Disquiet Junto 138 Video Sonic Void

Untitled #8, 2004 from Josh Azzarella on Vimeo.


The Disquiet Junto this week involved composing a soundtrack for the video by Josh Azzarella shown above. This piece is

part of the permanent collection of the San Jose Museum of Art in San Jose, California. This Disquiet Junto project is the result of an invitation by the Museum for me to develop a sound installation to be displayed on its second floor from October 2014 through February 2015. Tracks submitted to this project will be considered for inclusion in that installation.

After considering a drone, I decided to record a chord progression I've been developing for a song. Actually, one thing that's been an interest of mine in Junto projects is coming up with something that's distinct and I guess that's what led me away from the drone.

I used my MIDI guitar to capture the notes and made a few edits before experimenting with different VST synths. I settled on Lokomotiv again, which was used last week, then added effects including reverb and EQ with further reverb and EQ on a bus. You can see some of the effects in the screenshot above.

It was written and recorded with a view to being looped, like the video, but it jumps an octave and an abrupt start didn't feel right.




P.S. Below is an edit of the video with my soundtrack.

Forest Swords Fact mix

Enjoyed listening to this mix the other day.

Switched On Bach

My introduction to electronic music as a child was Wendy Carlos' Switched On Bach album (shown). I remember asking my mum to play it as I liked the pace and relationships between the notes.

So when the Disquiet Junto asked for 'old-time electronica' it was one idea and, after time wasn't going to allow me to make a Chemical Brothers homage this weekend, it was the project I developed.

Reed Ghazala on circuit bending

Disquiet Junto 135 Yanco Weir

The Disquiet Junto this week asked for a sonic equivalent of air-conditioning. I suggested to Marc that it was Northern Hemisphere-centric as it's the middle of winter here and this morning was the coldest morning yet. The day was sunny though and some varieties of wattle have started to bloom, offering a promise that spring is on the way.

My partner gave me the idea to revisit my recordings of the Murrumbidgee River, which I'd made for the Reimagining exhibition last year at a similar time I think. Cooling among the river red gums on the banks of (and in) the River is one of the highlights of this region in warmer months.

Abre Ojos' Incandescent Arc

Incandescent Arc from abre ojos on Vimeo.

John McEntire on limitations

I think that's one of the great things about working with limitations. You get situations where you are forced to get really creative to come up with solutions to problems even though you only have a few resources. That is in stark opposition to working on a computer where you have (seemingly) limitless possibilities.

Grong Grong last Saturday

Couple of pics that Derek took at the Fanny Lumsden show in Grong Grong on the weekend, where I played.

Disquiet Junto 134 Music From Choreography

Exciting Junto this week, composing a piece to accompany choreographed dance. I was pumped from playing my first gig in years and used the gear I'd patched together to improvise along with the video.

When I generated a random number to determine the section of video to compose with, I got a seven. I did a take playing along at the seven-minute mark but I didn't like that video as much as around the third-minute. I'll be honest, that section reminded me of Duran Duran's video for Girls On Film. I'll add my earlier take below as I like the vocal sample in it.

What you hear is a single take on electric bass and theremin. There's a third part created with a Super Ego pedal, which adds a pad-like drone from the bass. It wavers a bit, due to an old Ibanez unit that's transposed it up an octave. It gives it a kinda eerie feel.

One of the decisions made when improvising was to create a feel that added a sense of tension to the visuals. The key of D was what I'd been using for the part of my gig with the theremin. I could've used something else but I was happy to have some ideas that were already a bit developed and it's a great key for giving a sense of something a bit deep. I like the idea that the dancers are acting out a complex plot or relationship, so the music needed to convey something more than how fun it is to paint with your friend while you wear underpants.



Above is video of an alternate take. It's not the clearest picture but you can see a bit. The theremin is run through a Ravish sitar-emulator pedal, which keeps it in key and sounds nice. The bass is sorta sampled with a circuit bent Boss pedal. In the earlier take below I sampled my voice with the same effect, something I did for tracks in my set last night.



And at the bottom of this post is the audio track that was posted to the Disquiet Junto Soundcloud group, where you can hear all the other contributions.

Bassling [disquiet0133-sixnotesong]

The project is this: Compose a song that consists of just six notes. There should just be one short passage, with one “voice,” on whatever instrument you elect to use.

