Disquiet Junto Project 0387: Everything and More

Disquiet Junto
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Disquiet Junto Project 0387: Everything & More
The Assignment: Make a single piece of music using every single instrument that you have at your disposal.

There is only one step to this project:

Step 1: Make a single piece of music using every single instrument that you have at your disposal.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0387” (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 “disquiet0387” (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-0387-everything-and-more/

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, June 3, 2019, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, May 30, 2019.

Length: The length is up to you. Shorter is often better.

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0387” 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 387th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Everything & More / The Assignment: Make a single piece of music using every single instrument that you have at your disposal — at:

https://disquiet.com/0387/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

The title for this project come from the 1994 novel by Geoff Nicholson, but David Foster Wallace’s book about infinity arguably applies as well.

Subscribe to project announcements here:

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

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0387-everything-and-more/

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 Clayton Parker:

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

https://flic.kr/p/7WhgM9

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The project is now live.

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https://soundcloud.com/user-507251108/clouds-disquiet0387

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This makes me wonder if an unracked module counts as an “instrument at my disposal”? Or is it the collection of racked modules that make an instrument? But if the whole is an instrument, than how many instruments do I have with the varieties of combinations of modules? :thinking::thinking::thinking:

Thanks, @disquiet, your prompts always make me think!

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I think he simply means “use all that stuff you’ve got”

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this made me think of all the stuff I have - plugins, hardware, (things I could mike up and make music on!) - scary. and I’ve not got that much compared to some people either… ugh

Probably going to have to sit this one out - got work to do over the weekend but yeah - interesting food for thought

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It would take most of the weekend to even find all the musical instruments I own, so I’ve revisited a recording that uses many of them and added in some of the takes that I’d originally left out.

There are three takes of acoustic guitar, two takes of four-string guitar, one Nashville-tuned guitar, one MIDI-equipped guitar, two basses, two melodicas, two takes of drums and a glockenspiel. All are single takes, many first takes.

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This would be quite interesting, since I can’t play most of the instruments I own.
And I got a busy weekend to do

I’ll do my very best …

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@haebbmaster Well, I just found out that I can’t TUNE most of the (four) instruments I own!!

  • Backing track (drums, bass and strings): Spitfire Labs VSTs programmed using my Arturia Mini Lab MKII. (Some of the keys on this midi controller stopped working properly over Christmas, so I disassembled it and cleaned the contacts inside using my wife’s nail varnish remover. Somehow, that did the job and it’s still working.)
  • Acoustic guitar (rhythm and solo): Yamaha APX500II
  • Guitar swells: Gibson Tribute
  • Mandolin: 中出昌広 YM75 recorded into a Shure SM57

Besides my pedalboards, that’s everything I own.

Track took about three hours to cut, so it’s pretty rough…

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What a great track!! That thick rolling bass line has got me in the mood for some mid-period The Cure (Kiss Me, Disintegration, Wish). We should have a whip round and ask Robert Smith to cut some vocals :slight_smile:

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Missed a couple of weeks for no real reason and noticed that my motivation to make music in general was at quite a low. Figured that doing the weekly projects is a great way to get my juices flowing, so hoping to return more regularly :slight_smile:

I have quite a lot of random instruments lying around that I’ve collected over the past year or two. Always with the vague idea that I’ll just pick them up and mess around with them and have a sudden burst of inspiration… inevitably that never happens and they sit around in little boxes or on tables gathering dust. Really happy to have a project which pushed me to give some of them a go!

