Magic in its earliest form is often referred to as “the art”. I believe this is completely literal. I believe that magic is art and that art, whether it be writing, music, sculpture, or any other form is literally magic. Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating symbols, words, or images, to achieve changes in consciousness. The very language about magic seems to be talking as much about writing or art as it is about supernatural events. A grimmoir for example, the book of spells is simply a fancy way of saying grammar. Indeed, to cast a spell, is simply to spell, to manipulate words, to change people's consciousness.
Disquiet Junto 0773 Garden Glitch
The Junto prompt this week is "Record a piece of music that sounds like a once healthy garden going to waste, growing wild, collapsing under its own weight, or some other form of decay."
It follows from the gardening analogy last week and brought to mind that I recorded three takes at that time.
I went back to the recordings and found the final take was somewhat unruly.
There was clipping, which led me to re-amp the guitar with the Woodrow emulation.
Then I added some reverb to give it more weight.
Disquiet Junto 0772 Garden Grow
The Junto this week is "Tend to your music like Brian Eno might."
Brian Eno has a lot of cool things to say about making stuff.
I remember the gardening idea was one I found along with sprouting about generative systems.
This board let me plant a few seeds, starting with a loop on the Blooper pedal and then a shorter one on the Mood.
Afterward I added a couple of synth parts, which were generated as MIDI in Live.
I kept adding things and it probably needs a prune to open it up a bit and let the light back in.
naviarhaiku666 – speak of the devil!
I put these Chase Bliss effects together a few months ago, then set up the board with two Habit pedals.
This one gets unlikely sounds from my ukulele, because the loop is tuned down two octaves and made into a synth sound while the other output puts Lossy into Mood.
Disquiet Junto 0771 Phase Incident
The Junto prompt this week celebrates Steve Reich’s 90th birthday, which is cool because I enjoyed his 80th.
This recording developed as a collaboration with my partner Jo, who contributes to my Junto recordings and only occasionally appears in them but often shares a perspective along the way.
When the Disquiet prompt arrived I gave Jo a quick background on Reich and realised how much of his work I've enjoyed.
I wasn't interested in singing Happy Birthday, but Jo thought there was a section in it worth looping and I decided it'd be more enjoyable to work with her voice.
Tim Prebble discussed phasing experiments recently and, at that time, I'd pondered why would he use video editing software?
I realised that it made sense to try it because, where audio software works in milliseconds, it would adjust loops by frames and that could be 24-60th second easily.
Somehow the idea of changing in those increments seemed easier to manage!
So I made a quick recording with Jo using my Nikon and Rode mic, then opened FCP for the first time in ages.
I picked a six-second section and multiplied it, then shortened sections by 2-3 frames.
This edit was placed against a section with only six-second loops and it sounded close to something resembling my memory of Reich's Rain piece -- dunno, I should go back and listen to him again.
Anyway, I put the video into Ableton Live and ended up phase-cancelling out some of the vocal so that I could add another track!
Then I added reverb and compression and some percussion loops.
Now I'm wondering if it should be remixed?
Disquiet Junto 0770 Reverb x Reverb
The assignment is to: "Use some reverb. Then use some more."
I grabbed the guitars that I've been jamming with recently through Chase Bliss pedals driven with an Omnichord.
There's a ukulele (with a Klon clone) and a bass that each have a Habit pedal, as well as a 626 drum machine going through Generation Loss and the ride has Onward.
With a plan to add reverb, I recorded four mono tracks with these pedals and edited them a little (like dropping out drums in places).
There was some reverb added, like Lossy on the bass, then two reverbs added with busses.
These were Capitol and Motown emulations on guitars and drums, with some cross-pollination.
Normally I probably wouldn't add so much reverb to bass, but I think it sits okay.
Disquiet Junto 0769 Let's Poetic
The prompt for the Junto this week is "Do something poetic."
It brought to mind a file in my folder of lyrics that developed from a poem about a swamp.
Fivebough Wetland is a significant site for birds and I had a piece published that recalled a visit before sunrise.
Today I recorded those lyrics and put them to a file in my folder of song ideas.
Disquiet Junto 0768 Remix Therapy
The Assignment: Do yourself a favor and re-work it out.
There is one step for this project: Take care of yourself by remixing something.
