Disquiet Junto Project 0532: Other Means

Disquiet Junto
#1

Note: Tracks from this project may be discussed and excerpted in an upcoming online event to be held on March 26, 2022, as part of The Big Conversation Space (thebigconversationspace.org, aka the duo of Niki Korth and Clémence de Montgolfier). Details to follow as it approaches. This event will be part of their ongoing The Talking Cure effort, which inspired a Junto project this past November, number 0515. Niki and Clémence also produced this short film about the Disquiet Junto that I mentioned a few weeks ago: “Parallel Play” (on YouTube).

The following instructions popped up at disquiet.com/0532 (thanks to the powers of automation) shortly after 12:10am Pacific Time on March 10, and then at twitter.com/disquiet a little further along. The email containing those instructions went out via tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto later in the morning (after I woke up).

0532
05321200×1200 233 KB

Disquiet Junto Project 0532: Other Means

The Assignment: Make music about something you find difficult or unproductive to talk about.

Step 1: Consider the following question: When is “talking” helpful or productive for you?

Step 2: Now consider things that talking about doesn’t seem to help, or perhaps even hinders, for you.

Step 3: Make music about the topic or concern that arose from Step 2.

Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0532” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your tracks.

Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0532” (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 tracks. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your tracks.

Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0532-other-means/

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.

Step 8: Also join in the discussion on the Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to marc@disquiet.com for Slack inclusion.

Note: Please post one track for this weekly Junto project. If you choose to post more than one, and do so on SoundCloud, please let me know which you’d like added to the playlist. Thanks.

Additional Details:

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, March 14, 2022, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, March 10, 2022.

Length: The length is up to you. Take the time you need.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0532” in the title of the tracks, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.

Upload: When participating in this project, 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: It is always best to set 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 532nd weekly Disquiet Junto project – Other Means (The Assignment: Make music about something you find difficult or unproductive to talk about) – at: https://disquiet.com/0532/

More on the Disquiet Junto at: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0532-other-means/

2 Likes
#2

The project is now live. Sorry if you got the email announcement twice. I sent it to the wrong list by mistake first.

#3

This week takes me by surprise as I have been working on a larger work that addresses these unsettling times. In this work, I address the things that I find difficult (or impossible) to talk about - much less have any power to change. The situation is far beyond a single person and must turn to all of us to create change.

Thank you for listening and for leaving feedback - I am grateful for the continuous support of this community.
Be safe and be well.

11 Likes
#4

Recorded this piece about online shopping.

I don’t really want to talk about it but, yeah, it’s been a thing lately.

10 Likes
#5

Hi, it’s not the first time that a junto forces me to finish and let go something that’s stuck in a never-ending “demo” state.
“consider things that talking about doesn’t seem to help” ? Well, lack of self-confidence is a very bad thing and something I don’t feel confident talking about. One has the tendency to just hide those moments or situations. Not that it happens a lot, but in my music making it does happen sometimes. “Is this any good?” “it deserves more work or should I trash it?” etc
Mostly I do work on the bastard and le tit go, but this particular piece of music I will share, it’s been stuck for at least 6years and I keep coming back to try to save it, almost every month. Add stuff, remove stuff, drop it, and go back next month, and it’s never ok. Yet, I just can’t let it go.
Last time I worked on it was some days ago, I discovered some ebow improvisations (muted) dating from last year, listened to those tracks, edited a one track ebow thing, and dropped it again. But today I went back to it, mixed it and here it is.
I should have talked with some colleague visiting my studio, ask their advice, talk about what’s not convincing to me, etc, but I just don’t feel ok showing stuff that I’m not sure is any good (nor really bad).
Anyway, thanks for getting this out of my head. I feel the burden gone now, until l next time…

guitars, bass, drum beat

12 Likes
#6

I’ve been seeing the same therapist now for 10 years or so now. But, still, there are things I am paranoid or worried about that I will never talk to her or anyone about. I’m worried that, if I do, she’ll say, “You have good reason to be worried about that,” and confirm my worst fears.

In this piece, I tried to get in my head when I’m the most confused, discouraged, and ruminative. I wrote a basic melody and then added a lot of effects.

15 Likes
#7

Some people seem to get annoyed at the fact that some cars fuel is electricity, the fact that the vehicle does not have a combustion engine (this sentence does not feel correct, but…). I don’t understand what’s so provocative. There are persons putting down a lot of effort in tarnishing cars not having a combustion engine.
It does not feel productive to try to talk to them about this. Time will tell.

The track is inspired by our EV’s reverse signal.
This track happened so fast. The outcome was not what I had in mind.

12 Likes
#8

thanks for the profound task! In my opinion, the family is the place where talking to each other is so important, but also the place where talking to each other fails and maybe the big silence occurs and therefore many secrets are not told.
I’m on the road right now, composing theater music, “only” have my beloved Lyra 8 with me.
Anyway, I loved recording for this assignment!

