Disquiet Junto Project 0412: One Chord Wonder

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Disquiet Junto Project 0412: One Chord Wonder
The Assignment: Play an extended chord where the instrumentation of each note changes as the piece proceeds.

Step 1: Choose a chord, any chord.

Step 2: Make a list of the notes that the chord is comprised of.

Step 3: Record a piece of music in which each of the notes in the chord are played by different instruments (more broadly: different sound sources).

Step 4: As the piece proceeds, change each of the instruments/sources, while never altering the notes that make up the chord.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0412” (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 “disquiet0412” (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-0412-one-chord-wonder/

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, November 25, 2019, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, November 21, 2019.

Length: The length is up to you.

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0412” 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 412th weekly Disquiet Junto project — One Chord Wonder / The Assignment: Play an extended chord where the instrumentation of each note changes as the piece proceeds:

https://disquiet.com/0412/

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-0412-one-chord-wonder/

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

The image associated with this track is by Juan Carlos Bulas Osorio, and is used (image cropped, text added) via Flickr thanks to a Creative Commons license:

https://flic.kr/p/e26AoH

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

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The project is now live.

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Cool prompt Marc! I had fun making this.

The chord is A7 sus 4; the music is played by 21 STK instruments in ChucK. The overall gain gradually cycles via an LFO. On each pass, each instrument is randomly assigned a note. The LFO also influences the overall velocity for each note, which is drawn from a random distribution for each instrument on each play of the chord. The placement in the stereo field is also randomized. The length of each chord is also subject to a small degree of randomness. I run multiple overlapping versions of the code that use various inversions.

It’s interesting that various non-chord tonalities seem to emerge. I’m not sure if this is just the harmonics of some of the models, the interplay of tones across instruments, or maybe a coding error:)

code here: github.com/charliekramer/ChucK…ter/disquiet0412.ck

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One 6 note chord, played in arpeggio (and a couple of times strummed) on 7 different instruments, both real and virtual.
Huge Lexicon reverb glues everything.
Paris, Friday 22nd November 2019 (happy birthday to me)

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It’s funny. Often when a project comes together, I have a sense of whom it might particularly appeal to, and I now remember thinking. I believe Charlie Kramer is going to dig this.

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This turned into a pretty fun little minimal techno jog which then morphs into robot speech pandemonium. The chord here is E major add 9, although it really isn’t because the voices and oscillators are not tuned to E. The joys of quantized sequencing plus Modular (VCV in this case). I wanted to do everything in VCV Rack, because it’s self contained and easy for me to get something out, so you are hearing 8 plaits, which are all in tune. The pitch and gates are being sent out via the new browser based version of Orca (the live coding tool) for percussion and all voices. Befaco rampage providing envelopes for percussion.

My 4 instruments here are 4 voices provided by the Vocal and speech synthesis modes of Plaits. The voices each have their own one-note sequence from the chord and then as the song progresses they are mixed and matched, finally resolving where we started. Some compression, mixing, recording and reverb applied to taste.

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I dig! I immediately visualized an N-dimensional multilcolored robotic sculpture, which I realized with the help of black coffee and oatmeal.

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Black coffee and oatmeal is how I start my day.

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I use a Debussy chord, and only a Debussy chord, for the organ, ambient pad, and bass line. Also mixed in are Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem, “We Real Cool,” recited by Morgan Freeman, and Scarface.

I didn’t change the actual instrument when playing the chord. I used two Ableton Live instruments, “Phantasm” and “Funky Organ.” What I did was to use a ton of automation to ‘sweep’ over seven different parameters for each instrument. So the two instruments morphed over time in strange ways. I didn’t morph or change the electric bass line but did only use notes from that Debussy chord.

There’s, of course, also some orchestral music from the Scarface trailer that I sampled. It was kind of hard to keep that out without an excessive amount of DAW labor.

This is basically my little version of “Medicine Show” by Big Audio Dynamite.

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And the playlist is now rolling:

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What a horrendously bleak week it’s been. I’m a bit haunted and depressed by the climate change-induced bushfires which are currently burning my country (AU) alive at the moment. Not to mention the complete lack of action/leadership from our government. In particular, the viral video footage of a koala being rescued and literally screaming in agony is one of the most devastating things I think I’ve ever watched/heard. I feel like the country I grew up in - cultural, spiritual, environmental - is disappearing rapidly. So, I’m pretty down at the moment. Very down.

With that in mind, I approached this week’s assignment by taking a bunch of instruments (vibes, wurli, mellotron, horns) and grafted them to a Fmaj7/9 chord (FACEG) with instruments coming and going across their assigned notes. I then processed them slightly, exported and then crudely tuned the track down in Audacity by an octave. It’s a pretty accurate sonic representation of my state of mind at present.

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oups, there was a typo on my title (disquie) corrected now, please add it.
Thanks
DD

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Oh, thanks. That makes sense. It hadn’t shown up in the search I use to create the playlist. It’s been added now.

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My chord is based on notes in C Phrygian mode. I sequenced the Una Corda piano and some cellos with a Max 4 Live sequencer called mt.sev.

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Hello everyone.

One of my favourite chords - c#m9 (c# g# e d#) - played on my guitar, slowly overtaken by soft piano, finally subsumed in a cloud piano pad.

I saw the MELVINS live in Shibuya on Tuesday, and I’ve been listening to a lot of Old Man Gloom (who put me on to the spoken word sample I used this week). One chord magic has been ringing in my ears a lot recently.

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oh, i love their song “hive” (discovered it via the sun city girls)!!

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I forgot how much I love Hive! Such a great band thanks for the nod.

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Every chord should have a name!

Your chord it’s an altered dominant with omitted 7th. Call it D(#9)(#11).
You could also call it Dee-FAFA or Bernard…

Great track btw. Killing kick drum.

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One chord on one chord. Dminor. A good November Chord :slight_smile:

Several versions of una corda piano plays different parts of an arpeggio over the single chord - with added rythms and effects from (very) different sources. At the end - a human voice drops in to lay the chord to rest…

Thank you for another inspiring challenge!

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An ambient solution :slight_smile:
Started out as a D7add6 but as the different synths took on the notes it kind of dissolved into a lot more.
The instruments are all synths. The Boog Model D is acting fundamental and the Streichfett is acting secong physical synth. The rest are old presets I’ve made, that i chose due to time constraints. 2 of them are different approaches to granular synthesis in Ableton. One is Wavetable with a custom sample of a cello, the other is granullator with a voice sample that drifts in pitch. I really like how the last one makes the chords ambiguous throughout.

6 Likes