Ambient relay
Recently I joined an "ambient relay," where each participant contributed to two tracks.
This asynchronous collaboration crossed the finish line today and is now on Bandcamp.
I've been involved with various relays and appreciate they all have different approaches.
At first I thought we'd only be listening to the contribution of the person ahead of us, then realised that was an assumption from other processes.
You can see in this graphic how the process was designed for each participant to build on the previous collaborator.
I find myself a bit irritated that some of the more textural sounds sit in the foreground of the mix, but enjoyed the prompt to develop new work and explore a different practice.
This asynchronous collaboration crossed the finish line today and is now on Bandcamp.
I've been involved with various relays and appreciate they all have different approaches.
At first I thought we'd only be listening to the contribution of the person ahead of us, then realised that was an assumption from other processes.
I find myself a bit irritated that some of the more textural sounds sit in the foreground of the mix, but enjoyed the prompt to develop new work and explore a different practice.
naviarhaiku325 – true tranquillity
Sounds from the global lockdown
I've contributed to a couple of Cities and Memory's projects this year
Recently they published #StayHomeSounds and I shared a recording from my porch.
It features galahs rousing at dawn and the song of the pied butcherbirds who visit around the start of autumn and spring.
When I posted the link on a local Facebook page, I got this nice comment.
It features galahs rousing at dawn and the song of the pied butcherbirds who visit around the start of autumn and spring.
When I posted the link on a local Facebook page, I got this nice comment.
Disquiet Junto 0430 Solitary Ensembles x 2 (slight return)
I've tried joining another Junto trio, this time Morgulbee's 'Anti - Viral Blues' with a drum part.
My timing slips a bit, which is a shame because I really enjoyed the techno feels for this song.
Guess it needed a drum machine.
Disquiet Junto 0429 Solitary Ensembles
This week’s Junto project is the first in a sequence intended to invite, encourage, and reward collaboration. You will be recording something with the understanding that it will remain unfinished for the time being.
For the Junto I've revisited drums recorded earlier this year because I find that instrument to be the way I start many tracks.
You can download the audio or video for the Junto collaboration.
Disquiet Junto 0428 Urban Moss
The Disquiet Junto this week asks for "a short piece of music that pays tribute to the accumulated echoes of past concerts promoted here over the years."
I thought it would be fun to work with an older track using an unlikely variety of instruments.
The track is 'Histamor' and the result sounds a bit like Gotan Project.
For a quick video I've used https://archive.org/details/ShereeTigerD
Disquiet Junto 0427 Music 4 Airplanes
The Disquiet Junto instructions this week are to "Record a short piece of music that is intended to blend in with the industrial drone of modern air flight."
It gave me an idea to revisit an older track and update it with an Eno-style ambient treatment.
The track 'Remove Borders' was a response to a Naviar haiku a few years ago and, while I like the chords, the guitar seemed to become a bit grating.
I've called it 'Aviatrix' because it's International Womens Day.
naviarhaiku320 – the last kite
The idea of the light being reflected led me to double the feedback part in the song.
Disquiet Junto 0425 Crop Score
The Disquiet Junto this week asks participants to "Consider the idea of a crop circle as a graphically notated musical composition."
The cymbals got a walloping, so much so that I broke a drumstick.
Then I recorded a MIDI guitar part and ran it through a couple of synths, aiming for something celestial.
naviarhaiku319 – Memories of spring
As the rains continued this week, I was reminded that the spring break for showers has been pushed back into summer.
It's been feeling a bit tropical with the resulting humidity and I was sweating profusely when I recorded this piece.
At the time I was amusing myself between takes for the Disquiet Junto project, but the arrival of an unregistered motorcycle wanting to use the footbridge ended my recording session.
The haiku's line "Always present" seemed appropriate for the feeling that one can't escape the noise of motorised vehicles.
Layered Air
After finishing my Disquiet Junto track this week, I applied the technique shared by Brian Crabtree in project 223 and layered all the takes -- including the interruption at the end.
Disquiet Junto 0424 Fluctuating Rhythm
The Disquiet Junto this week was proposed by Jonathon Keats, who instructed "employing nature as your conductor."
I settled on a simple chord progression, since I planned to layer the recordings afterwards.
For the location I settled on a nearby water view, showing an irrigation channel.
I worked from the feeling of the breeze on my face, since I couldn't look away from my picking hand for long.
naviarhaiku318 – in the beach breeze
Disquiet Junto 0423 Hold Noise
The Disquiet Junto this week asks for "a short piece of music intended to sound just as garbled as the hold music on a modern phone call. Think of this as “hold noise.”"
I started recording a piece, then realised this week was more about the treatment than the composition.
So I turned to a piece of ukulele that was recorded recently and garbled it using a few plug-ins.
naviarhaiku317 – not heard my breath
Then I began looking at the ukulele chord chart to see what would go with it, when I found a different chord progression that I couldn't stop thinking about.
