Disquiet Junto Project 0451: Ursula's Silences

[PaulBeaudoin]

What does loss sound like? Using a piece by Beethoven, I am thinking about how the silences in the music can be used to create a place for the imagination to enter. As the sustained chords evolve, what else can/do we hear? Are these real or superimposed by our imagination, our sense of loss?

[PaulBeaudoin]

love your contribution this week!

[RPLKTR]

This piece is dedicated to the victims of the Santa Cruz Mountains wildfires. The Fahrenheit 451 coincidence is accidental but striking.

Process

At first when I read the prompt I thought of slow and brooding music like Bohren & Der Club of Gore or Harold Budd’s solo piano. However, as soon as I started my rig, Subharmonicon started singing and I let it. I used my “stereo Subharmonicon” patch, slowed everything down almost to a halt, placed droning bass with a pair of Mother-32s and some wind-like ambience with the Spectravox.

The Moog-only piece sounded a little hermetic. Some motion is added at the end of the piece with a piano arpeggio. Finally, I removed some of Subharmonicon’s notes to leave even more space within the piece.

[davidstelfox]

When I was thinking about this week’s project John Cage and his piece 4’33" came to mind, especially the idea that what many assume is completely silent piece is made up of “any and all sounds … and specific sounds found within the context of performance,” (from Brandon LaBelle’s Background Noise). My parents are staying this weekend and with two small children in a small flat quiet is hard to come by; they have taken the kids out for a couple of hours so I had a chance to have an explore.

I recorded the ambient sounds sat by my open back door for the length of time it took me to read an essay. I then made a drone from the car horn at just before 3 minutes (using Sampler, Echo, Valhalla Reverb and a little compression in Ableton) and layered this over in ever decreasing lengths and increasing pitches.

[jonbrennan]

Silence appears within words as often as between them. But (as usual) U.K. le G. is onto something deeper; we may perceive silence when passing from one slice of meaning to the next whether it’s acoustically there or not. Perception follows from both sense and thought (and I told myself that this project would be a break from recording video lectures on rationalism and empiricism). So, here pitch defines a set of phrases (words?) in a short repeating sequence. First timbral changes, then, yes, silences are introduced and the musical phrases change and change again as the listener draws on different cues to find structure.

The voice is rings through an lpg with tempo-synched delay from thyme. Recorded straight from the modular with light compression. Image made with praat.

As always, many many thanks for the inspiration

-jon

[disquiet]

The playlist is now rolling:

[RPLKTR]

A lot of interesting submissions this week. Some comments:

@klaatuberada - that’s something along the lines of what I first thought I’d do for this week’s Junto. Harold Budd meets Steve Reich. Beautifully still.

@Glitcher - inspiring idea with the “whiskers”, loved the ghostly upright piano. But I have to admit, the scraping noises made my skin crawl

@DeDe - yawn, boring. … just kidding, the cinematic nature of the piece was very emotional and immersive. The scales you used reminded me of the mountains, doesn’t matter if in Scotland or in Skyrim. But the space between the upper notes was filled with the drone in a fantastic way. I failed to glue my own piece with the drone as well as you did here.

@sevenism - I like the idea. The raw nature of the recording was making me want to go and layer things on top of this. This exposes that true silence is somehow anxiety-inducing to me.

@bb_r - the wind did a good job, and the idea to use contact mics is brilliant. This begs to be put in some cohesive space, like a reverb or some noise floor.

@RandomShuffle - I like vocoders, good job.

@Aaah - one of my favorites this week. The voice anchors the track as if it’s happening in some temple or hangar. Mutable Instruments makes this track, modern sounding without the contemporary harshness. Very cinematic.

@duckpow - a very fresh interpretation of the prompt. Given the anticipation and resolution drones being so spacious, I expected The Sound to also have its own giant reverb. It surprisingly doesn’t.

@Paul_Reiners - as usual, a technical composition with inspiring structure. It layers pretty well. I hope you don’t mind some feedback. I wish you spent some more time on sound design here. As it stands, the flat piano sound without varied velocity sounds artificial. I feel this gets in the way of appreciating the harmony. It reminds me of listening to MIDI Bach score sheets in music school trying to figure out how the voicings should sound.

@PopGoblin - this grows interestingly and by the time the proper beat comes in I totally dig it. Reminds me of classic demoscene music from the early 2000s. Just a minute long?

[RPLKTR]

(continued, as you can only mention 10 users at a time…)

@DetritusTabuIII - the submission is some David Lynch music. Goose bumps, the dreadful kind. The Naviar one is quite different. Love that phased Rhodes.

@JochenEdmund - Hey, I used to play clarinet, too. Also, TIL about waterphones. Fascinating!

@stefans - Amazing variety for a single guitar stroke. The beginning reminds me of Kangding Ray’s stabil album which is one my favorites. Good job! Your sound then evolves into some horror territory which fits the title very well. In a way this is a similar intrepretation to @duckpow’s.

@Xylr - another track that reminds me of Kangding Ray. The grains work very well, I love the razorsharp cuts and the motion that’s created, while the whole feels like a big body of water. It flows together and disintegrates at the end. The glue is there, I dig this.

@Ausgesuchtestenohren - honestly the hardest piece I listened to this time. Music concrète, demanding duration, bare silence as the glue. Can you say a bit more about how this is meant to be received? For a crude like me there’s little to hold onto.

@krakenkraft - Good job! Sounds like game soundtrack music to me. Reminds me of Lustmord’s rejected soundtrack to Planescape: Torment. “What can change the nature of man?”

