music but also the marketing.
There was your basic 12-bar blues, if you weren't afraid of "black" music, as well as the Skiffle phenomenon that might've given musicians like Jimmy Page an introduction to playing an instrument before he took inspiration from those earlier Blues songs.
In my lifetime I've heard rap music starting to use choruses through the influence of LL Cool J and producer Rick Rubin, through to rave music similarly adopting these song structures as it moves from illegal gatherings to nightclubs and then TV advertising.
I suspect it was these structures that gave new sounds a recogniseable shape for the ears of consumers.
This will be the challenge for musicians, balancing the strangeness of new sounds with serving it up in a shape that can fit the model of a song.
So I sympathise with those musicians who find their investment in producing a cultural product is offering diminishing returns.
However, I wonder whether we aren't seeing a return to earlier forms of music consumption.
Back to a time when music was almost incidental to most lives in the sense that peak live experiences of a favourite song were limited.
As well as recorded music offering little return, but maybe there'll be new models of patronage.
This means the opportunities for many professional musicians are likely peripheral to their own aspirations, such as the local identity who runs the musical instrument shop.
Or someone like me who is making sense of the Edison-branded wax cylinders in a community museum.
We can take our love of music and find the ways it opens opportunities to learn.
Playing music is a wonderful social experience and maybe it's misleading to think we should be monetising all of our passions?
Disquiet Junto 0644 Event Horizon
The Junto project is to record music for a party and it happened to coincide with my family leaving me at home alone.
That would’ve been my cue to have a party, but I had responsibilities such as packing an exhibition and pitching a TED talk.
I’d been looking for an opportunity to record the drum kit, which will be moved in the next month so we can use the fire when the cold weather starts.
When the Junto instructions arrived I had the chorus riff, so set about adding a couple of chords for the verses and wrote lyrics on Friday.
Then I quickly MIDI’d a sketch to play along with and recorded the drums and guitar on Saturday morning.
I gave myself three takes for each and edited these to record the bass and vocals today.
There’s a bit of editing to smooth out my performances, as well as adding a second guitar part and double-tracked chorus from earlier takes.
My plan was to record a blues track, as I’ve been thinking about Ethan Hein’s song lesson in recent weeks and bending notes.
Disquiet Junto 0643 Stone Out of Focus
The Disquiet Junto this week takes inspiration from Yoko Ono, who wrote “Take the sound of the stone aging.”
I've used the gear that I brought on holiday to the coast and thought about the stones along the beach.
These will give a crunchy sound and glisten in the most beautiful colours, which become muted by the time I bring them back to the house.
The guitar swells like the surf and I gated the 303-style bass to bring the rhythm back to a slower pace, like a geological scale.
Then I took the MIDI part and ran it through a Live preset with gold in the title.
naviarhaiku538 – Only the moon remains
I found myself thinking about the pummelling of the surf, while jamming on the gear that I brought along to my holiday at the coast.
Dozer
The tone was thick and the lift switch brought in the higher frequencies, but my fretless sounded better without those.
naviarhaiku537 – Deep in the mountains
I've been on holiday at the beach and had recorded the chords using a Jamstik guitar, sending the MIDI to Ableton Live's electric keyboard instrument.
It's been a rainy day today, so I arranged those parts and then recorded my upright bass.
This is about the sixth take and I think I was getting a bit carried away as the bass part is probably too busy.
Anyway, it's been fun to make music and it helps justify all the equipment I packed!
Disquiet Junto 0642 Kick from Champagne
The Disquiet Junto project this week invites participants to make a techno track using kick drums made from the sound of something carbonated.
It stumped me for a few hours, as I'm on holiday at the coast and wasn't sure I could record a good pop even if I had a bottle of sparkling wine.
Then I remembered Archive.org and downloaded:
- https://archive.org/details/bigclive_20201107
- https://archive.org/details/VirtualWine-vwtip_060810_03_how_to_open_champagne936
- https://archive.org/details/twitter-1304429831409537024
These were edited in Ableton Live and used only the effects within that software.
I found the sparkling pops worked for the snare sound and also the bass part, but there was a sample of Clive putting down some bit of equipment that gave an okay kick sound.
With that in mind it's interesting that two of the three videos compared the pop of the cork to a farting noise.
After shaping up the loops and getting a rhythm going, I gave the track structure in Live's Arrangement view and added the vocal part since I liked Clive's commentary.
Deep listening to nature
Recently I heard a talk from Andrew Skeoch about his field recordings.
It was a thoughtful presentation that opened with audio he’d captured of the dawn chorus of birds in Victorian bushland.
