Disquiet Junto Project 0314: Cold Start

Plym · 2018-01-07T17:06:07.862Z

My first time participating on this, and actually first time posting stuff I’ve made that is not part of a band or collaboration.

I used a Zoom H4n and sampled ice cubes dropping into and swirling inside the largest wine glass I could find in our kitchen. This sample (about 22 sec long) is the only sound source used in the track.
I began with finding different sections of the sample that I knew could be processed into different parts, some for the more rhythmic stuff and then some with more harmonic content. For the rhythmic parts I just chopped different parts and organised it and found some patterns in arrangement view in Live 9. These parts are processed with different effects like EQ, reverb, delay and bit-crushing. I knew that I wanted to find some harmonic content from the sound of the ice cubes hitting the crystal glass, and when I found something I could work with I tried to tune and pitch it so it sounded “clean”. I like to use the re-pitch algorithm in Ableton Live to preserve the most “natural” sounding tone, especially when working with stuff that can arranged as shorter stabs or notes. With this I could arrange some melodic/harmonic parts just by pitching the sample and make some simple chords and movements. I tried to make a synth tone with the Granulator (m4l device) but ended up ditching it (though I think I used a resampled arpeggio-delay-bitcrusher thing way back in the mix halfway through).

Most of the track is produced as described, in Ableton Live. The last step of the process was to process parts of the sample through my modular rig. I sent some parts of it through my Make Noise Morphagene that were modulated by Maths. For the clearly melodic stuff halfway through the track I processed the sample through Mutable Instruments’ Clouds. I freezed a section of it and found a tone I liked, then improvised some stuff with my Arturia Keystep while modulating by hand the position knob on Clouds.

I try to “mix” stuff along the creative process, so by the end of the day I just fiddle with details and some overall effects and stuff. I’m not to experienced with mixing, so I guess theres some quirky decisions made.

This has been a super pleasant experience. Pushed me to get off my ass and create something, and also just tell myself that I have to finish it up and let it go! I really look forward to future assignments : - ) Now I’m going to check out more of the tracks in the playlist! So much cool and inspiring stuff! Didn’t want to listen to too much while I was working on my own track.

disquiet · 2018-01-07T17:40:47.711Z

Welcome, @Plym. So many new people this week. A great start to the year.

nosollution · 2018-01-07T18:03:13.941Z

Another first-timer. Ice sounds from cube drops and shakes:

Disquiet0314 setup.jpg1500×686 1.17 MB

The track has three voices:

1. Rhythmic: the ice. The “microcassette-corder” was played back at half-speed into Morphagene, pitched down further, and looped. MG output is going through a Digitech Timebender that is pitching the delayed sound up 1 octave, so later in the track when MG morph is increased the MG pitch up + the DT pitch up bring back an approximation of the original ice sounds.

2. Melodic: Rings > Clouds played by Grids/Ansible/MP first voice. Ansible is clocked by MG.

3. Bass: MP second voice > WMD Spectrum > Three Sisters formant FM’d by Spectrum Sub.

TC HOF reverb is on the mixer out. Light EQ and compression in Reaper.

Autogeneric · 2018-01-07T20:37:30.212Z

Here’s mine. I recorded various sounds of an ice cube(s) in a small tumbler via both a contact microphone and a stereo microphone into a portable digital recorder; split them into splices on the Make Noise Morphagene, and passed the manipulated playback through a modulated delay and then a convolution reverb.

This is my first stab at this one so I’ve gone for something quite simple; however in the process I’ve created a load of great samples, so thanks Marc!!!

jks · 2018-01-07T22:56:26.567Z

Another January weekend, another day spent faffing with ice cubes in glasses in the kitchen; i’ve done six out of the possible seven of these which is both heartening & faintly terrifying. Time takes a cigarette & all that.

After recording a few cubes in a large tankard-style glass, I made an annoying though possibly reusable rhythm out of small sections of clink, thwock & crack. I took this track and, for conceptual continuity, placed it in a re-used Audiomulch set up from last year. I tweaked this set-up a bunch too, mind - made additional connections, added egregious amounts of delay - so as to not feel too lazy, too repetitive, i guess. I made 3 versions of the output from this set up - 1 at 1bpm, 1 at 66.5bpm & 1 at 115bpm - & sort of tried to get them to argue sympathetically; in addition there’s some super lo-resolution mp3 tracks, 'cause there’s something icy in that defocused texture, to my ears anyway. Finally i made the playback somewhat wayward, just to sort of… aqueous it all up, you know? It’s sorta sliding…

Shouts & peace to Marc who keeps this whole thing going with admirable focus & dilligence & to all Junto-ers new & old.

