#33

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 :sweat_smile:

@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?

9 Likes
#34

(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.

10 Likes
#35

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.

2 Likes
#36

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.

1 Like
#37

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.

2 Likes
#38

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

2 Likes
#39

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.

4 Likes
#40

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 :slight_smile:

2 Likes
#41

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.

3 Likes
#42

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.

2 Likes
#43

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!

6 Likes
#44

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 :slight_smile:

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!]

5 Likes
#45

Firstly, thanks for offering feedback to everyone here!

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

2 Likes
#46

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.

4 Likes
#47

This piece seems like the most straightforward response to the challenge. And it sounds lovely.

1 Like
#48

I have been striving, of late, to achieve more with less. My hope was that this would be an example of that. Thanks for your comment, and I’m glad that you enjoyed it.

3 Likes
#49

“For a word to be spoken, there must be silence. Before, and after.”

This was a live take from my modular/semi-modular setup. A self-oscillating ladder filter provides a sine wave and is passed through a VCA with CV coming from three separate envelope generators all running at slightly different tempi. The since is then processed through a Wasp filter being modulated by an envelope and gated by a homemade VCA/LPG. A sample and hold is passed through a quantiser to control the pitch of the sine, a physical modelling pluck module and a synth voice. There are other modulations provided by an inversion of one of the earlier envelopes and also CV values from a step sequencer that is set to fifteen steps to provide a shifting effect. The synth voice is also being gated by another homespun VCA/LPG. Finally the audio is passed through a slight hall reverb.

After that lot, the recording was stretched by three times using the Paul Stretch algorithm. No other processing was done in the box.

(Quite a long sentence but delivered deliberately!)

3 Likes
#50

Thank you for the kind words and taking the time for a focussed listen and thoughtful responses to the submissions. Looking forward to hearing the full playlist tomorrow. RPLKTR stay creative, safe and healthy. That also goes for all of you out there. Cheers.

4 Likes
#51

Reading the prompt for this week, I immediately thought of an old track, the first ambient piece I created that I felt happy with. I decided to go back to it and do some reworking to make something in the spirit of the original but also reflecting where I am today. Taking silence and slowly building it into emptiness. I don’t know if that makes sense to anyone but me, but here it is.

4 Likes
#52

thanks a lot, you are very kind.

1 Like