Lately I’ve been wondering about how older music seems kinda reserved.
Partly it was prompted by a friend commenting on the Angry Women Music at a local concert.
Anyway, I recorded the track here and had been wondering if it’s better to make music with less angst?
So, as a way of working out my trauma with a remix, I answered that question “always”
Disquiet Junto 0767 Your Move
The Junto this week is to "Record background music to have playing while playing a specific board game."
Disquiet Junto 0766 Rock Math
Mathematics is wasted on the young.
The Junto this week asks one to consider how a label like "math rock" might be subdivided, such as algebra or calculus.
I feel as though I am not familiar with either the genre or the discipline to give math the attention it deserves.
In my recent foray into teaching I found the subject to be a lot more interesting than I remembered of my time in school.
To begin I asked advice of my family and it seemed to provide a distinctly wide-ranging survey of the field.
My son studies extended mathematics in high school and began pondering co-sine equations as a way to generate sound, which was more advanced than I was willing to consider.
In contrast my partner chuckled at the thought of the "dummy maths" class and this seemed better suited for rock.
The little I know of "math rock" is the idea of using varying time signatures in composition and I really enjoy layering loops of differing lengths for the generative quality it adds.
However, my existing ideas were all a bit jazzy for rock.
So I began making riffs and that led me to add a 303, because it always seems a way to add energy to MIDI instrumentation and I think it rocks.
The public domain footage from Archive seemed perfect for the "dummy" class flavour and also captured something of my new found interest in mathematics.
naviarhaiku660 – shrine fence
Disquiet Junto 0765 Sonic Kin
The Junto assignment this week is to "Give space to the unheard voices of animals."
I sometimes hear dogs in the neighbourhood complaining on cold mornings.
This morning I was having a conversation with my partner that brought to mind the unhappiness of animals and how we live in an area characterised by industrial agriculture.
For example, nearby there are hundreds of sheds that surround the largest chicken-processing facility in the southern hemisphere.
So my mind started pondering giving a voice for animals and I wrote lyrics, then constructed a song.
Disquiet Junto 0764 Zoo Review
There is one step for the project: "Since the Disquiet Junto is a community, create the sense of an animal communal gathering by combining processed animal sounds into an original recording."
Honestly, at first I wasn't sure that I needed to do the Junto activity this week.
I've recorded a similar sort of song about 20 years ago and didn't think I could improve on it.
So I settled on seven creatures that I thought I could imitate and recorded myself.
Then it was a matter of gating and looping and selecting effects to create a short tune.
naviarhaiku659 – bright enough
naviarhaiku658 – Among bare branches
So I asked a large-language model to consider the poem and interpret it as song lyrics.
The first response didn't really grab me, but it had the line "my ears yawn open" which I liked.
Then I pondered the idea of going out on a limb and the sense of the sky being a view of the unknown.
This morning I finished writing and recorded lyrics using a simple melody and tried a few musical ideas before settling on a dancefloor banger.
Disquiet Junto 0763 3 Pedestals
The Junto instruction this week is to "Make music with three sounds: one you love, one you dislike, and one you consider to be neutral."
I started playing with this typewriter instructional movie for a different song.
The first sound with the periscope comes from the beginning and is one I love, while the stopwatch is neutral and the soundtrack I dislike.
You can hear that in how much I manipulate them, as the soundtrack is divided into two to be repitched and gated while the other parts largely stay recognisable.
naviarhaiku657 – In the mountain village
I have the fire burning but it's not cold enough for snow, so rain is falling.
There was a melody in my head that I quickly arranged and arrived at something that sound to me a bit like one of Aphex Twin's earlier (so-called) Ambient Works.
This led me to play around with the timing of the parts as the piece progresses.
Disquiet Junto 0762 Lunch Break
The assignment is to "Make music intended to be listened to in the background while one is reading in the middle of the day."
I don't normally like music while reading, so I asked Google and it recommended lo-fi beats.
This prompted a little bit of pondering, since the crunchy beats seemed at odds with background listening.
Investigation of different kits in Live led me to one that was "darker" sounding but had too much reverb, which was addressed with a gate.
Then I noodled around on the computer keyboard to play a bassline and added effects to make it darker too.