Tuonela · 2018-01-08T04:49:54.446Z

ioflow · 2018-01-08T13:06:27.546Z

ambient improvisations for piano, rhodes, modular synthesizer, effects, and field recording.

for the first disquiet junto project of the year (my last contribution was #0300 in october 2017), i followed the “blind recording” process i developed in 2016, starting with the field recording: crushed ice swirling in a glass, occasionally poured into another glass. as the ice melted, only the sounds of water and the largest ice cubes were left.

i then recorded the piano improvisation without listening to the ice; those clinks and little swishes serendipitously lined up with individual notes and longer phrases over different octaves.

finally, i recorded the rhodes swells by twisting the mixer volume knob, with that audio running through the modular synthesizer and strymon effects pedals. the whole thing was assembled in ableton live and audacity, with no other effects, eq, or compression.

hightunnels · 2018-01-08T14:50:24.447Z

Ice sounds recorded on an iPhone SE, processed and sequenced on an iPad using Samplr, Elsa, Rozeta Particles/Collider and Audiodamage Dubstation. Mixed and recorded in AUM. Trying to participate in the Junto more often this year–hard to believe it’s been 7 years!

otolythe · 2018-01-08T16:34:27.099Z

I thought at first to make a kind of Ben Franklin ‘armonica’ piece, but the ice sounds were clipped rather than persistent, so it became percussion.

https://soundcloud.com/otolythe/ice2018-timeshift-disquiet0314

For this one I took some ice cubes and dropped them in different glasses, and one tiny vermillion bowl, for different tones. I made a rhythm out of two tones that were separated by about a step (just by cutting and pasting, and repeating, in Garageband), then took a section of that into Audacity and pitch-shifted it different ways to make some seventh and thirds (I think!). Layered all these tracks against the original “field” recording for some happy accidents, then placed the tone of the tiny vermillion bowl (the high note, like a triangle) as a final beat. Finally, brought the whole track back into Audacity and gradually sped it up, from 0 to 60. Done!

petemaskreplica · 2018-01-08T18:36:04.672Z

A very quick and dirty one as I have NO TIME at the moment but I wanted to do this one as an incentive to myself to DO MORE STUFF. it will be a sad day when I don’t have time for a drink though. The sound of putting ice cubes into sherry glasses and pouring sherry over them, the icy noises have added reverb and the other noises have echo applied.

photofractal · 2018-01-08T22:52:54.490Z

My first Disquiet Junto! I really wanted to participate so I had to rush this one but having the deadline is really nice actually.

https://soundcloud.com/salierno_d/cold-start-disquiet0314

I recorded the ice in a glass using a close condenser mic and a stereo mic simultaneously further away in the room. Some of it was also recorded to micro cassette too. Every percussive sound is from those recordings except the kick. Other than that there is some eurorack, granular guitar, field recordings from a day at a museum, and some other tape recordings. Convolution reverbs and delays used in Ableton.

steveoath · 2018-01-08T22:58:37.391Z

Beat the clock by an hour!
https://soundcloud.com/chiplightning/steveoath-cave-ice-disquiet0314

I recorded ice being passed between two glasses using a voice recorder app on my phone. Sent the sound to the PC for playing with. Found a nice chiming sound and put that into Live’s Sampler. This was triggered by flin (so happy to have a grid again!). Mucho reverb and delay was added as was a little beat repeat. I exported a brief snippet of this to paulstretch and timestretched approx 8s of audio to 3 mins. I took this new audio back into Live and layered it with the original, more percussive layer.

SynthAvesta · 2018-01-09T01:44:10.780Z

Saturday morning was hot. I took out ice cubes from freezer before turn on the computer, turn on the audio interface, connect mic and open the DAW. When all was ready half of the ice had turned to water. I went to look for more ice cubes, but I realized that those were the last ones… I said to myself: “I got the title”. But when the watery recording was made, I hadn’t more time to continue. On sunday night I started to layering elements: ice cubes (three tracks), Solina String Ensemble (four tracks), one VST piano, a wind sound made with VCV Rack. And a lot of reverb, automated and always changing.

akstuhl · 2018-01-09T05:53:32.809Z

The material for this piece was made by shaking and swirling a glass of ice under an SM-57 while manipulating pitch-shifter and delay pedals (the latter set to a reverse-echo mode). I gradually ramped up the pedal modulation as I went and alternated between perturbing the ice more and less harshly, at one point adding some boiling water to the glass to produce some new sounds. I loaded the recording into Ableton’s Simpler instrument in order to arrange the more interesting snippets and to play with a contrast between the physical rhythm of moving the ice versus the imposed rhythm of retriggered samples.

