Disquiet Junto Project 0353: Warp & Weft

[disquiet]

Thanks to @bellyfullofstars for proposing this and to @mzero for the photography and participating in the project’s gestation (and to @mzero’s husband, John Horigan, whose weaving provides our sample this week).

Disquiet Junto Project 0353: Warp & Weft
The Assignment: Read loom-woven fabric as a musical composition.

Thanks to Kim Rueger for proposing this project, to John Horigan for allowing us to use this fabric as our source image, and to Mark Lentczner for the photography and for participating in this project’s gestation.

Step 1: Download the following image and look at it closely:

Step 2: If you’re not familiarize with the terms “warp” and “weft,” understand them as relating to the act of weaving. Per the Wikipedia entry, “The lengthwise or longitudinal warp yarns are held stationary in tension on a frame or loom while the transverse weft (sometimes woof) is drawn through and inserted over-and-under the warp.”

Step 3: Study the image with this concept of “warp and weft” in mind. Consider how the image can be interpreted as a musical composition.

Step 4: Compose a piece of music that, reflecting your thoughts from steps 1 through 3, reads the image as a music score.

Six More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0353” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your track.

Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0353” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation a project playlist.

Step 3: Upload your track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.

Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co.

Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 6: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Other Details:

Deadline: This project’s deadline is Monday, October 8, 2018, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted in the early evening, California time, on Thursday, October 4, 2018.

Length: The length of your track is up to you.

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0353” 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: Please consider setting your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution, allowing for derivatives).

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

More on this 353rd weekly Disquiet Junto project (Warp & Weft / The Assignment: Read loom-woven fabric as a musical composition) at:

https://disquiet.com/0353/

Thanks to Kim Rueger for proposing this project, to John Horigan for allowing us to use this fabric as our source image, and to Mark Lentczner for the photography and for participating in this project’s gestation.

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:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0353-warp-weft/

There’s also a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet to join in.

[disquiet]

The project is now live.

[klaatuberada]

Simplified the image in Photoshop (cropped and contrast), converted to MIDI, using verticals as indicators for chord changes and the pattern as notes. Little bit of mucking around with the notes to get them harmonising but stuck largely to the pattern from the image, made a few variations and splayed them across several different instruments from Omnisphere. 2C-Audio reverb to taste.

[DeVis]

https://soundcloud.com/user-507251108/fish-cloth-disquiet0353

[samarobryn]

Never knew a woven rug could sound so happy!

[euclidian]

https://soundcloud.com/user-970962304/fm-weavingdisquiet0353

[DeDe]

This one’s weird, I started with one thing and ended up with a different track “painted” on top of the first one.

Started this morning interpreting the image (vertical blue lines) as series of “bips” and 'beeps" using a synth I never used called Loom.
Then created glitchy electronic textures with another instance of loom and my microkorg
You still hear the beeps popping up the mix here and there but the rest is completely buried, just contributing to the overall mess.
Funny thing is that I worked intermittently for 6 hours and each time I came back to this thing I though it wasn’t good and kept adding layers, and went from an abstract mean glitch and noise thing to a nice naive space soundtrack, but the layers underneath provides confusion and mess to the poor gentle naive track.
Time will tell if I keep this or re-work completely. Not really enjoying it aft r a first listen.

The image by NASA is good though.

Cheers
dd

https://soundcloud.com/daniel-diaz/warp-space-weft-time-disquiet0353

[Walthisney]

https://soundcloud.com/walthisney/warp-weft-by-whlt-thisiey-disquiet0353

[VonnaWolf]

Well, I am playing music live for the first time ever and was attempting to relax prior to running out to look for a new dongle. I used photoshop to convert the image to B/W and used markers to create the notation. I then input each color into Muse Score as it’s own instrument and would use the Yellow squares as Drums since it reminded me of the Yellow Roli Bongo, exported MIDI to combine with the Roli set. I played the yellow blocks on a 4 bongo from roli in 3 instances since the notation contained 3 instruments.

Vonna ,Warp Wolf Weave? Please? Disquiet Junto 0353.mid (666 Bytes)
Vonna ,Warp Wolf Weave? Please? Disquiet Junto 0353.pdf (90.2 KB)

I also published the drum portion to Roli Noise app with corresponding title. Vonna ,Warp Wolf Weave? Please? Disquiet Junto 0353.pdf

[TotalEnergy]

https://soundcloud.com/total_energy/ww-disquiet0353

While the world turns and burns, nothing quiets the nerves quite like wine and a smoke…xo

Edit: At 12:01, so to speak, I decided to add the little drum track.

