Disquiet Junto Project 0551: The Bends

Anatol · 2022-07-24T12:16:06.164Z

I have to admit, I’m a sucker for applause. With the attention economy for artists in full effect, I’m guilty of wanting as many plays as possible for my music. As we all know, the first entries in any playlist get played more often, so I tend to rush the Disquiet Junto projects in order to be fast. This is just stupid, because you shouldn’t measure success just by quantity.

So I bent my expectations this time, forced myself to work slowly, took all the time I needed to get the piece as finished as you can get in four days. Instead of just going for the melodic parts, I added some drum parts this time, which took a while. Still, after having spent at lease 12-18 hours, the piece isn’t ready yet. I may leave it for a while and come back to it later.

kterauch · 2022-07-24T17:51:52.104Z

I’m a recovering classical pianist and have been relying heavily on DAWs to make music. Since my “strict rule” has been a simple avoidance of the piano, I wanted to center the piano as a compositional tool for this Junto project.

To keep the piece simple, I wrote a few melodies and patterns centering the pitch D, recorded the whole thing as a midi file and added slight enhancements to make the piano superhuman.

I think this can be a way for me to make peace with the piano?

krakenkraft · 2022-07-24T18:37:31.567Z

I’m strict about not using presets. So this is a preset track:

It’s a Landforms preset routed through a Arturia Fragments preset and some Supermassive presets. Plus a iZotope BreakTweaker preset for some drums and again rerouted through Fragments creating those artifacts which one could perceive as strange vocals. Because I went for a drum preset with jazz in the name it really feels torn inside, which I liked at the end.

fakeg3nius · 2022-07-24T19:56:19.563Z

I often / always start by putting some different ideas into Ableton (though I might source them from various places, vcv-rack, recording of playing in instrument, et.), then when I can imagine some of them working together I composite the whole thing together and so on. Now I deliberately started outside of Ableton. I chose Reason, because (1) I’ve used it in the 90s so there is nostalgia, (2) because it seems to be getting quite cool recently (again) with all the new “player” additions. Then, to not completely break the rule but bend it, I did go back to Ableton, exporting the stems from Reason and putting it together, adding just a little bit of effects here and there, not too much.

PaulBeaudoin · 2022-07-24T23:58:13.342Z

Within a Slowly Unfolding Universe

Like most humans on this small planet, I have been astonished by the images returning from the James Webb telescope. I wanted to explore that vastness and restrict myself to only free libraries. On this track, I am only using samples from the PIanobook collection - and in particular, the many superb samples made available by the generous Dan Keen.

Glitcher · 2022-07-25T01:48:41.227Z

Some of this rings true for me also but quite often I just dont know if I will have time to work some more on a project or not I don’t want to fall into the trap of never finishing anything and so sometimes when I decide it’s finished I can publish it and be happy with it. Occassionally though something feels wrong. That’s probably because part of me wants to work on it some more and doesn’t feel that it’s really finished. Thats how I felt about my track for this week but as some time became available this evening I have worked with my patch some more and added another layer to it

Anatol:

forced myself to work slowly, took all the time I needed to get the piece as finished as you can get in four days.

This is definitely a good way to approach the Junto. Well said

bassling · 2022-07-25T05:31:37.347Z

I decided to try an idea to assemble lines of lyrics.

As part of my haiku-writing habit, I’ve collected five-syllable lines.

For this piece I printed them, then cut them out to pull randomly from a box.

Calmnesia · 2022-07-25T09:03:42.600Z

Sorry, I’m a few hours late but I’m here with some tense dark ambient.

The point of this disquiet junto project was to bend a ‘rule’ that you normally follow while making music. I personally always make my songs change over time in a significant way. It could be that there are different sections like a typical song or that elements fade in and out over time. Here I created some generative patches and just let them run with a simple fade in and fade out for the whole track.

celaeno · 2022-07-25T14:10:58.569Z

I usually make ambient, drone, noise etc. music, inspired by motifs, settings, atmospheres or ideas of the Cthulhu Mythos. I mostly use hardware synths as an inspiration. For the Junto I always think of something new.
So this time I broke with all of that: I used an old sketch of a sample/bassline song in verse/chorus form with only soft synths – and finished it Monday afternoon. It’s nothing like the stuff I usually do, but I like it

derangement · 2022-07-25T18:25:30.954Z

I realised I always, without fail, run pitch CV through a quantiser. So for this Disquiet Junto I ignored pitch quantisation. Three voices - drone in background, Rings acting as bass, and a melodic voice.