It sounded good, but I knew it needed something more and time was short as my family wanted to watch another instalment of Dune -- because my son seems to insist in only sitting still long enough for half an hour at a time.
To speed things up I repurposed the bass as a keyboard part, starting it at a different point and pitching it up a few octaves.
The video was shot last weekend while visiting Dr Greg Pritchard in Natimuk, where I had the most delightful crap accompanied by the kaleidoscopes he has sitting in the bathroom.
(If you're looking for an artist residency, then I recommend his studio and the nearby Mount Arapiles is also inspiring for rock climbers.)
Tapewarp with feedback amplifier
Interesting instrument, I think.
The way the feedback saturates with the vibrations on the tape reminds me how much I liked hearing Alan Lamb's "wires" through a polystyrene box.
And the visual sense of folding the tape for pitch makes it look like driving the reins on a runaway stagecoach.
Disquiet Junto 0761 When Doves Smile
The Junto assignment this week is to "Make music for (anonymously) someone who’s angered or disappointed you."
A magpie-lark (Grallina cyanoleuca) is known locally as a pee-wee and it isn't a big bird, but it will act aggressively toward larger birds and even people.
So I was watching a pee-wee swooping at a hawk on the drive home from the shops and started singing about it to my partner.
She was amused and I typed up my lyrics when I got home, then the Junto instructions arrived that night and the bird theme made me think it'd be fun to record the song.
It's directed at some people in my neighbourhood who've been cutting down trees recently.
The line "birdy peep" imitates a call I've heard from pee-wees, but also is a rallying cry for those who would like to see the bird habitat protected.
Sensitivity settings
My favourite audio effect is a gate and playing with the threshold brings out dynamics in parts.
Communication is imperfect. What’s being offered and what’s received don’t always match. Borrowing from my recent toe-dipping into the world of audio engineering, I’ve installed a few new signal-processing tools for navigating life: Two knobs and a fader. The first knob is labelled FEEDBACK. Feedback can be useful. It can help us understand how we’re being perceived, including the moments when that perception doesn’t align with our own sense of self. There is, of course, another kind of feedback. When a microphone passes in front of a speaker and creates a loop of increasingly ugly NOISE. When that happens, I’m learning to reach for the feedback knob and turn it down a little. Beside it is another knob labelled SENSITIVITY. Sometimes that one can come down a touch too. And while I was installing the new equipment, I added a fader labelled SELF-LOVE. Somewhat magically, as the feedback and sensitivity come down, I’ve noticed the self-love fader creeping up. Discerning what is your shit and what belongs to somebody else is a lifelong practice. I’m feeling a little more ease navigating it with these new tools
Disquiet Junto 0760 Harness the Light
The assignment is to "Use audio of a light bulb to express the pervasiveness of energy."
Musikfestival Bern shared an audio sample by musician and media artist Michael Vorfeld, which I manipulated and then added video from a Chocolate Factory fire in Marrickville.
Disquiet Junto 0759 Rock Music
The assignment this week is to "Make music with nothing but rocks."
I recorded a selection of stones, mostly collected from Valla Beach, along with a couple of bricks.
These I edited in Ableton Live, repitching most, as well as adding a resonator and Sinevibes Reactor for the bass part.
Disquiet Junto 0758 Background Noise
The Junto assignment this week is to "Play into the distraction."
My Sunday morning routine includes watching ABC's Insiders program about Australian politics, which this week featured a distraction in the form of discussion of the Prime Minister's appearance on a podcast.
I should declare at this point that I have never subscribed to a podcast and don't understand why I would want to listen to such inanities, particularly when a transcription can be consumed much quicker.
As the venerable Fourth Estate disappears with the loss of journalism, and takes with it the important function of digesting policy and presenting a range of views rather than regurgitating press releases, we're left with mindless entertainment such as social media rushing into the vacuum.
An example of the inanity of this situation was provided in the distraction that followed Anthony Albanese's admission that he fancied Kylie Minogue, which is surprising because I think it would unAustralian to say one doesn't admire her contributions to popular culture that continue over decades.
So I found myself playing the blues as the esteemed journalists on the Insiders couch discussed the depths plumbed by the Prime Minister as a range of other significant policy discussions were disregarded without any acknowledgement of Ms Minogue's undeniable sex appeal.
naviarhaiku653 – through the keyhole
I've been playing with the idea of using two Chase Bliss Habit pedals as a way of providing instrumentation.
