Disquiet Junto Project 0286: Found in Translation

#1

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Disquiet Junto Project 0286: Found in Translation
Make three versions of something from different distances.

Step 1: Choose some piece of music, something expressly melodic or rhythmic might work best, with the intention of doing multiple renditions of it.

Step 2: Consider what it means to “transliterate” something, and how that differs from “translating” something, and how both differ from “interpreting” something.

Step 3: Now produce a recording that begins with the original from Step 1, and then follows it, in sequence, with versions that serve to transliterate, translate, and interpret it.

Five More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: If you hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to include the project tag “disquiet0286” (no spaces) in the name of your track. If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to my locating the tracks and creating a playlist of them.

Step 2: Upload your track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.

Step 3: In this following discussion thread at llllllll.co please consider posting your track.

Step 4: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 5: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Deadline: This project’s deadline is 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, June 26, 2017. This project was posted in the late afternoon, California time, on Thursday, June 22, 2017.

Length: The length is entirely up to the participant, though roughly three minutes is suggested.

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0286” in the title of the track, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.

Upload: When participating in this project, post one finished track with the project tag, and be sure to include a description of your process in planning, composing, and recording it. This description is an essential element of the communicative process inherent in the Disquiet Junto. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.

Download: It is preferable that your track is set as downloadable, and that it allows for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution).

Linking: When posting the track online, please be sure to include this information:

More on this 286th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Found in Translation: Make three versions of something from different distances — at:

https://disquiet.com/0286/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

http://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0286-found-in-translation/?source_topic_id=8312

There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.

Image associated with this project is by Flickr member Hannah, used thanks to a Creative Commons license:

Photocopying photocopies1024x871

creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/

#2

The project is now live. Sorry for the delay today. Had ridiculous Internet connectivity issues.

#3

Of the T triptych you forgot one:
Transcription - Transliteration -Translation
.:wink:
Interesting to apply the three to a piece of music, nice subject this week.

#4

https://soundcloud.com/user-208393504/concentric-sound-disquiet0286

#5

Transcription is the conversion of the characters of one language to the characters of another language in accordance with the pronunciation of the target language.
Transliteration means ‘translating’ a text from one writing system to another while keeping it in its original language.
Translation is interpreting of the meaning of a text and the subsequent production of an equivalent text that communicates the same message in another language.
I associated the idea of Transcription - Transliteration & Translation to modulation to a relative and/or parallel tonality in music, and then the transpositions to a certain interval in the same tonality; so I started with a very simple phrase in B minor and used just one instrument for 5 tracks, my glorious DRAKE DIAZ CUSTOM 5 electric bass guitar.
My tame and harmless Bb Aeolian phrase appears in the “tonic” and some “transliteration” in the 3rd and 5th of the same chord/scale , then a” transcriptions” to a Lydian mode in a different root (relative modulation) a ” translation” (transposition) to a B major chord (parallel modulation) with its “transcriptions” to the 3rd and 5th.
Created today Friday 23rd June 2017 during a beautiful sunny morning in Paris France.
Image associated with this project is by Flickr member Hannah, used thanks to a Creative Commons license

#6

The playlist is now live:

#7

As with all of my content, this entire process was documented in a live stream at www.twitch.tv/zeromeaning

The rules of this project were confusing. However, it was accomplished nonetheless.

First, a song was selected. This was Nine Inch Nails’ 12 Ghosts II. The main melody of the song was recorded as a cover of sorts on a piano at a higher octave. When it came to the actual music creation, I was unsure that I was carrying out the assignment correctly, so took this recording and re-arranged it into a different melody.

A ‘transliteration’ in its base form is a means by which the letters of one language are transcribed into corresponding letters of another alphabet. In this way, I played a similar melody on a different instrument (a violin, broken in last weeks’ project).

Translation was carried out by simply lowering the melody by three semitones.

Interpretation was the trickiest to understand. However, this was achieved by cutting up the original melody and re-arranging it to be in the same rhythm as the original but with the notes backwards.