 The first three notes are my favourite to play on a piano. Since I don't have a piano I used my bass that sounds closest and layered up three takes. Does it sound more like a piano? Dunno.

Dangerous dubstep

Return to Disquiet Junto 132

Lee Rosevere and I collaborated with Nofi previously and I'd hoped we'd work again this time, but my piece was too busy for him. So I've taken his piece with Westy Reflector and Nofi and added one of the basslines I recorded for this four-way collaboration.

That previous piece with Lee and I went on to become No Nofi on my WHILE album last year, and also appeared in this television commercial I made for the Bidgee Binge.

Disquiet Junto 132 posthumousnofitrio

This week the Disquiet Junto returned to an earlier project that played tribute to Jeffrey Melton:

Step 1: Choose one of the tracks that resulted from Disquiet Junto project 0066:
https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet0066-nonofi
Step 2: Listen to your chosen track several times, to get to know it.
Step 3: Extend the file by 10 to 15 seconds.
Step 4: Record yourself performing live along with the track. Any instrumentation is fine. Just no voice. Be sure to play alone for approximately 10 seconds after the original track ends.

 


The track embedded above by Westy Reflector suggested a dub-style bassline and I mucked about for a while without much success on Saturday.

As I was giving up, I added a favourite monologue from True Detective where Rusty Cohle ruminates on death. My partner immediately called out that it worked, so I left it in.

On Sunday morning I returned to the bass and found my basslines changed. In the end I made a mess of the bass, I think. It's a mash of two unedited takes with some delay and lots of EQ. My idea was to layer up takes to get a richer sound. It's something James Holden told me he does but it didn't work as well for me.

P.S. Seems I didn't pay enough attention to the instructions as they specified "no voice"! Aside from liking that scene from True Detective, the content seemed right for this context. The stuff about being isolated within a body kinda reminds me of the process of working in a computer and seeing within it the responses from other participants. I've communicated with a few people from the Disquiet Junto over the last couple of years but only via computer. Even when I interviewed Marc Weidenbaum, who runs Disquiet, it was via email.

Another useless remix

Another remix of material filmed at Keith Cameron's property and featuring his sculptures, also seen here.

The first and second remixes from RealArtWorks' Nothing Is Useless project can be seen here.

Disquiet Junto 131 The Key of Tea

This week the Disquiet Junto project called for recording a boiling kettle, whistling preferred. I decided to invest in a whistling kettle for Burning Seed this year.

The kettle was recorded in my kitchen using a Rode NT-2 and an AKG PZM. The former microphone is my oldest and has a tinny edge that's good on soft sounds. The latter captured more of the boiling sound. I experimented with varying levels of steam by moving the kettle on the stove top.

About a decade ago I recorded a song called Slow Boil and I was thinking of it when I began manipulating samples of the hand clap and finger click used to make a beat. There's an Ableton Live Beatrepeat effect that bothers me a bit, now I listen back to it. You can hear it changes the kick.



There are a number of other effects on the percussion, including a drone towards the end. The bass was created from another file of the kettle recording fed through effects by Sinevibes and Sausage Fattener.

The photo on Soundcloud was snapped while driving through fog this week. It's a nod to the video I made for the earlier track and I like those ironbark trees outside Temora.

Dance

Disquiet Junto 130 Filtered Melody

The Disquiet Junto this week involved filtering a loop as a way to develop a composition. I tried a couple of responses and have posted videos for both below.

My first attempt was gated and reverberated, shaping a composition of increasing snippets from the loop. It worked well with the bell-like chimes from a recording made at an art-making session on the north coast of NSW last weekend.


The video shows Mike and Keith tapping steel canisters to produce the tones.

My second attempt concentrated on using a filter to shape the frequencies of the recording, sliding from low to high to low again as reverb feedback increases. This produced a fade in, out, in and out again while the reverb has a descending feedback.

Disquiet Junto 128 One Year Ago

The Junto this week asked for a soundtrack to accompany reading text from a year ago. This is a bit of rushed recording as I've been parenting solo over the weekend.

I looked at my ShowcaseJase blog to see what I'd been writing about and found a piece on the Richardson family sword.

The bass riff is one I've been jamming on and occasionally recording since the funeral for my cousin Chris, mentioned in this piece. I think about him often while making music as it's an activity he encouraged, buying me my first bass guitar.