SonicSearch · 2022-07-25T18:34:23.450Z

(reuploaded the track link)

TLDR

Looking back through the lens of this prompt, there’s a few “habits” I tried to challenge this week:

being more of a synthesist than a DJ - preferring to work from the ground up, building my own synthetic sounds rather than taking advantage of readily available, complex and rich sonic material like acoustic instruments, recordings, sample packs, stems or even parts of tracks/movies/etc.
a fixed mindset when approaching familiar sounds: e.g. treating an acoustic guitar part as just that, rather than seeing it as raw sonic material that can be stretched and transformed in any way imaginable
not embracing randomness, again for me it’s about having a fixed mindset of “I know what I want to do”, rather than being open to “what is”, the randomness and chance and embracing the fact that the world isn’t the way I want it to be. There’s beauty in such embracement, it’s like having the randomness as you co-author. I love it.
disregarding the old projects, but revisiting them to re-contextualize the old recorded material and ideas could be a wonderful experience

The Context

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of sound synthesis - to the point where sound synthesis has become the core of my music practice. Just a few days before the challenge I realized that I’m pretty tired of it now and I could probably benefit from a change…

When I read this weeks’ prompt I thought of challenging this in this way: what if I work with bigger building blocks?

Rather than building up my own sounds and compose the basic elements, working my way from the “bottom up”, I’d work “top-down”, starting with already rich and complex sonic material and arranging it together.

I thought of a DJ workflow as the opposite of what I’ve been doing recently (thought informed by my recent visit to a DJ friend who showed me the basics of how to work with a mixing desk).

Not owning a mixing desk and not being savvy enough with it, I decided to stick to the tools I knew (for the purposes of this challenge). I’ve an idea of opening some old project that I didn’t finish and treat its tracks as stems on a DJ desk, remixing it and giving it a new life.

The Process

I decided to open an old project of mine (I knew which), but when I loaded it in Ableton, I realized I opened the wrong one… My first impulse was “Let’s close it, I need to find that particular I had in mind!”, but then (thanks to the lens of this challenge) I decided to embrace this random event and work with the project I did open.

I revisited a project from 11 months ago. I rarely do that. I was stunned how different I approached music back then: there’s a danceable beat! There’s recordings of me playing guitar and a bass! There’s a recording of my breathing as an ambient background noise texture! There’s also that custom percussive/timbral instrument hacked together from an (almost audio-rate) arpeggiator, a drum rack, and a pitch shifter which I almost forgot about…

It was really fun to apply my new knowledge and experience to an old project - playing mostly modular synths for these 11 months seemed to influence my approach to organizing sound

Just one example: that project contained a muted nylon guitar track. I remember having fun jamming along the track, but the part just didn’t fit. This time I was able to re-contextualize that material:

I no longer saw it as a fixed “guitar part”, rather I saw it as a malleable raw sonic material, from which I can create new sounds, new parts.

To fit the mood of the track, I transformed a 2 bar loop of the guitar part into a percussive sound by pitch shifting and rhythmically gating it:

image2204×472 117 KB

Then, I sliced the part on the timeline to create more space and variation, and to make it fit the other elements of the track:

image2346×274 91.8 KB

Finally, I put a Beat Repeater effect on it to give it even more randomized variation.

In the end, that track (muted and disregarded in the original project) has become the essential part of the whole track, serving as the main melodic content and a nice contrasting element to the noisy sound in the 2nd part.

Take-aways

A quick summary of my experience this week:

working with “larger building blocks” - e.g. samples or even stems can be helpful to fight the fatigue from doing lots of synthesis. Think of DJs -vs- synthesists. Sometimes it’s nice to change the hats.
revisiting one’s old projects can be surprisingly refreshing - it allows to see one’s progress, get in contact with the shift of your perspective and interests, also apply new knowledge techniques in a different context.
approaching any sound with an open mind, seeing it as raw, malleable sonic material can be helpful. E.g. being able to take a nylon guitar sound and turn it into a percussive melody. Or taking a cymbal sample and turning it into a drone or a bass sound. Anything is possible, I’d love to remember that more often.