Before long I was drafting lyrics inspired by the haiku to suit the chords, but I haven't recorded them because I don't have enough time to develop this song right now.
The result is a bit messy and I've tried to add energy with dynamics.
Disquiet Junto 0422 Chapter Cascade
The Disquiet Junto instructions this week focus on brevity:
Compose a piece of music made of up lots of very short bursts. You will have an A line and a B line, which will be tonally and aesthetically distinct from each other. These will alternate back and forth for however long you desire. Consider a length of about a second, or less, for each sliver of sound. And then finally at the very end, have the A and B lines combine.
I jammed on a few ideas, then revisited the instructions and realised I was going in the wrong direction.
Although, to be fair, I don't think there's a wrong way to Junto.
Earlier today I'd recorded my son playing the drums and had attempted to match up a couple of loops.
One is in 6/8, while the other is 4/4; and one had higher fidelity sound as I'd plugged in the VideoMic.
So I turned to these recordings and it's a thrill to collaborate with a family member on a Junto, which doesn't happen very often.
I added distortion, as well as different EQs and compressors to each part.
The parts are each a bit longer than a second and share the same fill, but I liked the constraint of using drums for the composition.
And I also liked not having to worry about recording because it's scorching hot today.
naviarhaiku316 – a dark corridor
Dunno, something about the dark corridor rolling at night.
Disquiet Junto 0420 Luna Tick
The Junto this week asks for "music that proceeds according to the phases of the moon, in celebration of Lunar New Year."
I spent a day exploring chord progressions, before deciding I wanted something that seemed obviously like an orbit.
Michael Schenker on avoiding writer’s block
I play and discover. You have to imagine a kid in a sandbox. You’re just having fun. You’re not expecting anything; you’re not looking for anything. You’re not following a trend; you don’t do something that needs to be similar to something else. It is actually from within yourself, which is endless. It’s like a kaleidoscope—you shake it and you have a bunch of new ways of doing things. So I think this block only happens to people who expect something, or who want something or are chasing something or who are trying to write something that sells or whatever. If you don’t look at all of these aspects, if you’re just having fun with notes, it doesn’t happen.
[…]
I call it “play and discover” rather than “practicing.” It’s like treasure hunting—you try and find a piece of gold but you enjoy the journey of looking for things along the way. You find something and then you capture that in a special place. And we use it later for making an album. And so that’s what I kept doing.I was always looking within myself for the next discovery.
naviarhaiku314 – Buoyantly we go
This week Naviar Records are celebrating six years of sharing haikus and inspiring music.
I've taken the opportunity to record a chord progression that's been haunting me on the ukulele: Em and B7.
This is my 102nd video in response to the Naviar Records prompts.
P.S. Just noticed the video of the bass is out of sync. Not sure I can be bothered fixing it.
Disquiet Junto 0419 Dischoir
The Junto this week involves making music from vocal samples of held syllables by members.
I began by singing a few notes, with a view to figuring out their pitch and substituting my voice with samples.
Then, after a few takes, I thought I'd layer up my singing and hear how it sounded.
Of course, by then it already sounded how I thought it should sound.
So I gave myself the day to clear my head, then returned and found samples to accompany my singing.
It was an interesting process working through the voices and I learned a few things.
The first was that I like the sound of my own voice.
The second was that composing with vocal samples requires allowing space for breathing.
The third was that I found pitch-correction did weird things and I didn't like it.
Disquiet Junto 0418 Ice-Nine
Directions for the first Junto of the year are to “Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something of it.”
It’s one of the more challenging Disquiet projects.
The high-pitched transients are difficult to manipulate and it’s usually the hottest day of the year here in the Antipodes.
I’ve made a few percussive rhythms over the years and increasingly I look for ways to make the ice cubes more harmonically interesting.
A few years ago I recorded around a dozen and half of my out-laws’ glasses, which have served me well for this project.
This year I offered those for Junto participants to use in their productions.
For a little while I wasn’t sure how to approach this assignment in 2020.
I had the drums that I’d recorded last year, when it was cooler — which is why I’m wearing a vest in the video.
On Saturday, when the temperature climbed to a new January record of 46C in Leeton, I got the idea to use the glasses to outline a progression.
So I found snippets that seemed to suggest a key, then added a transient shaping effect and de-essers to try and soften them, as well as tape-style delay and Eos reverb.
On Sunday I jammed with the bass until I found the notes that seemed to give the right shape.
Since it was a bit cooler, I put the shirt on that I’d been wearing when I recorded the drums.
I picked a fretless bass because the glasses weren’t really in tune, then afterwards I ended up adding pitch-correction to the samples to be sure they would mix.
Finally, I switched between drum recordings to give more variety to the song.
You can hear the kick drum comes in after a couple of bars, which was recorded using a bass speaker in front of the kit and then pitched down an octave for a fat thump.
Later on you can hear the drums shift, losing treble as I switched to the audio recorded through the Rode VideoMic on the camera.