Disquiet Junto 127 Library Shhh

Leeton Shire Major Dooley Library won an award a couple of years ago for their Saturday morning story program. When I read the Junto this week I wanted to share one of their readings.

There was a small audience this week but I recognised one of the kids and know the librarian Sandra, who I hope will excuse me recording her without seeking permission.

The short track loops parts of the recording to create drums and drones and a vocal loop.

Beck breaks

20 tracks by Beck for a new Ninja Tune Forum Seven Minute Mix project. I focus on the WTF? moments and key changes from funkier songs. Beck's production is really hot, both in terms of levels and exciting content. I like his collage approach.

Almost enough for an album

Disquiet Junto 125 Yellow Dog Blues

At a conference a couple of weeks ago I was introduced to an app by the National Library of Australia that offers their sheet music, arranged chronologically. I suggested they develop a competition to record a rendition of a piece from the app and started thinking it could be something for the Junto.

Coincidentally this week the Junto are proposing covering a 100-year old tune called The Yellow Dog Blues. The recording above helped me get a feel for the lyric delivery. I also liked this Yellow Dog Blues.

My version is a slinky rock track that sounds kinda karaoke.

The sheet music was kinda impenetrable for me. After googling a few renditions, I started jamming on a blues riff and eventually settled on a rock feel via disco.

My vocal performance needs more practise, especially the second verse. I was tempted to edit that out. Meant to use an English accent but ended up with that bad twang after too much Singstar this morning.

From musician to goat farmer

Following the logical step doesn't always lead you deeper into an activity. What I find amusing about the text shown here, aside from the slide from making music to raising goats, is that I had a similar series of thoughts but decided to find sounds elsewhere. For me it started with becoming frustrated with loops and samples but ended with finding music everywhere and sampling the environment.

Tomorrow's Harvest the movie

Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest The Movie from Julien Lavigne on Vimeo.

Disquiet Junto 122 8bit Undead ET

The Junto this week was to "create music for a fake movie whose plot is 'Poltergeist meets Wreck-It Ralph.'"

A quick google and I soon realised I liked the music to the former more than the latter. The Poltergeist theme is lovely and not what you'd expect from a horror movie.



The more I played my guitar and experimented with ideas the more I wanted to record a mellower track. I settled on a few chords and worked to try and make them more interesting.

Once the notes were settled I entered them as MIDI into Ableton Live with a view to playing it through my cheap synths but this didn't really work. A lot of notes were missed and there were a few other technical issues. So I used the instruments in Ableton Live and then tried to make them sound nicer with reverb and equalisers.

The title ET Cemetary is a play on Stephen King's Pet Semetary and acknowledges the Atari video game burial that inspired the Junto this week.

Control

Verdi's Requiem Remix by Ethan Hein

More great work from Ethan Hein. Read how he remixed Verdi's Requiem on his blog.

Disquiet Junto 121a: Jigsaw Composition

For the Math Rock Junto project I cut up my Sonic Tinsel track into around 135 parts. I added four extra snippets to 'set A' as I couldn't think how to divide them into 60 parts based on the grid in Ableton Live.

You can hear the sampled track in its entirety below.

Naviarhaiku 016: Flawless face of Rouge

Ostensibly this track is a response to the haiku shown on the NASA picture below; but mostly I just wanted to record a chord progression I discovered on holiday last week.

Wonderland remix

Audio Technology magazine are running a remix competition and you can hear my entry above and the original tune below.

The Occupants' track offered a lot of possibility, as well as excellent musicianship, and my remix is composed entirely from samples taken from their stems. I wanted to create a remix that took the material into a different tempo and mine is 113 BPM compared to their 166.

My idea was to focus on creating a new song from the elements, rather than just putting the material into a different genre. So I settled on using the hook 'Yeah, I believe you understand' because I have a theory that pop music is effective when expressing vulnerability.

I also was thinking about something Marc Weidenbaum phrased in an interview recently when discussing remixes:

I remember being astonished by how listening to the remix could kind of make you completely rethink the way that you relate to the original, and that moment was really important, realizing that altering something does not detract from the original, but can enrich your understanding of it.

Ethan Hein picked up on this too and has written:

There is no worthwhile work of art that isn’t derivative. Bad art is insufficiently derivative of too few different sources.

