Disquiet Junto Project 0375: Despite Yourself

Disquiet Junto
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Disquiet Junto Project 0375: Despite Yourself
The Assignment: Make a piece of music that sounds as unlike you as you can accomplish.

Step 1: There is only one step for this project: Make a piece of music that sounds as unlike you as you can accomplish.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0375” (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 “disquiet0375” (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:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0375-despite-yourself/

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

Step 6: If posting on social media, please consider using the hashtag #disquietjunto so fellow participants are more likely to locate your communication.

Step 7: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Additional Details:

Deadline: This project’s deadline is Monday, March 11, 2019, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted shortly before noon, California time, on Thursday, March 7, 2019.

Length: The length is up to you.

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0375” 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: 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).

For context, when posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:

More on this 375th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Despite Yourself / The Assignment: Make a piece of music that sounds as unlike you as you can accomplish — at:

https://disquiet.com/0375/

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-0375-despite-yourself/

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

Image associated with this project adapted (cropped, colors changed, text added, cut’n’paste) thanks to a Creative Commons license from a photo credited to Heather:

https://flic.kr/p/E939r

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

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The project is now live. It’s inspired by an observation made by the author (and artist) Douglas Coupland, I believe, many years ago, though I can’t find the source. I recall an exercise where you write a character different from yourself, put it in an envelope, and later read it and realize how much like you the character is.

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Now, this IS a challenge.

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A three year old child once complained about my overbearing volume levels, calling me “Mr. Loudy” in the process.

I’m currently resisting the temptation to submit several hours of digital silence…

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Another great challenge — Bizarro Track!

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I am also intrigued by the “envelope” part… the prompt also reminds me of a thing from art school, all artists (at least at first, and often, well, often) paint their own faces. even when you think you’re painting / really very much trying to paint someone else’s… :slight_smile:

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That’s interesting. Art critic Jerry Saltz is onto something similar in his tips to artists:

Lesson 12: Know What You Hate

It is probably you.

Exercise: Make a List of Art
Make a list of three artists whose work you despise. Make a list of five things about each artist that you do not like; be as specific as possible. Often there’s something about what these artists do that you share. Really think about this.

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https://soundcloud.com/user-507251108/verschillend-disquiet0375

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Wow. This is really hard to think about; I do stuff across so many genres I might end up doing plainsong… :smiley:

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In 1994, someone gave me an Optigan. You can do a little research to see what these were… kinda like an optical disk Mellotron. It had one disk with it, a collection of some cheezy swinging party type music. I was never able to find any other disks. There were separate tracks for drums, bass, organ, piano, vocals, and a few other things. I don’t really know why, but I recorded a bit of each of the parts and never thought much more about it, because there was nothing there that was remotely useful for the type of music that I do. The Optigan eventually died and landed in a dumpster.
Here we are 25 years later, and I finally have a use for those tracks.
I just made loops from the various tracks, corrected for pitch and time in ProTools and pasted together this very unrepresentative track.

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Thought for quite a long time about how to go about this week’s project, I’ve done music in lots of different styles over the years, so creating something that “doesn’t sound like me” was a little difficult.
Eventually I decided on taking myself “out of the equation” as much as possible and create a track where I had as little to do with it’s creation as possible.
Aside from the loudest beats, which were programmed on a long loop in Native Instruments Maschine and then “note repeated” during mixdown, everything else you hear was generated using probability engines from the Ableton probability pack by Sonic Faction with the synth parameters adjusted with random slow lfos from the MAX4LIVE Lfo:

You’ll have to judge for yourselves whether or not it still sounds like me…
Have a great weekend,
Rupert

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i was gonna do an acoustic insane clown posse cover but that would just represent a shadow-self, thought about something i’d be indifferent to (but its still my choice) went with doing something that i’d find impossible to do (but i did do it… oh no!)

i used performance rnn (https://magenta.tensorflow.org/demos/performance_rnn/index.html) at the highest note density, converted to midi controlling 3 drumkits in live8.

this is far more frenetic than i’d usually do. i actually used some music theory to ensure it wasnt a cacophony (i prefer gentle cacophony) and i’d usually never have a beat - let alone 3 at once so high in the mix. i didnt add any fx or remove clicks or do any mastering which was hard. i do work a lot with ai stuff but i’d usually rehumanize it a bit more (oh except i did gradually up the note density at the start,and reduce the pitches at the end)

i’d be interested if anyone thinks this track sounds like me

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Well, there’s a difference between music I don’t like and music that is unlike me. I didn’t want to spend my spare time writing music I really don’t like (Gospel, funk, country and western came to mind), which left that kind of music that I like (when I hear it) precisely because it takes me so far away from my self: dub. Dub is slow, cool, relaxed, made for dancing. SO NOT ME.

Never thought I’d ever write a song like this. Couldn’t really nail it, but had a great time trying to get the delay and reverb on the drums working.

In preparation I re-listened to Scientist’s brilliant album from 1981, Dub Landing.

Have a great weekend!!

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I SEE YOU

(sonically speaking :wink: )

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Doomed to fail… Had a couple of crazy ideas, but right now I can’t try them.
At least I did not come up with the title… or did I?
Came up with the musical idea sitting by the piano. That’s not me.

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What can I say about this ear treat?

I had a lot of fun making it :slight_smile:

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I decided to try this: Make something interesting, by grabbing the first 12 sounds available in the first 12 categories of the first instrument (Analog) in my DAW (Ableton) - a process I would NEVER otherwise follow. I then tried to create something I would enjoy, but still very unlike what I would normally do.

This is the result of this, difficult, assignment. Great fun. Thank you for the challenge :slight_smile:

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The playlist is now rolling:

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This track is sooooo not me. Hahaha.

Here is why:

1)3/4 time signature
2)Composed entirely in GB on my Ipad.
3)Downloaded the raggaeton pack (which I actually only used for drums)
4)Busy drum pattern
5)I used some pads at the end
6)I uploaded via my Ipad through Garageband (which was very convenient).

So I tried to do everything in my power to do the opposite of what I would usually do in my creative process. I think the track reflects that pretty well. I am not sure how to feel about it so I will let you all be the judge.

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The prompt got me thinking about what my personal theme music would be, my perfect baseball-walk-up-to-bat music. As a middle-aged Canadian white guy - this is not that track…

Created by messing around with pre-sets in GarageBand over my lunch break. It sounds nothing like ‘me’, but the haphazard technique is not that far off my normal style - so there are some underlying similarities to this bizarro strut.

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