Disquiet Junto Project 0405: Trustable (C. Remix)

disquiet · October 3, 2019, 11:29pm

It’s been awhile since we did a communal remix project, so that’s what we’re doing. A big reason we do fewer of them is that when the Junto started, tons of netlabels had music online allowing for Creative Commons remixes. That isn’t the case as much any longer. In any case, C. Reider, a longtime Junto participant, who spearheaded the 2012 Junto concert in Denver, Colorado, made his recent album, … a trustable cloud, available for us to remix this week.

Thanks to him, and thanks, as always, for your generosity with your time and creativity.

Disquiet Junto Project 0405: Trustable (C. Remix)
The Assignment: Remix music from C. Reider’s album … a trustable cloud.

Step 1: The album … a trustable cloud by the Colorado-based musician C. Reider is available at the following URL. It is downloadable for free. Reider, a longtime Junto participant, has given us permission to remix it for this project.

https://c-reider.bandcamp.com/album/a-trustable-cloud

Step 2: Remix the album to your heart’s content, and your ears’, for that matter. Focus on one track, or combine elements from various tracks. Add your own material, or stick with Reider’s. The direction is up to you. (Note: Reider created the album using online tools, and you might consider using one or more of those tools yourself.)

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0405” (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 “disquiet0405” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation of 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-0405-trustable-c-remix/

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, October 7, 2019, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, October 3, 2019.

Length: The length is up to you.

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0405” 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 405th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Trustable (C. Remix) / The Assignment: Remix music from C. Reider’s album … a trustable cloud — at:

https://disquiet.com/0405

Check out the source music at:

https://c-reider.bandcamp.com/album/a-trustable-cloud

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-0405-trustable-c-remix/

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

Image is a reworking of the cover to C. Reider’s album.

disquiet · October 3, 2019, 11:52pm

The project is now live.

Paul_Reiners · October 4, 2019, 12:02am

Are there stems for this?

disquiet · October 4, 2019, 12:14am

He offered. I’ll see if they’re available.

disquiet · October 4, 2019, 1:06am

Update: Chris is getting some stems together.

tristan_louth_robins · October 4, 2019, 2:21am

Thanks for checking on this. As generous as the original offer was, stems would certainly be handy!

DeDe · October 4, 2019, 6:28am

Cool, If there are stems for track 1 I’m in. Please keep me posted.

sevenism · October 4, 2019, 10:15am

i loved the ambient sections of this album

i got the start and near end of cloud 1 detuned -7ct and ran thru:
ambient reverb
hornet chorus
izotope vinyl
ddly

intro of cloud 4 (transposed +4 st) thru pong texture

gradually slows from 99bpm to 40bpm

DeDe · October 4, 2019, 5:19pm

Ok, too late for the stems (my day is over, the sun set in this part of the planet), so I used parts of this track Cloud 4 and added orchestral soundscapes, synths and electric piano. Some nice Kontakt freebies here.

VonnaWolf · October 4, 2019, 6:16pm

This was fun! I’ve been wanting to work on some more traditional dj skills. I loaded the 4 Clips im to serato, on channel 3 I also used a iPad with Rolands Zen Beats and played some loops on that thru the Roland DJ 808 with drums Programed into the 909/808/707/606 Banks i then routed thru Serato to Abelton where I looped in the sampled sections and the additional drums to some EQ chains I built. I then spun the Original sampled section of each track with the loops. I did in a small break I had. Denver’s sun is shining happy day!!!

Bach-y-nal · October 4, 2019, 6:50pm

I did the second one. An ambient approach, presenting and exploring a cast of interacting, transforming musical character samples. I added a bit of a Lamont Dozier vocal sample in there for seasoning.

Joule · October 4, 2019, 6:54pm

Thanks C. Reider for the great material for this remix. In this project, I wanted to create a place without clouds - the desert. To do so, I pulled samples from each of the 4 tracks on the album and used altered playback speeds and BP filters to slow things down. Assembly and mixing in Ableton Live. I think I can hear cattle astray looking for water, a mirage or two and satellites in the deep cloudless desert sky at night.

fbusche · October 4, 2019, 9:58pm

This remix somehow turned into a suspense thriller piano music score. Hope you all enjoy. This is just cut and paste with some looping in my daw, some pitching but nothing crazy.

Ethan_Hein · October 4, 2019, 10:08pm

A remix of “Cloud 1” by C. Reider. I followed my usual procedure of turning avant-garde music into groove by looking for segments of the track that could plausibly be stretched into a 4/4 loop. I made an instrument out of the opening synth sound and improvised on it over the grooves. Aside from a kick and clap, all sounds come from C. Reider’s original track.

mdh · October 4, 2019, 10:22pm

Wow, really nice album. I’ve used a few of these browser tools before, but never got beyond idle piddling, so this is really impressive to me.

I took a few sounds from each of the tracks on the album and manipulated them in various ways in Ableton. A couple of the sounds are stretched out across the entire duration of the track to give a foundation. On top of that I use other bits and pieces almost at random to try and create a sound collage

I used a couple of the browser plugins listed to add a few of my own sounds:
whale synth and music mavericks (specifically the spoils of war and small hand instruments - I love this site!)

Its well worth looking through the document of browser synths, there’s some really neat stuff in there. Amazing to see some of these tools be used in such a creative way

disquiet · October 5, 2019, 1:16am

Just received this set of stems from C. Reider. For folks employing them, please note that he mentioned the following: “hopefully this will be used as an additional resource rather than wholesale replacement of the album as source material.”

http://vuzhmusic.com/stems.zip

tristan_louth_robins · October 5, 2019, 1:49am

With thanks to C. Reider and Marc for facilitating this week’s challenge. I sampled sections of Track 1 from A Trustable Cloud, using predominantly drone-based and percussive elements. These were arranged as a series of tight loops in Ableton which I applied degrees of pitch shifting, filtering and modulation to. With the main sequence complete, I then applied some additional processing (reverb, modulated tape delay) in Logic X.

tristan_louth_robins · October 5, 2019, 4:29am

wow - this is excellent!

Paul_Reiners · October 5, 2019, 5:09am

I did this project in Ableton Live. First, I imported all the stems. I let Ableton warp the stems without any intervention on my part. I then created four tracks, drums, bass, piano, and lead. These would more accurately be called rhythm, bass, harmony, and melody. I put each stem in whichever track I thought best described it. Some stems were rhythmic, and others melodic, but it was hard to categorize others. So some of my classifications were somewhat arbitrary. Also, I made sure each track had roughly the same number of measures by moving some clips from one track to another. This moving about of clips added a bit more arbitrariness to the categorization.

I converted each clip into a loop of length 2^n where n was the largest number so that 2^n was less than or equal to the number of measures Live had warped the clip to.

I then used follow actions to trigger the progression of clips downward through each track. With a probability of 1/3, each clip would repeat, and with a probability of 2/3 would go down to the next clip. Then I started the first row of clips and let them go.

In the final mix, I let the last loop in each track continue to its end, rather than ending abruptly in the middle.

I added a little echo and reverb but did not alter any track (other than the warping done by Ableton). I used every track and did not add anything of my own.

If I had to use all of the tracks, as I did, I think I had to come up with a mechanical, deterministic process like the one I used. Otherwise, the choices I would have to make would be overwhelming.

howthenightcame · October 5, 2019, 9:08am

many thanks to marc and c.reider for organizing this project.

i heard something like a jazz rhythm in the opening thirty seconds of track 2. i used ableton to convert the sample to a drum beat and accompanying keyboard harmony, then played a guitar solo which i doubled up and pitch shifted. have a great weekend everyone…