Which leads me to confess that inspiration for my remix came from emulating another tune. When I thought of my favourite remixes and what approach to take, I remembered the approach taken by a talented producer named Charlie Van Pelt who used to post on the Ninja Tune Forum as Czar Kastik. I used a remix he made about 10 years ago as a scaffold for my track, which is the first time I've tried this approach and found it surprisingly easy and effective. It's an idea I'd previously discounted but reconsidered after learning the Beastie Boys have did the same thing on one of their best tracks.

Windowlicker cover

Aphex's apex?

Recently interviewed Marc Weidenbaum about his book on Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II. The piece is now online at Cyclic Defrost.

It was great to engage Marc in conversation as I've been an admirer of his work since joining the Disquiet Junto.

Earlier this month I recorded a musical response to the book, as part of the Junto.

Disquiet Junto 120 Readymade Rhythm

The Disquiet Junto this week involved interpreting the heartbeat of artist Marcel Duchamp.

The graphs of Duchamp's heartbeat reminded me of arpeggios, probably because I've still been playing around with picking the notes used last week. This track is a variation on that chord progression.

I guess it was readymade.

I've added an 808 kick as a heartbeat to the piece. It was mixed on headphones, hopefully it sounds okay.

Hiroshi Yokoi's Dream Tide

We are about the enter a period of major historical change not often witnessed in the long history of mankind. I believe that people involved in media have an important obligation to fulfil. That is to truly grasp the spirit of the period. And at the same time use their imaginative powers and practical skills to create a ‘dream tide’.

Naviarhaiku 014: Sunrise

This tune was recorded for the 14th Naviarhaiku project. It was inspired by a haiku by Marios Schismenos, presented below with an image by Flavio Jota de Paula.

My idea was to make an upbeat track that could be in the soundtrack to a modern Western. I'm not sure I've really managed the latter but the idea of a modern Western is an oxymoron. Brass would be good with it and an organ, or maybe a harmonica?

Disquiet Junto Paperback Beatmaker

This week the Disquiet Junto worked with rhythms inherent in text:

Step 1: Locate a section of a piece of written fiction that you admire. The section should be roughly between 125 and 200 words long.

Step 2: Record youself typing those words. Please note: You need not type it perfectly, and you should feel comfortable making some corrections as part of your typing. That said, you should come as close as possible to typing it straight through. And you should, if possible, record this in stereo in a way that distinguishes between the left and right sides of your typewriter. That text should account for roughly between a minute and a half and three minutes.

Step 3: Listen through the recording, making note of rhythmic themes, such as repeated sequences of letters, or natural pauses, or intriguing spacial separations across the keyboard.

Step 4: Record a piece of music to accompany the typing, music that uses the inherent rhythm of the typing as its foundation. Imagine, if you will, that someone could listen to this music while writing, and get into the groove, the zone, the mindset of the original writer.

I disregarded the direction to use fiction. Kerouac's On The Road came to mind because it's the first example of rhythm inherent in fiction I immediately think of, particularly the section about watching live jazz. I also like James Baldwin's Sonny's Blues, another piece featuring jazz.

Instead I decided to be cheeky and use Marc Weidenbaum's book about Aphex Twin's album Selected Ambient Works Volume II. As I've been reading it most recently it was close at hand and because Marc is responsible for setting the Disquiet Junto projects it seemed logical. I also decided to try making a track in the style of Aphex Twin's ambient work, ensuring a rhythm and heavy reverb on synth pads.

The section I located was the first page of the second chapter:

Background Beats

The critical evidence is overwhelming. The vast majority of discussion, especially as represented in writing — in music journalism, in criticism, in online discussion — about Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Volume II does not simply take the genre associations of its title for granted. It actively embraces and proliferates the idea that the record is largely if not entirely devoid of rhythmic and percussive material. The operative tag throughout such discussions gets to the point quickly. That tag is “beatless.”

##Meet the Beatless

Two takes were recorded using my Rode NT4 stereo microphone and the computer keyboard, as I couldn't locate a typewriter. The first take was used. In the second I typed the full page and it was over six minutes, which seemed too long.

There was a guitar riff I had in mind, which was recorded loosely as MIDI and run through a few Absynth presets. These were treated with plate and room reverbs.

It was put together quickly and I don't think I've nailed the spaciousness of Aphex Twin's arrangements. It feels more like Cliff Martinez' Solaris soundtrack to me. I probably would've made it shorter but I liked the way the typing ended with the two s's. It punctuates the piece.