Originally this was patched for my double-neck guitar, but I thought I'd try the Nukulele for this piece.
Great gates
I believe that gating is the future.
The simple binary effect of opening and closing a signal is one at the start of production for me.
In my remixing of playgrounds it was a way to isolate tones, then manipulate them.
Those
lingering metal notes from old slides, in particular, became so much
more usable with this approach before pitching them into key and adding
delay or reverb.
When I moved to recording
drums the gates became a way to remove the room sound, before adding a
studio reverb modelled on a more famous room.
One
of the most creative ways I've used gates was to run a sequencer through a crossover, then have the kick open a pitched-down treatment
while the hats opened a pitched up one.
I would
strum a chord and suddenly a bassline would pulse while a rhythmic
urgency pulsed, giving my simple playing a feeling like making live
techno.
Then I got
interested in how Rainger FX had used a gate in a range of pedals to
make the effect part of expression in my playing.
It
prompted me to look at the pedals I had that weren't being used with
new eyes and the B pedal board suddenly became the one I was using the
most.
Now I looking at the range of stutter
effects and wondering how even more variety can be incorporated,
especially now I'm thinking about a pedal board for a double-neck
instrument.
I can't believe there aren't more
guitar pedals with a crossover effect, but then again, I'm also
surprised there aren't more using gates.
Guitarspiration
I think it's the most audacious instrument that I've seen in years, with the resonant strings crossing over all those extra pickups.
It gives me hope that something as much as a mainstay as the Stratocaster design can still develop, because so much of contemporary culture seems stuck looking backwards.
And it reminds me there are a pile of pickguards and guitar bodies that are waiting for me to do something different.
My second double-neck
Disquiet Junto 0757 Screen Time
The assignment this week is to "Interpret [a] gauzy window treatment as an audio effect."
My first impulse was to record the guitar set-up I recently plugged together that uses a Chase Bliss Audio Lossy pedal, but my kids are home and I haven't much opportunity to jam to arrive at something worth recording.
So I wasn't sure I'd respond to the Junto, until I watched Hamnet with my daughter last night.
There's a moment after the death of the titular character where he's shown beyond veil of death and it's literally filmed through a dark piece of cloth.
(Hopefully that's not a spoiler for anyone but, frankly, if you didn't already know that the death of Shakespeare's son Hamnet has been thought to have contributed to his play Hamlet then it's probably not a film you'll be watching anyway!)
This led me to ponder whether the window gauze might be something more than a filter or a gate?
Also, this morning my Facebook Memories included the Junto track Beatin' Leeton from six years ago that I thought would be good material to manipulate.
From there my idea was that going beyond the veil in this case is to use Ableton Live's convert to MIDI functions as a way to go beyond the audio tracks, with bass and drum parts generated with those transcriptions being fed into arpeggiators as well as the aforementioned effects.
Look at the size of that thing!
The face of my delivery guy, Eric, came to mind and I really couldn't.
One wonders if it has inside it a speaker and one end and a mic at the other, or maybe a really big spring?
A wit elsewhere remarked that it is a room reverb, but I don't think I could fit my drums inside.
Does music create boundaries?
Susan Rogers, a recording engineer turned academic, once said to me that the future of music lies in timbre, which is where the abstract notion of notes becomes so much more engaging through the inflections of instruments and the memories they create and prompt.
Disquiet Junto 0755 Give Way
A couple of weeks ago, after Marc posted Junto 753 interpreting the
traffic sign, I was walking to the shops and pondered the "two tracks"
message on the Give Way sign outside the Leeton Rice Mill.
It's not the first time this sign has given me reason to pause and ponder, see https://showcasejase.
So
I sent it to Marc as a suggestion for a Junto and we considered
options, with me promoting a broad interpretation that ranged from
literally having two tracks giving way to each other through to arguing a
Wayne's World-esque "Way!" could also be valid.
In that discussion I also noted that
in the USA a "give way" sign is phrased as "yield" and knew it would
appeal to Marc, because I think one of the fun aspects of the Junto
community are those little insights one gains into other's lives and our locations in this small world we share.