I decided that using all the instruments at my disposal would take more time than I really wanted to put in and probably result in quite a cacophony of sound. So I decided to select a few that I either rarely use or have never recorded with. So, with no clear plan in mind I picked up some instruments, watched a couple of tutorials on how to actually use them and started recording in the following order:

  • Hohner Puck Harmonica: hurts my mouth to play it a bit - and I have no idea how to actually play it. I used the Ableton tuner to find out what notes I was actually playing: Ab, Eb, F#, Bb and C so I put them into a scale website and decided to use the F Phrygian scale for the other instruments
  • Coconut shaker: realised there is more technique to shakers than just back and forth motions. Very difficult to record nicely on a zoom-h1 mic
  • Cajon: had the microphone dangling from my desk in midair to record this - with part of the cable wrapped around synthesiser knobs to prevent it from reaching the floor
  • Electo-Acoustic Guitar: Hooked up to Ableton, plugin surfin’ until I found something which distorted the sound sufficiently for my taste
  • PO-24 Office: SO glad to have finally used this in a recording. All I’ve ever really used it for is the odd solo jam in bed / around the house. Quite happy with how the quality of this sounds recorded into a computer.
  • Shure Microphone: Bought earlier this year, but unfortunately always a bit too self-conscious to use it, even when I’m on my own.

All recorded into and sequenced with Ableton. The acoustic instruments were recorded and pretty much left untreated, so its pretty rough sounding and not quantised to a grid like all the music I normally make.

This was so much fun :slight_smile:

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I looked at this as a “throw it what ya got” assignment, but counting physical instruments and picking one softsynth to play on a keyboard controller. The chord change is inspired by a theory book I’m sporadically studying. I wanted to keep this musical despite putting ‘everything’ on it, so I mainly do a slow change, Lydian to Phrygian. Three electric guitars, acoustic guitar, two basses, Volca Beats, Volca Modular, and one zeta+ preset. I spent about 8 hours on it. its amazing how the Junto prompts can inspire creative energy.

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In my home we have mandolin, guitar, flute, block flute, ocarina, mouth harp,
harmonica, piano, keyboard + sound module, qy-10 (maybe not an instrument? For me it is. And I got 2 of them.), djembe, ukulele, oboe, cello, viola, violin, modular synth, trumpet, glockenspiel, electric guitar and bass, voice… I think that’s all. The computer is an instrument too. Dont have time to participate this week. I have a son that graduates from high school this week. And we renovate the kitchen. But I will listen to your submissions! Oh yes, the graduatee (is that a word) has some sort of Chinese instrument too. :thinking:
Yes we have a tin flute and a zither also. But none in the family plays them.

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Wow, The Cure might still be in the country after performing Disintegration at the Sydney Opera House.

Feel like I should try and develop something more melodic on the bass now, their basslines are often remarkable.

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I write my scores using Sibelius software and play that score through Noteperformer. This means that in addition to just about every instrument you have heard of, I have at my disposal instruments such as the Taiko, Cimbasso, and Bandoneon.

So I decided to make a little change to the project, which was to include every instrument that, at some point in my life, I have learned to play to at least some degree of proficiency, and have performed in public (which would leave out instruments like the tin whistle, which I played but never performed before anyone, as well as reel-to-reel tape recorders, which I used to create electronic music in the mid-70s).

This collection of instruments formed a rather motley group that, frankly, was pretty close to impossible to bring into coordination - sort of like trying to get a group of three year olds to dance together - so the piece Everything & More is similarly on the quirky side.

Everything & More was written for Clarinet, Baritone Horn, Piano, Acoustic Guitar, Electric Bass, String Bass and Voice.

The score is available at http://bit.ly/2QBJ2rH

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The playlist is now rolling:

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Instruments: Silvio Saprani Accordion, Porkpie Snare with magnet drop, Cymbal with Magnets, KORG SV1, ROLI, Roland DJ 808, SM7B, iPad with ROLI Noise App. Built some EQ and Loop instruments in Abelton and a drum rack with wood tones that I used to play on the Roli Block. I started by programing the drum sequencer and then live looping thru all the instruments and then a vocoder on for a vocal. I then applied some compression to various tracks at multiple rates.

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I’ve been out for several weeks and thought I’d be able to jump back in this week… but there are three or four hundred instruments in this house…

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Three or four HUNDRED?!

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Yeah, I’ve been playing music since the mid 60s and have accumulated quite a bit of stuff. I ran a mid size recording studio for about 25 years, which I recently closed, and have all of that gear. Plus, I went down the rabbit hole of guitar collecting for about 30 years…
my wife is also a professional musician, and plays 13 different instruments.

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