@samarobryn - Similar cover concept to mine, I see. The voice intonation sounds a little like Interstellar to me. This is strangely calming and trance-inducing. What’s the license of the dischoir samples?

@davidstelfox - That’s got some proper mood. Can’t check since you didn’t enable direct downloads but it seems to be produced really quietly.

@jonbrennan - incredibly meditative and organic, despite the processing. I like the major consonants and the repetition, turns out my Subharmonicon went into similar territory this time.

[Paul_Reiners]

Thanks @RPLKTR. I will definitely spend more time on sound design, and randomizing the key velocities.

My philosophy is that the music should stand on its own without any effects. But, after getting the music down, I should probably think about more sound design.

[RPLKTR]

Music compositions do stand on their own but then again we have famous performances of those as well. Two sides of the same coin. As a music producer you’re in a uniquely powerful but also somewhat desperate position to have to deal with both.

[davidstelfox]

Thinking about it, it was recorded and produced really quietly. I was originally going to record outside but it was too windy even when I turned the gain right down, and then I didn’t check it when I started recording just inside the door. I also had to boost the gain in Ableton when I imported it and then my drones were too loud so I massively reduced the gain on those tracks - ended up with something a bit quiet everywhere. Have had a quick check and uploaded a version where hopefully the levels are a bit better.

[DeDe]

thanks a lot for taking the time for all these comments, great to read you and listen to all those tracks again, cheers DD

[zoundsabar]

The image is of thoughts from an oracular mind bubbling up out of a magic pond in a rocky mountainous area. The notion of silence is relative. Silence = Death. Pause = Articulation, allowing meaning.

Composed from a reading of Ursula Le Guin’s quote from “A Wizard of Earthsea,” and a field recording made in the wee hours of the day the lighting strikes started the fires above Santa Cruz. But we didn’t know that yet.

Thanks for the prompt! And thanks for listening.

[Glitcher]

Hehe , I grok why you would say that as some of the sounds from the whiskers do allude to ‘fingernails on chalk board’ sound. I think the ‘nail violin’ is possibly an aquired taste too.
It’s all good though. Using different materials will likely give different results. I’m thinking of creating some more tiny contact mic instruments to fit inside a video VHS case for a more varied and playable feel.

Thanks for your feedback

[vgmrmojo]

Disquiet0451
vgmrmojo’s blackout
• Key: F#/Gb BPM: 124 Time signature: 4/4 DAW: Reaper
• Instruments: N/A
• Plug-ins: AlterEgo, Rast Sounds Atlas, Neutron Elements, Waves L1 Ultramaximizer
• The idea was to mimic the quote “For a word to be spoken, there must be silence. Before, and after.” Only using sounds.
• Started with a voice saying the beginning of the quote followed by silence then followed by another sound.

[notrance]

In this time of miscommunication and frothing of the noosphere, take the time to accept the clarity of the moment:

Recorded using AUM, from Moog37 and MinilogueXD, using some external delay and the Meris Polymoon.

[chalkwalk]

My first thought was something sparse such as room ambience punctuated by a single sound but I couldn’t quite convince myself to go for it. Instead I made recordings of a mixing bowl and a water bottle. I tried to combine these with room ambience but didn’t particularly like it so I added some “synth silence”.

The samples were all taken with my Zoom H6 and it’s built in microphone. The samples were handled on my MPC with slight EQ and a lot of compression (to allow hearing any detail beyond the transient). The background noise is made on the Peak by turning down everything in the mixer and increasing gain such that only self noise can be heard. This is also given a lot of gain on the mixer to add noise from the line amp with the result being EQed down. Both parts have effects added from my usual Boss 500 pedals.

When listening back I decided my background ambience was too loud so I did a little noise reduction to “feature” the silence a little more. Overall I think it works; I’m particularly pleased with how some of the samples sounded (quite like a gong). Thanks for another fun project!

[homeontheland]

Well, it looks like it isn’t going to work out this weekend to pull together a submission, but it hurts - such a good prompt! Looking forward to listening to everyone’s contributions

My experience of Le Guin’s writing is hardly comprehensive, as I only finally began reading her work back in April. Judith and I read through the first 4 Earthsea books out loud, and I just read The Lathe Of Heaven over the last couple of weeks.

We were prompted to go back to read this quote in context. The passage comes at a moment of calm in Ged’s quest, as he prepares for a final push. He is asked to explain the great powers of the universe even as he confronts his own doubts and fears and ignorance. He describes all the powers as “one in source and end” and all the true names as “syllables of the great word that is very slowly spoken by the shining of the stars.”

This Junto’s quote was spoken by Ged in response to the follow-up question: “What of death?”

Each of us is a word, preceded by and returning to silence - but we are also syllables of a word that begins and ends with time itself.

[been a long day - stream of consciousness complete - take care everyone!]

[samarobryn]

Firstly, thanks for offering feedback to everyone here!

Secondly - I should’ve said I recycled my own Dischoir vocals I think the link to the entire sample pack is on the Disquiet 0419 thread and follows the usual Disquiet licence.

[bassling]

Ursula [disquiet0451]

I’ve incorporated silences into my track through including pauses before different sections.

To do this I built up the scaffold of the song by playing drums along to this song that I’ve been enjoying recently.

Then I settled on a handful of notes on the bass, which led me to learn they were part of a Phrygian mode.

Today I added a guitar part to fill out the song and attempted a melody.