naviarhaiku660 – shrine fence

The haiku shared by Naviar Records this week prompted me to think of how a person might disappear into the background. 

There's our little producer

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. 

When she looks through your phone

 

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.

However, when I looked at my Facebook Memories today there was a theme and it encouraged me to reconsider.

It seemed as though a couple of my posts from this date in previous years were pointing me toward this project.

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. 

They just raised the volume

 

naviarhaiku659 – bright enough

The haiku shared by Naviar Records demanded a pace for losing sight of something as celestial as the moon.

Under the same moon

Write your name

When you yawn

 

naviarhaiku658 – Among bare branches

The haiku shared by Naviar this week intrigued me, but I wondered if I was missing something.

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. 

Puts on hearing glasses

 

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. 

Don't shred on me

 

naviarhaiku657 – In the mountain village

The haiku shared by Naviar Records this week captures something of the weather here.

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. 

White suburban mother

 

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.)

The rest of the song

 

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. 

Sharps