The
various meanings of the word "yield" have become more significant in my
interpretation, which should become apparent by the end of this
reflection.
At the time I resisted pointing out
how the "two tracks" message is erroneous, as a railway track uses two
rails and this particular site has two railway tracks that the road
crosses, which became part of the interpretation that ended up informing
my track for this prompt by using four tracks.
So it's two tracks combined, giving way to another two tracks combined.
Since my exchange with Marc I noticed this Junto project would be my 500th video responding to a weekly prompt from Disquiet.
It's a surprising number, but the biglyness reflects how much enjoyment I've gained from these activities over the years.
Yesterday
I thought I'd look over my playlist and see what suggested itself for
the activity this week, finding a few things that seemed relevant to the
location.
The first is a recording made from
close to the site of the Give Way sign that responded to a
project proposed by my compatriot and sometime fellow Cyclic Defrost contributor, Kate Carr.
That
was Junto number 218, and my video shows the Rice Cooperative site that
adds a distinctive hum through most of the year in my town of Leeton,
New South Wales.
Rice is the crop that secured a
future for the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area, where Leeton was planned
as an administrative centre, and it was proposed by the manager of the
fruit cannery who the road Brady Way is named for.
Around
the site of the Give Way sign the road Brady Way becomes Railway Avenue, and
then later becomes Oak Street around where a bridge crosses the tracks,
but none of this is very clear and that's another surprising thing
about the location.
I often think this area in
front of the Rice Cooperative is one of the wildest roads I've driven,
because when you turn the corner you can be travelling at 60km/h and be
confronted by a long freight train in your path or sometimes a B-triple truck on the wrong side
of the road as it turns out from the weighbridge.
You will also find trucks parked
wherever they please, including in the area between the two train tracks opposite to the old cindercrete railway station.
It
really surprises me that the road traffic authority haven't taken more
interest in this area, but I suspect the local council realise that it
would impact on the travel of residents as well as the traffic
servicing the Coop.
By the way, you might sometimes eat
some of the products from this site, as it's marketed as Sunrice and is a
significant Australian brand with a corporate headquarters in town too.
Anyway, the
second of my two tracks is 'Riverside' from Junto 284 and I think I
remember that involved manipulating samples made from an artist working
with river-based clay.
At that time I'd been
reflecting in a soundtrack for an exhibition how the local Murrumbidgee River is part of exports with the industrial agriculture in our region, and thought to
illustrate my track with water escaping from the Coop on a cool night.
The next two tracks used this week are also from Junto projects and there are few ways that the first two give way as I
used a variety of filtering techniques, including EQ and sidechain
compression, as well as effects from Goodhertz and Unfiltered Audio.
These are automated to increase throughout the transition.
The
drums were taken from an early of iteration of the Junto trio projects, number 429, and a personal favourite as they prompted a wonderful spoken response from the poet Sam
Knot.
The footage of the train travelling
through the next railway crossing heading east from the one outside the
Coop came from a self-initiated project I started in 2011 to celebrate
the centenary of Leeton, see https://www.youtube.com/
That video from Ramponi Park was used in Junto project 635, which I think might have
been a direction to use a field recording to give shape to a musical
composition.
In
hindsight, those tracks I made manipulating contact mic recordings of
playgrounds were one of my formative experiences as a musician, and also
reflected in my first Junto video for project 29. (Although, surprising in retrospect,
at the time I wasn't sure it was appropriate and didn't publish it until years later).
See https://www.youtube.com/
The
decision to work with video developed into the "For 100 Years" album
and a series of screenings that I held, with some of that material
contributing to exhibitions at the Griffith Regional Art Gallery in 2019
and Wagga Wagga Art Gallery in 2020.
Recently I
asked ChatGPT what it knew about the artist Jason Richardson from Leeton and the discussion became skewed toward my electroacoustic work, which was innovative enough to gain the most interest online I guess.
Sorry, I seem to have rambled on, but it's been interesting for me to connect a few observations to coincide with this project.
The
Junto is a significant part of my creative practices and I really
appreciate the inspiration it has provided, especially now that I look
back and see it constitutes around half of the material I've published
on Youtube in the last two decades and that's likely a similar ratio in my releases on Bandcamp too.