#8

D# D# E D# F D# E D#
the above phrase was played with three different instruments (transliterate), one of which was reversed (translate). These were mixed and combined in different patterns throughout the piece and a voice track (10 minutes of Fox News) added (interpretation). The whole thing heavily processed with 2 delays - one left channel, one right channel, ring modulator & stereo expander

Turned out a bit “wall-of-sound”

#9

Hey All, Started with basic beat and procession. Set Max midi fx to clips on the APC40 and did a live thing which I accentuated with some penciling to get tempo and launch changes . It transmogrifies into the pre-ponderous 3 feet of warmness and solitude and back to reality but is it really reality. Only de la soul know.

Peace, Hugh

#10

For various reasons it’s been a struggle to motivate myself at present, so I’ve fallen back on using a couple of tracks prepared earlier.

The first part has ‘Smoke’ from late 2015, then you can hear I’ve translated it using different bass and drums in a remix from March this year.

The final part is a new remix but one that uses short snippets of ‘Smoke’ and lots of Live’s Beatrepeat effect to create new melodies.

There’s more discussion on my blog. Cheers

#11

Hi folks,

Here’s a transliteration/transmogrification of “One” by Metallica. (please note: I broke from the instructions a little–I did not include the original, as I thought it would be a bad idea to sample Metallica without permission).

The song is transformed a couple ways:

Guitars transformed into pianos
Metal song turned into trap song
Guitar solo transformed into baroque-isa piano solo
Vocalist transformed from James Hetfield to Richard Nixon (I have a thing for sampling Richard Nixon-I have about a half dozen “Nixonia” tracks). The ‘lyrics’ are the from 1969 “Vietnamization” speech.

Whole thing done in Ableton Live. I re-used a trap drum and bass track that I was fooling around with. A little reverb, a lot of compression–the bass and drums are driving limiters pretty hard to try to get that “trap” sound. Nixon has some reverb going on.

#12

really beautiful, great modulation!

#13

cool! really dig the passage around 0:57–ambient gamelan glitch :slight_smile: the new parts are did you redo the video in parallel? it looks like the video evolves to match the music.

#14

recorded something simple on ukelele (this forms the first 40 odd seconds)
converted to midi inaccurately
had the midi playing through various synths / samples
ableton changed the bpm , not sure why. i didnt argue.

#15

Transliteration is the process of writing a word using the letters of another alphabet. This is done by identifying characters between two languages that sound the same, even if their visual appearance is completely different.

A good example of transliteration is when an Arabic phrase like القلم على الطاولة is spoken as “Al-qualam 'alas at-taawila” in English. The phonetic clues help speakers of both languages know that the pen is on the table. In the art of global communications, it’s important to build bridges where and how we can.

To explore the musical equivalent of transliteration, one might ask what it means to consider the language of music as being derived from multiple alphabets. Is it possible to create a piece that isn’t really musical, yet retains the phonetic properties of sound from which music is made? Can a new language be assembled from components that have no basis in structure? How might we cultivate a musical phrase from non-musical origins?

(We at Suss Müsik ask a lot of questions. We are highly curious).

For this insane piece, Suss Müsik created an alphabet of noises using a prepared electric guitar played with homemade mallets, wooden blocks and a hollow metal tube. A rhythm began to emerge to create the first phrase. We then destroyed the rhythm through a process of declension, creating a sort of consonantal cluster before the original rhythm returns.

The result is something like hearing a Captain Beefheart riff crossed with Fred Frith’s guitar experiments after a visit with the dentist. It’s messy, chaotic, amateurish and probably awful, but we had fun doing it.

The piece is titled Metamorphoo, which is a transliteration of the Greek word μεταμόρφωση meaning “transformation.” The image is an old sheet of acrylic Letraset.

#16

Cheers! That glitch is liberal use of Beatrepeat on the programmed drums.

Yeah, I put together a new video with each remix. In this case the last part was a new video but I copied the original’s layout.

#17
#18

I like the increasing urgency and sense of evolution in this piece.

#19

Nice, great bass sound and the other instrumentation is refreshing.

#20

Keep thinking this could be a soundtrack but then I get a disturbed feeling trying to imagine the scene.