Andrew shared a spectrogram with the birdcalls that showed their frequencies and then identified specific bird species to discuss their evolution and how this shaped their communications.
A cuckoo, for example, had a deeper call to reach other cuckoos as they were more geographically isolated species.
Other species engaged in a call and response that saw their birdsongs adapt to new melodies, which reflected my own recent experiences whistling with Pied Butcherbirds.
He spoke on the way some sounds will evade detection, while others include transients that help identify the location of the bird.
As the presentation neared the conclusion, Andrew reflected on the subjective experience of time to consider how different species in the landscape operate in different speeds.
He speculated that dragonflies, for example, live at a pace over a hundred times faster than humans.
To illustrate his point he slowed down the birdcall (but maintained pitch) of a small bird to demonstrate how more emotive their sequence sounded when we could identify the micro-phrases that constituted it.
As he ended Andrew played the recording again and this seemed magic the way it illustrated how much we'd learned since first hearing it.
I really enjoyed hearing his perspective and am grateful for the Murrumbidgee Field Naturalists for inviting Andrew to visit Leeton.
Disquiet Junto 0641 Re-re-re-re-revise
The Junto this week is to revise a recent track.
Lately I've been challenging myself to work in different time signatures, so this isn't the best example but maybe that's why it stood out.
After I'd tried permutations that made lottery numbers look sequential, I found myself pondering whether I'd lost something pursuing needless complexity in my compositions.
So I put together this track quickly and used the M-Tron VST for inspiration, particularly the disco bassline and a choir shaped the chord sequence.
When the Junto instructions arrived I decided to run the four MIDI parts through my Roland Boutique rack. I've got a lot of the Boutique range but mostly use the TR-06, JU-06, JX-08 and SE-02.
I found presets that sounded okay and then began experimenting with the arpeggiator and delay settings. Somewhere I found that fuzzy Juno button and then I realised the song needed more space for the delay, so I changed the sequence.
And I've been pondering that news from Cechnya about legislating tempo and realised this song would fail their censorship, although it means no harm to the Checnyan peoples.
This is the fourth take and it was the first where the feedback didn't totally get away from me.
I can't believe it's not synthesis
The song of the Antrarctic Weddell seal is wild!
You can see they have a massive range in the spectogram showing a big drop, so clearly their song has range as lower pitches use more energy.
Listening to it and I sense the reverberance of their singing underwater, that's the metallic ringing effect.
It might be clicks that become like lazer gun sounds, the latter being made tapping on metal wires so it might be the soundwave bouncing back through the water from the ice?
Wonder if this is their dawn chorus or maybe a seasonal song?
naviarhaiku535 – Come outside
Disquiet Junto 0640 Time Vault
The Junto this week is a surprising twist on the idea of a creative constraint.
It asks participants to hand over a track for eight months time!
So I got enthusiastic and misread the instruction for a “wordless” piece, but that’s okay I’ll use the track I wrote elsewhere but I made a demo.
As it is I have a different idea for a track that I desperately need to stop myself from whistling.
It’s the call of the Pied Butcherbirds, which I adore hearing at Griffith Pioneer Park Museum.
Over the last year I’ve recorded a few times where we exchange melodic phrases.
However, I shared these with the local Field Nats and heard in response that it is unethical to distract birds.
The argument is that wasting the birds time is not cool and actually I can dig it.
So here is a track I’ve made with my final Butcherbird whistling recording.
In it you can see the point where I realise that my provocations are crashing their party.
You can’t see but there were two birds basically finishing each other’s sentences.
Then I begin parroting them.
At one point I think one bird flies overhead to give me a stern look.
naviarhaiku534 – Pre-dawn inertia
The pre-dawn inertia that he identifies is a thing and also a rich metaphor, but I took it as a thing.
Solitaire
It was saved to my folder of music memes, but the more I look at it that the more it makes new meaning.
So many recordings I've over-twiddled with settings, so opening a round of Solitaire to occupy away some thought makes a lot of sense to me.
Disquiet Junto 0638 Center (3 of 3)
For the Disquiet Junto project this week I added to recordings from previous weeks.
Drums seemed an obvious contribution to make and, after listening through the tracks, I settled on 'Ataxophobia' by Encym and Jimmy Lem.
It took me a while to realise that I'd used Encym's track the week earlier, but by then I was almost finished.
naviarhaiku532 – Wordless
I liked the image of following a butterfly's shadown in the haiku shared by Naviar Records.
It'd be great to be able to film that movement, but it seems like it'd require some time in my garden.
Maybe that'd be a good thing, as it's starting to feel like autumn.
Anyway, this track is an example of my recent interest in 6/4 time signatures.
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