Reflections on Juntos

Since I first started doing the juntos I can see how much progress I made in terms of being able to release imperfect, “unfinished” tracks.

Duh! Of course the tracks are unfinished, of course they are imperfect. They will always be, just like any art works!
I’m learning to accept this fact as being an integral part of the creative practice. When I did my first junto a few months back things weren’t so simple - the perceived imperfection and unfinished-ness of my own work caused much frustration.

It was refreshing to see and experience works of other Junto members, to get a glimpse into their creative worlds, to see the amazing variety of approaches. Such a good reminder that there’s no right and wrong.

I learned to work faster, implementing and iterating on the ideas, then letting them go for the next one. And it feels great! So much better than sweating over details and getting stuck with one project

Now on to listening works of others, so intrigued by which habits other folks identified and challenged.

Thank you for this excellent prompt!

Hugh_Prat · 2022-07-26T03:49:53.133Z

Hey All, I am not real strict about anything. I was thinking it was to get up a new way of working. I tried many things. One was just using the arrangement view and working linearly but I did not dig that. I finally decided to have no repeating loops but have the loops constantly changing. I did let the drums loop though but the beat itself is always changing a bit.
I also did this for STBB and they had a thing about a butter sound and using a reverb to crate a room feel. Hope all are well.

Peace, Hugh

SinnySounds · 2022-07-26T05:59:02.272Z

Many pop songs utilize 808s for the drum programming and EDM synth leads, so as a matter of principle, I tend to avoid those sounds in favor of more unique textures. An exception to that rule was made for this song.

Also, give it up for the AI hype man (or hype bot in this case)!

PaulBeaudoin · 2022-07-26T11:01:30.798Z

@blisterpop - I totally get sitting it out. I have to do it too. Something that keeps me boxed in is my training that anything done quickly has no merit. (Academic training says sweat and toil over every.single, damn, decision.) I’m trying to undo that now.

@ossimuratore - I have Maschine and I have plugged it in twice. I need to learn it because I really want to make my music live.

@disquiet - why is it so hard to get on the Soundcloud playlist? I mean, I know it isn’t, but I often feel the bot never finds me. Unlike the male underwear ads it wants to send me in the Metaverse.

@RabMusicLab - graphic scores still intimidate me - but I make them - even if they are never realized. That will soon change when I go to a composers residency.retreat next month.

@krakenkraft - no presets? wow - does your dad know? Presets are often not so bad - especially in combination with others that I make. and, oh my god, I freaking LOVE Landforms - S+A completely reformed (and inspired) me back to composing after a long hiatus.

krakenkraft · 2022-07-26T13:26:17.809Z

@RandomShuffle Living in Munich I wonder where you recorded these sounds

@ray_cobley I had problems to get into, but then I wished it would go on or hours.

@ossimuratore @Anatol I like the (broken) rules

@SonicSearch I especially liked the Reflection on Juntos!

You’re absolutely right to make fun of me @PaulBeaudoin – and it really did sound more severe than intended. I certainly don’t start every sound from blank scratch. It’s more about avoiding ‘not even minimally personalized presets’, and the track definitely consists only of such.

PaulBeaudoin · 2022-07-26T14:28:01.373Z

Oh, I wasn’t making fun of you or the track - rather admitting that I use presets all the time without hesitation - they are often quite good at getting the kind of sounds I am seeking - or even - that they inspire from me new music(!). I am sorry if my wit came across as a stab to you or your sound - definitely not - and if I offended, then I apologize and will be more sensitive in the future.

krakenkraft · 2022-07-26T16:53:52.108Z

Really “none taken”, in no way, not a second

kterauch · 2022-07-27T01:46:56.271Z

Lol @SinnySounds my husband really hates it when I use 808 bass because of his sound memory. I love the stuff against orchestral material. He cannot get over it, though

@Hugh_Prat I have to work linearly and did not even realize that was one of my rules until you mentioned. I’ll try to figure out how I can make my thing on Ableton vertical view!

