Trying to capture some slightly out of sync, slightly one-sided, but somehow still meaningful conversations that I’ve been apart of over the years. All Deluge: one part unsynced and lfo’d ringmod arpeggio and one part delayed and lfo’d cello mellotron sample.
The hyper-compartmentalization of conversation these days urged me to focus instead on an entirely unguarded conversation I often rehash about raising kids in New Mexico. This was of course interrupted by my colleagues in Kerala, India, and the wonderful birdsong outside their windows.
The tune here is based on a Mihoacan folk song recorded several times by guitarist Joaquin Bautista. I’d intended it to be more lyrical but my fingerstyle powers are not what they used to be and I’ve leaned heavily on the DSP to make it more engaging. This was recorded on a passable Yamaha G60A with a couple pencil mics and a piezo near the bridge, a rhythm take down low and blues take up higher – all sent through a new Behringer 1002b battery-powered mixer with a couple delay pedals attached. The DSP is the usual suspects from Glitchmachines and Output – the rhythm track gets pitched > ringmod > stutter & smear > filtered over multiple passes, for instance.
There’s a spot on these recordings (not included) where my colleague tries to put the laptop out the window nearer the birds and the router starts dropping packets. Listening to that slowed down by granular effects, I can hear the heavily aliased individual UDP packets repeating until the stream resumes again seconds later. Fun!
A sloppy conversation between two MM2 patches, based on the David Shire theme music for The Conversation. In the spirit of the movie, a pad and shakers provide background chatter.
I decided to execute on this idea late last night. It turned out to be a great opportunity for me to learn the Blackbox better. I used 10 different audio clips, triggering them from the pads menu as the song progressed.
I had arranged some old riffs for this week’s song (I try to make a song each week, Junto or no) and had trouble filling it out. Then, the email for this week’s Junto project came in, so I thought about adding wordless dialogue.
I made a custom drum kit in NanoStudio using Animal Crossing Animalese samples. Then, I cut some bits out of a Borges lecture so he could come in on the break.
Again this was a wonderful challenge.
My idea was to have an one-sided conversation with a kind of guru. And then there is a friend who always has to add something insignificant while I am talking, or have the last word. He even starts before the intro… The guru remains very monosyllabic.
I started with the drums for basis. After choosing the sounds for the three interlocutors I improvised the melodies in one take. In a second take I used a Midi-controller to manipulate several values of the used synthesizers (mainly cutoffs, resonance, distortion, but also grain speed and formant for Padshop).
Then I added the other instruments to give the backing (different for me and the guru), added an intro, an outro and pauses. Effects were added to enhance the sound - as always everything done inside Cubase.
I think this was my fastest created track so far, and with the most improvisational content.
This is an interesting challenge! I work in science, where it is often said that all models are wrong (but some are useful). It is nearly impossible to have a conversation that does not involve a belief in models (about both the self and the counterpart) that are wrong. I decided on a short dialog with ego around the subject of reification (error of confusing a model of something with the concrete thing itself). The staccato cello is wisdom, and overbearing piano is ego which has a self-righteous pout (at 1:15) when faced with evidence of its non-reality.
A dialogue between an organ and a synth. There is some playing with different scales involved. I first recorded drums, bass and strings in Reaper through MIDI (quantized etc) and then I played the organ and the synth semi-live.
During our monthly conversation this past Sunday, I was telling an old high school pal that I keep on meaning to make recordings of my electrolocating pet fish (who I reach via video messaging as they’re in Chicago) and the bats (heard echolocating via a bat detector) by the Kelvin here in Glasgow.
He told me I should really do that.
So I did that.
My phone’s memory cut off the conversation too soon, so I’ll have to come back to it.
Wasn’t going to do one this week, but then I was playing around with tape recorders I fixed earlier in the week and some 30 second loop cassettes (designed for answering machines, so quite appropriate to the conversation theme), and I liked the textures that were left on the loops when I listened back the next day.
The two loops play a couple of times each, panned to different channels. I slowed one down slightly and sped one up slightly, so they don’t stay synched. It’s a pretty noisy and repetitive conversation, with the two voices talking over each other a lot, but isn’t that often the way?
Hello Junto! I have been away too long and I’m back with a celestial choir battle. I took two sound files and ran them through @dwtong’s excellent glaciers script on norns. I’ve been really enjoying this script and wanted to post something with it and this was a great opportunity to do so. The two tracks didn’t need additional reverb, but I like smears and smears on smears isn’t a bad thing so both got some Valhalla love in Live.
I will do my best to continue participating up through Week 500!
As always, I really appreciated the prompt. This time it helped me get unstuck on an instrumental track I’d been building with layers of guitars and keyboards. Stripped most of that out, recorded my violin to converse with the lead guitar.
The playlist has been updated. If your track is missing, lemme know. Thanks, everyone.
This was great! Very dungeon synth.
I was inspired. Admit. But as I understand you are supposed to use old keyboards or at least simple, general midi like, sounds and almost no fx. The “rules” of this genre is intriguing… Dungeon are supposed to sound like the soundtrack to an old adventure game. Correct me if I’m wrong… 
There are so many offshoots now that range from '90s PC RPG sounds to Casio black metal to full-on cinematic soundtracks (which aren’t too far away from late-'90s CRPG music) that it’s a more feel-driven genre than a rules one. And even the feels have broadened — there’s now sci-fi dungeon synth and comfy synth.
I’m sure there’s a genre cop out there that’ll tell me I’m wrong, though. 
Maybe a genre junto? 