Ohjann · 2018-01-09T11:35:09.871Z

First Junto! Managed to upload it in time but only signing up to this forum after the deadline so hopefully that’s not too late.

Wrote it mostly on the bus to/in my home town of Galway so ice-in-glass samples are taken from freesound.org rather than recorded myself as I left my Zoom in Dublin. Also used some other icy samples such as ice machines, people walking on ice, ice breaking etc.

Went into it with no definite plan, started with just dropping the samples I had into the project and messing with them till I had a beat of sorts and then went from there. Only thing added to the beat is the kick and snare/clap (and some occasional eski samples).

Bass synth made with Ableton operator, the rest are Massive.

The track inspired by Wiley’s Eskibeat, Dat Oven – Icy Lake, and Mssingno (more generally).

Alternative version with some vocals here that gives it a bit more uumph but decided to leave out in the end: Dropbox - Error - Simplify your life

id_23 · 2018-01-09T12:38:41.568Z

a tad late, but happy new year folks!

id_23 · 2018-01-09T15:17:07.649Z

For anyone who doesn’t visit SC;

I recorded 3, 8 second loops in fieldscaper, I ran these through Fieldscaper as well as into several other chains of effects, surfing the controls in an improvised manner…
apps used:
fieldscaper
frobulator
muckraker
reverb fdn
dedalus
gliderverb
eos2
dubstation
space
roughrider
limiter

Realised I have posted this to an older profile, rather than the more current @idxxiii

proxemia · 2018-01-09T17:33:45.874Z

Disquiet Junto Project 0314: Cold Start
The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something of it.

short piece of recordings of ice taken from 4 different locations just outside of boston, in somerville, ma, which is my current place of residence. recently we were hit with a cyclone bomb that left over a foot of snow in some places. work was closed, events were canceled, cars were buried, and sidewalks transfigured into canyon like paths of the indian jones variety. for this piece, it was clear to me that i wanted to acquire the ice from the remnants of this recent storm, and found it a great opportunity to muse over the changes in locational materiality. the disquiet junto has always been an important vehicle push process open the flood doors of creativity. this must have been my first disquiet junto, nearly 4 years ago. just as icicle remnants fall into the slush near a dug out hydrant, this piece allows me to reflect on what as changed, how i am changing, and how my perception of the environment is an important part of that process.

recordings made with binarual microphones, a pair of Usi’s, and a sony PCM10. what you hear is a collection of the mapped soundwalk around my block, the ice samples moving about the container during the walk, and the ice samples inside a half gallon glass jar.

location1_ice sheet under snow, atop a stone wall
location2_icicle-like bit from a rain gutter
location3_sample from large ice chunk from the roadside
location4_icicle-like bit near fire hydrant

manipulations done in cecilia5 and ableton.

bellyfullofstars · 2018-01-09T18:43:27.468Z

https://soundcloud.com/bellyfullofstars/icee-disquiet0314-coldstart

Way late posting, but the theme for this year is “Get Things Done”… maybe next year I can add, “… On Time”.

Along those lines, I’ve decided to make this annual Junto challenge tradition a continuing Work In Progress. Last year I recorded the ice samples and made a few short loops, but didn’t end up completing the challenge. This year: a piece to post! Mostly I worked with two shortish loops culled from last year’s samples, and turned them into a piece by performing and processing them live via a series of effects pedals (including a newly acquired Neunaber Immerse Reverberator). I like the arc of the piece overall, but I can already hear mix changes I would do and parts I might add or subtract from the arrangement. But that’s what next year’s challenge is for!

Looking forward to hearing everyone else’s icy entries. Hope everyone here is having a good 2018 so far.

Allysse · 2018-01-11T11:54:14.818Z

I’m very behind with this but the end of the week is the busiest for me, so I only managed to find time for the project yesterday.

For this piece, I recorded a couple of ice cubes being dropped in a glass and submerged them with water. I used an Uši microphone, a JrF hydrophone and contact microphone.
I roughly synchronized them and listened a few times to the track.

I then used a Roli Blocks. I turned off the field recordings and let myself be driven by the memory of the crackling sounds of the submerged ice cubes to create the melody.