Smug As a Sicksquid remix

Today I remixed a tune by Sicksquid. Above is his version, below is mine.

You can hear I've sped it up a bit and left out his piano part, as well as the percussion and bass. In their place I've added an 808 and synths, both a bass and a pad.

It was fun mixing a track by someone else, particularly working with vocals. I like the sentiment of the track.

Austin Kleon on imitation

The reason to copy your heroes and their style is so that you might somehow get a glimpse into their minds. That's what you really want -- to internalize their way of looking at the world. If you just mimic the surface of somebody's work without understanding where they are coming from, your work will never be anything more than a knockoff.

Naviarhaiku 013: Sunday afternoon

For the Naviar Haiku Project I returned to my acoustic guitar. The poem I've responded to was by George McKim:

Sunday afternoon 
The phone ringing 
In a vague way

I've responded quite literally, although it was recorded on Saturday afternoon. The idea of sitting on my bed for the recording was inspired by the blanket used as a backdrop for the poem.

The chord progression is the one I used in my Brush Brush Brush Brush Junto (below) because I'm thinking this version will lead into it nicely when I put together a compilation of tracks latter this year, like I did with the Junto tracks that went into While in 2013.



P.S. I've also responded with a haiku of my own.

Disquiet Junto 118 Internet Room Tone

“What is the room tone of the Internet?” asks the Disquiet Junto this week and you can hear my answer below.

It was a question that stumped me for a few minutes, then I remembered the digital-sounding interference recorded when using my Sony Cybershot camera while recharging.

To minimise other noises I covered the microphone on the camera with Blu Tack, on tape to ensure it wouldn't get stuck in the microphone holes. Two takes of around six minutes were recorded, which is the maximum possible on each side of my old memory stick.

These were cut into three and layered in Ableton Live. I panned them in various directions and removed the one with the most noise from elsewhere in the house. Then equalised them before running through an effect to widen the sounds.

The image below comes from a Reddit thread about a pregnant woman emanating WI-FI.

Brian Eno (by Alfred Dunhill)

“…the big mistake is to wait for inspiration. It won’t come looking for you. It’s not so much creating something, I think, it’s noticing when something is starting to happen…”

Lost ambient work by Richard D James

This is allegedly an unreleased ambient track by Aphex Twin.

Then again, it could be an April Fools Day joke :)

Built like a brick

From Create Digital Music's April Fools jokes

Album In A Day

My track High Coo Unplugged is at number 21.

My sometime collaborator Lee Rosevere, who suggested I get involved, put together this video for his track.

Slapping A Fat Man Beat

High Coo Unplugged

When I took to Twitter on Friday night after posting my track for the Disquiet Junto/Naviar Haiku Project, Lee Rosevere (Happy Puppy Records) replied that he was recording a song for the Album In A Day project and suggested I consider it too.

So I packed my guitar and camera and recorded this unplugged version of High Coo, the track I'd written and recorded for the Junto.

Disquiet Junto 117 Naviar Haiku Project

Not so long ago I signed up for a project similar to the Disquiet Junto called the Naviar Haiku Project. The idea is to respond to the haiku poem they provide and I like haiku and I like making music, so I was intrigued and joined.

This week the two projects overlapped, which was good as I wanted to respond to the haiku but have plans.

Step 1: This is the haiku for the 12th Naviar Haiku project entry:
“They encounter
A cathedral of ice
At the end of the world” 

Step 2: Compose an original piece of music in response. 

Step 3: Upload the file to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud and describe your approach and process in the text field associated with the track. 

Step 4: Also consider uploading the file to the Naviar Laboratory group on SoundCloud. 

Step 5: Listen to other members’ tracks as they appear in the Disquiet Junto feed on SoundCloud, and comment on them when you have the time.

Once again I took the opportunity to record a chord progression I'd been jamming on. I thought with the right treatment it would sound appropriate, so I recorded MIDI with my guitar and ran that through a few VST synthesisers: Phosphor, Absynth and Massive.

The percussion part was a click-track that I decided to keep and I experimented with automating different reverbs to give a sense of movement, which was a technique I learned from the 3D Junto last year.



P.S. I recorded an unplugged version of the track High Coo too.

What Difference Does It Make

Seems a good question to ask after reading this piece which raises an existential question on the value of the arts. (Though the logical conclusion of that article is that any activity that isn't humanitarian is a waste.)