Wish I knew which Charles Sturt University student created it, but it's been adopted for my senryu-style blog: Zen Roo.
naviarhaiku649 – Leaning on my crutches
The haiku shared by Naviar Records this week brought to mind the expression from backstage in a theatre, "break a leg."
I took the bass recorded for the Junto and experimented with faster drums, before reevaluating the piece at a slower tempo.
Disquiet Junto 0754 The Blip
The Junto project is to "Interrupt an ongoing process."
I think gating is a versatile effect and almost everything benefits from it, aside from some recordings where it draws attention to itself.
To demonstrate I recorded a simple bassline and ramped up the threshold on the gate until it mutes near the end, before rolling back down again.
A moat for the GOAT guitar design
Okay, so I was reading about AI and realised the audacity of Fender's strategy in claiming the S-shape (for Stratocaster) as entirely their own.
After seven decades and innumerable versions of the famous ergonomic double-horn shape, the recent moves to prevent others from using the design have put an ugly shade to the company.
Previously I thought that their decision was in response to the quality of Chinese counterfeits and my experience has been that Chenders offer a value that overshadows the original, especially since Fender guitars often lack the features they expect consumers to buy afterwards like better quality pickups and other parts.
The thing that occurs to me is that claiming the design, along with the legacy of Leo Fender in previous months, is it provides a moat for their business:
A moat is what protects a business from competition. The term comes from Warren Buffett’s image of a castle surrounded by water. The castle is the business; the moat is whatever prevents rivals from storming the walls. A moat might be a famous brand, a patent, a network effect, control over scarce resources, high switching costs for consumers, or a regulatory barrier that makes it difficult for competitors to enter the market. The deeper the moat, the easier it is for a firm to charge high prices, preserve margins, and survive imitation.
naviarhaiku648 – In the sky, the sound
So I wanted to revisit my track for the Junto this week and tighten it up, like a cherry blossom.
Using an alternate take of the drums, I gated the guitars and added some effects.
Disquiet Junto 0753 5 Minute Wait
The Junto project this week is to "Write outdoors hold music for a single-lane tunnel entrance delay."
As I had been jamming along to a track that's about the five minutes recommended for this assignment, it was easy to record that part.
Then I came up with a few chords that sorta fit, and recorded bass afterwards.
Saviorcaster
Actually, it makes a lot of cents given the sheer volume (pun intended) of musical gear sold to churches.
One of my favourite account signatures was on a forum while researching PAs that said "Turn it up for Jesus!"
Elsewhere on the internet, I was surprised that Rick Beato went straight for the top and argued that the new CEO should resign from Fender.
My feeling is that Fender has jumped from the pot and into the fire, but that few commentators have realised their existential threat developed from tackling the wave of quality Chinese-made counterfeit instruments.
Racism seems to be the only thing keeping a portion of Fender's fanboys behind the brand.
Nick Cave on pop
No one willingly wants to be indie. The great beauty of pop music is that it is a joy machine.
Disquiet Junto 0751 Gastropod Meter
The Junto assignment this week is "Imagine you’ve been invited to compose music for a nature documentary about slugs."
I decided it needed something squishy and found this video by Michael Verdi on Archive.org
Be off-Fender-ed!
Fender have been a topic of ire here in recent months
When the company won a copyright ruling in the EU earlier this year I thought things looked grim.
The iconic guitar brand is owned by an investment firm and it seems obvious to anyone who has tried a variety of products that they sell over-priced instruments to maximise profits.
So I was shocked when I saw an apology issued by one retailer, as it showed the brand were using their dominance to limit competition.
With the ruling against Chinese copies in Europe they were given an opportunity to further entrench their advantage to monopolise the market.
Stratocasters were patented in 1956 and Leo Fender died in 1991, so it is another example of how copyright law is harming innovation.
Can you imagine what guitars might look like if the market was not dominated with the message that designs from the mid-20th Century are the best available?
Many are celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Telecaster, yet is it really a design to put on a pedestal and say there is nothing to improve?
(Nashville models with a Strat-style middle pickup say differently, obviously.)
When I had that thought it prompted me to consider ideas about what else could be done, such as adding pickups for individual strings and multiple outputs.
It will be interesting to see if the Fender brand becomes toxic to consumers, because they lost my support last year for less.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)