@SonicSearch totally agree with you on how Junto projects let you churn things out without being too self-conscious. I think it’s also the supportive community that helps. I love it - thanks @disquiet ! Also - I really enjoy how this track sounds. I might be crossing the line of sound Orientalism associating the pentatonic scale but I was seeing scenes of Blade Runner listening to this!

SonicSearch · 2022-07-27T20:59:07.213Z

It’s lovely to see the feedback culture taking its root!
Must be those earlier feedback-related prompts.

@DeDe Laid-back vibe and reliably groovy, wished it lasted longer! I like how the melodies don’t cry for attention, perhaps due to their mellow sound.

@tendigits welcome to Junto, hope you liked it! haha, it’s a great description! also my ship captain was definitely navigating a spaceship not sailing in the sea when I show my patches or tracks to my partner, we both like coming up with some weird imagery/descriptions like this one, it’s so much fun

re: the mix, I’d probably make the high sound to be less loud… now it’s kinda hard to hear the background sound behind it. Higher pitches often tend to be perceived louder than they are due to how our perception works, something I try to keep in mind when mixing.

I was also thinking that making it less loud and possibly entering / leaving or becoming closer / further could help the composition to last longer without becoming overwhelming.

@ossimuratore loved it! sounds like you enjoyed playing with that patch!
Wondering if you changed your mind about not using pre-sequenced parts?
Also liked how you combined the harmonic and inharmonic sounds, makes a nice contrast.

@RabMusicLab I loved your process! Also a brilliant name for the track (could be a great album title?), descriptive of your approach. the result is a unique and emotional track. I think you’re onto something here…
Looks like it pays off to think less while playing, let go of the familiar structures and be guided by something else instead. Your track reminded me of the best playing experiences I’ve had in my life when I did exact same thing - playing keyboard or guitar without thinking about scales & rhythm. When it feels like I’m playing.
So… thank you for reminding me of that joy!

@Anatol the drum part sounds very organic - nice work! And totally loved the contrast between the mellow instrumentals and the harsher timbres of the rhythmical vocal bits.
also appreciating your honesty about being a sucker for applause. Very familiar, and I sometimes feel… hmm, “not free” because of it?

@kterauch happy to see you’re finding your ways to overcome obstacles! I’m sure you’ll come to see your classical background as your strength and as a source of playful inspiration when making your music. There are many artists trained in classical piano who found their own unique ways of working with the instrument to go way beyond its original constraints by combining it with electronic production and performing techniques (Nils Frahm comes to mind, or Sarah Belle Reid who after years of mastering a perfect technique on her trumpet has been learning to play it in “wrong ways” to break through to new territories). And they seem to be taking advantage of all the skills and experience they developed through their early practice. So I’m sure you’re on the right track and your piano background is such a great asset!

@krakenkraft it sounds great! I also tend to avoid presets, and I imagine it feels very different to compose with them.
So after finishing your track - did you enjoy working with these restrictions? is presets-only approach something you’d try again? Maybe some responsibility for the end result is shifted on to the preset designer, which frees you for more creative tasks… Idk, just wondering out loud

@bassling that’s a cool process - also awesome storytelling with the video!

@Calmnesia - I enjoyed the sound of your patch, I think its elements are fitting together quite nicely. Definitely would listen to more of this kind of music.
Also would love to hear a few words about your patch. Are there any samples involved?

Reflection on giving feedback

I didn’t expect to write as much as I did, but in the process I realized an important thing and that realization pushed me forward:

Giving feedback helped me to feel and think deeper about what I’m hearing, as well as reflect on my reactions to that. And that in turn helps to deepen my own relationship with music and art in general.

So basically when providing feedback I found much value even for myself just in paying more attention and verbalizing some of the observations that I normally tend to leave not fully formed and articulated. Anyway…

Wondering if others have similar experiences?

DeDe · 2022-07-27T21:48:45.359Z

Blockquote Giving feedback helped me to feel and think deeper about what I’m hearing, as well as reflect on my reactions to that. And that in turn helps to deepen my own relationship with music and art in general.
So basically when providing feedback I found much value even for myself just in paying more attention and verbalizing some of the observations that I normally tend to leave not fully formed and articulated.

Spot on, thanks for this.