I think there are many benefits from making music, an activity Stephen O'Malley suggests has been part of human activity of a very long time in the doco above. I think it's disappointing more people don't make their own music, since most enjoy it but seem to have internalised a judgment that they're not a musician. I say music is too much fun not to have a go.

Steve Reich profile

I became interested in minimalist composer Steve Reich's music after reading Brian Eno rave about him and it was flattering to be compared to him on the Playgroundology blog.



This video profile discusses his influences, his lo-fi ‘funky home tape recorders’ and his inspiration for his classic piece Music for 18 Musicians.

There's a great bit of advice in it when Reich says:

“Don’t tell me you don’t have the right equipment…. IT DOESN’T MATTER! What matters is your musical imagination and your ideas.”

Disquiet Junto 116 Brushx4

Dental hygiene was the subject of the Disquiet Junto this week:

It is understood that one should brush one’s teeth for two minutes: half a minute each for front and back, top and bottom. Compose a piece of music made of four portions, each 30 seconds in length, each 30-second segment intended to direct a segment of the brushing The music should be placid enough to be listenable to at night and in the morning. The juncture between each 30-second segment should signal to the listener to rotate from one portion of the mouth to the next.

My track uses a chord progression that I'd been looking to use since around the time of the Sonar Vortex Junto. I think it might've been inspired by an alternative chord progression I'd developed but it's also got some ideas I took from a soul song. For this track I developed the eight chords I had into a 16-bar chord progression which is played four times. Some variation is provided by the bass.

My idea was to start at the top, although my dentist advises I focus my brushing on the bottom teeth as I'm missing molars and need to ensure the health of the teeth I have on my jaw. So the gap in the middle of the track is where the bottom starts and the bass licks are meant to symbolise my tongue, which always gets in the way; and when the section repeats for back section the bass drops to a low C.

The other idea with this track was to demonstrate my lack of fillings by not doing any work on the performances. It's a bit of a leap but, again, I was looking for an opportunity and the Juntos are an excuse to try out new ideas and challenge myself. The performances are all single takes and are unedited.

I recorded the guitar parts first using a click track at 130BPM and it was challenging. The strumming is kinda offbeat and the muted strum on the beat drifted out of tempo often. It was really humbling to listen back to and I recorded many, many takes. In the end I used two that were recorded around the same time, benefiting from the performance-enhancing benefits of that wonderful legal drug called coffee. These are panned in opposite directions for full stereo effect.

The drums were recorded next and I experimented with a couple of beats before settling on four-on-the-floor house. I incorporated some basic fills to keep it interesting and hopefully distract from my wonky guitar-playing. In hindsight I wish I'd done another take or two as there are a couple of hits that don't quite make the beat.

Both guitar parts and drums were recorded using my Nikon D5100 camera and Rode VideoMic. This approach doesn't give the best results but simplifies the process of editing a video. One concession I did make to getting good sound was positioning the microphone to point at the 12th fret of the guitar from about 30cm. Bass guitar was dubbed last and only required a couple of attempts, which was good as I've spent most of the day recording this track.

Or, as I told my Facebook friends, I've spent the day playing with myself. Now my hands hurt.

The Music of Sound

The MUSIC of SOUND from tim prebble on Vimeo.

Tim's blog The Music of Sound is a great read and this video he's made is sublime.

Beastie Boys circa 1987

Madonna and the Beastie Boys toured together in 1985 and then Australian Penthouse reunited them in print in 1987, with the former's nude photographs and the latter also at a point in their career they tend to gloss over.

I was a fan of the Boys in '87 and have written about their Beastie influence on my other blog.

Disquiet Junto Mediated Solo Duet

This week I returned to the Disquiet Junto, although I haven't finished editing the videos I'm meant to be working on. Anyway, I figured it wouldn't take me too long to follow these instructions:

Here are the steps for this week’s project:

Step 1: Choose a recent piece of music you’ve recorded.

Step 2: Play it very loud in an adjacent room.

Step 3: Close the door to the adjacent room.

Step 4: Accompany the track live, and record your performance. Capture your live playing and the muffled original track.

Step 5: Upload the file to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud and describe your approach and process in the text field associated with the track. If possible, include a link to the original piece for comparison listening.

