Disquiet Junto 0611 Music That Listens to Itself

 

The Disquiet Junto assignment this week is to "Record a piece of music that repurposes itself as it proceeds."

I pondered that directive for while, at first thinking it was about establishing a leitmotif, then reading the detail about effects:

From reverb to echo to tape loops to granular synthesis to accessing a buffer, various techniques serve such a compositional and performance purpose. Consider a means to achieve this result.

This led me to use my gated effects with two chords to draw attention to how the different pedals are triggered by the drumloop to shape the ukulele part.

The effects chain splits an octave below and above, while the original part goes to the Empress Zoia pedal with the "Loopforest" preset.

On the octave below is a Mainframe bitcrusher and Bass Synth, while the octave above goes through a stereo chorus and into the Modrex.

The drumloop is going through a Platform compressor and Generation Loss, before being filtered by a Mini Kaoss Pad.

The Beastie Boys are releasing

naviarhaiku504 – Lazing in shadows

Layered up my takes from the Junto recording for the Naviar track this week.

Every day is better

 

Disquiet Junto 0609 Speed Limit Pt 1

 

The Disquiet Junto instruction is to "Record a simple track at 60 BPM in 4/4 that will be reworked subsequently by other musicians."

Which terrestrial isopod

 

naviarhaiku503 – Caterpillar

 

This haiku shared by Naviar Records prompted me to record the chords I'd been jamming with on my electric ukulele.

Inspiration

Disquiet Junto 0608 Nature-to-Text

 

As someone, I think Brian Eno, once said “Honour thy error as a hidden intention.” 

When I read the Junto instructions I thought they said to use a text-to-speech tool to turn a field recording into instructions for a composition. 

Anyway, it led me to plan to use lines from my micro-journal with a recent field recording to start a composition. 

After I double-checked the assignment and realised my error, I tried Youtube's auto-subtitles and Macwhisper but couldn't use a speech-to-text tool to turn a field recording into instructions. 

So, I took the instruction to also include considering Eno and his hidden intention is where that recording landed.

Kraftwerk Orange

 

Disquiet Junto 0607 Silence Wave

 

There’s just one step to this project: 

Compose a piece of music in which the relative amount of sound to silence starts at zero (that is, no sound), rises to approximately 40 percent (that is, 60 percent silent) and returns to zero again. Keep the pace fairly steady.

I returned on the upright bass to the piece I first recorded.

When you're getting indicted

 

Sound check

 

Disquiet Junto 0606 Three to One

The project this week is to "Compose a piece of music with three times as much silence as sound."

Once again I reached for the guitar and began recording while waiting for my son to return home.

I recorded a few takes but the camera battery ran out before completing the final.

This version is the first take and I picked it as it has more silence.

In post-production I added some tape delay and reverb, as well as tube-style saturation.

Jazz is about

Disquiet Junto 0605 Fifty Fifty

The Disquiet Junto prompt this week is to "Compose a piece of music with as much silence as notes."

It came from a suggestion I made to Marc after hearing Mozart on the radio while driving to work.

Ed Le Brocq had introduced the piece observing that it had as much silence as notes and it seemed perfect for a Junto exercise, particularly since I've found myself frustrated by making busy music.

(And, as an aside, I read Ed's book 'Whole Notes' recently and enjoyed it. One of the volunteers at the museum where I work had recommended it, saying all of the members of her ukulele group had liked it.)

Anyway, I found half an hour this morning to set-up a camera on the balcony of my out-laws place outside Wagga and recorded a few takes.

This evening I've tried to improve the sound quality by EQ-ing away higher frequencies and sneaking a bit of tape warble and delay, as well as compression.

And, I've got to add, I was pleased to read this from Marc in the Junto email:

Major thanks to Jason Richardson, aka Bassling, for having proposed this week's project. There may not be another person who's recorded as many Junto projects as Jason has, and so he has a unique sense of them. He interviewed me back in 2017 for Cyclic Defrost, and I learned quite a bit about the Junto myself during the conversation. I think frequently about an observation he made, in the context of one of his questions: "Junto themes seem to have proportion to daily life, with a number about sleeping, waking, eating, walking, etc." I couldn't agree more.

What kind of noise musician are you?

Disquiet Junto 0604 Heaven’s Gate

The Disquiet Junto assignment this week asks participants to "Use a picture of the clouds as a plan for adjusting your sound."

It's been a long time between Juntos, the longest in nearly ten years; but I've been keen to get back.

Marc shared a photo of clouds that reminded me of a clock and the title said gate, so I ended up thinking about gating the sound of the chimes I heard while volunteering at the front desk of a museum on the weekend.

The snippets of sound that broke through seemed ripe for delay and then I added back in the clock to make sense of it all near the end.

Gibb's son

I'd love to add The Bee Gees to my effects chain.

Seriously, I spent many years dancing to a copy of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.

Recently I saw a doco on them and found myself admiring their harmonies, songwriting and a joyful jam that led to 'Jive Talking'.

Not my pic but I'd like a fuzz pedal just to see their eyes light-up to my music!

World Listening Day

This morning I heard a Pied Butcherbird singing outside my office, so I attempted to make conversation with a renowned songbird and appreciated that it entertained my efforts.