Disquiet Junto Project 0412: One Chord Wonder

[sevenism]

made from a flute, piano, and double bass sample - notes A, C, E
i adjust the pitch of each sample as the track goes along so you get a nice degradation over time
accidentally started to play it in reverse and liked how that sounded as a way of closing the track. added reverb for cohesion.

[Andrulian]

I used a D#min 11+ chord - D# F# A# C# F G

Recorded live in Brainmodular Hollyhock 3, I used a different sound source for each note: Arpix (HH3); Enkl; Go2 x3; SubBoomBass 2 with different note lengths and midi pattern lengths to create a polyrhythm type of effect. Each sound was changed once during the recording.

Processed with a range of Eventide effects and Litote (Inear Display) using the HH3 physics engine to add movement to Litote. Mastered in MuLab 8.

[samarobryn]

For this assignment, I took a broader approach to “chord” by splitting a sound into various frequencies.

I’ve been closely following the news on the devastating bushfires in eastern Australia. One of the quotes that really struck me was from a beekeeper who, while surveying the remnants of his hives, noted that the “forest was screaming”. If you wanted to sum up the bushfires in three words, that was it.

I started off by recording the tree outside my house, then I took a 6sec section and slowed it down by 800%. From there, I used the graphic equaliser to narrow down to various frequencies, approximating a chord.

Layer 1: Base recording + Moscow resonator
Layer 2: Base recording at 500hz, panned left
Layer 3: Base recording + 250hz, panned right
Layer 4: Base recording + 1k-2k, with Around The Head pan effect + Spacebirds flanger + Replika delay + Dominator distortion
Layer 5: Recording of a fire
Layer 6: Original recording of the tree

[karol]

If I had more time I would introduce more randomness into chords voicing but basically it is:

• teletype in tracker mode having three patterns consisting only of notes from chord: Cmin7/9/11
• values from tracker are sent to rings/doepfer a-111-1/disting vco
• clouds is connected to aux track on mixer
• various modulation connected to clouds, doepfer a-111 pwm etc.
• Bard Pontius and Befaco Chopping Kinky used as VCA for a-111-1 and Disting vco
• Zoom MS70CDR as master effect
• Recorded to microcassette (hence why frequency response is so narrow but it adds really nice flutter)

The whole setup was running as it is and when recording my only input was changing audio level of various oscillator tracks and sending them to clouds through aux.

[cmcavoy]

Coming in under the wire here, but there’s a lesson. I’ve been participating in Disquiet Junto’s for ~ four years now. For me, it’s always about recording, sharing and listening. My participation has trailed off over the last year or so, largely because I’ve started judging my output before posting. I don’t know what changed, but I’ve let a little demon in my brain telling me to not share because it’s not good enough. That demon is the worst. With this post, I banish thee daemon! EXORCISED!

I chose A minor, because it’s my favorite chord…largely because it’s easy to find, sounds good, and spells ACE. I enjoy words. All the voices are Simpler Ableton instruments, except the drum and bass, which are an 808 kit and wavetable instrument.

[candlesayshi]

Made it just in time for this one. Was struggling to find the time to put something together for this, but I didn’t want to miss out because I really liked the idea behind this week. I went with an Ebm in just intonation voiced with the third at the top. Was going for a crushing kind of sound (guess it’s just what I like, tbh) and I’m really pleased with how it turned out this week. Two of the voices came from Reaktor synths and the other two came from a simple patch in Bitwig’s Grid and a patch in Glitchmachines Quadrant.

[AuralAntithesis]

https://soundcloud.com/auralantithesis/disquiet0412-one-chord-aural-antithesis
Simple diminished F chord, 3 takes on the juno 60 with 3 voices and different ways to manipulate the sound of each note.

[Rprecht]

My first posting to disquiet, variations on a C dominant 7 13 #11 chord using inversions and arpeggios.

[ntrier]

I…did not do this week’s prompt correctly. Whoops! Instead, I went through a few chords but used one instrument for each pitch in the scale.

The instruments I used were accordion, baritone horn, piano, organ, voice, and a Chinese hulusi (reed instrument).

I used diads instead of triads (two notes instead of three). The first few chords have a G in common and experiment with how changing just one note can change the feel of the chord. The second half of the piece does the same thing on Ab.