Elsewhere the drums were recorded through a Rode NT-4 stereo mic, which I also used to record the ice in the glasses back in 2017.
Listening back to the track now, I wonder if I should've added another loop.
Anyway, there's always next year.
It's good to have had the project to occupy some of the weekend, rather than being absorbed with the news of the bushfires.
Disquiet Junto 0417 Changes Tracker
This week the Junto asks for a sonic diary, so I've compiled a series of second-long samples from recordings made (or manipulated) this year.
Disquiet Junto 0416 Time Laps
The Junto instructions this week outline a process of improvising parts, which are then reversed.
I decided to use some drums I'd recorded earlier as the first part.
After reversing those I recorded the chord progression on the electric ukulele, then turned to the bass.
By the time I reversed everything again, I'd gotten confused about the progression but managed to record a take when I stayed in key.
The result has moments that catch my ear, so I can see how this could be an interesting process for composition.
naviarhaiku310 – One push of the door, a single step
After finishing my response to the Disquiet Junto this week, I realised I'd stuffed it up.
So I wanted another crack at playing a C major scale at different paces, then layering the results.
And it seemed as though sitting at different points along the corridor at home would also evoke the poem.
Disquiet Junto 0415 Seasonal Metal
The Disquiet Junto this week asks for "a piece of music that explores tinsel for its sonic properties."
I wanted something irritatingly plastic and repetitively layered that could be looped, so my attention turned to my latest keyboard -- which cost $3 at my local St Vinnies.
Disquiet Junto 0413 Objective Thankfulness
The Disquiet Junto this week requests we "highlight one piece of musical equipment for which you are particularly grateful."
The appropriate response was at hand, in the form of my recent remix of Spinks Park in Lismore.
I'd been invited into the Northern Rivers region to be part of The (Un)Usual with my friends at RealArtWorks.
Barcus Berry 4000: Planar Wave System pickup has been a part of my process for remixing playgrounds since 2012.
Thanks Barcus Berry, I know you pitch this product for pianos and harps but it helps me find music in everyday locations.
And thanks to the Disquiet Junto, this has been my 200th video in response to their creative prompts.
Disquiet Junto 0411 Wrapped Up
The Junto this week prompted me to finish a song I wrote last year.
'Wild at Heart' tells the story of how I met my partner.
Disquiet Junto 0410 Op Audio
The Disquiet Junto this week asks:
What does the sonic equivalent of Op Art sound like?
I'd been considering adding delay to something and then, while sitting in a yoga class, had the idea of a tap dripping.
I've added reverb to give a sense of the room growing bigger.
Disquiet Junto 0409 Spooky 3.0
The Junto this week has a Halloween theme, asking for something that makes spooky music spookier.
It reminded me of the breathing sounds in Doom and how much atmosphere they added to the game.
So I've recorded myself and added that to a track built from bowed cymbals and things that might go bump in the night (except it was Friday afternoon).
naviarhaiku298 – Watching a kite
The wind is often an unseen force and is unmentioned in the poem, yet seems central when considering a soundtrack responding to the scene.
naviarhaiku297 – awakened from sleep
As the days are lengthening, I'm feeling a familiar mania and the pace feels as though it's picking up.
So I think these layered takes on the drums capture some of that.
Disquiet Junto 0402 Music for Tasks
The Disquiet Junto this week asks for music to accompany a task.
I'd recently revisited the recording of my washing line for Junto 356 and had just finished hanging a load, so I set about recording the drums to accompany that chore.
This aligns with Dom Vella's observation that "everything sounds better with drums."
I decided to include the sound of the washing line for context and, the way it builds, reminds me of how electronic music employs white noise.
Hulong
Historian Bill Gammage describes Hulong as the site of a conflict during the Frontier Wars, which arose as Europeans settled along the Murrumbidgee River in the mid 19th Century.
Evidence of the Wiradjuri culture can still be found in the region, although Hulong is now known as Whitton.
After being inspired by Garlo Jo's Ventdeguitares.com project to record at Poison Waterholes Creek in 2017, I've returned to the idea of using a guitar played by the wind at sites of conflict between black and white Australia.
Australia's First Nations are the oldest living culture, so it seems appropriate to show the scars of what might have become a shield remain on a living tree.
Yindyamarra
naviarhaiku296 – evening haze
Most recently I'd been thinking about drumming for Play Music on the Porch Day, so it led me to think about recycling the drum beat I recorded last week.
I've edited together a couple of unused takes and added saturation from Izotope Trash.
Disquiet Junto 0401 Noise Pacing
The Junto this week returns to the theme of "rauschen," which is German for noise in the style of white or background noise, and asks participants to use background noise as a beat, as a rhythm.
My washing machine seemed a good candidate for a rhythm, as it's rauschen is one I've heard while doing three loads of washing this week.
However, today is rainy. So I've used a recording I made of the machine in 2016.
Back then I'd identified the rhythm seemed kinda metal, so I've tried to add something melodic in that style using my electric ukulele.
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