Step 6: Listen to other members’ tracks as they appear in the Disquiet Junto feed on SoundCloud, and comment on them when you have the time.

As I've been procrastinating, I mean editing video, I haven't spent time working on new musical material. So for this Junto I listened over my previous Juntos and settled on my wind chime remix for 107, which I called Antipodes.

The track was at a tempo that felt a bit slow for my drumming, so I struggled a bit but recorded a few takes and settled on the final. I get a lot of pleasure from playing drums but my sense of timing isn't great. Given my father struggles to clap in time, I think I might be battling a genetic shortcoming.

The room the drums were recorded in has no acoustic treatment and the drums haven't been tuned since Burning Seed last year.

Audio was recorded using the Rode VideoMic that's on my Nikon SLR camera, which had a 50mm lens with a wide-angle adapter attached. I mastered the audio in Ableton Live, using tape emulation, compression and a few other effects.

John Cage on the music of objects

Look at this ashtray. It’s in a state of vibration. We’re sure of that, and the physicist can prove it to us. But we can’t hear those vibrations… It would be extremely interesting to place it in a little anechoic chamber and listen to it through a suitable sound system. Object would become process; we would discover… the meaning of nature through the music of objects.

This quote resonates for me as I said something similar last year to introduce a project, see:

Volca details

One thing -- and admittedly it's a very small thing -- I find curious about the Korg Volca series is the different placement for the branding details.

As you can see, the name Korg is on opposite sides and the Volca Beats title seems squashed in the lower right-hand section above the sequencer buttons.

It's like they had two separate design teams that didn't compare notes.

Ever wonder?

"Ever wonder how to become a producer or DJ?"

Sometimes I wonder why companies set themselves up to be attacked on Twitter.

The above sponsored post from AIM Music Institute is one example and the responses below show how wasted was their effort.

Thinking about online collaboration

This is a piece I wrote for the Western Riverina Arts' blog about my experiences with online collaboration:

Online collaborations have taught me a lot and provided many opportunities to develop and promote my music.

When I moved to Wagga Wagga it was a rather lonely time and I started evenings on the forum of the UK-based Ninja Tune record label's website. There I found like-minded music lovers and also remix competitions.

Remixing was a great education in electronic music, as I could hear how different producers approached the same source material.

In recent years I've been involved in a couple of 'remix chains' that originated on the Ninja Tune forum, where each track remixed the previous in a 'Chinese whispers'-style approach.



For a regional musician with limited interest in playing at a pub, online collaboration has been a satisfying outlet.

Another a group I've been involved with is the Disquiet Junto. The US-based blogger Marc Weidenbaum sets weekly projects, which vary greatly but provide interesting challenges. There's a lot learn from the activity but even more to be gained reading the reflections provided by other participants.



Whatever your medium, there are probably other artists online who are willing to share. Look around, introduce yourself to people whose work you like and see what you can learn.

There's a lot of inspiration to be found but even more to be gained through collaboration.

Mock pelican

This is a pelican impression recorded using a balloon. It's for an audible protest, see http://www.burragorang.org/bimbleboxbirds.php

Morton Subotnick

Spoke with Morton Subotnick yesterday about how pitch dominates music, Ableton Live and other interfaces. See Cyclic Defrost's website

This photo of Mort in his New York studio comes from Ethan Hein's blog, which has many excellent posts.

NO MOBILES ON THE DANCEFLOOR, PLEASE

David Byrne on How Music Works

Music tells us things — social things, psychological things, physical things about how we feel and perceive our bodies — in way that other art forms can’t. It’s sometimes in the words, but just as often the content comes from a combination of sounds, rhythms, and vocal textures that communicate, as has been said by others, in ways that bypass the reasoning centers of the brain and go straight to our emotions. Music, and I’m not even talking about the lyrics here, tells us how other people view the world — people we have never met, sometimes people who are no longer alive — and it tells it in a non-destructive way. Music embodies the way those people think and feel: we enter into new worlds — their worlds — and through our perception of those worlds might not be 100 percent accurate, encountering them can be completely transformative.

Reimagining in Wagga Art Gallery

Western Riverina Arts' Reimagining the Murrumbidgee exhibition is now open at the Wagga Wagga Art Gallery.

My contribution is a soundtrack composed from recordings of the River, as well as photographs in the catalogue which I also designed.

If you can't make it to Wagga, you can download my Reimagining soundtrack and a copy of the catalogue from Bandcamp.

