I suggest watching this piece with the sound muted. The goal of the Disquiet Juno this week was to create a combination which is less than the constituent parts. We were instructed to utilize portions of the first ten tracks on Lee Rosevere’s sublimely beautiful release entitled “5 Minute Meditations” and to combine them to create a single five minute piece which was “something even more ethereal, more ambient, more artfully threadbare.” I was immediately interested in not doing anything to the source material except use it to create a video synthesis feedback system. I did this by taking the full ten tracks and putting them on my Thonk/Music Thing Radio Music module. I then utilized multiple random generators to scan through the folder with the samples, pitching them up and down, and staggering their start and reset points. As the results were very mid-range and treble heavy, I needed to get some bass frequencies in play so I parallel processed the audio through my Make Noise QMMG in low-pass mode. From their I ran the results through my Modcan Dual Delay, and then that whole chain was piped into my LZX Sensory Translator. I took the resultant 5 bands of EQ impulses from the ST and they drove all of the synthesis patterns in this piece. Finally, I recorded a pass in mono and then layered a reversed copy of that track in the opposite stereo channel. This process was incredibly labor intensive as I’d tried to previous methods using just the source material to drive the video synthesis, but the frequency content was too quiet and too narrow of a range to get good results. By manipulating and massaging the material radically, I was able to get something happening in the visual realm. But, I don’t love how my processed sounds feel compared to the original. Hence my suggestion to watch with the sound muted. Just know it was Lee’s sounds which created everything at play in my piece.