Recorded in Ableton Live

Everyone stay healthy and peace on earth!!!

12 Likes
#9

Went for the Unproductive route. It’s attempting to be a mediator, an interpreter, a compiler, a linker, with an alien species that talks in the language of a different species type. No Rosetta Stone here baby!

Thanks for listening. Hope you enjoy.

10 Likes
#10

6 Likes
#11

In 1997, members of a religious cult called Heaven’s Gate believed that the passing of the Hale-Bopp comet would be followed by a spaceship. Convinced that the spaceship would take “true believers” aboard to the Afterlife, several members bought an expensive telescope to gain a better view of the comet. Within days, they requested a refund; when asked why they returned the telescope, they complained that the item was defective because it didn’t show the spaceship in the comet’s wake. Shortly thereafter, all 39 members of the cult killed themselves.

Cognitive dissonance is a term coined by psychologist Leon Festinger to describe the state when a person’s beliefs and behavior contradict one another. It manifests itself in various ways, from what we eat to how we vote. The COVID-19 pandemic was a breeding ground for cognitive dissonance; political and cultural biases invaded factual discourse, impeding our capacity to solve a global condition whose reverberations persist to this day.

Suss Müsik sought to explore the vexatious nature of dissonance using DIY-glitch technologies and manipulated vocalizations. Sounds emitted from handmade devices were recorded to tape and “performed” using a hacked cassette Sony Walkman. The most interesting bits were sampled into loops and run through a grain synth engine. The vocal effect (which features a sample of psychologist Dr. Dan P. McAdams) recalls that of sound art pioneer Alvin Lucier, whose seminal piece I Am Sitting In A Room suggests a new form of musicality: spoken words verbalized and abstracted, the non-tonic becoming tonic and back again.

The piece is titled Festinger and was recorded live to 8-track.

8 Likes
#12

as usual your text is informative and sometimes as interesting as the music. thanks for informing me about Dr Festinger’s interesting concept.
“Cognitive Dissonance”…man now I have to borrow that for a song title.
Or could even be my autobiography’s title, mind…

5 Likes
#13

Thank you, friend! Looking forward to hearing “Cognitive Dissonance.”

2 Likes
#14

What happens to a pack of chewing gum when it goes through the washer?
My first submission to this forum!
Track created in Eurorack using my new Arbhar granular sampling a gamelan orchestra clip, a Morphagene sample of a Japanese flute and bass note from a MiniMod. Some processing with an FXAid and recording in one take into Logic Pro.

8 Likes
#15

This was a challenging project for me, to create something based on when talking doesn’t help.
I find communication difficult and interpreting what people are trying to tell me even more so. I can hear words but I’m blind to their meaning and struggle with ambiguity. I often misread situations or get surprised by people reacting in ways I would not have predicted. Sometimes it’s like trying to tiptoe through a mine field whilst balancing an egg on your nose when trying to work out how to respond to a sociable “how are you?”
Over the years I’ve found ways of compensating and dealing with social communication, little heuristics that help me appear less autistic in the workplace.
This piece is based on that, using heuristics to give an approximation of agency.
I fed some lfos that were retriggered every 8 steps into a matrix mixer, output routed into a sample and hold and quantiser, pitch and gate info triggering a piano multisample. This would create random repeating 8 note sequences, changing the lfo frequencies and matrix routings creating new patterns at the start of a retrigger.
I fed this and some recorded phone line adverts from the '80s into Beads to create a distracting jumble of words and glitches, kinda expressing in sounds what I’m unable to describe in words.

15 Likes
#16

The playlist is rolling:

2 Likes
#17

Reading the prompt, I thought of the last album I released exploring themes of grief and loss. The reason I create art, including music, is to better express complex emotions I find difficult to put words to. It’s not so much that talking about these emotions isn’t helpful, it is that I find that when I try to explain them with words, it feels inadequate and limited. So this is a quick rework of a track composed for that album but not used. Listening to it now, thinking maybe it should have been.

9 Likes
#18

Due to my relative lack of self awareness, I am prone to cutting people off in conversations. To represent this common phenomenon, I asked a musician to send some guitar interjections that would completely hijack the original recording I prepared. The result is my first foray into noise music.

Sinny: synth pads, arrangement
Tooth: electric guitar and distorted synth

6 Likes
#19

That’s a very cool way to put it…

2 Likes
#20

I used a contact mic into the modular to trigger DM77 drum module in the higer range plus capture the mic sounds themselves. Modulated a droning rose oscillator (lich) with 16n.
Modulated a Grandpa and Spa with 16n. Modded my mostly unused TD-3 with four diy mods to make it sound better and created a bassline. This is supplemented with a kontakt Buchla bass patch. Used vst drum Moonkits and effects.

The rest is best not talked about but @melondruie is spot on with his take on music, emotions and setting stuff free by creating. Hope all are well :slight_smile:

8 Likes