No Junto

Missed the Junto last week and will skip it again this week. In part it's because there's a video I should be editing, but also because last week's exercise involved remixing some tracks I found kinda headache-inducing and this week requires interpreting a weekly calendar. The latter isn't something I keep but is an interesting idea, wish I'd had time to prepare for it but, yeah, I should be editing a video.

Amazing tongue twister

Brian Eno Visual Music

Been enjoying reading Brian Eno Visual Music by Christopher Scoates. It's a lush book filled with many examples from throughout Eno's education and career, as well as discussing his influences and exhibitions.

The text on the bookmark ribbon comes from the Oblique Strategies developed by Eno and Peter Schmidt, which is a nice touch.

P.S. There's an interview where Eno reflects on the book and his work here.

Disquiet Junto Celebrating Burroughs

The Disquiet Junto this week celebrated what would've been the 100th birthday of William S Burroughs, who popularised the cut-up technique of composition in literature and other media.

This Junto really excited me because it was something I'd been meaning to try out. My partner has been making cut-up poetry in recent months, ahead of an exhibition that opens today. She hadn't considered this would coincide with Burroughs birthday, as she was drawing her inspiration from Tristan Tzara.

Funnily enough, I'd suggested to her on Friday morning that we could create an application that would automatically compose cut-up poetry from text. She argued against the idea, saying the process of putting together a piece using the technique relied on editorial judgments but also human intent. This is the sort of argument I'd expect from Burroughs, who promoted the technique as a kind of magical process. So it was curious to end up doing something similar following Marc's instructions.

My local newspaper is The Irrigator and their lead story concerned a couple of botched break-ins that happened in the main street of Leeton on Thursday morning.

At first I wasn't sure about the lyrics I'd composed following the Junto email, when it arrived on Friday afternoon. But I liked the chorus better than the third line in the lead story from The Area News that day, and settled on a chord progression before my partner arrived home from hanging the exhibition. I thought the verses were crap though and she suggested I consider a more punk delivery.

Since I wasn't going to be able to play the guitar fast enough, I decided to MIDI the track and ended up with this electro-sorta hardcore. When I got to recording the lyrics on Saturday morning, I'd forgotten the melody I had in mind. So I belted them out a couple of times while getting the microphone levels right. What you hear is my third take.




P.S. Here's a cut-up I made at Jo's exhibition.

Dads Best Friend

Clint Mansell on scoring

I truly just work. The mystery is not really a mystery. There's no secret. It's all about doing it. There are days when you get it right and, there are days when you don't. It all starts with my senses, when things speak to me. Sometimes I write for days, and nothing really works. But then I write one piece. ONE, which finally gives a meaning to all that rest that I've been writing. Everything you do is leading you somewhere, even when you are not aware of it; it's like a puzzle. Quite often I get into a movie knowing what I am after, but not what it is. I look at what I do very much as a William Burroughs kind of work, very random at first, not linear whatsoever. But then, as you get more pieces, things start to get together and I begin to see the bigger picture, the symphony. Every melody always starts with one note, after all.

Pulling the chain

There's a piece I've written about the new Remix Chain album on Cyclic Defrost, click here and learn more.

Mario Caldato on recording

Sometimes mistakes can sound really good. Instead of putting the mics where everyone else puts it, put it somewhere else and face it in the wrong direction, run it through something and see what it does. Start hitting buttons, you might surprise yourself. Shit, run it through Tapco EQs, run it through some garbage. Run it through some Radio Shack stuff, just be open. There's no rules, nobody says you have to do this or that. You know what? You got a Yamaha compressor? You got an Alesis? They all sound good, they're all different. Don't be afraid. Try dumb stuff, put the mic in the refrigerator, put it in the closet - try weird spots. If you're gonna do drums, set up your usual mics, kick, snare, overheads. Then tack one on the wall or facing the other way, go as far as you can in the room, try to get some depth on it. Open up the door and put it in the next room. Put it outside, get some ambience. We set up a mic and I did vocals in a tree on a still night, and it sounded great. We were pullin' in some helicopters - they came in at just the right time in the song. The little bugs and birds and bees added so much life and texture to the song. It was really amazing.

Eclectic Method's History of Sampling

A Brief History of Sampling from Eclectic Method on Vimeo.

Read more about some famous samples here.