I tried to record in different octaves than the final result would be, to get some tasty pitch-shifting artifacts (apparently if you sing falsetto and pitch shift it down, you sound like you’re in a boys choir rather than The Chipmunks).

Some sounds have a bit of reverb and echo on them. I used a tape simulator to “glue” them together, and used Klevgrand’s Gaffel plug-in to split up the frequency spectrum, which I then panned to the left and right a bit.

[Joule]

For the “One Chord Wonder”challenge, I set out to build a drone. So, I started with a recording of an induction coil EMF as a broad spectrum sound source. This was then layered up to 37 times on top of itself, each pass randomly tuned using a band pass filter to one of the 5 notes of an Amajor9 chord – and each pass subjected to a slight randomly chosen change in rate and filter parameters to build a choral effect. I was hoping that the beats and harmonics generated by the layering would make it interesting. In any case, here is the result!

[ryanscottmattingly]

The whole piece is a single chord, but this chord was spread across several different instruments: a Behringer Model D, an electric guitar, a resonator dobro and likely others I’ve forgotten. . . even the faux drum sounds are just processed electric guitar playing the same chordal notes…

As for the idea, it’s another vegetarian propaganda song, but with a story that involves sex. Sort of. Anyway, years and years ago, I was fairly inexperienced and bought what I assumed was a natural alternative to the normal box of carcinogenic, chemical laden condoms, but when I got them home I realized these “natural condoms” were made out of the intestinal lining of lamb, which seemed like a crazy fucked up thing to be putting into contact with genitals. I returned them immediately, and I imagine the heat of the night was probably lost by that point, but all this time later a song was hatched, so there’s that.

[Peter]

My one chord is the ‘Hendrix chord’ – an Eb7#9. There are five voices – the tonic, doubled at octave, third, seventh and sharp nine. The instruments are three related ugens in SuperCollider which are selected at random for each voice at each iteration. If my math is correct that gives 3 to the 5th power, 729 possible combinations. Don’t know how many of those I gathered here, but a little of this goes a long way.

[GlennSogge]

[mdquigley]

For this I chose to experiment within Sonic Pi (sonic-pi.net)

I first chose a chord: Am/9. There is a guitar voicing that I’m fond of because it reminds me of tacky tv drama moments when it’s arpeggiated: A E B C E A. I sampled single notes from 6 different voices on my Casio SA-7 in ProTools: Ocarina, Violin, Pearl Drop, Marimba, Chorus, and Tuba. I then wrote a very simple program in Sonic Pi that plays the six samples with varying rhythm, envelopes, and panning.

I also created six synths within Sonic Pi using built in synth voices: :growl, :dark_ambience, :dpulse, :pretty_bell, :dull_bell, and :tri. Each synth was assigned a note of the chord, again with varying rhythms, envelopes, and panning.

I then recorded an improvised live-coding of the 12 sound sources, starting and stopping each to add some human element to the piece in terms of structure.

This was my first disquiet contribution in a couple years. Glad it’s still going. Check out Sonic Pi if you’re interested in live coding. There’s decent built in tutorials and it’s super easy to make intro-level experiments like this one.

[AuralAntithesis]

I honestly love all the different ways that the prompts get interpreted each week.
I read the prompt and something comes to my head and I don’t know how else it could be interpreted, but there is always amazing variety and creativity here. Thanks to all who add work each week, its fun to share work here and listen to what everyone else adds.

[RichieWitch]

Well… I’m a week late, but I decided to post it on SoundCloud anyway, so figured I may as well add it to the list here too.

My chord of choice was F minor 9–F has always resonated with me, and when I found out that F minor 9 is rarely used in music, it gave me that extra incentive. Instruments used included: DSI Prophet 6, a Hypersynth Xenophone, Korg MS2000, and Kontakt’s Ethereal Earth.

Once I had the ambient chord recorded, I ran it out to my Eurorack where I have a replica of the Juno 106 chorus circuit, and blended that on a parallel bus to give it a more expansive, swirly sound.

[Rprecht]

I am thankful for arpeggiators. This piece has four tracks – drums, pad, Logic’s Bell Echo Arp, and grand piano to which Apple’s Arp patch was added.