The strings are wonky. Any suggestions on how to get a more realistic midi-string sound?

[disquiet]

The playlist is now live:

[janglesoul]

https://soundcloud.com/janglesoul/disquiet0353-wovengou

Nothing too clever. I listened to Peggy Gou last night. She might have influenced it. I toyed with the idea of having some M4L-device transfer the image to midi. But instead I decided to arrange my bits and pieces visually.

The alternating blue and white seemed something to follow. So I choose a white kick and a blue kick and had them alternate. To me the Disquiet Junto becomes an area for taking chances. So I decided to use tools (M4L-instruments etc) that I’m not familiar with. Choosing presets fast and reckless. Freezing, flattening and chopping. Colouring everything blue and white and moving stuff around.

It’s not a finished piece, rather I’d be happy to work on it some more. I’m pretty happy with the sounds and believe the assignment made me do stuff that I normally wouldn’t.

So, an interesting oblique strategy. (as usual)

[octif]

https://soundcloud.com/octif/fabrication-disquiet0353/

I tried to treat the woven piece as a sequence, 9 repitions of a 32 bar sequence (it’s very long). The density of the simple chord sequence changes with the colours. Over time it changes and filters to reach the end of the process (the audio track and the weaving). Audio of machinery in a textile factory tells its own story.

[edited - I did this and uploaded late at night, wasn’t until next day that I realised one of my elements was completely missing, so have redone that and another aspect. It’s still too long, but that was how I chose to interpret the weaving ]

[sevenism]

https://soundcloud.com/7777777777/weft

recorded something in synthmaster, a held note with various detuning throughout
warped in ableton by changing the tempo and pitch. warped further with izotope vinyl
the weft is from podfarm phaser imagining it going over and under quite slowly.

[disquiet]

I love how your track’s cover image on SoundCloud correlates with the source image.

[janglesoul]

Glad you like it. Souncloud cropped it. Here’s the full screendump.

[samarobryn]

Investigating how to turn images into music was part of my earlier compositional practice, and for this I went back to it. I ran this image into i2sm, a program that converts jpeg into MIDI, played with a few settings then layered three versions of the MIDI on top of each other.

When considering “warp and weft”, I thought about how different strands might duck and weave around each other, and panned two of tracks so they would wander left-to-right around one central track.

Programs: i2sm and Ableton 9

[wkujater]

This piece starts with a more conventional instrumentation and arrangement on guitar, piano and trumpet, then gradually these parts are re-arranged by taking the “threads” of these sounds and applying new patterns to them in different ways. I processed each instrument differently, all within Ableton Live.

https://soundcloud.com/chrisrueger/threads-disquiet0353

[SussMusik]

https://soundcloud.com/suss-musik/dovetailing-disquiet0353

Suss Müsik initially misread this week’s Junto theme as being inspired by a line from an early Cocteau Twins song: “The devil bite’s dirty, we warp and weft.” This should provide an inkling of how little we know about the textile sciences. Not that you couldn’t make the same assumption by simply looking through Suss Müsik’s wardrobe.

As part of our research, Suss Müsik consulted with an expert versed in the subtle art of warping and wefting. “Basically the warp is vertical lines of yarn attached to a loom,” we were told. “The weaver then inserts the weft yarn horizontally back and forth to form a fabric.”

Okay, got it.

“There are different techniques when making something like a tapestry. You can do a vertical slit by weaving two wefts toward each other until they meet at the place where the slit is desired. You can also do a diagonal slit by turning at the same point in succeeding weft passes, moving one or more warp ends to either side of the previous turn.”

Um … okay.

“You can also do something called hatching, where two weft yarns approach, meet, and return from one another in a series of joins in a random overlapping fashion. My favorite is the dovetail interlock, where two adjacent color wefts circle a common warp end as a turning point.”

At this point, Suss Müsik politely shooed away all this talk of warping and wefting and got to work. An egg shaker provides the longitudinal structure, while two gently plucked guitar phrases behave as weft hooks. Two Moog synth washes are then “woven” across the front of the mix.

Halfway through, two drum patterns interlock as a binaural databend of the provided image stretches behind them. Hand-over-hand piano polyrhythms complete the “tapestry” while an EWI whines in the foreground. The last sound heard is a harmonic treatment of the original image’s bit data converted to sound.

Upon hearing the piece, our textile consultant determined that it most closely resembled a dovetail interlocking pattern. Something to do with a third color emerging from the two grounds overlapping, so we’re told.

[SussMusik]

Best of the lot thus far. Nicely done.